December 2004 Archives

"Nowadays young, second- or third-generation Moroccans don't see themselves as Moroccans anymore, but also not as Dutch. In the search for an identity, they decide that they are just Muslims and nothing else." From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

AMSTERDAM, Dec 31 (Reuters) - The Dutch spy chief has accused politicians of ignoring intelligence warnings about rising Islamic militancy in his first newspaper interview since the murder of a Dutch filmmaker critical of Islam.

"I was always surprised that politicians did not sound the alarm in reaction to our annual reports," the head of the country's main AIVD agency, Sybrand van Hulst, told the Friday edition of Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad....

Van Hulst said the agency had warned that integration of immigrants was failing and that foreign powers sought to influence religious communities in the Netherlands.

"In 2000 we said in our annual report that our society was facing increasing pressure. That is a very severe thing to say. But no word from the politicians. That really amazed me."

"Politicians now realise that tougher laws were necessary," he said, but warned that measures against radical Muslims alone would not solve the problem.

"We must make sure that Muslims feel welcome here, that they integrate, that they accept the identity of the country where they live," he said.

The Netherlands is home to about 1 million Muslims, or 6 percent of the population.

Van Hulst said young Muslims were especially vulnerable to the appeal for radical Islam.

"Nowadays young, second- or third-generation Moroccans don't see themselves as Moroccans anymore, but also not as Dutch. In the search for an identity, they decide that they are just Muslims and nothing else."

From AP, :

SAN DIEGO - A man who met with two Sept. 11 hijackers before they crashed an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon has been deported from San Diego to Algeria, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

Samir Abdoun, 38, was arrested 11 days after the 2001 attacks and convicted of immigration and passport violations and Social Security fraud, according to Homeland Security.

He had met with hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, according to Homeland Security, and lived in San Diego with four men who were arrested as material witnesses in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77.

Abdoun met the two hijackers for coffee several times but was never arrested as a material witness, said Lauren Mack, a department spokeswoman. He told federal agents that he was not friends with them, she said.

Islamic law for dhimmis forbids them to build new churches or repair old ones. That is, many will tell you, a relic of history. But when Christians in Egypt tried to build a new church, Muslims, programmed by centuries of cultural habit, took umbrage at the uppity dhimmis; the ensuing confrontation was bloody. "One Dead, Two Injured in Egypt Sectarian Clash," from Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

CAIRO (Reuters) - One man died and two others were injured in uncertain circumstances in southern Egypt, a police source said on Thursday, in the latest in a series of clashes between Muslims and Christians in Egypt.

The source said the clash took place on Wednesday when dozens of Muslims threw stones at a private building in Damshaw Hashim village, some 240 km (150 miles) south of Cairo, which they believed a Christian resident was turning into a church without state permission.

Police arrived at the scene and fired shots into the air to disperse the crowd, the source said.

It was not immediately clear how the man had died or who he was.

Members of the Christian Coptic minority, who make up 5 to 10 percent of Egypt's 70 million people, say they face restrictions in building churches among other problems. The authorities say every Egyptian is treated equally before the law regardless of religion.

From AP, with thanks to Melmere:

WASHINGTON -- A new government intelligence bulletin describes in the greatest detail yet Al Qaeda's techniques for assessing potential targets, extolling the lethal power of flying, shattered building glass and advising that kerosene and tires are effective for a deadly arson attack.

"The focus is on maximizing the destructive and killing power of an attack," the bulletin says.

The bulletin provides a fresh glimpse of terrorist reports found in computers and disks seized in Pakistan in July. The reports described the casing by terrorists of several buildings in the United States and prompted U.S. authorities to raise the terror threat level earlier this year for high-profile financial facilities in New York, Washington and Newark, N.J.

The heightened alert was eased shortly after the Nov. 2 election, and there is no evidence a potential attack ever moved beyond initial planning.

"Current intelligence provides no indications that Al Qaeda has operatives to conduct an attack based upon the information in these reports," the eight-page bulletin said.

Produced by the FBI and Homeland Security Department, the bulletin was circulated Tuesday to law enforcement, government and industry officials nationwide and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The excerpts, according to the bulletin, show that Al Qaeda operatives go well beyond basic description of a potential target to sophisticated analysis of vulnerabilities in building construction, an examination of potential police and emergency response and recommendations for possible methods of attack.

In one report, an unidentified Al Qaeda operative notes that a building "is almost completely made to resemble a glass house -- which could be devastating in an emergency scenario ... that is to say, that when shattered, each piece of glass becomes a potential flying piece of cutthroat shrapnel!"

Hard to believe that someone could write that and think he was acting in the service of the Creator of Heaven and Earth, but there it is.

Paraiba do Sol will have one of the only statues of a terrorist in the Western world. From AP, :

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- The New Year's Eve celebrations in the small community of Paraiba do Sul will honor a figure the town's mayor says hasn't been honored anywhere else in the West - the late Yasser Arafat.

Moments before the clock rings in 2005, a fireworks and light show will serve as a backdrop to the unveiling of a life-sized statue of the Palestinian leader holding the traditional symbol of peace, the olive branch.

The 5-foot, 7-inch bronze statue will be part of an open-air memorial that includes a marble map of Palestine and a replica of the Palestinian flag, also in marble, Paraiba do Sul Mayor Rogerio Onofre said.

"It is the first time a memorial in Arafat's honor has been built in the Western world," Onofre said.

Let's hope it's the last, but it probably won't be.

Democracy in Iraq update. From the Washington Times, :

BAGHDAD -- The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other terrorist groups issued a statement yesterday, warning Iraqis not to vote in the Jan. 30 election because democracy is un-Islamic.

"Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit," the groups said in a warning. "This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God -- Muslims' doctrine."

Democracy leads to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual "marriage," if the majority agrees, the terrorists said.

After the warning was issued, all 700 employees of the electoral commission in Mosul, Iraq, resigned, the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera reported.

Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said he was not able to confirm the Al Jazeera report.

In this fiendishly obscene essay, Professor Shahid Alam of Northeastern University portrays the mass-murdering thugs of 9/11 as heroes on the order of the American patriots of Lexington and Concord. Check out also (at LGF) the sneeringly anti-Semitic reply he made to an email reproaching him for his hateful views. From Dissident Voice, with thanks to Anthony and MB:

On April 19, 1775, 700 British troops reached Concord, Massachusetts, to disarm the American colonists who were preparing to start an insurrection. When the British ordered them to disperse, the colonists fired back at the British soldiers. This "shot heard 'round the world" heralded the start of an insurrection against Britain, the greatest Western power of its time. And when it ended, victorious, in 1783, the colonists had gained their objective. They had established a sovereign but slave-holding republic, the United States of America.

The colonists broke away because this was economically advantageous to their commercial and landed classes. As colonists, they were ruled by a parliament in which they were not represented, and which did not represent their interests. The colonies were not free to protect and develop their own commerce and industries. Their bid for independence was made all the more attractive because it was pressed under the banner of liberty. The colonial elites had imbibed well the lessons of the Enlightenment, and here in the new world, they had an opportunity to harness liberty in the service of their economic interests. Backed by the self interest of their landed and commercial elites, and inspired by revolutionary ideas, the colonists had a dream worth pursuing. They were prepared to die for this dream - and to kill. They did: and they won.

On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die - and to kill - for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity. The manner of their death - and the destruction it wreaked - is not merely a testament to the vulnerabilities that modern technology has created to clandestine attacks. After all, skyscrapers and airplanes have co-existed peacefully for many decades. The attacks of 9-11 were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too; if one can think objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosion of 9-11 was indeed a "shot heard 'round the world."

A few days ago I posted the full decision of Judge Michael Higgins in the Australian religious vilification case.

Now here are full transcripts of the actual seminar for which the pastors were convicted. You can judge for yourself whether or not they are guilty of vilifying Muslims.

Session One

Session Two

Session Three

Three guesses as to which one. From Broadcasting & Cable, with thanks to Twostellas:

Fox is under fire from at least one group for scenes in the Jan. 9 debut of drama 24 that portray a Muslim teen-ager and his parents as members of a terrorist cell plotting a mass attack on Americans.

Yes, I can see why they would be upset. That sort of thing never happens.

On[e] of the villains is a Walkman-toting, bubble-gum-chewing teenager who fights with his conservative Dad about dating an American girl and talking on the phone.

The young man also helps his parents mastermind a plot to kill large numbers of Americans that begins with an attack on a train.

Over the breakfast table, the father tells his son: "What we will accomplish today will change the world. We are fortunate that that our family has been chosen to do this."Yes, father," his son replies.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights and advocacy group, plans to bring their concerns about the episode to Fox, says group spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed.

That group has previously received complaints about the depiction of Muslims on 24, but this episode is particularly egregious, she said.

"They are taking everyday American Muslim families and making them suspects. They're making it seem like families are co-conspirators in this terrorist plot." In another scene, she says, a terrorist is shown coming out of a mosque. The way the episode depicts Muslims creates an atmosphere in which many Americans look at all Muslims as suspects in the war on terror, she adds. "It's very dangerous and very disturbing."

Sharia alert. There will be a lot of poor people in Italy when Sharia comes to that dhimmi land. From the BBC, "Italian fined for kiss in Dubai," with thanks to Sharon:

A drunken Italian tourist has been fined more than $3,000 (£1,566) for hugging and kissing a woman in public in the United Arab Emirates.

Police took the couple in for questioning after seeing them embracing in the back of a taxi near Dubai airport, said local paper Gulf News.

Officers say the pair confessed to kissing and hugging, and the Italian also admitted to being drunk.

The woman, an Egyptian national, had to pay $500 for lewd behaviour in public.

"On November 22, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent an intelligence bulletin to police agencies to alert them that terrorist groups have shown an interest in using laser beams to try to bring down airliners." From CNN, "Lasers illuminate airline cockpits on approach," :

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Six commercial airliners in the past four days have had their cockpits illuminated by laser beams while attempting to land, a government official told CNN Wednesday.

The incidents have happened "all over the place" and in "kind of odd places," the official said without elaborating.

None of the flights was affected.

The government official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said it was unclear whether this week's incidents were the result of "kids who got a laser light for Christmas" or whether there is "some deliberate attempt to target aircraft."

The cockpit of a Continental Airlines 737 was illuminated by a laser Monday as it approached Cleveland, authorities said.

FBI spokesman Bob Hawk said the light, which shined into the cockpit at around 8 p.m., came from a suburb about 15 miles from the airport.

The FBI said no harm was done and the light did not affect the plane's landing.

On November 22, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent an intelligence bulletin to police agencies to alert them that terrorist groups have shown an interest in using laser beams to try to bring down airliners.

"Terrorist groups overseas have expressed interest in using these devices against human sight," the bulletin said. "The U.S. intelligence community has no specific or credible evidence that terrorists intend to use lasers to target pilots in the homeland."

The bulletin said lasers were not a proven method of attacking aircraft but that they could lead to a crash.

Religious profiling: horrors! Why isn't DHS checking Methodists for terrorist activity? And what about those Amish? What are they up to? Come on, where is your sense of fairness? From AP, "Muslims claim unfair treatment at border," with thanks to Kemaste:

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- An Islamic civil rights group Wednesday accused U.S. border agents of religious profiling after dozens of American Muslims were searched, fingerprinted and photographed while returning from a religious conference in Toronto.

Some of those stopped said they were held at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge for six hours or more with no explanation.

A spokeswoman for Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection said agents stopped anyone who said they attended the three-day convention, titled "Reviving the Islamic Spirit," based on information that such gatherings can be a means for terrorists to promote their cause.

"I asked `If I refuse to give my fingerprints, what will you do?"' said Galeb Rizek, 32, who claimed he arrived at the border around midnight and was held until 6:30 a.m. "(The agent) said, `You can refuse, but you'll be here until you do."'

Rizek, whose family owns a hotel in Niagara Falls, said he is a frequent traveler across the border and has never before been fingerprinted or photographed. He described one woman, traveling with her young daughter, who protested and sobbed through the fingerprinting. The little girl cried as well.

"It was kind of dramatic. You really feel like a criminal and you haven't done anything wrong," said Rizek, who was born in the United States.

"The image of a room full of American Muslim citizens apparently being held solely because of their faith and the fact that they attended an Islamic conference is one that should be disturbing to all Americans who value religious freedom," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The group demanded an investigation by Homeland Security officials.

CBP spokeswoman Kristie Clemens said 34 people were stopped at the Lewiston crossing and four others were checked at the nearby Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls. They were held for an average of 2 1/2 hours and offered coffee and tea, she said.

Clemens acknowledged the inconvenience over the additional security measures, but said with the threat of terrorism, there was no room for error.

"We have ongoing credible information that conferences such as the one that these 34 individuals just left in Toronto may be used by terrorist organizations to promote terrorist activities, which includes traveling and fund raising," Clemens said. "As the front-line border agency, it is our duty to verify the identity of individuals _ including U.S. citizens _ and one way of doing that is fingerprinting."

Mo Rizek, 19, said frustration among those held for several hours boiled over to anger.

"Everyone was yelling," he said. "Some people had a 10-hour drive back to Connecticut in front of them, people had to go to work in the morning ... Every single person there was a U.S. citizen."

He said one of the messages of the convention was how to change for the better the way people feel about Muslims post-Sept. 11.

One easy way to do that would be to cooperate with such inconveniences without complaining about profiling. The bottom line is still that if you are not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Americans must accept these irritations as an unavoidable price of living freely and securely in America today. I myself have been stopped and searched many times at airports, and have never complained about it, nor will I ever, even if I were held for hours somewhere and had to miss my flight.

"Security among many risks for Dakar rally racers," from Reuters, with thanks to Kemaste:

DAKAR, Senegal - Ronn Bailey is a computer security expert but he will be worrying more about low-tech threats when he takes part in the 5,000-mile Dakar rally, considered the world's premier off-road race.

Like all the participants, the American millionaire adventurer is well aware that two stages of the 2004 rally were canceled because of a planned attack by Islamic militants.

This month authorities in Mauritania said they had arrested a man with links to al Qaeda who was planning to attack Americans taking part in the 2005 rally, which begins this New Year's Eve in Barcelona and ends in Dakar on Jan. 16.

Wire taps revealed the suspect was in touch with people connected to Osama Bin Laden's network in Saudi Arabia, according to officials in the Muslim West African country which is due to host six stages of the ultimate off-road rally.

The U.S. Embassy has issued a note telling all Americans involved in the rally to exercise "special caution."

Bailey and his team, Vanguard Racing, have also been advised not to display any American flags or symbols on their custom-built vehicle.

"So we're not doing anything of that nature - we're not painting any bullseyes on our car," Bailey joked in a telephone interview from his staging base in Paris last week.

But the first-time Dakar participant knows the risks he runs could be serious. The final document he signed before leaving the United States was his last will and testament.

"There's a possibility that something could happen and I just considered it to be proper to put the right things in place so that it wouldn't be such a burden on my family and on my employees if something should happen," he explained.

The forces of truth and right will have won a great victory when people start calling things by their right names. From P. David Hornik in FrontPage, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Haaretz story from Monday, December 27 informs us:

" . . an Israel Defense Forces tank opened fire and killed two Hamas activists early Sunday morning near the fence along the Green Line. . . . The two were seen crawling some 200 meters from the fence, and the IDF believes they were planning to set an explosive charge. Hamas confirmed the two were members of its organization."

Activists? What were they, campaigners against whale farming, or for a higher minimum wage, or a shorter school day? "Activist" is a strange term for people who were seeking to commit mass murder, and who belong to an organization whose charter states:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. . . . There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. . . . Jihad is [our] path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of [our] wishes. . . . "

When Haaretz isn't referring to terrorists of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the various PLO offshoots as "activists," it calls them "militants"--a word that connotes, or used to connote, hard-boiled labor leaders and the like. And what, exactly, would Haaretz have called people in Germany in the 1930s who called for the destruction of the Jews and incited and perpetrated attacks against them--militants? Activists?

It will be interesting to see if this initiative can possibly succeed. For what can the "well-educated mullahs" learn and teach that will really blunt the force of Qur'anic literalism? If they do succeed, they will have something that the whole world needs.

But the "traditional Islam" mentioned in this article is more of a cultural than a theological construct, and as such I wonder if it has the vitality to stand up to the "Wahhabi" literalist challenge. In a rather uncomprehending 2000 article published in the Center for Political and Strategic Studies essay collection Islam and Central Asia, the Orthodox Archbishop Vladimir of Bishkek gives some indication (without appearing to realize the implications of what he is saying) of how far Central Asian Islam has strayed from Qur'anic, traditional and historical Islam. To give just one example, he asserts that "Modern-day Islam [in Central Asia] does not strive to expand its domain."

Would the warrior prophet Muhammad recognize a non-expansionist Islam as the one he preached? Will the "well-educated mullahs" of Nizhny Novgorod be able to convince young Muslims who read the Qur'an that their Islam should not be expansionist as well?

From the Moscow Times, with thanks to None:

Finding it difficult to compete with the fiery rhetoric of radical Islamic teachers in winning the attention and respect of young people, Muslim clergy young and old are heading back to school.

Crash courses in divinity, anti-extremist propaganda, history, philosophy and sociology are being offered to all imams and muezzins in Nizhny Novgorod under a program set up by the regional Muslim spiritual board.

The intensive two-week program is mandatory for all Muslim spiritual leaders in the region, and classes are taught by professors at Nizhny Novgorod State University.

"Wahhabis look stronger when they take on self-learners," Damir Mukhetdinov, the deputy head of the regional spiritual board, said, referring to the radical strain of Islam that has spread like wildfire across parts of the country, particularly the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus.

"Trust me, it will be a different picture when Wahhabis will face well-educated mullahs," he said.

Mukhetdinov, himself a political science lecturer in the back-to-school program, said Muslim clergymen are also being trained how to distinguish religious extremists in a crowd and how to use dialogue to convince them to embrace more traditional Islamic views. "We don't betray them to the FSB," he said of the Federal Security Service. "To fight ideology, we try to use ideology, not violence."

This school of thought is rare outside Nizhny Novgorod, where Muslims are in a minority. In largely Muslim-populated regions where Islam carries a lot of weight in local politics, homegrown traditionalists and radical fundamentalists are often at one another's throats -- quite literally.

Traditional Muslim clergy have largely failed to adapt to new challenges such as the spread of Wahhabism and continue to follow a route inherited from Soviet times, when spiritual life was tightly controlled by the authorities, said Alexei Malashenko, an Islam expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

"The traditionalists are losing Muslims to Wahhabis, and not only because they are younger and better-trained in rhetoric," he said. "Most clergymen have gotten used to state support and have forgotten to bury themselves in their books. They are not preachers, and they have always circumvented honest polemics."

From the New York Times, with thanks to Ron:

CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 29 - President Bush took the unusual step on Wednesday of responding to one of Osama bin Laden's taunting tape recordings, declaring that Mr. bin Laden's recent call for Iraqis to boycott the elections in January "make the stakes of this pretty clear to me."

"His vision of the world is where people don't participate in democracy," Mr. Bush said of Mr. bin Laden, Al Qaeda's leader, who has eluded capture for more than three years. "His vision of the world is one in which there is no freedom of expression, freedom of religion and/or freedom of conscience. And that vision stands in stark contrast to the vision of, by far, the vast majority of Iraqis."

Interesting. I hope he's right, but the clear evidence that many Iraqis are attached to the Sharia is an indication that many are not as interested in freedom of conscience as Bush may wish them to be.

Lynne Stewart trial update, from AP, with thanks to None:

NEW YORK -- A lawyer and two co-defendants helped an imprisoned Egyptian sheik commit a sort of "jailbreak" by allowing him to get around prison rules and feed messages to terrorists overseas, a prosecutor told a federal jury Wednesday.

In his closing argument, assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Dember asked the jury to convict the three of a conspiracy to overcome the government's effort to silence the still "powerful and influential" prisoner, Omar Abdel-Rahman.

Civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart and her co-defendants, Ahmed Abdel Sattar and Mohamed Yousry, testified they obeyed the law in the work they did for Abdel-Rahman.

The blind sheik, who entered the United States in 1990, is serving a life prison sentence for his 1995 conviction for inspiring plots to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and blow up New York City landmarks.

Dember told jurors the three defendants in effect "broke Abdel-Rahman out of jail, made him available to the worst kind of criminal we find in this world -- terrorists."

This morning FrontPage carries a Symposium on women's rights in Islam. This is actually the second Symposium on this topic in which I have participated; the first two Muslim participants dropped out after the first round of responses from Ali Sina and me. This one, which is quite lengthy, carries this introduction:

Does Islam have the keys within itself to liberate women within Muslim social structures? To discuss this issue with us today, Frontpage Symposium has assembled a distinguished panel. On the side of the possibility of a feminist Islam, joining us today are:

Mohamed El-Mallah, a board member of Al-Ittihad Mosque in Vista, former board member of Islamic Center of San Diego, and an associate member of the Muslim American Society. A native of Egypt who migrated to the U.S. seven years ago, he is an activist in the Muslim Community of San Diego who has given many series of presentations on Islamic History,

and

Julia Roach, a UCSD student currently pursuing a bachelor's in literatures of the world, specializing in gender issues and women in literature. She converted to Islam in 2003.

On the side of Islam being mutually exclusive with women's rights, we are joined by:

Ali Sina, the founder of Faith Freedom International (www.faithfreedom.org), a movement of ex-Muslims created to provide support for those who want to leave Islam and give factual information about Islam for others,

and

Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).

It is a heated and revealing exchange. Ali Sina in particular is devastatingly effective. Read it all, or as much you have time for. Here is just a little bit from my closing remarks:

Spencer: Ms. Roach begins her concluding remarks by quoting Tolkien: "What can one do against such reckless hate?" The idea that Mr. Sina and I must hate Muslims because we dare to tell the truth about what Islam teaches is a common calumny straight out of the playbook of those who revere as a prophet the man who said, "War is deceit" (Bukhari IV:52:267). Yet it was neither Mr. Sina nor I who put this question and answer exchange, complete with supporting hadiths at the Muslim Students' Association website of the University of Houston:

Question: We always hear the Hadith, "Women have a shortcoming in understanding and religion." Some of the men state it to insult women. We would like you to explain to us the meaning of that Hadith.

Response: The Prophet's words and their explanation is as follows:

"I have seen none having more of a shortcoming in reasoning and religion yet, at the same time, robbing the wisdom of the wisest men than you." They said, "O Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) what is the shortcoming in our reasoning?" He said "Is it not the case that the testimony of two women is equivalent to that of one man" They said, "O Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), what is the shortcoming in our religion" He said, "Is it not the case that when you have your menses you neither pray or fast?''1

The Prophet (peace be upon him) explained that their shortcoming in reasoning is found in the fact that their memory is weak and that their witness is in need of another woman to corroborate it....This also does not mean that she is less than men in every matter or that men are superior to her in every aspect. Yes, as a class, men are superior to women in general. This is true for a number of reasons, as Allah has stated,

"Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend [to support them] from their means" (al-Nisa 34).

However, she may excel him in many matters. How many women are greater than many men with respect to their intelligence, religion and proficiency. It has been narrated from the Prophet (peace be upon him) that women as a species or class are less than men in understanding and religion from the point of view of the matters that the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself explained....Shaikh ibn Baz

I suppose Sheikh ibn Baz and Muhammad himself hate Muslims too? Or is it just I who must hate Muslims because I dare to quote them? Ms. Roach is dealing in a patent absurdity. This is a symposium about women's rights in Islam, but instead of forthrightly acknowledging the obstacles and difficulties women face in Islamic lands and offering positive solutions, Mr. El-Mallah and Ms. Roach have denied, obfuscated, distorted, smeared Mr. Sina and me, and tried to deflect attention to Christianity. If this is what we can expect from Islamic "moderates," the future for women in Islam looks bleak indeed.

From the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, an Open Letter to the United Nations Against Religious Apartheid. Sign it here. (Thanks to Mike for the link.)

Open Letter to the United Nations Against Religious Apartheid

To: H.E. the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan;

The Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights is an umbrella coalition representing various organizations from the following communities: Arab-Christian, Armenian, Assyrian, Bahai, Buddhist, Copt, Hindu, Humanist Muslim, Ibo, Maronite, Nubian, secular intellectuals, Southern Filipino, Slavic-Christian, Southern Sudanese, Syriac, West African, and women's groups.

We gather to demonstrate our determination to protest the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, as well as women and moderate and secularized Muslims in Islamic lands. We are here also to cry out against the murderous ideology of radical Islamism, which, by dividing humankind into worthy Muslims and inferior "infidels" is wreaking havoc throughout the world.

In the face of growing attacks and oppression of religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic lands, we respectfully make the following two demands upon the appropriate organs of the United Nations:

1. We call upon you today to appoint a Special Rapporteur to investigate the status and conditions of non-Muslim minorities, women, and humanist, moderate Muslims in states ruled by Islamic majorities. Such a rappoteur must investigate the following conditions.

Equality Under Law: What is the status, both in law and in practice, of these groups, and of individuals belonging to these groups? Do the laws in these nations discriminate against religious minorities? Do members of these groups have the same rights to assemble, speak, publish, and associate as those in the majority? Can members of these classes be elected to governmental and representative bodies? Is there a government policy of discriminating against the hiring of members of these classes? Does the government allow or encourage radical anti-minority organizations to abuse, threaten or otherwise oppress minority populations? Do the agencies that enforce the laws represent all groups in society?

Religious rights and freedom: Do members of minority faiths have the right to practice their faiths freely? Do they have the right to proselytize? Do members of the majority faith have the right to choose another faith?

Cultural equality: Are the rights and cultures of national, religious, and ethnic minorities respected?

Teaching of hatred and contempt: What is the view of these classes promoted by the government and the general culture?

2. We call upon the United Nations to condemn the ideology of Jihad-Islamism as a form of religious apartheid, which divides humankind into exalted Muslims and inferior "infidels."

Radical Jihad-Islamism is a supremacist, quasi-racist ideology that is now waging terrorist war worldwide against innocent men, women and children it labels "infidels." This ideology is supporting religious wars against non-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslim infidels worldwide. It is seeking to establish Apartheid-like regimes similar to those in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan, to subjugate and control "infidels." It legitimizes and extends human rights abuses - including slavery - on a massive scale. It employs a global economic resource (oil) as a weapon against non-Muslim nations in the service of its goals. It is the duty of the United Nations, which came into being as a result of racist Nazism, to condemn and to combat any ideology which defines some part of the human race as inferior.

Radical Jihad-Islamism must be condemned as a form of cultural, racial, religious and ethnic discrimination, and the United Nations should equate it with Colonialism and Imperialism. It should condemn its teaching to any community or school and it should call for a "corrective teaching" to seek to undo the hatred that it has engendered in peoples who have been taught the ideology. Further, the U.N. should condemn all current Jihad wars and call on nations waging such wars to cease violating the rights of ethnic and religious minorities and peoples. Finally, the U.N. should intervene to protect the rights and lives of religious and ethnic minorities and non-Islamist Muslims in Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia Sudan, and Syria.

We would like to meet with you about our concerns, and we wait with hope and prayer, your considered response.

Sincerely,
Fr. Keith Roderick
Secretary General

Memo to Osama bin Laden: stop equating jihad with terrorism, will you? It is astonishing that anyone after 9/11 would dare to suggest that the equation of jihad with terrorism comes from the West (I know, I know, there are a thousand academics suggesting just that every day in classes all across this fair land), but here it is.

From the PakTribune, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ISLAMABAD, December 30 (Online): Maulana Fazlur Rehman, opposition leader in the Lower House on Wednesday called upon Western world to stop equating 'Jihad' with terrorism. Talking to Mayor of Italy Mr Lostanio at his (Fazl) residence here he said that religious parties of Pakistan are trying to play their role in settling the difference between Islam and West through negotiations.

They discussed hosts of issues including role of international community in war against terrorism and bilateral relations between Pakistan and Italy.

"International community must address the real causes behind terrorism," he noted.

Maulana Fazl said that terming Jehad a form of terrorism is wrong interpretation of Holy War and people fighting in Palestine and Kashmir are freedom fighters, they are not terrorists....

Oh, I get it now. If it's jihad, it can't be terrorism. I wonder if Maulana Fazl would be so kind as to let us know when terrorism is not jihad. What does he think, for example, of 9/11? Is any violence or brutality justified by the jihad?

He said religious parties favour peaceful political atmosphere in the country and are against any kind of repression.

"We want to settle all issues through negotiations," he maintained.

From the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Service (ACCESS) (scroll down), with thanks to EPG:

ACCESS applauds the Dearborn City Council for passing a resolution on December 7, 2004, opposing the Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal (CLEAR) Act. The CLEAR Act mandates that local law enforcement officers enforce federal immigration laws. The Act was introduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Dearborn City Council expressed concern in the resolution that the Act would burden already hard-working police departments and threatens to destroy the positive relationships that the Dearborn Police Department has developed within the diverse community. The resolution stated that "trust is a big factor in our effectiveness to protect all of our residents. This act would compromise that trust."

Council President Jack O'Reilly said that this resolution supports Mayor Michael A. Guido's position against legislation like the CLEAR Act. Mayor Guido came out with a press release on April 22, 2003, clearly stating his opposition to the CLEAR Act, for it was an infringement upon civil rights, and could put a great burden on the police department and city operations.

Is it really a matter of trust to agree not to enforce federal laws? Is it really a civil rights issue to flout federal laws?

If he wasn't involved in jihad-related activities, and if his travel was innocent, why did he lie? From the Star Tribune, with thanks to Bruce:

An Iraqi man who pleaded guilty Wednesday in St. Paul to lying to airport officials about his Mideast travel was deported to his homeland and ordered never to return to the United States.

Ali Mohammed Abboud Almosaleh, 40, who has been in federal custody since his arrest July 7 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, told U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle that he lied to U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents about being in Iraq and about video discs containing calls for resistance against America. He said he was in fear about being stopped when he falsely told agents that he had only been in Syria and that the discs contained only music.

"I beg from you forgiveness," Almosaleh said in court through a language interpreter. "I was very scared and I was very afraid."

Almosaleh was interviewed several times after his arrest by federal investigators, but was never charged with any acts of terrorism. A three-count indictment against him alleged that he made false statements and misrepresented information on immigration forms.

The video discs in his possession contained images of militant Iraqi Iman Muqtada al-Sadr, but his defense attorney has said that the images of al-Sadr and his militia were no different than what has been shown around the world on CNN....

At Wednesday's court hearing, Almosaleh told Judge Kyle that the three-count indictment against him was true. Under an agreement with prosecutors, Almosaleh pleaded guilty to one of the counts in exchange for dismissal of the other two charges....

Almosaleh told Kyle that he left the United States in January 2004 and traveled into and out of Iraq. He returned July 7 on a flight from Amsterdam that stopped in the Twin Cities and falsely told Customs officials he had been gone for only a month.

Karen Bailey, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis, declined to comment on whether the government considers Almosaleh a terrorist. She noted he was not charged with any crimes of terrorism.

This article attempts to show that America's presence in Iraq creates jihadists. It trots out tired points such as Bush's calling the war on terror a "crusade," without mentioning the fact that Bush clearly had no idea of the historical resonance the term has in the Islamic world. But even in the midst of all the pretexts piled up in the story, it becomes clear that this teacher had a prior understanding of what jihad was, and when it must be fought.

That opens the question: if the US had not done these things (granting that the characterizations in the article are accurate only for the sake of argument), would he not have fastened on something else? Or would he have considered himself free from the obligation to wage jihad? That's unlikely: it is, after all, a religious duty in Islam. So it would seem that the jihad ideology is the problem here, not all the alleged offenses of the Americans. After all, the Tibetans, for example, have suffered over 50 years of brutal, murderous oppression and occupation by the Chinese. Why aren't they waging jihad?

From the LA Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

BEKAA VALLEY, Lebanon — The handsome, 35-year-old teacher had many things to live for — a PhD, a steady job, a healthy salary — but still he decided to leave home, make his way to Syria and then sneak over the border into Iraq, intent on fighting Americans, even if it meant dying in a suicide attack.

In the beginning, the schoolteacher had struggled to decide how he felt about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It spelled humiliation and sorrow to Arabs. But as an Arab who had tasted the despair of despotism, he had a small spot of hope.

"At first, I thought, 'OK, the Americans want to bring democracy to the region,' " he said.

That was before he turned on the television to the grainy images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. "The human triangle. The woman dragging the man by the leash," said the teacher, a broad man with a clipped beard and intense gaze. "These images affected me deeply. The shame the Americans brought. I was fervently monitoring the TV images, not so much the words as the pictures."

He remembered that President Bush called the war on terrorism a "crusade." He thought about American helicopters being used by the Israeli army to attack Palestinians. And he decided that sitting impotently in Lebanon wasn't enough.

Over dates and sweet coffee in a middle-class living room here, he recently spoke in measured tones about his fervor to fight in behalf of Muslims against U.S. troops — and his decision to leave the battle in Iraq to make his way home again.

The story of the teacher, who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his hometown be named, reflects the oft-stated notion that the war in Iraq has opened a regional Pandora's box of jihad. In a region where so many people feel helpless before repressive governments and U.S. policy, the road to Iraq has become a trail of independence in the minds of some men, a way for young Muslims to come of age and to join the battles they see on television.

His journey began here, in a high valley that is so flat it looks like it was ironed, stretching like a gritty carpet between the mountains of southern Lebanon, hard against the Syrian border. Unemployment is rife and religious zeal intense.

It is a hardscrabble place where international worries and local woes are intimately intertwined. A recent Friday sermon called for martyr's blood to avenge the Iraqi insurgent shot dead on the floor of a mosque by a U.S. Marine. "Every day we are seeing these things and hearing the same word: Fallouja," the preacher cried. "What are we supposed to tell our men? To put down their weapons? To surrender? If we do, who's going to avenge their blood and tears?"

Then the sermon shifted seamlessly; the preacher tried to drum up donations to heat the schools. "We worry about Iraq and about Palestine," he said, "but it's getting cold here."

This ancient strip of farms has a history of defiance, and it has sent its share of men to join the insurgency in Iraq. Some made their way back home. Others have been commemorated at funerals without corpses after friends called from Iraq to report their deaths.

Martyrdom doesn't come cheap. Foreign fighters are expected to pay their own way, from smugglers' fees to meals. Many of the would-be mujahedin, or holy warriors, simply can't afford to go, said Shaaban Ajani, the mayor of a town in the Bekaa called Majdal Anjar.

Within Iraq, there is broad consensus that foreign fighters form only a small band of the insurgency roiling the country. Nevertheless, in neighboring countries the psychological resonance of the struggle, and the adulation and envy of the foreign jihadis, has been profound.

"If a man stands just an hour with a weapon in his hand to fight jihad, it's better than being a preacher in Mecca for 100 years," the teacher said. "It's not about preaching. It's about actions."

Here is an insight into the level of knowledge about Islam in America today, and the peculiarly tendency of the ignorant to charge with ignorance those who know more than they do. This is, of course, a phenomenon I run into all the time from, among others, multiculturalist types who condescend to inform me that jihad is an inner spiritual struggle.

From Lua Hightower in the Augusta Free Press, "The Silence of the Muslim Community," with thanks to Anthony:

I read with dismay yet another rant (The real face of Islam, Dec. 21 AFP) attributing things to Islam that are contrary to its teachings. The writer of the letter is obviously ignorant about this faith and its tenets, refering to a document called the "Sira." What is the "Sira?" To my knowledge - a student of Islam for some 23 years - there is no religious text called the "Sira."

Well, Lua Hightower, the "Sira" is the biography of the Prophet Muhammad. The earlier extant Sira we have today is Ibn Ishaq's as edited by Ibn Hisham, which dates from the late eighth century. There are many other important Siras that were written throughout Islamic history, by Muslims from Ibn Kathir to Martin Lings.

It is interesting that you could have studied Islam for 23 years and missed this. When I myself started studying Islam around 23 years ago also, one of the first things I did was read deeply into Ibn Ishaq's Sira. What aspects of Islam have you been studying?

The Qur'an is the revelation from God (al-lah means the-God - the one true God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob - and Jesus) to the prophet Muhammad. Are the Arab Christians of the world to also refer to God as al-lah, worshipping a minor satanic god?

It is true that the word "Allah" referred to a minor pagan deity before Islam burst on the scene. It is also true that Arabic-speaking Christians today use the word "Allah" to refer to the God of Christianity, as they have for many centuries. This is a key point that gives the lie to many pseudo-scholarly analyses put forward today by dishonest, self-promoting hucksters with a limited knowledge of Arabic.

However, it is also true that the deity as depicted in the Qur'an is significantly different from the God of the Bible, and to equate the two based on the use of the same word for God is misleading in the extreme. That is why I myself usually use "Allah" for the god of the Qur'an, to emphasize the distinction between that figure and the God of the Bible. However, the differences are matters of doctrinal substance, not the use of this word or that word. Hightower should have picked up some of the differences during those 23 years of study of Islam.

Certain Qur'anic texts claim that the God of Judaism and Christianity is the same as Allah of the Muslims: “Say: It is only inspired in me that your Allah is One Allah. Will ye then surrender (unto Him)?” (Sura 21:108). That he is addressing Christians and Jews is made clear by another verse: “And do not dispute with the followers of the Book except by what is best, except those of them who act unjustly, and say: We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you, and our Allah and your Allah is One, and to Him do we submit” (Sura 29:46).

However, Muslims themselves vehemently deny that the Allah of the Qur'an is the God of the Bible. Not only is the Trinity, which is accepted by almost all Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox groups (with the exception of a few marginal groups and self-anointed experts) blasphemous to Muslims; referring to God as “Father” is for them blasphemous as well. Even to say such a thing puts one at risk of Hell. Muslims do not view Allah as a Father, but a Master who orders His slaves to obey strict rules. He has no relationship with them on earth or in Heaven. Muslims obey His commands in order to gain entry into Paradise. The concepts of service to others motivated by divine love, and of love for one’s enemies, are Christian ideas that are foreign to Islam. Jesus says "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44); the Qur'an says "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves" (48:29).

The concept of Allah’s love in the Qur'an is tied to obedience in the early Qur'anic texts; Allah’s love is only for Muslims, as Allah hates unbelievers. “Allah is an enemy to those who reject faith” (Sura 2:98). The idea of a God Who sacrifices Himself for us while we were His enemies is unique to Christianity: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Consequently, no objective observer would identify the Allah of the Qur'an with the Father of Christian worship.

Back to Lua Hightower:

Second, Islam does not preach conversion followed by taxation followed by death.

That's right. It preaches conversion OR taxation OR death: "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" (Qur'an, Sura 9:29).

Also see this Hadith:

It has been reported from Sulaiman b. Buraid through his father that when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war...When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them....If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 19:4294)

"There is no coercion in religion," states the Qu'ran, and it refers to Jews and Christians as "people of the book" - followers of the prophets of God whose right to practice their religion is to be protected by the followers of Muhammad. The word muslim in the Qur'an refers to all those who believe in God, who have faith, and who do good works - who give charity and care for the orphans and do not agress against others.

So, technically speaking, Jews and Christians are "muslim"; that is, they have dedicated their lives to the One God, and are in submission (islam) to God. So I would like to know which "Qur'an" the writer of this letter has read - or has he/she even bothered to read it before maligning its contents?

I'd like to know which Qur'an Hightower has read. Does it include, for example, 9:30, which says that Allah's curse is upon Christians and Jews?

I am so tired of listening to supposed experts attribute any number of horrific beliefs to Islam - beliefs that are so contrary to the Qur'an and the life of the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as to indicate either absolute ignorance or willful deception and defamation. And I tire of publications and organizations who continue to publish and support this sort of misrepresentation and fail to examine factual information readily available to the naked eye by simply sitting down with the Book and reading it.

Is there no accountability for those who publish such hate speech? Is there no responsibility within the media?

Last, how many times do I have to sit down and write such a rebuttal only to find that it goes unpublished - and then sit and listen to people speak about the "silence of the Muslim community"?

Well, this one was published, not only in the Augusta Free Press, but now at Jihad Watch. Lua Hightower, feel free to contact me if you'd like to discuss this further.

From Southern California's Daily Breeze, with thanks to Anthony:

An Orange County mosque leader from Egypt who authorities said had given speeches that could be considered supportive of terrorist organizations agreed Tuesday to leave the United States voluntarily, giving up his fight to remain in the country.

Wagdy Ghoneim is being held at the federal immigration detention center on Terminal Island. As part of the agreement with government attorneys, he avoids deportation in exchange for admitting he was in the United States in violation of his immigration status, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement.

He must leave the United States by Jan. 7. By agreeing to voluntary removal, Ghoneim, the imam at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, is eligible to reapply for entry into the country.

Ghoneim, 53, was arrested at his Anaheim home last month on an immigration violation, but authorities had declined to disclose details about the case.

At the time, his lawyer and supporters said the arrest was a mistake and that he expected to be released soon.

Ghoneim has been held without bond since then "based upon Department of Homeland Security concerns that his past speeches and participation in fund-raising activities could be supportive of terrorist organizations," Kice said, declining to provide further details.

Meanwhile, the standard allegations of mistreatment, which would be more credible if they weren't made every time (like the protestations of innocence and discrimination):

Muslim leaders say he was hospitalized with chest pains during his detention and that he was handcuffed and chained to his hospital bed. When family members tried to check on his condition, they were reportedly turned away, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations Southern California.

The Keystone Kops are out in force in the Philippines. "The PNP chief, Director General Edgardo Aglipay, on Tuesday admitted there were 'individual' lapses in the handling of high-profile detainees like Bulagnatan."

Note also that Bulagnatan was a Muslim convert who was arrested in an Islamic school. Now didn't they learn there about all the peaceful teachings of Islam we keep hearing so much about? Why do these peaceful teachings, so insistently touted by American Muslim groups, seem to drop so easily out of the curricula of Islamic schools the world over? Yet no matter how many stories like these there are, the mainstream media still refuses to note the possibility that what men like Bulagnatan are doing is actually obeying the Qur'an, not twisting it. From the Manila Times, "Bomb suspect, cop shot dead in Crame," with thanks to Anthony:

A suspect who was being interrogated about a bomb that was found on a bus was fatally shot at the Philippine National Police headquarters after he allegedly killed his guard, police said on Tuesday.

Allan Bulagnatan, a Muslim convert, was questioned by police late Monday about the discovery of a homemade bomb in a commuter bus in suburban Valenzuela City on Christmas Eve, the PNP spokesman, Sr. Supt. Leopoldo Bataoil, said.

Bulagnatan was being escorted back to his cell inside the PNP Intelligence Group compound when he grabbed the handgun of his guard, Police Officer 1 Rolando Nolasco, and shot him dead.

The suspect was gunned down by another officer after ignoring orders to surrender, Bataoil said.

Bulagnatan was arrested Monday in Paso de Blas in Valenzuela City regarding a foiled attempt to bomb a bus in Quiapo on Christmas Eve.

Police said he had been arrested with five other suspected terrorists on May 3, 2002, at the Madrasah Islamic School in Anda, Pangasinan.

The other suspects were Dawud Muslim del Rosario Santos, Pio Abagne, de Vera, Marcelo Cenar Egil, Reendo Cain dellosa and Angelito Trinidad.

Seized from them were a .22-caliber revolver, a .45-caliber pistol, a shotgun, night-vision binoculars, military uniforms and documents showing that one of them trained with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Maguindanao....

The PNP chief, Director General Edgardo Aglipay, on Tuesday admitted there were “individual” lapses in the handling of high-profile detainees like Bulagnatan.

A radio report said Bulagnatan was handcuffed but not behind his back.

“These are individual mistakes and we would like to correct them. I have already formed a committee to look into the circumstances surrounding the incident,” Aglipay said.

Now here's a twist: Majid al-Massari is charged with various ties to Al-Qaeda, but he is fighting deportation to Saudi Arabia on the grounds that his father supports Osama's desire to overthrow the House of Saud, and that therefore he will be tortured and killed there. So he is asking the United States to protect an Al-Qaeda sympathizer.

From the Seattle Times, with thanks to Anthony:

To his co-workers at the University of Washington School of Nursing, Majid al-Massari was a happy guy who bounced down the halls and seemed like a "big teddy bear."

What his friends didn't know about the burly, bearded 34-year-old computer-security specialist was that he had helped set up a Web site for a group linked to al-Qaida, quoted Osama bin Laden in his own Internet postings, lashed out against American policies on his father's London-based radio show and had landed in the sights of U.S. terrorism investigators.

Now the Saudi national is being targeted for deportation, but immigration officials say it's not because he's a terrorist. Instead, they cite a nearly 2-year-old misdemeanor drug conviction that, under immigration law, is considered an "aggravated felony" and the basis for deportation.

In response, al-Massari is seeking asylum in the United States, claiming he would be tortured in his home country because his father, a prominent bin Laden supporter, has openly called for the overthrow of the Saudi monarchy and has praised terrorist attacks against Saudi and Western targets. The son's hearing, which is closed to the public, began earlier this month in Seattle and will continue, after a break, in February.

While his friends and former co-workers rally for his release, al-Massari awaits his fate in federal detention near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In his deportation case in Immigration Court, federal lawyers have filed thousands of pages of pleadings, including posters of bin Laden, that focus not on al-Massari's crack-cocaine conviction but on his father and his al-Qaida connections.

Majid al-Massari has not been charged as a terrorist. His Seattle attorney, Cheryl Nance, said his case is "purely guilt by association."

There is nothing in the government's filings that leads her to believe her client is anything more than a Muslim with unpopular opinions about America's role in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, she said.

Nance thinks the U.S. and Saudi governments are targeting the senior al-Massari and "using my client as bait." Al-Massari, through Nance, declined to be interviewed.

Alyssa Lappen at FrontPage takes us inside the twilight world of the propaganda jihad. Remember Mohammed Al-Dura, the little Palestinian boy who was shot dead on film by Israeli troops? You couldn't have missed it: the footage was replayed endlessly, and became the foundation of international outrage against Israel. But one inconvenient little detail is becoming increasingly clear: it didn't happen. The whole thing was staged by Palestinian propagandists, apparently with the knowledge and consent of major media outfits.

This one makes Memogate look like a walk in the park.

More than four years have passed since the picture of Mohammed Al Durrah was aired across the world, but the public still imagines the boy's Sept. 30 2000 presence at Netzarim junction in terms described by President Clinton in My Life:

"As the violence persisted, two vivid images of its pain and futility emerged,” he writes: “a twelve year old Palestinian boy shot in the crossfire and dying in his father's arms, and two Israeli soldiers pulled from a building and beaten to death, with their lifeless bodies dragged through the streets and one of their assailants proudly showing his bloodstained hands to the world on television."

In short, Al Durrah should never have been juxtaposed with a lynching, much less by the leader of the free world. Two weeks after the Al Durrah tapes aired, two Jewish soldiers lost their way in Ramallah, where they were savagely beaten to death, their innards eaten by hysterical and frenzied crowds screaming Allah Akbar--God is great--and seeking revenge for the supposed death of the boy. Indeed, the Al Durrah case is nothing more than a classic Islamic incitement to jihad.

But evidently, the shooting was merely photographic. “The violence erupted after the Al Durrah incident,” notes Daniel Seaman, director of Israel's Government Press Office, who openly calls the incident a hoax, a staged forgery.

Since Seaman made this charge publicly in late 2002, few mainstream news media picked up the story. These include the European Wall Street Journal and New York Sun, which both ran columns in November, respectively by Stephane Juffa, the Metula Press Agency (MENA) chief in Israel and Nidra Poller, an expatriate writer in France.

Nearly two years ago, France 2 Jerusalem bureau chief Charles Enderlin -- also the vice president of Israel's foreign press association -- threatened to sue. On January 2, 2003, the legal adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wrote to Enderlin, noting that Israel is a free country. Seaman named neither Enderlin nor France 2. But if he felt injured by Seaman's remarks, Enderlin was more than welcome to take appropriate legal action. The counsel advised Enderlin, Israel has “reliable information” that the case was indeed a fraud, the counsel advised Enderlin, however. At long last, in November, attorneys of France 2 and Enderlin have sued in France -- not Seaman, not Israel, not Metula, not the Wall Street Journal, but “X.”

Before detailing French statutes making such a preposterous case possible, a brief recap of the Al Durrah hoax is in order. On Sept. 30, 2000, dozens of reporters and cameraman waited around for news as children lobbed stones, Molotov cocktails and heavy appliances from the ground and nearby buildings onto the roof of the only Israeli guard post at Netzarim Junction. In a superb investigative coup, renowned Israeli physicist Nacham Shahaf wrested three hours of raw September 30 news reels from Reuters and the Associated Press. These rushes show very clearly that the Israelis shot only when fired upon, and that Palestinians walked around without fear.

Another important fact shows too: The Israeli post was situated at a very wide angle to the position of Jamal and Mohammed Al Durrah--behind a Palestinian warehouse two times its own height.

In other words, even if the Israelis were filmed shooting, which they weren't, it was physically impossible for them to have wounded either Mohammed or his father Jamal Al Durrah, who were crouched, entirely out of view, behind a barrel topped by a cement cinder block. On the Al Durrah's side, moreover, the barrel has no bullet holes. If bullets penetrated it from the Israeli side, they did not come out.

Whoever shot at the Al Durrahs that day, it was not the Israelis.

Shooting footage was Talal Abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian stringer for AP and Reuters, who created the icon of supposed Israeli brutality. Abu Rahmeh said under oath that he shot 27 minutes of film. In tapes broadcast worldwide, he asserted that Israeli soldiers subjected the man and the boy to 45 minutes of withering fire, that Israelis intentionally shot the boy dead.

Abu Rahmeh said the boy bled for 20 minutes. The father said he was shot in the hand, arm, and leg and that his elbow and pelvis were crushed--and that a bullet ripped through his son's stomach and exited from his back.

But in the rushes, there is no blood on either the victims or the ground. The supposed 27 minutes of footage was apparently less than three minutes. Three hours of additional rushes from AP and Reuters obtained by Shahaf show much more besides.

At the rear of the warehouse, inside a hollowed out room, several armed and uniformed Palestinian Arabs were filmed on Sept. 30, 2000, talking calmly with directors. The latter then clear the area before takes. Since when do fighters take their cues from civilians?

Later the same day, at least five AP and Reuters photographers taped the same Palestinians firing through a large hole in the rear cinder block wall into the empty warehouse room they had quietly occupied hours earlier. At whom were they firing? The Israeli position was on the other side of the warehouse, in a building half the size. Given their lack of fear and the positive glee of bystanders, these men were surely acting.

Thirty people were reportedly killed and hundreds wounded that day, but the rushes show not one critical injury. Every evacuation was careless of its effects on the supposed patients. One man grabs his leg as if shot, but like the Al Durrah's remains unbloodied. He is then roughly loaded onto a gurney--on his “injured” leg. Another young man hands off a Molotov cocktail before being swooped into his colleagues arms and thrown into the back of a waiting prop--one of several Red Crescent and UN ambulances. Actors clap and laugh as its doors close. Others were caught sunbathing, talking on cell phones, standing nonchalantly, their backs turned to the Israelis. Clearly, these are mises en scene.

There is much more. Read it all.

UPDATE: Missketz kindly reminds me of this superb Atlantic Monthly piece also establishing that the whole thing was a fraud. (And here's a link for non-subscribers to the Atlantic, with thanks to Louise.)

Abdullah, Abdullah. You're never going to end the jihad this way. But I suspect you already know that. From UPI, with thanks to Twostellas:

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has stressed that issues related to Islamic rule and national unity are not topics of debate in the country.

"We believe in the Islamic law as a constitution and in moderation as a way for improving and developing in all fields," local press Tuesday quoted Abdullah as saying.

"Anything in the country could be debated except Islamic faith and everything could be put out for discussion exception national unity, pride and security," Abdullah said during the inauguration of a development project at King Fahd Petroleum University Monday night.

He asserted that, "We will continue in the path of the religion without being affected by the extremist criminals and traitors," in an allusion to Muslim fundamentalists believed responsible for bombing attacks in the oil-rich kingdom.

However, they might check ID's more often. From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq - American commanders are fully aware that Iraq's insurgents exploit their policy of employing locals on U.S. military bases but insist the practice will not stop, though some security measures may be tightened.

The vulnerability of the American stance was exposed on Dec. 21, when an Iraqi suicide bomber dressed in a military uniform detonated his explosives at a mess hall at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, killing 22 people including 14 U.S. servicemembers.

Since then, security has been tightened at chow halls in some camps, with military guards demanding proof of identification more often and not allowing backpacks. Officials say they are constantly reviewing procedures to make sure such an attack doesn't happen again, but insurgents infiltrating camps is unavoidable.

"They're trying to infiltrate the base as much as possible, taking pictures, videos drawing diagrams, grabbing people who are coming off base to intimidate them into giving them locations where different facilities are located on the base or torturing them until they do tell them," said Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, deputy for current operations for the 1st Marine Division. "We know it is active and ongoing."...

One aspect the insurgents also appear to have exploited is the American desire to give Iraqi security forces a greater role, to treat them more as equals and to try to get them to do their jobs on their own, without U.S. supervision.

While Iraqis who work on bases are vetted, Americans acknowledge that they don't do security checks on Iraqi forces on base, instead leaving that task to their Iraqi counterparts.

"We don't do a systematic vetting process on Iraqi security forces, their government that does that," Wilson said. "There's a certain trust factor that goes along with the Marines working with them."...

American troops on the bases express widespread distrust about the Iraqis that work there, and have remarked that they all believe contractors are relaying intelligence back to insurgents on the outside.

But that won't lead to a change in policy, said Marine spokesman Lt. Lyle Gilbert.

"Contracting locals helps the economy. That's something we want to do," Gilbert said. "We want the Iraqi economy to flourish. We want them to have jobs, to have money, to get back on heir feet."

Gilbert said that closing off bases to Iraqis would be like "everybody in America closing their doors in fear and not going anywhere."

When confronted with the realities of dhimmitude, most Muslims respond (if they will admit at all that non-Muslims faced discrimination, harassment, intolerance and worse in Islamic societies) that all that is a historical relic, with no contemporary relevance. It is thus refreshing to encounter someone in the Islamic world who knows that it is still very much part of the agenda of the global jihadist movement.

Note also that he is absolutely correct about the distinction between believers and unbelievers. The Qur'an declares that "never should a believer kill a believer" (4:92) and "Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves" (48:29).

From MEMRI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

In an article titled "The Arab Silence on Darfur Revisited," Abu Khawla, a human rights activist and former chair of the Tunisian section of Amnesty International, points out that pan-Arabism is the chief culprit for the lack of Arab reaction to the "horrendous crime being committed by their fellow Arabs in Sudan." In his view, the only effective way to counter the pan-Arab "propaganda of hate-mongering and deceit" is to mobilize the Arab liberal movement.

And here is the salient statement from Abu Khawla:

"Why did these fundamentalist havens try to hide the truth about the Darfur massacre? For starter, we should notice that the matter wouldn't have raised an eyebrow among Muslim public opinion had the slaughter targeted non-Muslims. Fighting infidels until they either convert to Islam or submit to Muslims as 'Dhimmis,' i.e., citizens of second class status under Islamic rule, and pay the 'Jezya' (a poll tax), is still considered by Islamists to be a religious duty. And the above-mentioned status of Dhimmitude is exclusive to the 'peoples of the book,' namely Christians and Jews. Animists, Hindus and other 'heretics,' are all considered 'Najus' (filthy), i.e. fit for extermination. Today's animists in Southern Sudan as well as Bah'ai and Ismailite sects in most Islamic countries are learning about it the hard way.

"But Darfur is different, since it is a slaughter of Muslims even though they are non-Arabs of African descent. Why? In order to be able to answer this question, we need to make a difference between theory and practice. In theory, Muslims aren't allowed to slaughter other Muslims. The much-vaunted reference here is the Koranic verse stating that 'only faith and piety will make a difference between an Arab and an 'Ajami' (non-Arab).' This explains to a large extent the historic animosity between Islamism and pan-Arabism. While the latter refers to the Arab nation, Islamists refer to the Islamic 'Ummah,' considering Arab nationalism as a source of 'fitnah' (sedition).

"The practice, however, tells a very different story. Slavery is among the most horrendous means by which Arabs subjugated non-Arab Muslims, especially those of African descent. The practice was widespread in Saudi Arabia until the mid-1960s when it was abolished due to intense international pressure."

In this the PA is simply reflecting traditional Islamic piety. The Hadith quoted by Dr. Hassan Khater is repeated several times in Sahih Muslim, indicating its attestation by multiple sources. (The exact version he quotes is in book 41, no. 6985). Nor is he the first Palestinian official to quote it.

From Palestinian Media Watch (no direct link), with thanks to JC:

For years, the PA religious establishment has repeatedly portrayed the killing of Jews as a religious necessity. Today, PA TV chose to rebroadcast this same call to genocide as a historical necessity -- this time from a senior PA academic rather than from a religious leader. Dr. Hassan Khater, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia and a TV lecturer, cited the identical Hadith - Islamic tradition attributed to Mohammed - that the religious leaders have used to demand this genocide. This was part of a lecture focusing on what he described as the war of the Jews against Palestinian trees.

These were his words quoting the Hadith:
"Mohammed said in his Hadith: 'The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'" PA TV Dec. 27, 2004 [Rebroadcast from July 13, 2003]

The continued teaching that this Hadith applies today could well be a dominant factor driving terror against Israeli civilians. By depicting redemption as dependent on Muslims' killing of Jews, the PA world view presents this genocide as a religious obligation and historical necessity -- not related to the conflict over borders, but as something inherent to Allah's world.

No indication as to whether the dhimmi French care about this, or realize the implications of ties to the first modern Islamic terrorist organization, the father of Hamas and Al-Qaeda. From the Chicago Tribune via the Baltimore Sun, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Deep in the misty hills of Burgundy, fervent young European Muslims are forging an Islam of their own. Depending on the point of view, they are either budding fundamentalists or Europe's best defense against extremism.

The European Institute of Human Sciences lies at the end of a winding country road in a drafty 19th-century chateau in the town of St. Leger-de-Fougeret, France. The site was a corporate retreat until 1992, when a federation of French Muslim groups bought the 27-acre campus of craggy trees and moss-lined brick paths.

Every year, 150 men and women from across Europe, ranging in age from 14 to the mid-30s, pay $3,500 a year to study theology and Arabic language and memorize the Quran. Most are second- or third-generation immigrants, and some are converts. They are the proudly conservative vanguard of European Islam.

"I used to go dancing with my friends, but my life was not close to Islam. Islam was not deep in my heart," said Lazare Boufeta, walking under a canopy of towering pine trees on the path to his small dormitory room. "One day I started thinking, where am I going? Do I have an aim in my life?"

Boufeta was like any other young French man in the southern city of Grenoble, snowboarding and playing clarinet, until he made the change. The tall and slim 25-year-old arrived at the institute last year and began growing his beard. He adopted the brown robe and sneakers favored by other men on campus. His mission, he says, is to help his nation understand Islam.

"I am French, I know French history and theater. I feel closer to France than Algeria," he said. "But France is afraid of things it doesn't know. As we see, nuns can wear a head scarf, and the French are not afraid of them. But not Muslims?"

The school's declared mission is to train a new generation of homegrown clerics. Its backers call that a vital step in supporting Europe's burgeoning Islamic population. Government officials across the continent are cautiously welcoming the project as well because they are eager to reduce their nations' dependence on foreign imams and foreign financing of mosques, on the belief that ties with the Arab world are fomenting extremism and stymieing integration....

State support of Islam stirs deep unease in Europe's secular societies. Former French Cabinet minister and rising political star Nicolas Sarkozy sparked controversy last month with the suggestion that the government should finance the construction of mosques.

Doing so would mean revising a century-old French law on the separation between church and state, a particularly hallowed principle in France known as laicite. Sarkozy believes that, not unlike Turkey - where authorities directly manage the religion as a means to control it - France must no longer maintain a hands-off approach to Islam.

France has deported at least 10 clerics in the past three years for endorsing violence or for spousal abuse, including Algerian-born imam Abdelkader Bouziane, who argued that the Quran allows men to beat unfaithful wives. Britain and Italy have also expelled or jailed imams for expressing what authorities consider statements in support of violence.

By some measures, the European Institute of Human Sciences, with branches in St.-Denis, France, and near Lampeter, Wales, presents a possible solution. Still, there is much about it that makes the French government uneasy; a senior Interior Ministry official said the textbooks, training and lectures at the school are "being watched."

The wariness begins with the school's sponsor, the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, an influential federation of local Muslim groups. The union has long-standing ties - though it denies formal links - to the Muslim Brotherhood, the world's largest Islamic militant group, which has renounced violence but remains banned in Egypt.

Picking up on Khamenei's accusation. Note how AP reports this conspiracy paranoia without a hint of how outlandish it is, or with any reply from anyone back on planet earth. "Scholars reject attacks in Najaf, Karbala," with thanks to Ruth King for the link:

CAIRO: A Muslim scholars union yesterday condemned twin bombings this week in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala that left 67 people dead.

The International Association of Muslim Scholars suggested the attacks could be connected with Zionist (Israeli) and other international intelligence agencies and aimed at damaging Iraq’s social cohesion.

“Even as the Association denounces the horrible crimes in Najaf and Karbala, it calls on all Sunni and Shiite scholars to get together soon to agree on ways to stand in the face of these conspiracies and treacheries,” it said in a statement.

The association, which groups Sunni and Shiite scholars, is based in London and headed by Egyptian-born Sheikh Youssef Al Qaradawi who lives in Qatar. It was founded with the aim of helping Muslims in the West adapt to their adopted countries.

Qaradawi, of course, is the famous "reformist" (according to John Esposito) who endorses suicide bombing.

Saturday’s statement said the attackers aimed at “harming Islam and Muslims by carrying out acts which look like acts of resistance ... but in fact, they are meant to distort the image of the honest resistance.” It also called on all “honest” Iraqi resistance factions to deplore these attacks.

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CAIRO, Egypt - In an audiotape received by Al-Jazeera satellite television, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott of next month's elections there.

Al-Jazeera quoted the tape in a news summary Monday but had not broadcast the recording.

Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, leads a group called al-Qaida in Iraq, which is responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq. The United States has placed a $25 million bounty on both bin Laden and al-Zarqawi.

Iraqis are scheduled to elect a 275-member National Assembly on Jan. 30. There have been calls to postpone the election because of the ongoing insurgency, but President Bush has insisted the vote be held as scheduled.

As I explain in Islam Unveiled, this is not infrequently the kind of reception that awaits Muslims who dare to stand up for reform of the religion.

Why? Because Islam is perfect, as Allah tells Muhammad: "This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion" (Qur'an 5:3).

Jihadists say to moderates: "You would change what is perfect? Do you know more than Allah?" And of course they see such presumption as a manifestation of unbelief and apostasy, making the moderate liable to a death sentence.

Also, the Qur'an warns Muslims against those who would keep the other observances of Islam but dare to remove fighting from it:

Hast thou not seen those unto whom it was said: Withhold your hands, establish worship and pay the poordue, but when fighting was prescribed for them behold! a party of them fear mankind even as their fear of Allah or with greater fear, and say: Our Lord! Why hast Thou ordained fighting for us? If only Thou wouldst give us respite yet a while! Say (unto them, O Muhammad): The comfort of this world is scant; the Hereafter will be better for him who wardeth off (evil); and ye will not be wronged the down upon a date-stone. (4:77)

Nonetheless, it is at least a good sign that the murder sparked protests. From ExpressIndia, with thanks to Twostellas:

Danwakote (rajouri), December 27: Piqued over the peace prayers at the local Jamia Masjid in non-descript hamlet of Danwakote in Rajouri district, militants last night abducted and slit the throat of the Imam of the mosque, sparking off a huge protest demonstration in the area. Sources said today morning, hundreds of villagers from Danwakote and its adjoining areas came out on the streets to protest the killing of Moulvi Mohammad Bashir, the head priest of the Jamia Masjid mosque.

This is for the first time in the area that a religious preacher has been killed by militants.

According to villagers, at 8:30 pm last night, some unidentified gunmen barged into the house of Bashir and abducted him and another villager Khalil Ahmad at gunpoint.

After taking them a kilometer away, militants released Ahmad, but slit throat of Bashir, whose body was spotted by villagers.

Demanding visit of human rights organisation to the area, protesters said, “The killing of Imam has exposed the militants’ claim of carrying out jehad and their so-called sympathy with Muslims of the area.”

Did DHS ask them about the CAIR officials who have been arrested for terrorist activities -- how they got jobs at this "moderate" organization without offending anyone with their "extremist" views? Did DHS ask them about Nihad Awad's declared support for Hamas, a terrorist organization?

A CAIR press release (thanks to EPG):

ANAHEIM, CA -- (OfficialWire) -- 12/24/04 -- Representatives of the Council on American-Islamic Relations - Southern California (CAIR-LA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) met yesterday with senior officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its largest investigative arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The meeting was designed to develop dialogue and communication between the American Muslim community and both government agencies. Concerns addressed at the meeting included the perceived lack of openness by ICE and DHS officials, targeting of Muslim immigrants and ways to enhance the nation's security without undermining civil liberties.

Although DHS and ICE officials declined to discuss specific cases, the Muslim community's concerns about the detentions of Imam Wagdy Ghoneim and Abdul Jabbar Hamdan were brought to their attention.

The recent detentions of these local religious leaders and the dozens of complaints of harassment filed by American Muslim travelers, which include being unable to remove their names from the 'No Fly List,' repeated stops and interrogations at airports, exclusion from entry to the United States, and revocation of visas to enter the country for no stated reason (such as in the cases of Yusuf Islam and Dr. Tariq Ramadan) have been of concern to the Islamic community.

Future meetings to address these issues are being planned with Muslim organizations, religious and community leaders, DHS, ICE, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has 29 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

More empty bluster? Maybe. We have seen a string of empty threats here since the site opened. But maybe not. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Anthony:

A secret intelligence report has revealed that security chiefs believe al-Qaeda may target New Year celebrations across Britain, The Telegraph has learned.

The document, which has been distributed to every military base in Britain warns that "crowded places or events" are under "a severe threat" of attack from terrorist bombers. The report, which is marked "restricted", is understood to have been compiled by military intelligence specialists, MI5 and Special Branch officers.

Under the heading "International Terrorism", the report warns that military personnel and establishments within the Government Security Zone in central London, which includes Horse Guards in Whitehall, and Buckingham and St James's Palaces, face a "substantial" threat of attack. It says military bases across the country are also facing a similar threat.

The report, which is part of a monthly security update for the armed forces, adds that the threat "comes from al-Qaeda and associated terrorist groups". It continues: "Targeting against US and UK interests both at home and abroad remains a priority for al-Qaeda. Their attacks - including the Madrid train bombings in March - have been against soft targets with the aim of creating as many casualties as possible."

The report says that on November 18, the general threat to central London was reduced, but it adds: "It is emphasised that crowded places or events... that draw large numbers of people will still attract a severe (general) threat."

Conspiracy theory alert. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Anthony:

Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused American and Israeli secret agents on Monday of carrying out weekend bombing attacks in Iraq that left scores of people dead and wounded in an attempt to influence upcoming Iraqi elections.

On Sunday, car bombs ripped through a funeral procession in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, killing 52 people and exploded at a main bus station in the Shiite city of Karbala, killing at least 14 people.

The attacks were the deadliest in Iraq since July. Officials had warned of the possibility of an increase in terrorist attacks by anti-Western insurgents in the run-up to the Jan. 30 elections in the country.

"No doubt, the Israeli and American spying services are behind these events and this is a plot aimed at keeping the Iraqi people busy so that they miss the chance [to participate in] elections," Khamenei said, according to the official Iranian news agency IRNA.

The Christian Science Monitor has a large feature about American Latinas converting to Islam: "US Latinas seek answers in Islam." (Thanks to all who sent this in.) It's easy to see why Jasmine Pinet would find "Hello, Sister" more appealing than "Hey, mami," and not want to be regarded as a sex object. But the idea that the Taliban originated the features of Islam that discriminate against women, and that a return to the Qur'an will help women assert their rights, is laughable.

The Qur'an, after all:

1. Likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223);
2. Declares that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282);
3. Allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3);
4. Rules that a son's inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11);
5. Tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: "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" (4:34).

UNION CITY, N.J. – Jasmine Pinet sits on the steps outside a mosque here, tucking in strands of her burgundy hair beneath a white head scarf, and explaining why she, a young Latina, feels that she has found greater respect as a woman by converting to Islam.

"They're not gonna say, 'Hey mami, how are you?' " Ms. Pinet says of Muslim men. "Usually they say, 'Hello, sister.' And they don't look at you like a sex object."

While some Latinas her age try to emulate the tight clothes and wiggling hips of stars like Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera, Ms. Pinet and others are adopting a more conservative lifestyle and converting to Islam. At this Union City, N.J., mosque, women account for more than half of the Latino Muslims who attend services here. Nationwide, there are about 40,000 Latino Muslims in the United States, according to the Islamic Society of North America.

Many of the Latina converts say that their belief that women are treated better in Islam was a significant factor in converting. Critics may protest that wearing the veil marks a woman as property, but some Latina converts say they welcome the fact that they are no longer whistled at walking down a street. "People have an innate response that I'm a religious person, and they give [me] more respect," says Jenny Yanez, another Latina Muslim. "You're not judged if you're in fashion or out of fashion."

Other Latina Muslims say they also like the religion's emphasis on fidelity to one's spouse and family.

But for many family members and friends, these conversions come as a surprise - often an unwelcome one. They may know little of Islam other than what they have heard of the Taliban and other extremist groups.

That creates an inaccurate image, insists Leila Ahmed, a professor of women's studies and religion at Harvard University. "It astounds me, the extent to which people think Afghanistan and the Taliban represent women and Islam." What's really going on, she says, is a reshaping of the relationship between women and Islam. "We're in the early stages of a major rethinking of Islam that will open Islam for women. [Muslim scholars] are rereading the core texts of Islam - from the Koran to legal texts - in every possible way."

New views of women and Islam may be more prevalent in countries like the US, where women read the Koran themselves and rely less on patriarchal interpretations.

"I think the women here are asserting more their rights and their privileges," says Zahid Bukhari, director of the American-Muslim Studies Program at George- town University. "

Some Latina Muslims say they harbored stereotypes about Muslim women before deciding to convert, but changed their minds once becoming close friends with a Muslim.

"I always thought, geez, I feel sorry for women who have to wear those veils," says Pinet. Then she met her Muslim boyfriend and began studying the Koran with a group of Muslim women. She says she was impressed with the respect they received.

"A women is respected because she is the mother, she takes care of the children, and she's the one that enforces the rules," Pinet says. "They're the ones who are sacred."

Critics of the decisions of Latinas to convert to Islam say they are adopting a religion just as patriarchical as the Roman Catholic faith that many are leaving behind.

"While it's true the Latino culture tends to be more male-dominated, and there's a tendency toward more machismo, I would venture to say it exists [in Islam] as well," says Edwin Hernandez, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Religion at the University of Notre Dame....

Within the Islamic community, Latina Muslims report being warmly received, although language barriers sometimes exist for Latinas who only speak Spanish. There are few Spanish services at mosques and a limited number of Islamic texts in Spanish.

Spanish services? Doesn't the Monitor know that Muslims must pray in Arabic? And as for there being a limited number of texts in Spanish, that may be so -- but I myself studied under Julio Cortes, who translated the Qur'an into Spanish, and I know his translation exists. I wonder what the women in the article would say about the verses I quoted above. (Although I just participated in a FrontPage Magazine Symposium about Islam and women's rights, so I actually have a fairly good idea of what they would say about them at this point. That Symposium should be out this week sometime.)

Here is an update on the Wales church that Muslims are planning to convert into a mosque. The problem remains the same: people with any legitimate concerns about terrorism or jihadist activities in the mosque, or the ultimate intentions of British Muslims regarding the Sharia, are not involved. Only a group widely known as racist, the BNP, is doing any protesting, which just reinforces the mistaken idea that the only reason why anyone would oppose Islamic activities must be racism.

From the BBC, with thanks to Anthony:

Fundraisers behind plans for a new mosque in a derelict church in Swansea say support for the project has been overwhelming from people in the city.

They have condemned a British National Party (BNP) leaflet opposing it and believe the Muslim community centre would strengthen race relations.

Muslims in Swansea bought the former St Andrews United Reformed Church from a private owner in 1997.

They aim to have it renovated and open within two years.

Arjan Ali, one of the project co-ordinators, said once complete it would be a centre for use by everyone in the city.

"The money used to buy the building was raised by the Muslim community and the charity has kept it safe and secure for the last six or seven years," he said.

"When we took on the building it was derelict. People had been using it for taking drugs. They were breaking into it and starting fires.

"It is one of the most beautiful ecclesiastical buildings in Swansea and we are working to restore it."

'Brownies or Cubs'

Mr Ali said the present mosque, just yards from the church on St Helen's Road, did not have enough room or facilities for the community.

"A lot of the stuff that we want to do we can't because there is not the space. We want to focus on three areas - the youth, women and elderly," he added.

"For the youth we are planning homework clubs, mentoring programmes, indoor recreational activities for both boys and girls - the sorts of things the Brownies or Cubs do."

There are plans for crèche facilities, mother and toddler groups, social activities and English classes for women.

"One of the things we have noticed with the elderly is that help and support is there but Asians in particular are not accessing services such as meals-on-wheels.

He said people from all ethnic backgrounds or religious beliefs would be welcome.

"One of the biggest causes or racial tension is where communities ghettoize into groups but we believe we can achieve something for ourselves and the wider community."...

Police confirmed last week the BNP leaflet was being looked at by the Crown Prosecution Service.

The party has denied trying to stir up hatred and has argued it should be allowed to debate the mosque issue without fear of arrest.

Released to wage jihad again? From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

RABAT, Morocco (AP) - A Rabat criminal court postponed a trial of five Moroccans formerly held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay and temporarily released three of them, including a suspected bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, his lawyer said. Arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan in late 2001, all five were accused of taking training courses in how to handle firearms and make explosives.

The court had rejected an initial request Dec. 7 to release the suspects from prison and gave no immediate explanation for why it had changed its mind regarding three of the suspects, said defence attorney Abdelfattah Zahrach. No bond was posted.

Among the three released is Abdelleh Tabarak, 49, suspected of serving as a bodyguard for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan. Lawyers said they expected the three - Zahrach, Mohamed Ouzar and Radouane Chekkouri - to be freed Monday evening.

"Complaints about the proposal, he said, are often based on ignorance. Some residents do not understand that Islam teaches peace." Oh. Yet what John Wilson said about mosques being used as staging grounds for terrorist activities is true, is it not? Why can't the local Muslims deal with that objection honestly and fully, instead of consigning it to "hatred" and "ignorance"?

From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

SOMERVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Muslims planned to turn an old sod farm near Memphis into a cemetery, but angry neighbors protested, complaining the burial ground could become a staging ground for terrorists or spread disease from unembalmed bodies.

It was not the first time a group faced opposition when trying to build a cemetery or a mosque, but the dispute stood out for the clarity of its anti-Muslim rhetoric.

"We know for a fact that Muslim mosques have been used as terrorist hideouts and centers for terrorist activities," farmer John Wilson told members of a planning commission last month.

Similar disputes have arisen elsewhere when Muslim groups sought to develop mosques or cemeteries, which are often the first Islamic institutions in some communities....

Rabiah Ahmed of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said she noticed more protests of Muslim building proposals after the 2001 terrorist attacks, so she was not surprised by the cemetery critics near Memphis.

"It's not shocking, but it is discouraging," Ahmed said from the council's headquarters in Washington.

Opponents told the Fayette County planning commission in November that power lines would be prime targets for terrorists in the region about 20 miles east of Memphis.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you may think this is farfetched, but that is what the Jewish people thought when the Nazis started taking a small foothold, a little at a time, in their community," Wilson said.

In a telephone interview later, Wilson said he and his neighbors are primarily worried about their property values, but, he added, news reports cannot be ignored.

"I don't think anyone who has read the newspaper or seen what investigations have gone on about other mosques would not have those kinds of concerns," he said....

Complaints about the proposal, he said, are often based on ignorance. Some residents do not understand that Islam teaches peace.

"Our religion stresses acceptance by our neighbors," Halimah said. "Even if the law is on our side, religiously we have to be careful."

Yet another jihadist -- another "marytrdom seeking brother" -- finds his ticket to Islamic paradise. This is an altogether traditionally Islamic practice, going all the way back to Muhammad himself, who encouraged his men with promises of Paradise:

The polytheists (now) advanced (towards us), and the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said. Get up to enter Paradise which is equal in width to the heavens and the earth. 'Umair b. al- Humam al-Ansari said: Messenger of Allah, is Paradise equal in extent to the heavens and the earth? He said: Yes. 'Umair said: My goodness! The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) asked him: What prompted you to utter these words (i. e. my goodness! ')? He said: Messenger of Allah, nothing but the desire that I be among its residents. He said: Thou art (surely) among its residents. He took out dates from his bag and began to eat them. Then he said: If I were to live until I have eaten all these dates of mine, it would be a long life. (The narrator said): He threw away all the dates he had with him. Then he fought the enemies until he was killed. (Sahih Muslim 20:4680)

And from the Qur'an: ""Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain..." (9:111)

And fourteen centuries later, another pious Muslim seeks to slay and be slain in order to enter Paradise: from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A video posted by an Iraqi insurgent group Sunday purported to show last week's suicide attack at a U.S. base in Mosul, with a fireball rising from a white tent. The group claimed that the bomber slipped into the base through a hole in the fence during a guard change.

The footage showed a black-garbed gunman wearing an explosives belt around his body — apparently the suicide bomber, identified in the tape as Abu Omar al-Mosuli — bidding farewell to his comrades. The video gives no further details about the bomber beyond his name....

"One of the lions from our martyrdom-seeking brothers will infiltrate the defenses of the enemy at the Morez base in Mosul. He will slip through a hole in the camp's wire, exploiting the changing of the guard," the gunman said. "We have been observing their schedule for a long time."

"This lion will then proceed to his target, and he will take advantage of lunch time, when the dining hall is crowded with the crusaders and their (Iraqi) allies," he said. "The operation will then be carried out."

"Let Bush, Blair and Allawi know that we are coming and that we will chase them all away, God willing," he said, referring to President Bush and prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Ayad Allawi of Iraq.

Charles at Little Green Footballs has very kindly alerted me to an appalling example of dhimmitude at the Chicago Tribune: "Of Two Minds" (subtitled "Struggle for the Soul of Islam").

The Tribune reported the series, which ended this month, to answer some simple questions posed by readers in the wake of Sept. 11: Why are people from faraway lands attacking America and Americans? Why do they happen to be Muslims? Is there something about Islam that promotes violence?

Reporters found little to suggest that Islam encourages violence, despite the impression Westerners might have because of exposure mostly to extremists. In fact, its venerable history suggests that Islam, like most religions, promotes peace and charity.

Now there is a load of taqiyya of which Ibrahim Hooper himself would be proud. If the Tribune reporters had done any research, or had any integrity, they might have stumbled over Qur'anic verses like these:

"And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers." (2:191)

"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." (9:5)

"Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain..." (9:111)

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens." (47:4)

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter..." (5:33)

And there are so many others where those came from, and so many ahadith on the order of Sahih Muslim 1:33, in which Muhammad says: "I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah..."

I am not making all this up. There is no question that such passages exist, and many other similar ones. There is no question that Islam in history built an entire doctrinal system of religious warfare around them. There is no question that there is nothing genuinely comparable to such verses anywhere in the Bible or in any other religious text of any major religion.

These texts exist, and they show the Tribune to be engaged in a major whitewash. These texts exist, and they encourage violence: these verses and others are not only routinely cited by the "extremists" themselves; they are also used by the "extremists" to recruit new terrorists from among the moderates. The case of the Lackawanna 6 illustrates this. One may question whether these verses are known and obeyed by Muslims in one place or another -- and there is evidence that they were essentially dead letters in various places where Islamic culture settled into a reasonably comfortable arrangement with its neighbors, but that arrangement was always temporary, and dissolved when Muslims rediscovered their fervor.

This relaxation and deemphasis of jihadist sensibilities among cultural Muslims in Southern Europe and Central Asia is often mistaken nowadays for a "genuine," peaceful Islam that will ultimately triumph over the "extremists." But because the Islamic texts are not on their side, these cultural moderates are everywhere today in intellectual retreat in the Islamic world.

The Trib could have tried to argue that no Muslim takes these passages seriously -- but that contention would have foundered on the plain fact that so many do. So instead they try to pretend they simply aren't there, although there is no real question about their existence itself except for those who are ignorant or wish to deceive others. Which is it, Tribune?

But of course for the Trib, it's all America's fault:

But the Tribune series also showed how American foreign policy has angered Islamic radicals and moderates alike, from the suburbs of Chicago to the refugee camps of Gaza, from the dusty streets of Pakistan to the winding warren of stalls in Egypt’s colorful bazaars.

Those who take action against America, such as the men who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, are a relatively small band.

But this radical fringe shrewdly capitalizes on the legitimate grievances of many moderate Muslims against American government policies, enabling the militants to extend their influence far beyond their numbers.

An in-depth look at Mufid Abdulqader, from D Magazine, with thanks to RSH:

ROOM 305 of the Oak Cliff Municipal Building, an outpost of Dallas City Hall, houses some of the city’s most highly skilled worker bees. They labor largely unknown within a honeycomb of cubicles. They are the civil engineers of the Public Works and Transportation Department, bound together almost tribally by technical language and complicated undertakings most outsiders wouldn’t understand.

Mufid Abdulqader was one of the department’s rising stars. He had earned the respect of his colleagues and supervisors in his eight years there, and his employment evaluations were exemplary. As a project manager who mostly designed street and sidewalk projects, Mufid was ambitious, always pushing for the next step up the pay-grade ladder. His leadership on the $4.8 million Bishop Arts District redevelopment in 2001 won him commendations. Even Mayor Laura Miller, who consulted with Mufid on the project, praised his talents.

His fellow engineers also appreciated how Mufid could liven up a roomful of technocrats with backslapping, disarming goofiness. Thickening a bit at the age of 45, Mufid wore his graying black beard heavy on his cheeks, as is customary for many pious Middle Eastern men. The full head of bristly black hair and limber eyebrows, which he flexed sharply upward for comic effect, made him come off as a big, smiling teddy bear of a man. Some colleagues noted a nasty temper that flared up from time to time, but who didn’t get frustrated when dealing with contractors?

Mufid loved the spotlight, relishing any excuse to speak in front of a crowd. A Palestinian who grew up in Kuwait and a proud father of three U.S.-born daughters, he never turned down an invitation to lecture high school students about the struggles he endured as an immigrant searching for a better life in America. Yet he remained proud of his background. Mufid and a couple of other Muslim engineers prayed five times a day, even if that meant breaking up a business meeting. He could often be spotted toting his prayer mat down the hall to an office conference room.

During lunches at Las Ranitas in Oak Cliff, where television sets were tuned to CNN Headline News, Mufid would offer running commentaries on the events in the Middle East. Like many Palestinian Arabs, he saw the Israelis as brutal occupiers of a stolen Palestinian homeland, but his colleagues never sensed that he held extremist views.

What his co-workers didn’t know was that Mufid led a secret life, one that seemed almost impossible to reconcile with the affable person they had all liked. But Mufid’s two worlds collided on the morning of July 27, 2004, when he failed to show up for work. Instead, representatives of the Dallas FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force came to the office to explain why he had been thrown in jail.

Mufid had been named with six other men in a 42-count indictment for helping to fund Hamas, a terrorist organization that has waged a grisly suicide-bombing campaign against Israeli civilians. The FBI set its sights on Mufid after discovering that he was associated with leaders of the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. The group’s supporters have always claimed that the Holy Land Foundation, or HLF, was a legitimate charity that helped orphans and widows. But President George W. Bush closed down the organization in 2001, calling it the largest clandestine fundraising arm for Hamas in the United States, a depiction upheld by successive federal court rulings.

His connection to HLF, however, was just the beginning of Mufid’s secrets. For more than a decade, he’d been touring the country with the popular Arabic singing troupe Al-Sakhra. If he had muffled his political views about the Middle East while at City Hall, the Arabic lyrics he sang on weekend gigs all across the country left no doubt about his true feelings. With all the angst of a rock star, he urged on the violent holy war and glorified the martyrdom of suicide bombers. Video of Mufid’s performances was first aired by CBS Channel 11 in November, when the station broke the story. Mufid’s band often appeared at fundraisers for Hamas. In one song, he sang, “We won’t fear a Jew. Oh, Hamas, respond to them with force. ... Death is right for the Jews. It is right!”

But Mufid had yet another secret. His half brother is the notorious Khalid Mishaal, the current leader of Hamas. The federal government believes that Khalid has directly supervised assassinations and bombings to disrupt U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations in the Middle East. His operations have claimed the lives of hundreds of Israelis and 10 Americans, and he is reputed to occupy the top slot on Israel’s assassination hit list of Hamas leaders.

Read it all.

Mind-boggling dhimmitude, and Western concepts of the equality of human dignity of women, on the verge of going out the window in Britain. "Muslim second wives may get a tax break," from the Times Online, with thanks to libbysmom:

THE Inland Revenue is considering recognising polygamy for some religious groups for tax purposes. Officials have agreed to examine “family friendly” representations from Muslims who take up to four wives under sharia, the laws derived from the Koran.

Existing rules allow only one wife for inheritance tax purposes. The Revenue has been asked to relax this so that a husband’s estate can be divided tax-free between several wives.

The move is bound to create controversy if it leads to a change in the rules. It is seen as a breakthrough by Muslim leaders who have been campaigning to incorporate sharia into British domestic law.

"We believe democracy is an atheist call that idolizes human beings" -- just as Sayyid Qutb, one of the leading jihadist theorists of the 20th century, said. I have been trying to call people's attention to this for some time. From MSNBC's "Mysterious Iraqi terror group gains clout," with thanks to Kemaste:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Ansar al-Sunnah Army has emerged from its roots as a little known militant group operating in northern Iraq to become the country’s deadliest terror network, capable of carrying out spectacular strikes like last week’s suicide bombing at a U.S. base and virtually eclipsing al-Qaida’s cell in the war-torn nation.

Unlike al-Qaida, Ansar al-Sunnah is believed to be made up mainly of Iraqis, and its apparent strategy of targeting only Americans and those viewed as collaborating with them — Iraqi security forces and Kurds — may have increased its support, in contrast to other groups that have hit more clearly Iraqi civilian targets.

Designs on an Islamic state

Nearly five months after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003, Ansar al-Sunnah’s first statement surfaced on the Internet, pronouncing itself “a group of jihadists, scholars, and political and military experts” dedicated to creating an Islamic state in Iraq.

The statement was signed by the group’s “emir,” or leader, the previously unknown Abu Abdullah al-Hassan Ibn Mahmoud.

Since then, it has carried out numerous bombings and attacks, particularly in northern Iraq — and shown its ruthlessness with the slaying in August of 12 kidnapped Nepalese construction workers, releasing video showing their deaths. In its deadliest operation, Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for Feb. 1 suicide bombings against two Kurdish political parties in Irbil, killing 109 people.

In the Irbil attack, the group slipped bombers into the Kurdish party offices during celebrations to set off their explosives. Tuesday’s attack on U.S. forces at Mosul showed even greater sophistication and planning: a bomber — possibly in an Iraqi military uniform — entered a dining tent on the heavily guarded American base and detonated the blast during lunch, killing 22 people, mostly American soldiers and civilians.

Now the group is warning Iraqis not to participate in crucial Jan. 30 elections, promising to attack polling stations.

But who exactly is behind Ansar al-Sunnah and how it was formed remains a mystery. Some experts believe the group splintered from Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida-linked group established in September 2001.

Ansar al-Islam was founded by Mullah Krekar, who has been living as a refugee in Norway since 1991. The group vowed to set up a conservative Islamic state in northern Iraq, and its members have trained in Afghanistan and provided safe haven to al-Qaida members fleeing the U.S. invasion there.

The offshoot group may have changed its name to Ansar al-Sunnah — Arabic for “supporters of the sunnah,” of the traditions of Prophet Muhammad — as an attempt to appeal to Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs, experts suggest.

There is nothing to corroborate this theory except that the group mainly operates in northern Iraq where Ansar al-Islam is based.

Mohammed Salah, a Cairo-based expert on Islamic militancy, said research indicates that the Ansar al-Sunnah Army was established by a mix of various Sunni Muslim anti-occupation factions that came together after the end of the war.

They chose the name Ansar al-Sunnah (loosely translated as “supporters of the traditions of Prophet Muhammad”) to distinguish the Sunni group from Shiite militias, Salah said.

The group now seems to include nationalists and other secular people opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq who are not typical religious fundamentalists or extremists but who “chose the cover of Islam as a propaganda that sells well.”

Democracy targeted

The group seeks an Islamic government and Islamic law in Iraq, stressing its opposition to democracy, which it says replaces God’s rightful rule with that of man.

“We believe democracy is an atheist call that idolizes human beings,” says a manifesto detailing Ansar al-Sunnah’s ideology.

Why is our "friend and ally" waging a propaganda jihad against the United States? Could it be that their loyalties remain with the jihadists they have funded so indefatigably for so many years? When will anyone in Washington face this?

From MEMRI, with thanks to all those who sent this in:

In the Saudi government daily Al-Watan, an article from Brussels written by Fakhriya Ahmad charges that, based on alleged secret European military reports, the U.S. military in Iraq is harvesting and selling human organs. The following day, the story was also published in the Iranian daily Jomhouri-ye Islami, [1] as well as the Syrian daily Teshreen. [2] The following are excerpts from the article: [3]

"Secret European military intelligence reports indicate the transformation of the American humanitarian mission in Iraq into a profitable trade in the American markets through the practice of American physicians extracting human organs from the dead and wounded, before they are put to death, for sale to medical centers in America. A secret team of American physicians follow the troops during their attacks on Iraqi armed men to ensure quick [medical] operations for extracting some organs and transferring them to private operations rooms before they are transferred to America for sale.

This story doesn't mention the fact that after Frank Gardner was shot in Saudi Arabia, he called out to passersby, "I'm a Muslim. Help me." Because he knew that Islam creates such a sharp distinction between believers and unbelievers that they were unlikely at best to help an unbeliever. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Kemaste:

A BBC journalist who was paralysed after being shot six times by terrorists in Saudi Arabia has vowed to return to work early next year, declaring: "You can't keep me off air." In his first interview since the shooting in June, Frank Gardner, the corporation's security correspondent, said on the BBC's Today programme that the trauma of being riddled with bullets at point-blank range had affected only his body, not his mind.

"The weird thing is, being shot didn't actually hurt," said Mr Gardner, whose cameraman Simon Cumbers, 36, was killed in the same attack.

"It was a traumatic experience, but when I lay there – I didn't know it at the time, but I had five bullets in me – I was wide awake and conscious and thinking, 'Crikey, I've taken a lot of hits here, but I'm still alive, so I've got to stay alive for the sake of my family.' So I willed myself to stay on.

"Fortunately they didn't get to my brain; that remained intact. They didn't get to my head, thank God, I've had no flashbacks, post-traumatic stress disorder or waking up sweating in the night – I've had none of that. I've been very lucky."

Mr Gardner, a fluent Arabic speaker and an expert on al-Qa'eda, is currently confined to a wheelchair and is receiving treatment at a special spinal injuries unit.

He is learning to walk again through the use of special rigid leg casts, although his chances of being fully mobile are less than 50 per cent.

He said that he could remember every second of the attack, which took place as he and Mr Cumbers attempted to film the Riyadh house of an al-Qa'eda supporter who had been shot by Saudi security forces.

"I saw in the faces of the gunmen absolute hatred; they had pressed the button of violence and nothing I tried to say to them in Arabic was going to dissuade them," Mr Gardner said.

"As far as they were concerned I was a heathen, a Western infidel who had come into their area and this was an opportunity to execute a Westerner. It was quite terrifying, as you can imagine.

"These people were hard-core militants, I don't think it would be fair to say they were paid-up members of al-Qaeda, but they were certainly sympathisers. These were people of the same mentality as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's people in Iraq."

After the gunmen drove off, Mr Gardner began crying out desperately for help, already aware that his legs seemed paralysed. To his dismay, locals in the western Suweidi district – reputed to harbour supporters of Osama bin Laden – appeared either unwilling or simply scared to be seen helping a Westerner.

Not a Westerner. A non-Muslim. Again the kaffir press is unwilling to draw attention to the only distinction that most likely really mattered both to those who shot Gardner and those who declined to help him.

From the Chicago Tribune via the KRT Wire, with thanks to all who sent this in:

What is happening in Europe may provide a partial preview of what lies ahead for the United States and its fast-growing Muslim population.

For the first time in history, Muslims are building large and growing minorities across the secular Western world - nowhere more visibly than in Western Europe, where their numbers have more than doubled in the past two decades. The impact is unfolding from Amsterdam to Paris to Madrid, as Muslims struggle - with words, votes and sometimes violence - to stake out their place in adopted societies.

Disproportionately young, poor and unemployed, they seek greater recognition and an Islam that fits their lives. Just as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran are witnessing the debate over the shape of Islam today, Europe is emerging as the battleground of tomorrow.

"The French are scared," said Tair Abdelkader, 38, a regular at the tented mosque whose light blue eyes and ebony beard are the legacy of a French mother and Algerian father. "In 10 years, the Muslim community will be stronger and stronger, and French political culture must accept that."

By midcentury, at least one in five Europeans will be Muslim. That change is unlike other waves of immigration because it poses a more essential challenge: defining a modern Judeo-Christian-Islamic civilization. The West must decide how its laws and values will shape and be shaped by Islam.

I don't think the West has any power to decide how its laws and values will shape Islam, but it certainly can decide to do nothing and allow its laws and values to be shaped by Islam. And alternatively, it can recover some sense of its own cultural identity and require that the Muslims who come into Western countries accept their laws and values, rather than those of Islam.

But will they find the spiritual energy necessary to do even that?

For Europe, as well as the United States, the question is not which civilization, Western or Islamic, will prevail, but which of Islam's many strands will dominate. Will it be compatible with Western values or will it reject them?

If only it were really that simple. The situation is complicated by the fact that all the "strands" of Islam will be present, no matter which one "dominates." If a group of moderate Muslims reaches some lasting accommodation with the parameters of Western societies, what will that group to do rein in its violent brethren? So far such efforts have been quite insufficient.

Center stage in that debate is France, home to the largest Islamic community on the continent, an estimated 5 million Muslims. Here the process of defining Euro-Islam is unfolding around questions as concrete as the right to wear head scarves and as abstract as the meaning of citizenship, secularism and extremism. In some cases, conservative Muslims have refused to visit co-ed swimming pools, study Darwinism or allow women to be examined by male doctors.

One young St.-Denis fundamentalist recently set off for Iraq and was captured fighting American troops in Fallujah. Stunned by stories like that, France is hoping to use the legal system to influence the direction of Islam within its borders.

The government has deported 84 people in the past six months on suspicion of advocating violence and drawn wide attention for banning head scarves and other religious symbols in public school. But even supporters of that tough approach concede that the measures can do little more than patch the widening cracks in Europe's image of itself.

"I'm not sure we'll go much further than gaining a few months or years" in the effort to limit Islam's imprint on France, said Herve Mariton, a member of the French Parliament who lobbied for the head scarf law. "That may be useful. But there is no way this is the ultimate answer to the challenge."...

Young French Muslims gravitate toward charismatic spokesmen of a new European Islam, such as controversial Swiss-born philosopher Tariq Ramadan, whose French headquarters here in St.-Denis urges a "silent revolution." In his writings, he advocates using the political process, instead of violence, to win Muslim rights and recognition across Europe.

Ramadan's supporters call him a major voice of moderate Islam, but some critics say he is tied to extremists, a charge he denies. He was scheduled to begin teaching this year at the University of Notre Dame until U.S. immigration authorities rescinded his work visa, citing unspecified national security concerns.

Here is a hint as to what they may have had on Brother Tariq.

The results are stark. Within six years, for instance, the three largest cities in the Netherlands will be majority Muslim. One-third of all German Muslims are younger than 18, nearly twice the proportion of the general population.

With that growth, and the deepening strains between the U.S. and the Islamic world, radical Muslim clerics have found no shortage of adherents. A 2002 poll of British Muslims found that 44 percent believe attacks by al-Qaida are justified as long as "Muslims are being killed by America and its allies using American weapons." Germany estimates that there are 31,000 Islamists in the country, based on membership lists of conservative federations.

Year by year, European Islam pulls further away from the cultural traditions of Morocco or Algeria, refashioned all the while by the pressures of life in Europe. For some, the solution is a more liberalized Islam that incorporates Western concepts of individual rights and tolerance. But for others, the answer lies in a stricter interpretation of the core elements of the faith.

"It is more fundamentalist in its essence because what you subsist on is personal practice_reading of the Koran, Shariah," Vaisse said. "It can take very humanist forms, but in some cases, it can also lead to political radicalization and terrorism."...

Then we hear that the moderate leader's influence is not increasing, but weakening:

Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris in the heart of the city, is a long-standing voice of moderate Islam in France. On the other side is Lhaj Thami Breze, president of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, the increasingly powerful Islamist federation....

There is no question that Boubakeur's influence is weakening. Last year he was handpicked to be president of the official French Council of the Muslim Faith, a new body established by the government in 2003 to give Muslims a formal voice in dealings with the state. Just as other bodies represent Catholics and Jews, the council speaks for Muslims on issues such as the construction of mosques and the training of clerics.

But things didn't go as planned. In the first election, his moderate camp was trounced by conservative candidates who won 70 percent of the 41 seats. The next vote is scheduled for April, and moderates are expected to lose even more to the men he believes are "radicalizing Islam" in France.

"The facts are there: Religions that close in on themselves become sects, and that is what is happening to Islam here," Boubakeur said. "And I am very sorry about that."

Across town, beside the highway in the tough Paris suburb of La Courneuve, Boubakeur's opponents are confident. Breze greets visitors at his glass-and-steel headquarters with a glossy package of materials and a calm message of "coordination, not confrontation."

"We are not extremists," he says, sipping espresso at a conference table. "We practice our beliefs and have respect for the state. We want one thing from Europe and France: that they are faithful to their values."

Indeed, Breze and the union have thrived under Western democracy. Just two decades after its creation, by two foreign students, the union dominates French Islam.

In the last elections for the Council of the Muslim Faith, Breze won control of a crucial post representing central France.

Breze's federation draws 30,000 people to its annual conference, and the crowd is increasingly vocal in challenging the political powers that be. At last year's convention, the interior minister was booed in the middle of his speech when he suggested that women must remove their head scarves for ID photos.

So what does Breze really want for Muslims in France? He and his group carefully calibrate their demands. They demonstrate against the ban on head scarves, for instance, but urge young women to respect the law as long as it is in effect. His federation is part of a broader umbrella group for all of Europe that is known for issuing decisions that help conservative Muslims function in a modern Western society by permitting, for instance, interest-bearing loans that would otherwise be banned under Islam and allowing the consumption of pork-based gelatin.

Push Breze on the most sensitive issues - does he seek an Islamic state in France, or the application of strict Islamic law and punishment - and he says no: "Perhaps they are valid in Saudi Arabia or Palestine, but they are not valid here."

To some critics, Breze is a "double talker" who says one thing in French and another in Arabic. To others, he is simply a shrewd strategist who understands the coming power of the fast-growing Muslim communities here.

For his part, Breze says his mission is to convey a simple message: "France must respect this population."

OK. Must his population respect France?

The Muslim Students' Association of the University of Houston has a most interesting website, especially its page headed "Questions Related to Aqidah (Faith)." (Thanks to MB for the link.) Among other things, it tells Muslims that they should not hire unbelievers, and that Muslims are permitted to be polite to unbelievers for the purpose of calling them to Islam.

(I wonder if the UH authorities know that the MSA is advocating religious discrimination.)

Ruling About Hiring a Non-Muslim Maid [or Servant]

Question: I sent requests asking for a maid to help my wife with her housework. I discovered, through letters, that they did not find a Muslim in the country that I wanted a maid from. Is it allowed for me to hire a non-Muslim maid?

Response: It is not allowed to have a non-Muslim maid or a non-Muslim male servant, or a worker who is non-Muslim for anyone living in the Arabian Peninsula. This is because the Prophet (peace be upon him) ordered the Jews and Christians to be expelled from that land. He ordered that only Muslims should be left there. He decreed upon his death that all polytheists must be expelled from this Peninsula.

Although this only has to do with the Arabian Peninsula, the Saudi Sheikh who is writing this ruling then expands its scope:

Furthermore, hiring disbelieving men and women is very dangerous for the Muslims, their faith, their behavior and the upbringing of their children. Therefore, such must be prevented in obedience to Allah, the Glorified, and His Messenger (peace be upon him), and to prevent a source of evil and immorality.

And Allah is the One who provides guidance.

Shaikh Ibn Baz

And then there is directive to manipulate the unsuspecting:

Ruling Concerning Mixing with the Disbelievers in order to Call Them to Islam

Question: Is it allowed to mix with the disbelievers, Christians, Hindus and others, and to eat and talk to them or even to be amicable with them as a means of calling them to Islam?

Response: It is allowed to mix with the disbelievers, sit with them and be polite with them as means of calling them to Allah, explaining to them the teachings of Islam, encouraging them to enter this religion and to make it clear to them the good result of accepting the religion and the evil result of punishment for those who turn away. For this purpose, being a companion to them and showing love for them is overlooked in order to reach that good final goal.

Shaikh Ibn Jibreen

"For this purpose, being a companion to them and showing love for them is overlooked in order to reach that good final goal." In other words, it is an objective evil to be a companion to and show love for an unbeliever — unless one is doing it to convert them.

This ruling accords completely with Qur'an 3:28: "Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them." It's a bit convoluted, but the verse is essentially saying that Muslims must not make friends with non-Muslims, except insincerely, in order to strengthen themselves against them. This is one of the foundation verses of the doctrine of religious deception, taqiyya. And certainly making friends with an unbeliever in order to make him a Muslim would be one way to strengthen the Muslim community.

There are several reasons to doubt the contentions made by the jihadists in this article. One is the fact that long before September 11, there was abundant evidence that violent groups holding the Islamic jihad ideology had spread throughout the world. Another is that there is reliable evidence that they are present today in many more than 60 countries.

Aside from the merits or demerits of the question itself, leaving Iraq will not end the jihad, any more than going to Iraq started it. While it is true that jihadists point to Iraq or Afghanistan or the founding of Israel or the toppling of Mossadegh as the reasons why they are fighting, the nature and history of the jihad ideology make these claims historically preposterous. These are indeed tools of jihadist recruitment, and some have proved more effective than others. However, if one is taken away, another one will be found. The captors here indicate this by complaining that none of the Arab leaders are "truly Islamic." They thus indicate that their project, like that of other jihadists around the world, is not just to get the US out of Iraq, or the Jews out of Israel, or anything else but the restoration of the caliphate and Sharia.

For that very reason, a realistic appraisal of the jihad ideology also indicates that a long stay in Iraq for the US would most likely be counterproductive. The Wilsonian project of democratizing Iraq may somehow ultimately succeed, but the odds are prohibitive, and the January elections will not determine the outcome of the project as a whole. This will be a work of decades -- at least. Democracy in Iraq faces an obstacle far greater than those faced by post-World War II Germany and Japan: the vitality of political Islam, which has not been discredited or disavowed by any of the many Islamic groups in the country. This force can only be neutralized not by military might, but by a large-scale ideological effort that has not been undertaken, because the need for it has not been understood.

From the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), with thanks to Kemaste:

PARIS - An insurgent guarding two French hostages told them his group supported President George W. Bush in the US November election because his policies help Islamic extremism expand, the French daily Le Figaro reported Friday.

Former hostage Georges Malbrunot, 41, told the paper that sometime between September 26 and October 15, he asked his guard if he wanted Bush or Democratic Party challenger John Kerry to win the US presidential election.

“We want Bush,” his guard told him. “We want Bush because with him, the American soldiers will stay in Iraq, and this way we will be able to expand.”

Malbrunot, a journalist employed by Le Figaro, said the guard also told him that the American attack on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States enabled Islamic extremism “to spread throughout the world”.

“We are now present in 60 countries around the world,” the hooded guard said. “And our aim is to overthrow Arab rulers and establish a caliphate from Andelusia to the borders of China.”...

Malbrunot said that there were repeated references among the kidnappers to “Sheik Osama” and that the group holding them had an Iraqi agenda” but also “an international and jihadist agenda”.

When he asked his guard what its priorities were, the man replied, ”There are two. Saudi Arabia, Egypt ... but we know all Arab leaders are traitors. None is truly Islamic.”

With Christmas under sustained attack from multiculturalists on the one hand and jihadists on the other, it seems only fitting and proper for this site dedicated to universal human rights to wish all of those who observe the day the merriest and most forthright of Christmases.

Here is a pdf of Judge Michael Higgins' full decision in the Australian religious vilification case.

Read it and weep.

Stop the presses! One of the just-released French hostages held in Iraq says that his captors weren't really insurgents or nationalists at all, but (gasp) jihadists! I know this will come as a shock to many of you, so sit down and read on. From the BBC, with thanks to Susan:

One of two French journalists released from captivity in Iraq has said his captors were driven more by Islamic holy war than Iraqi nationalism.... The men's captors said Mr Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot were freed because of France's anti-war stance.

Mr Malbrunot told French television: "One of the lessons we drew from our captivity was that we were immersed in Planet Bin Ladin, especially when we were in a cell of the Islamic Army in the north.

"We were very aware of the fact that it wasn't the Iraqi agenda that motivated our kidnappers, but the internationalist jihadist agenda. I think this is the real challenge for the next 10 years, the clash of cultures that these people are advocating, are seeking."...

Mr Malbrunot warned other journalists working or thinking of working in Iraq to take care.

"Our kidnappers told us: Don't come back to Iraq, this is a land of war and we do not need you here. We want to settle our scores with the Americans.

"I would say you must be very, very careful because that country is crawling with armed men who are on the lookout for Westerners."...

French officials have denied that a ransom was paid and many in France are expected to take the view that the men's release vindicates the country's opposition to the war in Iraq.

In other words, they are expected to argue that dhimmitude pays.

More news from "moderate" Indonesia. From Straits Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

JAKARTA - FEARS of attacks by Islamic militants are forcing some Christians in Indonesia to abandon traditional churches in favour of more discreet and secure venues this Christmas.

With foreign governments warning of holiday terror bombings, thousands of churches in major Indonesian cities will hold services this year in office buildings, hotels and even movie theatres, church leaders say.

'It puts us at a lower risk of being a target for religious persecution,' said Pastor Steve Lunn, originally from Seattle, whose International English Service holds services for 1,000 people in a downtown Jakarta office building.

'People tell me they feel safer,' he said.

'The facility itself is not the most important thing. It's just a place to gather. The most important thing is being together and worshipping God together.'

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of more than 13,000 islands and 210 million people, is the world's most populous Muslim nation.

The vast majority of Muslims practise a moderate version of the faith.

Sure they do. That's why Christians are meeting for Christmas in movie theaters.

And the idea that Christians should have second-class status, a traditional concept of Islamic law, is alive and well there:

But attacks against Christians, who make up just 8 per cent of the population, have become more frequent since ex-dictator Suharto's downfall in 1998, and amid a global rise in Islamic radicalism. Mr Suharto enforced secularism as part of national security policies....

'People are still afraid,' said Pastor Hengki Ompi, whose church was attacked earlier this month by suspected Muslim gunmen on the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

'We hope the attacks stop so we can celebrate Christmas without fear.'

Plans to build new churches are sometimes met with violent protests from Islamic groups, which view them as an attempt to convert Muslims.

Church leaders also say a decree requiring religious leaders to get neighbourhood approval before building new places of worship is being used to discriminate against them.

Some church leaders say these obstacles are understandable, given the country's Muslim majority, and acknowledge that Muslims face similar problems in the few pockets of Indonesia where Christians dominate.

But others say the restrictions reflect a growing intolerance of religious minorities.

'We have a lot more liberties than say Afghanistan and Pakistan...but the fact is that Christians are second-class citizens,' said Pastor Bill Heckman, a Dutchman who has tried for six years to build a church in Jakarta....

Muslims say evangelical Christians are partly to blame for rising religious tensions.

They say hundreds of foreign-funded evangelical groups are using churches in Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods to convert locals - a claim some Christians acknowledge is true.

In response, the government has proposed a law that would bar Indonesians from attending religious ceremonies that do not reflect their faith - making it harder for them to switch.

It would also criminalise inter-faith marriages and adoptions.

Jihad against Christians continues in "moderate" Indonesia. From AAP, with thanks to Twostellas:

A CHRISTIAN preacher has been attacked and badly wounded by a machete-wielding gang on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi despite a massive security operation intended to curb sectarian blood-letting and terror attacks during Christmas.

Reverend Jemri Tambalino was in critical condition after the attack by three men in the coastal town of Poso, which has been a major battleground between the Muslim majority and Christian minority.

The preacher, who was riding a motorbike, suffered deep slash wounds to his neck and face.

A friend travelling with Rev Tambalino was also attacked, with injuries to his hand, a hospital spokesman said.

More than 1000 people have been killed in the area over four years of sectarian fighting.

A recent report by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group warned extremists linked to the Jemaah Islamiah terror network were using the area as a recruiting ground....

At the main Catholic Cathedral in Jakarta, metal detectors had been installed ahead of Christmas Eve services, and hundreds of paramilitary police were expected to be placed outside this afternoon....

Reverend Natan Setiabudi, chairman of the Indonesian Communion of Churches, said Christians "do not feel totally secure", particularly since the Palu attacks showed violence "could happen anytime, anywhere".

Interesting assertion. I hope they're right. But I remember the eight years between the first World Trade Center bombing and the successful one, and I suspect it would be unwise to think that there is nothing to be concerned about here. "Al Qaeda 2.0: Where will it strike next?," from Rediff.com, with thanks to Fanabba:

Michael Scheuer is a former chief of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre's bin Laden unit.

Scheuer, who resigned from the CIA in November after 22 years of service, believes there is a need to build pressure on Al Qaeda inside Afghanistan, and not in Pakistan because Islamabad is already doing a lot in the war against terrorism.

He thinks the Al Qaeda leadership is still planning new attacks in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia while hiding in Afghanistan. Many areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan, he added, are not under the Hamid Karzai administration's control.

US offers $5 million for Al Qaeda trainer

He also said Europe, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to be Al Qaeda's new targets in the near future.

Other US security officials are confident that there are no more Al Qaeda secret cells in the country and Osama bin Laden cannot organise new attacks like 9/11 in New York or Washington. But they too warn that America's allies in the war against terrorism are still vulnerable to Al Qaeda attacks.

The United Kingdom will increase the number of its troops in Afghanistan under NATO cover early next year. The UK and Pakistan will increase pressure on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan through coordinated operations. US troops will increase the pressure on Al Qaeda in eastern Afghanistan.

Will questions that Muslims find uncomfortable soon be illegal in America? Never mind that the question quoted below — does your school teach a particular verse of the Qur'an — is entirely reasonable. And forget that jihadists around the world have told us that they are fighting to establish the caliphate and Sharia wherever they can. You simply can't ask American Muslims what they think of such things. To do so would be "anti-Muslim." From the Houston Chronicle, with thanks to Hutchrun:

A national Islamic organization has demanded an apology from a Texas-based private school association after claiming its director took an "alarmingly intolerant and hostile attitude toward Islam and Muslims."

The protest by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations was prompted by a letter sent by the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools to the representatives of an Islamic school in Houston.

Dar-Ul-Arqam, which enrolls more than 300 students at three area locations under the supervision of the Islamic Education Institute of Texas, has been seeking membership for its Adel Road campus in the private school association, known as TAPPS. The association includes 238 schools across the state, including Awty International School, Incarnate Word Academy, Northland Christian School and St. Thomas High School in the Houston area.

Membership typically expands opportunities for private-school students to compete against other schools in academic and athletic events.

The letter, apparently signed by TAPPS Director Edd Burleson, has the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas calling for an investigation, according to Alamdar Hamdani, a Houston member of the ACLU board. The Anti-Defamation League also has expressed concern.

In his correspondence, Burleson quoted a verse from the Quran as calling on Muslims to be violent toward Christians and Jews. He noted that most TAPPS member schools are Christian. "Why do you wish to join an organization whose membership is basically in total disagreement with your religious beliefs?" he asked in the two-page letter, which included 10 questions.

He asks about the school's attitude toward "the spread of Islam in America" and the goals of the school "in this regard."

Finally, he suggests that some TAPPS members may not be tolerant of Muslims: "Why do you think that the current member schools of TAPPS will not be biased against your school, based on the fundamental difference in your religion and Christianity, since about 90% of TAPPS schools embrace Christianity?"...

Iesa Galloway, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations' Houston office, said Burleson sent a similar letter to an Islamic school in the Dallas area. He said he was awaiting details of that case.

Besides demanding an apology, Galloway's group has asked for reprimands against those responsible for the letter.

"The TAPPS letter, a symbol of religious intolerance, has no place in a nation that was originally built by those seeking asylum from such intolerance," Galloway said in correspondence he sent this week to the TAPPS board.

Dar-Ul-Arqam's Adel Road campus enrolls some 175 students and already participates in the Grapevine-based Private School Interscholastic Association, according to Khaled Katbi, a school representative.

But that association's programs are only available through middle school. So representatives of Dar-Ul-Arqam began looking for an association that would offer scholastic competition for its 19 high school students.

On Nov. 4, Katbi went before the TAPPS board to seek membership for his school. Board members asked him if the school taught from the Quran, and Katbi said it did.

"Their questions were reasonable," Katbi said. "I did not sense hostility."

A week later, Katbi got a letter from Burleson that included questions Burleson said the school needed to answer before it could be admitted to TAPPS.

"Do you teach your students to 'Make war on them (Christians and Jews) until idolatry is no more and Allah's religion reigns supreme' (Koran 8:37)?" Burleson asked.

Katbi said he was "astonished" by the letter. He did not reply to the questions.

The bylaws of TAPPS do not indicate that the organization is open only to Christian schools.

Hamdani, the ACLU representative, said the organization would come under special restrictions if it accepts federal funding. But the TAPPS Web site indicates that the nonprofit organization relies on dues from member schools and sporting-event fees.

"It's the venom in that letter that's so disturbing," Hamdani said. While the letter is structured as a series of questions, he said, "they're really more assumptions than questions."

Martin B. Cominsky, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the letter "assumes some offensive stereotypes about what Islam is all about."

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., said he was not aware of any other cases in which Islamic schools had difficulty joining private-school organizations.

He said the letter reflects "the rise in anti-Muslim sentiment" that has emerged since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Last thoughts on the man who might have been a professor at Notre Dame from Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald:

Several things have happened to Tariq Ramadan that have made him extremely eager to move to the United States. Essentially, in Europe, for him, the jig is up. Too many people have been studying his connections, his speeches, the contents of his books, described by NPR as "scholarship" but, in reality, he is no Muslim scholar (Bassam Tibi is a Muslim scholar), but a full-time propagandist for Da'wa.

These include:

1) the appearance of Ramadan on a television show with Nicolas Sarkozy, who demolished every one of Ramadan's well-worn attempts to practice taqiyya/kitman, to turn aside any discussion of his support for "my grandfather" Hassan al-Banna (who used to whip up Cairene crowds, which crowds would then express their enthusiasm, as they did on November 2, 1945, by attacking Coptic and Jewish shops, and murdering Copts and Jews -- something about his grandfather that Ramadan has never condemned or mentioned, just as he has never uttered a syllable against the persecution of the Copts in Egypt, nor of the persecution of any non-Muslims anywhere in the Muslim world).

Sarkozy's steely performance destroyed Ramadan, who has never before had to face any real interviewer -- the same way, on NPR the other day, he had only the gush and mush of Jack ("McCarran Act! McCarran Act!) Beatty and the sympathetic Gail Harris, both of whom were worrying about what this "great Islamic scholar" would do now, and what is family would do, since he had been denied admittance to the United States -- as well as Jay Tolson, apparently a recent recruit to the ranks of Ramadan groupies, who would not tolerate anyone invoking such words as "taqiyya" and "kitman," and who stood, stoutly and ignorantly, by his man -- and his main man is Ramadan.

2) the careful study of Caroline Fourest, "Frere Tariq," which is the main book on offer even in provincial towns in Brittany, according to an informant, and which sets out all sorts of Ramadan's prevarications, omissions, and outright lies -- one by one by one. It is a book from which, like the encounter with Sarkozy, Ramadan will not recover, and has no reply. He will simply hope the book is not translated into English, and that the clear-headed at Notre Dame -- that leaves out Scott Appleby in particular, who "knows" all about Tariq Ramadan, and does not wish to be confused with fact after fact after dismal fact -- never read it. Ditto with Esposito at Georgetown, who doesn't want to have James V. Schall (terrifying thought: Esposito has to mix it up with James V. Schall before the Georgetown University trustees, who may be getting calls to sever their now most-embarrassing institutional connection with the Arab-financed Center of Muslim Apologetics that provides Esposito with his handsome returns of the day).

3) the emission by the Franco-Arab journalist Mohamed Sarfaoui (whom Google), which the Union of Muslim Associations tried to prevent from being broadcast on France-2 on December 2 (the broadcast went on anyway) by threatening Sarfaoui himself. They were not subtle: they said that such a broadcast against "Frere Tariq" would be tantamount to apostasy -- and while we are not saying more, you know what can happen to apostates.

The broadcast needs to be seen in this country as well, with subtitles, so that the Notre Dame administration, trustees, and interested faculty can read the book ("Frere Tariq") and see the movie, or movielet, about this sinister figure.

4) the connections with assorted terrorists -- a meeting with Al-Zawahiri, and similar sinister socializing that has been documented by Daniel Pipes -- whom Ramadan kept referring to on NPR, as if the only thing he had to worry about was the charge that he had met with known terrorists, and not his whole propaganda operation. For obvious reasons, the French and American governments cannot go into in any detail about that operation (nor explain how they know what they know, in order to satisfy Mesa Nostra or the Scott Applebys of this world). But these connections also have not gone away, nor been forgotten.

5) Ramadan has a few select rhetorical tricks, but behind those tricks is this reality:

He wants to see the islamization of Europe. He thinks that Europeans suffer from a "spiritual emptiness" and that they are ripe for wonderful Islam. He has said that "the West is in decline, and the Arab-Islamic world is on the road to renewal" -- yet that "renewal," he believes, will take place when Islam conqueres, through his kind of Da'wa. His Da'wa, of course, is far more cunning, with far more roses than guns, than the Da'wa of Qaradawi, or of Sheikh Tantawi, and of course than the threats of Bin Laden, Zarqawi, et al.

But the goal of Ramadan is the goal of Bin Laden and indeed of all Believers: the victory of dar al-Islam over dar al-Harb, the removal of all obstacles in the dar al-Harb to the spread of Islam, and the subjugation of all non-Muslims -- who will be subjugated, as they have always been subjugated over 1350 years of Muslim conquest (with not a single exception anywhere) and, as dhimmis (where not killed or converted outright), subject to a permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.

Keep that in mind. But until you have read -- as Beatty and Gail Harris clearly had not -- at least a few of Ramadan's books (worthless in any literary or historical sense, but instructive as lines of propoaganda), even if you have to brush up your parley-voo, and Fourest's "Frere Tariq," and seen Sarkozy's debate, and Sarfaoui's program, you simply cannot defend Ramadan out of ignorance or some dreamy interfaith idea (the Scott Appleby approach to life, where all religions "want the same thing" and they are "all the same" and everything is the same of a sameness).

Ramadan is kaput as a propagandist among the Infidels. No one takes him seriously. His job in Geneva had come to an end. He was desperate to find innocent Infidels elsewhere -- and to start over where they would not, he felt, know him as well as the French and Swiss had come to know him.

But guess what? Some of us know French, and can read, and can even watch French television. Tariq, you should have thought of that before angling for the Joan Kroc Center. And Scott Appleby, you should have asked yourself whether or not a good many other people might not take lying-down your feelgood approach to matters that, in the end, involve our own security, and the survival of a relatively tolerant, bemused, curious, and interesting civilization, which Tariq Ramadan's belief-system undercuts and threatens at every turn. One hopes, but does not expect, that you will learn some lesson.

And why not offer instituional care and feeding, at this point, to some refugee Copt or Maronite scholars, who can from their perch at Notre Dame inform the American public about how non-Muslims are treated? Habib Malik? Walid Phares? Or perhaps offer a platform for those who were born into Islam, but are viewed as "defectors" from it and in danger of their lives? How about inviting Azam Kamguian to teach about Islam and Women? Reza Afshari, to set up a Center on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Shari'a? What about Ali Sina? Ibn Warraq?

Cat got your tongue?

Recent posts about Khomeini and Sistani seem to have aroused the ire of the tiny minority of extremists, who have written in (from the United States) with their usual moderation and tolerance:

HYPOCRITE! YOU MAKE A FUSS BECAUSE MUSLIMS REMEMBER KHOMEINI YET YOU DONT CRITISIZE SOUTHERN WHITE NEO-CONFEDERATES WHO COMMEMORATE THE TRAITOR ROBERT E LEE! SHAME ON YOU!

Yeah, the world faces a serious neo-Confederate threat these days. Shame on me.

Listen you filthy swine! Christian Priests rape and abuse young boys because the Christian religious texts tell them too!

America would not DARE antagonise Grand Ayatollah Sistani. If the election is fixed by America and the American puppets win the election ALL HELL WILL BREAK LOSE! And you know what will happen to Israel in the ensuing chaos! So watch your tongue when referring to Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And YES KAFFIR LIKE YOURSELF ARE UNCLEAN. YOU FILTYHY FORNICATING, ADULTEROUS, HOMOSEXUAL, CHILD MOLESTING, RAPING, MURERDING PIG EATING, ALCHOHOL DRINKING, DRUG USING, BLASHPEMING, PAGAN (CHRISTIANS WORRHIP 3 GODS THE FATHER THE SON AND THE HOLE SPIRIT), HERETICAL, BEASTIAL, DONT EVEN WASH YOUR GENITALS AND BACKSIDE AFTER YOU P**S AND S**T, KAFFIR!

I added in the asterisks. Meanwhile, I'd like to see this writer come up with those "Christian religious texts" mandating the rape of young boys. I won't be holding my breath.

From ABC, with thanks to Nicolei:

- A California woman reveals to ABC News that she unknowingly married a Muslim extremist who helped set up what authorities say was one of the first al Qaeda sleeper cells out of their Orange County apartment complex.

Saraah Olson says she watched as her then-husband, Hisham Diab, and his group transformed local teen Adam Gadahn into an America-hating fanatic who she says is the masked man who promised in an al Qaeda video message released in Pakistan late October that the "streets of America will run red with blood."

Watch Brian Ross' interview on "Primetime Live" tonight at 10:00 p.m. ET.

"I was just a stepping stone to a green card," Olson said. "I married a terrorist. I married somebody who did not like America, who didn't like Americans."

Gadahn, who met Olson's former husband at a local mosque, was "fresh meat," she said. "Someone they could control. Not only that, he's very unassuming-looking, he can do a lot of their tasks."

The voice, gestures and rhetoric of the video's "Azzam the American" were all familiar to Olson, especially the phrase "red with blood," which was one of the group's favorite sayings, she said.

And over the course of three years, Olson said, some of Osama bin Laden's top deputies would stay with her and her husband, including blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who would later go to prison for life for his role in organizing terrorist plots against the United States.

Olson said she repeatedly tried to notify the FBI of her husband's suspicious activities, but that she was never taken seriously. "I'm in hell," Olson remembers thinking after she recognized Abdel-Rahman in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombings. "I have entered the bowels of hell and I'm going to be here forever. And I've only been married seven months. I've got a terrorist in my house."

The FBI said in a statement that counterterrorism is their top priority. "Whenever we receive credible information pertaining to terrorist threats against the United States, the FBI acts immediately to thoroughly pursue all such leads," the statement read.

Federal authorities say the couple's neighbor Khalil Deek, considered a major al Qaeda figure, ran the Orange County sleeper cell operation.

Diab, who obtained a U.S. passport after marrying Olson, left the country suddenly in 1998. He is now being sought by U.S. authorities and is believed by intelligence officials to be hiding in Pakistan with top al Qaeda leaders....

Plus details of how devoutly Diab followed Qur'an 4:34 in his marriage to Olson:

The honeymoon was short-lived, however. First, she said Diab insisted she wear the hijab, a head scarf worn by certain devout Muslim women, and conform to other strict Islamic customs.

And the beatings came next, she said, provoked by what were deemed violations of her husband's strict rules, which including forbidding physical contact with any man. She says he hit her the first time just weeks after their wedding for accidentally bumping into the manager of their apartment building.

"You have to listen to me and I am God," she said Diab told her. "Follow the rules."

Olson's son Ryan, now a teenager, says he was beaten almost daily when he did poorly in the Arabic lessons he was forced to take.

"I mispronounced something and that set him off," the college freshman said. "And I remember he clasped both his hands together and just hauled off and hit me right square in the back. I remember the wind, you know, getting knocked out of me, crying out."

Ryan said Diab's cell tried to recruit him into their group and he would be brought to small meetings where the men would rail and plot against America.

"He wanted me to be just as extreme as he was you know, hate America, anything that his little group didn't like," he said. "I just can't really say I ever believed it. I just went along, just nodded my head."

And Saraah Olson admits she played a role in drawing up the papers for a fake charity, called Charity Without Borders, that the cell used to funnel money overseas. The organization would not be discovered or shut down until after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was an act of desperation, Olson said. "I'm not proud of it. Not proud of it at all," she said. "I just knew that I lived in hell and I wanted out. And if helping him do whatever it was that he was doing meant that I wouldn't get hit, I was willing to do it at that point."

CAIR plays, but DHS doesn't dance. However, the FBI cuts a mean jig. From the LA Times, with thanks to JS:

Muslim American groups from Southern California held a town hall meeting Monday to discuss with federal officials what they call unfair targeting of Muslim travelers and immigrants in the wake of 9/11.

Nearly 500 people attended the meeting, held at a La Mirada hotel. But not everyone on the coalition's guest list showed up.

A representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said that a week ago he invited officials from the Department of Homeland Security, including the local heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Transportation Security Administration.

The officials declined, said Omar Zaki, director of government relations for CAIR's office in Anaheim. The officials said that their local offices handle only enforcement and do not set policy, Zaki said.

Lori Haley, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment Monday.

The Department of Homeland Security has "completely closed the door on this community," said Zaki at Monday's meeting. "They've taken the position that it isn't important for them to be here. They've avoided every opportunity to talk with us. Their arrogance is not acceptable. This is about accountability."

The FBI, which is part of the U.S. Department of Justice and not Homeland Security, did send a representative. Matt McLaughlin, special projects coordinator for an outreach program to the Muslim community, told the audience that the FBI "wants to be sensitive when it makes sense. Our government isn't perfect — mistakes can occur. We are trying to treat everyone with dignity and respect, but also do the very difficult job of protecting you all."

In an interview before the meeting, McLaughlin said that the FBI and the Muslim community "need to remain in dialogue, whether it's a happy day or a sad day. I think it's important that the FBI be here to listen to the community."

From CNN, with thanks to Teri:

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thousands of teachers in Thailand have walked off their jobs to protest a lack of security in the country's south.

More than 300 schools in Pattani province, a region hard hit by a Muslim insurgency, closed their doors Thursday.

But others in Yala and Narathiwat provinces remained open.

Pairat Wihakarat, who heads the Southern Teachers Association, told The Associated Press a meeting would be held Thursday to decide whether to close schools in these two provinces.

The teachers say they won't return to school until the government can provide adequate protection, an education official said.

Militants have been targeting teachers and other government workers, with three teachers killed in recent weeks.

Violence has troubled the Muslim south of predominantly Buddhist Thailand for decades, but has worsened this year, with more than 500 people dying so far.

From Israel National News, with thanks to Teri:

The Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem was to be the target of choice for an Israeli-Arab couple who planned to blow themselves up following their wedding. Israeli security forces thwarted their plans.

It was released for publication on Wednesday that the GSS recently arrested an Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem on suspicion of planning to carry out a suicide bombing together with his 16-year-old fiancé. The attack was scheduled for shortly after their wedding.

Ahmed Jazawi, an Israeli-Arab resident of the mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood of Abu-Tor, was recruited by Hamas handlers from Hevron – the same terror gang that carried out the double suicide-bombing in Be’er Sheva this past August, murdering 16 people.

Jazawi, 22, had already convinced his young fiancé to carry out the attack together with him, and was in the midst of gathering intelligence with the goal of bombing the Sbarro pizzeria when he was arrested. Sbarro became famous in the summer of 2002 when, in a different downtown Jerusalem location, it suffered a suicide terrorist blast felling 15 Jews, including parents and three of their eight children.

The investigation revealed that Jazawi had friendly relations with Moutzab Hashlamoun, a Hamas handler from Hevron. They studied together at Abu-Dis University. Half a year ago, Jazawi told Hashlamoun he wanted to carry out a suicide bombing in Jerusalem. The Hamas handler agreed and began to direct Jazawi on how to make his way to a target with his bomb, and how to maximize the number of murdered.

Oh. I guess they think that makes it all right. Leila M update, from Persian Journal, with thanks to Anthony:

An Iranian mullah judiciary official today denied reports that a young woman, who has been sentenced to death for prostitution, is mentally disabled.

Leila Mafi, 21, was sentenced more than a year ago by a court in Arak, central Iran, for having illegal sex. The death verdict is now being reviewed by the Supreme Court, Mohammad Hossein Pourianmehr said today.

Hanging is the usual form of execution in Iran's mullahs regime.

Iran - Land of Mullahs

Leila's case had been little noted in her country but was brought to world attention last week by London-based Amnesty International. The human rights watchdog said she was 19 with the mental capacity of an eight-year-old.

Pourianmehr said Leila was in full mental and physical health and had confessed. he said she was 19 when she was arrested, which may account for the age given by Amnesty.

From the New York Times, with thanks to Anthony:

BETHLEHEM, West Bank, Dec. 20 - In the town where Christians believe Christ was born, the Christians are leaving.

Four years of violence, an economic free fall and the Israeli separation barrier have all contributed to the hardships facing Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, one of the largest concentrations of Christians in the region.

An estimated 3,000 Christians in the Bethlehem area have moved abroad since the Palestinian uprising began in 2000, according to Bernard Sabella, an associate professor of sociology at Bethlehem University who has tracked the issue. While some others put the number a bit lower, there is a consensus that 10 percent or more of the Christian population in Bethlehem and two adjoining towns has departed.

The continuing exodus has left Christians accounting for only about 21,500 of the 60,000 Palestinian residents in the area, or about 35 percent, according to Mr. Sabella. "Christians all over the world need to know this reality," said Hanna Nasser, a Christian who is the mayor of Bethlehem. "If there is not a breakthrough in the peace process, this trend will continue. Imagine the town of Bethlehem without Christians."

Bethlehem's central square should be packed for Christmas celebrations, but the tourists and pilgrims stopped coming when the fighting began.

"For four years there has been no business, no way to earn a living," said Saleh Michel, 88, a Catholic.

For decades Mr. Michel ran a recession-proof family business. His musty souvenir shop, the Bethlehem Oriental Store, is less than 10 paces from one of Christendom's most important shrines, the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where tradition holds that Jesus was born.

Yet Mr. Michel rarely opens these days, and one of his adult sons has moved to Italy. "I asked him to stay," Mr. Michel recalled. "He said, 'Then feed me.' He had no choice but to leave and find work elsewhere."

The gloom stands in stark contrast to the mood five years ago. Back then, the stone square outside the Church of the Nativity was overflowing with tourists for Christmas and New Year's celebrations. Palestinians were talking up the possibility of statehood in 2000. Pope John Paul II visited in March 2000, helping to fuel a surge in visitors. New hotels were rising to accommodate the crowds.

"We all had high hopes," said Fayez Khano, 58, who carves olive wood souvenirs in a workshop dusted with flakes of blond wood.

But today Mr. Khano, a father of three, has a son and a daughter in Dublin, and another daughter who is about to move to the United States.

"We depend on our kids to send us money," said Mr. Khano, who along with his brother has been crafting Jesus figures and manger scenes at his shop for a quarter-century. "I want to stay, because I was born here, but my wife is pushing me to leave. If the situation continues I will have to consider it."

Arab Christians have been a relatively prosperous minority within Israel and the West Bank, generally well educated and middle class. Many have the advantage of having relatives or other connections abroad, enabling them to move with ease to the United States, Europe or Latin America.

The Christian emigrants tend to be quite successful and rarely look back. In one striking example, the two main candidates in El Salvador's presidential election in March, the winner, Tony Saca, and the runner-up, Schafik Handal, were both descendants of Catholic Arab families that came from here.

Bethlehem was more than 90 percent Christian until the middle of the last century. Then the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, begun by Arab states in response to the founding of Israel, brought an influx of Muslim refugees to the Bethlehem area and signaled the start of a demographic shift. But what began as a steady emigration of Christians accelerated into a relative flood with the onset of violence four years ago.

The Christians, most of them Greek Orthodox or Catholic, have not been directly involved in the fighting but have suffered the consequences.

In the early days of the uprising, Muslim gunmen in the Bethlehem area took hilltop positions in Beit Jala, which is predominantly Christian. That afforded them a clear firing line at the southernmost part of Jerusalem. When the Israeli military responded, Beit Jala residents found themselves on the front lines of the conflict, and occasionally among its casualties.

From the Washington Times, with thanks to EPG:

AL QOSH, Iraq — Compared with the ferocity of war in much of Iraq, the isolated Monastery of the Virgin Mary — 25 miles north of Mosul — exists in tranquility.

Surrounded by desert, this cool shelter — complete with olive trees, honeybees and a Chaldean church — houses six monks and 36 orphaned boys, ages 5 to 14. Twenty-two girls live at a convent in nearby Mosul.

Over the years, the Rev. Mofid Toma Marcus, 37, an Assyrian Christian monk in charge of the monastery and orphanage, has kept the wolves away. During dictator Saddam Hussein's reign, he passed off his orphanage as a seminary for students preparing for the priesthood, because the government was not anxious to let the outside world know the actual number of orphans in the country.

Even today, when the boys, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, line up after their naps and are asked how many want to become priests, six raise their hands. They will go to a Catholic seminary in Baghdad.

The fate of the other boys is uncertain, because Father Marcus will not give them up for adoption to Muslim families.

"In an Iraqi orphanage, they make you change your religion," the monk said, "and I don't want our Christian kids to be Muslims."

Bound by law

He wishes he could send them to places like Detroit, which has many Iraqi Chaldean families who belong to the same ancient stream of Christianity and are willing to raise an orphaned child. Although the U.S. State Department says it has received many inquiries from American citizens asking about adoption, its Web site says adoption is not possible under Iraqi law.

One reason: Adoption is prohibited under Islamic law, which informs Iraqi civil law. Unlike in the West, orphaned Muslim children do not take the name and family relationships of their new parents. Instead, Islam allows "kefala," a type of guardianship in which children retain their original family identities.

But U.S. immigration law considers kefala insufficient for immigration purposes. Moreover, anyone raising a child under the kefala system must promise to raise the child as a Muslim.

"The chances of adopting a Muslim child is nil," said Roni Anderson, a former Southern Baptist missionary who worked with Father Marcus for 12 years — until this year. "They'd prefer the child be stranded than be adopted by a Christian."

However, Father Marcus' charges are Christians and not subject to Islamic law. To date, Iraqi law has not permitted foreigners to obtain legal guardianship of Iraqi children. But Iraqis living abroad might be allowed to do so.

Much depends on whether human rights issues for women and children are addressed in the new Iraqi Constitution and whether adoption is part of subsequent international treaties or agreements between Iraq and the United States.

So, Father Marcus' charges continue to live in limbo.

Read it all.

Andrew Bolt on the shameful conviction of the two Christian pastors in Australia. From The Herald Sun, with thanks to JE:

HOW odd that a Christian pastor has been found guilty of vilifying Islam after quoting the Koran.

Is this really what Premier Steve Bracks intended with his absurd racial and religious vilification law?

Pastor Daniel Scot and Pastor Danny Nalliah were last week found to have committed religious vilification after the first trial under this new law.

Judge Michael Higgins found Scot offended by quoting the Koran in a way that got "a response from the audience at various times in the form of laughter".

Yes, Scot made his audience of 250 Christians laugh at Islam. He didn't inspire them to burn a mosque, shout insults at Muslims, plant bombs or paint nasty slogans on fences.

He just made the audience laugh. And that in Victoria is now a crime.

But that's not the only absurdity in a case that has so far cost these two pastors more than $200,000 in costs.

The absurdities start with the excuse the Premier gave in 2001 for imposing this law, threatening us with six months' jail and $6000 fines.

"Victorians take considerable pride in the fact that people from . . . diverse backgrounds live together harmoniously in our community," he told Parliament.

Yet even though we got on well, we now had to limit our free speech -- despite Bracks conceding "freedom of expression is crucial to our democratic society".

Publicly saying hurtful things about a race or religion would now be illegal.

Fear not, Bracks soothed. This law was "confined to prohibit only the most noxious forms of conduct", and would "promote racial and religious tolerance".

But it wasn't and hasn't.

With a new law to play with, it was inevitable activists would try to use it.

Read it all.

From Asia Times, with thanks to EPG:

At least fourteen American troops and several others were killed on Tuesday in an attack on an improvised dining hall of a US military base at Mosul in northern Iraq. An organization called Jaish Ansar al-Sunnah (JAAS) has claimed responsibility for the attack.

While JAAS has projected the attack as a suicide bombing, thereby giving the impression that it has been able to penetrate the US military base, local US Army spokesmen have described it as a mortar attack, similar to the mortar attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad, which one witnesses frequently.

JAAS, which came to notice for the first time in February after a major terrorist strike in the Kurdish areas, has claimed responsibility for many killings of kidnapped hostages, including 12 Nepalis, and a number of daring attacks - not only in and around Mosul, but also in different areas of the Sunni triangle. The incidents outside Mosul show that it has a wide reach in the Sunni-majority areas of Iraq.

It advocates hardline fundamentalism, similar to that of the Afghan Taliban. It describes its objectives as not only the defeat of the US-led occupation troops and the liberation of Iraq from their subjugation, but also the establishment of orthodox Islamic rule in Iraq after its liberation. It says that those Iraqis who had willingly sacrificed their lives in the jihad against the occupiers would have died in vain if a secular government was to be restored in Iraq after the defeat of the occupying forces.

A statement of December 6 attributed to JAAS said:

It is known that jihad in Iraq has become the obligatory required duty of every Muslim after the infidel enemy fell upon the land of Islam. It was the followers of the Prophet's Sunnah and Jammah, the people of unification and following of ancestors, who raised the blessed banner of jihad and acted in groups, each in their area but spontaneously, receiving the directions and orders for their jihad from the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Noble Prophet. They included clerics, sheikhs, and military fighters.

This is in accord with traditional Islamic doctrine on jihad. Jihad in the defense of Muslim lands is fard ayn, that is, obligatory for every Muslim.

Also note that this is probably mistranslated. I haven't seen the original, but "the people of unification" sounds to me as if it was more likely "the people of Tawhid," that is, the Islamic doctrine of the absolute unity of God. And I suspect that "the following of ancestors" likely refers to their loyalty to Islamic tradition.

The task is great and the situation is momentous. It concerns the nation's fate and does not terminate by the end of the occupation. The aim does not end with their defeat, but with the upholding of Allah's religion and the application of the Sharia of Allah to rule this Islamic land. What is the use of shedding Muslim mujahideens' blood to throw out the forces of occupation if, after that, the fruits are enjoyed by a secular Iraqi or a puppet agent of the Americans working to fulfill their plans and programs? Then, we return to the control of a puppet government that rules with the laws of infidels in the name of Islam and is, in fact, controlled by the Jews and the Christians.

A faithful does not get bitten twice. Because of this, a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam, have brought together a number of divided groups and platoons of resistance that operated in the field from the north to the south to make up a huge army that comes under a unified command. A command that will establish a locally devised unimported practical plan based on their knowledge of the battlefield and on the basis of the Sharia in the Koran and the Sunnah. We called it the Ansar al-Sunnah Army. We call on our brethren in faith and jihad to come together under the banner of this army to fulfill the hope of an Islamic nation that honors Islam and Muslims. Allah's hand is with the group; the devil is in the company of the single. The wolf attacks the straggler sheep.

Its projection of itself as "a group of resistance fighters and knowledgeable people, who have the political and military savvy and who have the record in managing the Islamic struggle against the enemies of Islam", is significant. This seeks to show that it is a mixed group of local resistance fighters and others who had participated in jihad elsewhere. However, it also projects itself as an indigenous organization carrying out a jihad against the occupation troops on the basis of a "locally devised unimported practical plan".

Their sensibilities cannot be offended in Saudi Arabia, and their sensibilities cannot be offended in Europe, as we have documented here with several recent stories. So in both Christmas is increasingly furtive. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas in Saudi Arabia, where Islam is the only accepted religion and non-Muslim religious activities are banned in public.

Turkeys lie in deep freezers under shelves loaded with pumpkin pie spices, cranberry sauce, stuffing mix and tinned sweet potatoes. Yule log-shaped cakes sit in patisserie cases; a couple of bare, plastic Christmas trees stand in a boutique window; and gift wraps and glittering red, green, silver and gold candles appear in stores.

Restaurants serve "seasonal" beverages and dishes, with invitations to "seasonal" dinners recommending "holiday dress."

There is nothing that explicitly says it is Christmas, but there is enough of a festive whiff in the air for expatriate shoppers determined to have something resembling a holiday at home.

The little Christmas things count in a country accused by the U.S. State Department of "particularly severe violations" of religious freedom. This year, it placed the kingdom for the first time on a list of countries that could be subject to U.S. sanctions because of religious intolerance.

Also, terror attacks and assassinations targeting Westerners since last year have dampened private celebrations, with many people not holding large bazaars or going to markets downtown to shop for gifts.

Saudi Arabia has stated publicly that its policy is to protect the right of non-Muslims to worship privately. However, Defense Minister Prince Sulta also stressed that the kingdom would never allow churches to be built....

The State Department said in 1993 that "non-Muslim worshippers risked arrest, lashing and deportation for engaging in overt religious activity that attracts official attention."...

But not only the government shuns religious symbols. Medical workers say some Saudi patients refuse to take some medications because they mistake the cross-like indentation in tablets for religious crosses.

The bans go beyond Christian symbols. Small statues of Buddha are confiscated at airports, and Buddha pictures on a popular CD have been colored over. Ironically, a CD of Gregorian chants sitting next to it was left untouched.

During the Christmas season, embassies hold staff parties where Santa Claus may appear, with some allowing religious services. The State Department report said non-Muslim clergy were not allowed to enter the country to conduct religious services, although some come "under other auspices."

Religious police agents become very active in the days leading up to Christian and Western celebrations. A few weeks ago, a toy store owner was detained for promoting witchcraft because he carried such Halloween decorations as scary masks and witches' hats.

That is why Christmas cards are sold under the counter and only in very few stores. Some florists discreetly sell Christmas trees, mostly artificial ones, and poinsettias. One florist told customers that several dozen fresh trees from Holland were intercepted at the airport, hacked to pieces and then sent back to Holland.

Some expatriates coming from Bahrain, where Christmas is observed openly, have had Christmas decorations confiscated by customs officials.

But not everyone is caught. An American woman at a "holiday supper" brightened up as she recounted how she brought in Christmas ornaments from London for a tree she borrowed from an American neighbor.

The woman declined to be identified because she said the topic may hurt Saudi sensibilities.

Sipping Saudi champagne, a concoction of fizzy water and apple juice, the woman said Christmas used to have its own traditions in Saudi Arabia. American women would make their own Christmas ornaments and shop for old jewelry pieces in the souq - a venue Westerners do not consider safe anymore - and dress them up with ribbons.

They also would boil a mix of powdered cinnamon and water that, when hardened, would be cut into the shapes of bells, camels and dallahs - Saudi coffee pots with curved beaks - and then hung on the tree.

"These days, we celebrate very quietly. You can't be open about it," she said.

Yes. They have the same problem in Italy.

See this also, from Anthony Browne in The Australian (thanks to JE): "Unholy war on Christmas."

It would have been interesting to know if anyone else in this Islamic chat room took issue with the posting of the video, saying (as we always here from Muslim apologists in America) that "Islam forbids suicide." Somehow I doubt it. From MSNBC, with thanks to Eschwapp:

Posted in a militant Islamic chat room three days ago, a stunningly detailed 26-minute video on how to make a sophisticated suicide bomb vest, along with a demonstration of its kill range, using a mannequin.

Titled "The Explosive Belt for Martyrdom Operations," the video obtained by NBC News demonstrates how to make an explosive vest that would be tough to detect, mostly from common off-the-shelf materials.

"The most disturbing thing about this video is that it exists," says NBC analyst and retired military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Rick Francona.

He says the video would be extremely valuable to any terrorist.

"Every military commander in Iraq and Afghanistan should be aware of this," says Francona. "This video shows someone how to more effectively attack American troops."

Experts believe the video was made by a Palestinian group.

"The video was accompanied by a note that explained it was there for the purposes of aiding the brothers, the fighting brothers, in cities in central Iraq," says NBC terror analyst Evan Kohlmann.

The propaganda jihad in Iran. From MEMRI, with thanks to EPG:

Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes." The series premiered on December 13, and is set in Israel and the West Bank. It broadcasts every Monday, and was filmed in Persian but subsequently dubbed into Arabic.

The story follows an Israeli candidate for Prime Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, who is also the military commander of the West Bank. The opening sequence of the show contains graphic scenes of surgery, and images of a Palestinian girl in a hospital whose eyes have been removed, with bandages covering the sockets.

In Episode 1, Yitzhak Cohen lectures at a medical conference on the advances being made by Israeli medicine regarding organ transplants. Later in the episode, Israelis disguised as UN workers visit a Palestinian school, ostensibly to examine the children's eyes for diseases, but in reality to select which children's eyes to steal to be used for transplants.

In Episode 2, the audience learns that the Israeli president is being kept alive by organs stolen from Palestinian children, and an Israeli military commander is seen kidnapping UN employees and Palestinians.

Sahar TV also broadcast an interview with the director of the series, a former Iranian education ministry official, who discussed his motivations for making a series "about children."

At the MEMRI link are excerpts from the first two episodes, and from the interview with the series' director.

The Dallas News (thanks to Anthony) speaks out about the Khomeini tribute held recently by Muslims in Dallas.

Khomeini led the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the corrupt shah and replaced the government with a brutal Islamic theocracy that today is locked in battle with reformers seeking to end a quarter century of repression. Khomeini preached worldwide violent Islamic revolution, thundering that "those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world."

"Why do you only read the Quranic verses of mercy and do not read the verses of killing?" Khomeini challenged fellow clerics in a 1981 speech. "Qu'ran says: kill, imprison! Why are you only clinging to the part that talks about mercy? Mercy is against God." The tyrant also exhorted his followers to "kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all."

That's some vision. Yet a Muslim group based in Irving hosted a seminar earlier this month paying "tribute to the great Islamic visionary." It's chilling to think that any local Muslim would be willing to honor such a man, especially with the United States under the threat of attack by Islamic terrorists.

Dismayingly, the list of speakers at the Irving event included some of North Texas' best-known mainstream Islamic figures, including Dr. Yusuf Kavakci of Dallas Central Mosque, widely considered a moderate. He and other leaders shared the roster with Mohammed Asi, a radical Washington imam whom, according to The Washington Post, U.S. officials suspect to be an Iranian agent.

Dr. Kavakci declined two invitations to tell us why he attended the conference. We tried to obtain a tape of the conference, but we're told none is available. Another attendee, Mohamed Elibiary, president and CEO of the Plano-based Freedom and Justice Foundation, shares his reasons for attending on the opposite page. Still, we are hard-pressed to understand what good could possibly come from attending – let alone hosting – such a forum.

Event organizer Imam Shamshad Haider told us that Khomeini has been unjustly portrayed in the Western media. He complained in a television interview last week that Khomeini had been unfairly judged on only one aspect of his personality.

Imam Haider insists that the theme of the conference was Muslim unity. Other area Muslim leaders who spoke at the event support this contention, saying they agreed to speak to foster cohesion between Sunni and Shia Muslims, not necessarily to endorse Khomeini.

That may be true on one level. But no amount of good Khomeini might have done can possibly balance his blood-soaked legacy. Unity is a poor excuse for legitimizing the views of Khomeini admirers by appearing at this event, even if it drew fewer than 100 attendees, as one participant told us.

If Muslim leaders want to be perceived by the broader community as men of good will and moderation, they need to make clear what they consider radical and extreme and treat it accordingly.

Pockets of Islamic radicalism exist in North Texas. We don't believe – and this is important to get straight – that they characterize most Muslims in the Dallas area. But these elements are here, and we cannot afford to ignore them. Neither can the Muslim community avoid the responsibility for policing itself.

As former FBI counterterrorism chief and Rowlett resident Oliver "Buck" Revell tells us, "If we continue to be deaf, dumb and blind to what's plainly in front of us, we have no one to blame but ourselves."

Or as I put it about the recent demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan in which several people held up Khomeini posters:

Just where American Muslims stand on Khomeini’s doctrines — and how many stand with Khomeini — are still forbidden questions for the major media. But if the old man could have spoken from his sign in Dearborn, he might have said, “Ignore me at your own risk.”

I wrote about this case in Islam Unveiled. It is interesting in light of the way Muslims in the West tend to downplay the existence and implications of Qur'an 4:34.

From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

MADRID-The Spanish deputy prime minister has attacked the decision to free a controversial imam who was jailed for writing a book which advised readers how to attack women without leaving any marks.

María Teresa Fernández de la Vega strongly criticised release of Mohamed Kamal Mostafa, who was freed after only serving 20 days of a 12-month sentence.

In an interview with the programme 'Ruedo Ibérico' on Spain's Antena 3 channel, the deputy prime minister said "this did not help to reinforce the line which Spanish society had adopted to domestic violence: zero tolerance".

She criticised the decision of the court in Barcelona to release Mostafa on Monday.

Women's groups have also attacked the early release of the controversial Islamic cleric.

Mostafa, the imam of Fuengirola in Andalusia, was jailed last month for one year.

But he was released and must go on a training course to learn about human rights.

Interesting. I doubt the course will deal with the Islamic roots of Mostafa's beliefs -- and if it doesn't, what good will it be?

Ron Csillag of Religion News Service (thanks to Anthony) makes much of this mosque where women pray together with men. And gee, it all sounds swell -- until one realizes that the article says absolutely nothing about these modern, progressive Muslims addressing and fighting the roots of Islamic terror. We have yet to see a story about that.

Toronto, Dec. 21 - The handful of girls and women arriving for Friday prayers at the Islamic center make small talk before removing their coats and shoes, tying their head scarves and quietly filing into the prayer room -- just as their Muslim sisters do the world over this day.

After the adhan, the call to prayer, they listen intently to the English sermon, then perform the qiyam, the standing posture. Like the men,they raise their hands to their ears and then fold them, right over left, over their hearts. Like the men, they prostrate and touch their foreheads to the ground, returning to the standing position.

The only conspicuous difference is that at the Noor Cultural Centre, females do not use a separate entrance, do not sit in a balcony or behind a partition, or languish at the back of the room.

The small, glassed-in prayer space in the center's basement is believed to be the first place in Canada where Muslim men and women pray side by side -- or at least, lined up with each other.

It's not completely egalitarian -- a three-foot aisle separates the men's and women's sections -- but it's being hailed as a major first step in the expression of a more flexible form of Islam in the West.

Is it Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare? The start of a renegade movement? Neither, says the center's CEO, Roshan Jamal, who, as far as she knows, is the only woman to head an Islamic organization in Canada.

Come on. Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare would be an organized global movement of Muslims who reject the jihad ideology and champion a new, anti-literal reading of the Qur'an and Sunnah. But Osama is sleeping soundly.

The Noor center "is an effort to show there's another side to Islam ... that God is not punishing but loving," says Jamal's husband, Husein, a 69-year-old physician who often leads the prayer service (there's no full-time spiritual leader or imam). "If you want to reach people, there's no point in being confrontational. This is a gentle, no-fault approach."

The prayer space wasn't created willy-nilly. Center officials say they consulted no less an authority than the Ayatollah Sistani, one of only five living grand ayatollahs and the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq.

"He said it was completely permissible for men and women to pray together," says Husein Jamal, "but there had to be three feet between them."...

Both Jamals say there is nothing in the Qur'an or Hadiths that enforces the segregation of women and men at prayer.

So they're still taking their cue from the Qur'an and Hadiths, which should be a cause of concern to Csillag, but probably he doesn't know the right questions to ask.

Meanwhile, they're also getting directions from Sistani. I wonder if he reminded them of some of his other rulings. Did he tell them that an unbeliever is one of the things that is essentially unclean? At his website, in accordance with traditional Shi'ite doctrine, he writes:

84. The following ten things are essentially najis:

Urine
Faeces
Semen
Dead body
Blood
Dog
Pig
Kafir
Alcoholic liquors

The sweat of an animal who persistently eats najasat

"Kafir" is, of course, unbeliever. (There is no direct link. Go to "Najis Things" in the main title line to find this list.)

How modern! How progressive! It would have been interesting if Csillag had asked the Toronto folks if they believed that. I wonder if they shook his hand.

No surprise here. Search for "Abu Bakar Bashir" in the Jihad Watch archives. From China's Xinhuanet, with thanks to Anthony:

JAKARTA, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- Indonesian Muslim Cleric Abu Bakar Ba'ashir had delivered edicts from Osama Bin Laden to kill citizens of the United States and its allies in Indonesia, a witness said on Tuesday.

"Ba'ashir had delivered the edicts," said witness Nassir Bin Abbas to Indonesian court session here.

He said "Osama bin Laden urges Muslims around the world to kill American and its allies civilians."

Abbas said that Ba'ashir was head of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI),a militant group seen as the Southeast Asian arm of al Qaeda.

No surprise here. From AFP, with thanks to Anthony:

Warnings from foreign governments of an imminent terrorist attack in Indonesia have led to a spate of cancellations from visitors planning to travel to the country, tourism officials in Jakarta said.

"At least 500 tourists have cancelled their planned trip to Indonesia for the December 2004 to April 2005 period," said Yachya Mahmoed of the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies.

From The Scotsman, with thanks to Anthony:

Spanish police have broken up a radical Islamic cell that was trying to buy explosives for a terrorist attack in Spain, the Interior Ministry said today.

Three Moroccans, identified as Majid Bakkali, Mohamed Douha and Abdelkader Farhaoui, were arrested in different towns in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.

The three were part of a radical Islamic cell “that was engaged in different activities leading to the purchase of explosives, with the aim of committing terrorist attacks in our country,” read the statement from the Interior Ministry.

It also said that the suspects were trying to buy explosives outside of Spain but did not elaborate further.

I doubt it can, and I doubt it will survive without recovering its own spiritual resources -- as I argued in Islam Unveiled. Rónán Mullen explores this idea in the Irish Examiner: "Christian Europe may have to rely on Muslims to keep the faith." (Thanks to Anthony for the link.)

HERE’S a question to ponder as December 25 approaches: for how long more will Christmas be celebrated in Europe? In the short term, these are exciting times to be European.

New member states in the EU, a new European constitution, controversy and compromise between the European parliament and the European commission, the beginnings of a European army, aspirations to create a military superpower, and possible Turkish membership of the EU.

But behind all this political growth lurks future crisis.

Our continent is committing demographic suicide - systematically depopulating itself in what British scholar Niall Ferguson calls the greatest “sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death of the 14th century”.

Today, 18 European countries report ‘negative natural increase’ - i.e., more deaths than births. No western European country has the replacement level birthrate of 2.4 children per woman. Germany may lose the equivalent of the population of the former East Germany in the first half of the 21st century. By 2050, Spain’s population will decline from 40 million to 31 million while, in Italy, 42% of the population will be over the age of 60 and almost 60% of the Italian people will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts or uncles....

Already, the Central Statistics Office forecasts that Ireland will need 45,000 immigrant workers each year for the next 12 years to sustain economic growth.

But this will bring its own challenges across the continent of Europe. The continent will be increasingly Muslim since immigrants are coming mainly from Islamic countries, mostly Turkey, but also from various Arab and North African states. In France, even if no more Muslims were to arrive, the Islamic population would double in one generation, and quadruple in two. Bearing in mind that immigrants tend to have children at a younger age than their European counterparts, those generations will reach maturity in a relatively short time.

If current birth rates persist half of the school age children in France will be Muslim by 2050. This makes the question of Turkey’s accession to the EU a very interesting one.

How do we feel about an increasingly Muslim Europe? Most of us believe in a generous, inclusive society where Europeans with their predominantly Christian heritage would get on with their Muslim brothers and sisters.

But last weekend’s papers carried the news that Europeans, especially people in the more secular north, believe there is increased negativity towards Muslims. This stems from a deep-down fear that Muslims do not, in sufficient numbers anyway, buy into basic concepts like democracy, equality of the sexes, freedom of religion and of expression, concepts which are so essential to life as we know it in the western world.

That fear, as we have abundantly established here, is not imaginary, but is based on the statements and actions of many Muslims.

There is another fear - that ‘Old Europeans’ may not be respected as their numbers decline in proportion to the Muslim population.

Few people have enough contact with Muslim people to know how that community feels, for example, about terrorist activity in Palestine and Iraq. But it is troubling, say some, that Muslim disapproval doesn’t have much of a public face across Europe.

Nor does it have much of a public face anywhere else. As I have explained here and on various radio and TV shows many times, this is because Muslim moderates do not have the Islamic texts on their side. Radical Muslims can easily charge them with being disloyal Muslims if they speak out against violence committed in the name of Islam -- and point to numerous passages of the Qur'an and Sunnah to buttress their argument.

Even if Turkish membership of the EU helps to reconcile Islam and the West and acts as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, how would we fare in a Europe where non-Muslims became a minority?

Would our churches survive as places of worship? Would the Vatican have to relocate to Mexico City, Buenos Aires or Manila in the next century? Where will our grandchildren, or their children, go to celebrate Christmas?

ACCORDING to George Weigel, biographer and friend of the Pope, Europe’s problems stem from “a crisis of civilisational morale”. In a book to be published next spring, he links Europe’s recent failure to acknowledge its Christian roots in its draft constitution and a despairing, defeatist approach to life which now characterises European life and thought.

Weigel asks why, in the aftermath of 1989, Europeans failed to condemn communism as a moral and political monstrosity. “Why was the only politically acceptable judgment on communism the rather banal observation that it ‘didn’t work?’”

He also wonders why there are “disturbing currents of irrationality in contemporary European politics”.

He asks why one-in-five Germans (and one-third of those under 30) believed that the US was responsible for 9/11, while 300,000 Frenchmen and women bought a book which argued that the US military destroyed the Twin Towers using remote-controlled airliners. “Why do certain parts of Europe exhibit a curious, even bizarre, approach to death? Why did so many of the French prefer to continue their summer vacations during the European heatwave of 2003, leaving their parents unburied and warehoused in refrigerated lockers? Why is death increasingly anonymous in Germany, with no death notice in the papers, no church ceremony - as though the deceased did not exist?”

The answer, says Weigel, is that Europe has lost faith in God. And when you lose faith in God, you lose faith in humanity. Like the great Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in his 1983 Templeton Prize Lecture: “The failings of the human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.”

The loss of faith that has led to European depopulation and cynicism may also prevent us from integrating our Muslim brothers and sisters.

The irony of trying to build a Europe that doesn’t mention God in its constitution is that we are left with no rational basis for tolerance and respect towards others, apart from the rather thin argument that ‘tolerance is good because it works better’. Why in the absence of God should we be fruitful and multiply? Why should we postpone short-term gratification in the interests of society?

Why should we welcome immigrants?

Why, in turn, should they accept standards of freedom of religion and expression, the dignity and equality of women and the values of democracy, if they believe their values are better? Christianity offers an answer through the Pope who in his 1989 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), argued that: “The Church proposes; it imposes nothing.”

A Christian Europe would defend tolerance as a Christian virtue - while also giving European society a sense of identity and the confidence to integrate people of different cultures and traditions.

As to whether Europe can simply get by with its secular version of tolerance, it’s hard to see how. Without the unifying vision of Christianity, what is there to live for? We Europeans are already asking that question, and our birthrates show the conclusion we have reached.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer writes in FrontPage this morning about the terrible implications of the Australian religious vilification case.

Two Christian pastors in Australia have been found guilty of religious vilification of Muslims. The decision threatens us all.

One of the pastors, Daniel Scot, is Pakistani. He fled his native land seventeen years ago when he ran afoul of the notorious Section 295(c) of the Penal Code — which mandates death or life in prison for anyone who blasphemes “the sacred name of the holy Prophet Muhammad.” It’s a treacherously elastic statute that has been and is often used to snare Christians: cornered and made to state that they don’t believe Muhammad was a prophet, they then find themselves charged with blasphemy.

Scot went to Australia, only to run afoul of that nation’s new religious vilification laws. Last Friday, Judge Michael Higgins of The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found him guilty of vilifying Islam in a seminar hosted by his group, Catch the Fire Ministries. The judge noted that during the seminar, Scot stated that “the Quran promotes violence, killing and looting.” In light of Qur’anic passages such as 9:5, 2:191, 9:29, 47:4, 5:33 and many others, this cannot seriously be a matter of dispute. Muslims have pointed to verses in the Bible that they would have us believe are equivalent in violence and offensiveness, or have claimed that the great majority of Muslims don’t take such verses literally; but it takes a peculiarly strong resistance to reality not only to deny that such verses are there, but to charge one who pointed them out with religious vilification.

Yet Higgins wasn’t finished. He also scored Scot for contending that the Qur’an “treats women badly; they are to be treated like a field to plough, ‘use her as you wish,’” and that in it, “domestic violence in general is encouraged.’” He charged Scot with saying that the Qur’an directs that “a thief’s hand is cut off for stealing.” Yet the idea of the field and “use her as you wish” are from Sura 2:223 of the Qur’an. Husbands are told to beat their disobedient wives in 4:34. Amputation for theft is prescribed in 5:38. What Qur’an is Higgins reading?

Higgins got not just the Qur’an, but Scot’s own statements wrong. The judge charges that Scot called Muslims “demons”; but according to human rights activist Mark Durie, who was deeply involved in the case, “Scot at one point in the seminar said that in the Qur’an there were jinn (spirit beings) which became Muslims in response to the message of Islam. However, in his summary the judge appears to interpret this as Scot saying that Muslims are demons. So ‘Some demons are Muslims’ becomes ‘Muslims are demons’!”

There are some hints that the outcome of the case was virtually predetermined. When during the trial Scot began to read Qur’anic verses that discriminate against women, a lawyer for the Islamic Council of Victoria, the organization that brought the suit, stopped him: reading the verses aloud, she said, would in itself be religious vilification. Dismayed, Scot replied: “How can it be vilifying to Muslims in the room when I am just reading from the Qur’an?”

With religious vilification laws now coming to Britain and no doubt soon also elsewhere in the West, Scot’s question rings out with global implications, and must be answered. If it is inciting hatred for Muslims simply when non-Muslims explore what Islam and the Qur’an actually teach, then there will be a chill on reasonable public discussion of Islam — a public discussion that is crucial to hold in this age of global jihad terrorism. Such laws actually make Muslims a protected class, beyond criticism, precisely at the moment when the Western republics need to examine the implications of having admitted into their countries people with greater allegiance to Islamic law than to the pluralist societies in which they’ve settled.

To criticize is not to incite. The courageous ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq calls upon Muslims to “admit the role of the Qur’an in the propagation of violence.” If they do not do this, what end can there possibly be to the jihad terrorism that is inspired, according to the terrorists themselves, by the Qur’an? What will keep jihadists from continuing to use the Qur’an to recruit more terrorists, right under the noses of fatuous Westerners like Judge Higgins who would prefer to pretend that what they use in the book isn’t really in there?

When Judge Higgins signed the guilty verdict on Daniel Scot, he may have been signing the death warrant for free Australia — and maybe even the entire Western world.

I put this up so that you will remember that there was a plot to destroy the Dutch Parliament and the charming Schiphol Airport. One of these days such plots will succeed somewhere, and people will say, "We didn't know there was a threat!"

From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

AMSTERDAM — An 18-year-old man, who is accused of planning terror attacks on the Dutch Parliament and Schiphol Airport, will face trial on 24 February next year.

A pre-trial hearing was held on Tuesday in Rotterdam Court and the court penciled in two days for Samir A.'s trial, starting on 24 February.

The public prosecutor accuses A. of planning attacks on the parliament in The Hague, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the nuclear reactor Borssele, the Defence Ministry, and the Leidschendam offices of the Dutch security service AIVD.

He was arrested in June on suspicion of involvement in a supermarket robbery. A search of his house allegedly uncovered blueprints of the buildings. The documents also allegedly had notes regarding security and the possible necessity of a car.

The Dutch government issued a terror alert on 9 July as a result of A.'s arrest. Security was tightened at key Dutch installations and the alert has not yet been rescinded.

A strange story from Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

AMSTERDAM — Alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb has launched a blistering attack on the Dutch government for the way Cabinet ministers reacted to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Moroccan-born Aboutaleb is in charge of Amsterdam City Council's Social Affairs Department and has been under 24-hour guard following threats to his life in the days after Van Gogh was killed....

Several politicians, including Aboutaleb, also received death threats, apparently from radicalised Muslims.

Speaking on a radio programme on Tuesday morning, Aboutaleb rated the government's response to the killing as "totally unsatisfactory".

He said the only major response from senior politicians in The Hague was the appearance of Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk at an intentionally noisy rally in central Amsterdam hours after the killing to honour Van Gogh's right to free speech.

Verdonk told the estimated 20,000 crowd that everyone — native Dutch and Muslim newcomers — had to decide "which side they were on" following Van Gogh's murder.

Aboutaleb said there had been an "icy silence" from The Hague in the following days. "Our task was to join in a dialogue with the public, but I didn't see the government really get involved. I feel I was let down," he said.

"We heard nothing from the heart of the cabinet. No minister came to Amsterdam, not even a state secretary [junior minister]."...

Referring to the "declaration of war" against Islamic extremism made by Deputy Prime Minister Gerrit Zalm, Aboutaleb said: "I am unbelievably angry".

Why?

An update on this curious story. From AllAfrica.com, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

TWO South Africans who returned home after five months in a Pakistani jail were on a training mission for Al-Qaeda, according to a statement sent to the South African police by Pakistani authorities.

Dr Feroz Ganchi, a trauma surgeon from Johannesburg, and Pretoria Islamic student Zubair Ismail were arrested in the same house as the FBI's then most-wanted man, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Ghailani is the alleged mastermind of the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.

Ganchi and Ismail were released after being interrogated for two days by the South African Police Service on Friday.

Both were taken to their homes, where they were welcomed by members of their families, religious leaders, friends and supporters.

The statement sent by the Pakistani authorities says the two men had been in contact with one of Pakistan's most senior Al-Qaeda members.

Ganchi allegedly treated Ghailani while in the house in Gujrat, where some of the occupants engaged in a 10-hour shoot-out with Pakistani police.

The statement also contains an admission that the two were recruited for Al-Qaeda in South Africa, and were taught how to use and formulate coded messages and carry out intelligence reconnaissance.

Here is Daniel Pipes on CAIR, taken from a generally good writeup on him in Harvard Magazine (thanks to all who sent this in):

The true obstacle to bridging differences in the United States, he repeats, is Islamism, principally its "worst, most aggressive, and most prominent" practitioner, CAIR. "CAIR and I are engaged in an effort of mutual delegitimation, and it gets vicious. In 2000 they bought a website with my name [DanielPipes. com] and posted one calumny after another. [CAIR allowed the website to lapse after Pipes threatened legal action.] These lies were reprinted in various Muslim publications, and I got barrages of hate mail, including threats." CAIR, he asserts, "tries to present itself as a civil-rights group, the Muslim equivalent of the NAACP. But CAIR, with Saudi financing, is the attack dog of Islamist institutions in the United States. CAIR has two primary goals: to help build Hamas against Israel and to promote militant Islam's agenda here. Its people are all over the place, extremely active, but they are the totalitarians among us, the front for the enemy in this country, and they should be shunned, as David Duke or Louis Farrakhan is shunned." In fact, three CAIR staff members—Ismail Royer, Ghasan Elashi, and Bassem Khafagi—have been convicted on mail fraud and terrorism-related charges.

Note also this:

In a scathing article for Commentary, "Jihad and the Professors," he reported that a survey he made of media comments by some two dozen academics had turned up definitions ranging from "a struggle against our own myopia and neglect" to "resisting apartheid or working for women's rights." For example, he quoted David Mitten, Loeb professor of classical art and archaeology, a convert to Islam and faculty adviser to the Harvard Islamic Society, as saying that true jihad is "the constant struggle of Muslims to conquer their inner base instincts, to follow the path to God, and to do good in society." Three years later, Mitten says, "Sure. I'll stand by that quote. This is what is called greater jihad, dating to the eleventh century, and is superior to lesser or militaristic jihad, extracted by Osama and Zarqawi for their own dastardly purposes. We knew Zayid's speech would be controversial; the word is inflammatory, but he wanted people to understand the real meaning of greater jihad."

"But of course," Pipes erupted in his article, "it is precisely bin Laden, Islamic Jihad, and the jihadists worldwide who define the term, not a covey of academic apologists. More importantly, the way the jihadists understand the term is in keeping with its usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history."

And that definition, he continued, to the majority of Muslims meant, and means, "the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims (known in Arabic as dar al-Islam) at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims (dar al-harb)." Khaleel Mohammed agrees. "The normative meaning has become war—whether expansionist or defensive," he writes. "The academic professors at Harvard, et cetera, often confuse their Islamica and their political thought." Tashbih Sayyed goes even further: "When the apologists talk about greater jihad or lesser jihad, they are basically playing with words. If it is so and jihad is good deeds or good thoughts, then why do they never call their thinkers mujahadin, holy warriors? Why are only those people who wage war with swords and behead non-Muslims glorified as mujahadin?"

Pipes does acknowledge the concept of greater or higher jihad, which he says is usually associated with Sufism and with the reformist approach to Islam that "reinterpret[s] Islam to make it compatible with Western ways." But he calls this approach "wholly apologetic," owing "far more to Western than to Islamic thinking."

Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR has sent around this fresh steaming pile of taqiyya to the mainstream media, and many fish are biting. This link is to the Providence Journal (thanks to the bullfrog and 1 for alerting me to this piece). In it, Hooper tries through Qur'anic sleight of hand (quoting only convenient verses, ignoring others) to convince Christians that Muslims are Christians too, and that Christians and Muslims really believe the same things (since the Prophet Muhammad "sought to erase any distinctions between the message he taught and that taught by Jesus."

Behold! The angels said: "O Mary! God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God."

BEFORE SEARCHING for this quote in the New Testament, you might first ask your Muslim co-worker, friend or neighbor for a copy of the Koran, Islam's revealed text. The quote is from verse 45 of chapter 3 in the Koran.

It is well known, particularly in this holiday season, that Christians follow the teachings of Jesus. What is less well understood is that Muslims also love and revere Jesus as a one of God's greatest messengers to mankind....

As forces of hate in this country and worldwide try to pull Muslims and Christians apart, we are in desperate need of a unifying force that can bridge the widening gap of interfaith misunderstanding and mistrust. That force could be the message of love, peace and forgiveness taught by Jesus and accepted by followers of both faiths.

Christians and Muslims would do well to consider another verse in the Koran reaffirming God's eternal message of spiritual unity: "Say ye: 'We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves.' " (2:136)

The Prophet Muhammed himself sought to erase any distinctions between the message he taught and that taught by Jesus, who he called God's "spirit and word." Prophet Muhammed said: "Both in this world and in the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one."

When Muslims mention the Prophet Muhammed, they always add the phrase "peace be upon him." Christians may be surprised to learn that the same phrase always follows a Muslim's mention of Jesus or that we believe Jesus will return to earth in the last days before the final judgment. Disrespect toward Jesus, as we have seen all too often in our society, is very offensive to Muslims.

Unfortunately, violent events and hate-filled rhetoric around the world provide ample opportunity for promoting religious hostility. And yes, Muslims and Christians do have some differing perspectives on Jesus' life and teachings. But his spiritual legacy offers an alternative opportunity for people of faith to recognize their shared religious heritage.

America's Muslim community stands ready to honor that legacy by building bridges of interfaith understanding and challenging those who would divide our nation along religious or ethnic lines.

We have more in common than we think.

Several months ago I wrote this in a column about an earlier, similar CAIR initiative:

I support efforts to diminish prejudice and build bridges, but not under false pretenses. CAIR would do more to promote peace by confronting and repudiating the roots of Muslim hostility toward Christians. It could start by denouncing some recent incidents of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world....

Where does the Islamic animus toward Christians come from? Certainly radical Muslims despise Christians: the great radical theorist Sayyid Qutb said that while “Jews have been behind every calamity that has befallen the Muslim communities everywhere,” Christians “have been no less hostile.” But the roots lie deeper. CAIR’s ad doesn’t mention the verses of the Qur’an that say that those who “call Christ the son of Allah” are under “Allah’s curse” (9:30), or that command Muslims to “fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day . . . (even if they are) of the People of the Book” — that is, primarily Jews and Christians (9:29). Yet Muslims around the world are acting upon them. If CAIR wants Christians to believe that Christians and Muslims have “more in common than we think,” let them repudiate the violence these verses still inspire in the world, and help Muslims understand these verses in a way that will enable them to live in lasting peace with their Christian neighbors.

Is there no end to this man's gall? He has called for jihad in Britain, and now he wants to dhimmis to give him more money. Well, that is what they're for, after all. From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON : Radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is in a British jail on incitement to murder charges, is to sue welfare officials for thousands of pounds (dollars) in extra state benefits, a newspaper said.

Hamza, who is due in court next month on incitement to murder charges, claims he has been denied benefits worth 200 pounds (290 euros, 389 dollars) a week for nearly three years, The Sun newspaper said.

His family are already taking in benefits worth over 1,000 pounds a week, it said.

Meanwhile, he is kept at the taxpayers' expense in jail, has his own personal nurse and even received a new hook worth 5,000 pounds, which is in place of his missing hand, it said.

A jail source was quoted as saying: "He has a cheek."

Ah, the British. Still masters of understatement.

At least in the short term. Ask Zapatero. He'll tell you.

From the BBC, with thanks to Mike:

Militants in Iraq have freed French reporters Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot, who were taken hostage on 20 August. The French foreign ministry confirmed an Arabic TV report that the two men had been set free and said they would return to France on Wednesday.

They were abducted while driving to the city of Najaf and appeared on a video released in October by their captors.

Their captors said they had been freed because of France's anti-war stance.

From WND, :

A major Islamic charity raising millions of dollars in Britain "to provide humanitarian aid to peoples of the Middle East" is actually a Hamas front that channels funds from British Muslims to support Hamas terrorism, Israeli security sources told WorldNetDaily.

According to its website, Interpal, established in 1994, is a British charity "that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine and the world over, primarily in Palestine and the refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon."

The charity reportedly raised more than $8 million last year.

Interpal was declared an illegal, terror-supporting organization in Israel because of its alleged links to Hamas and was outlawed in the United States in August 2003 after being designated by a U.S. executive order "an entity that commits, threatens to commit or supports terrorism."

Interpal has been investigated several times by British authorities, and has in the past had its UK bank accounts temporarily frozen, but Britain's Charity Commission in 2003 dropped the investigation for "lack of evidence" that Interpol was connected to any terrorist organization. The charity currently operates unimpeded in Britain.

But documents discovered and recently declassified from Israel's 2002 Operation Defensive Shield in the Palestinian territories, along with other supportive evidence released through the Center for Special Studies in Israel, including bank-transfer information, should warrant Britain reopening its investigation into Interpal, security sources say.

"Interpal is one of the most important channels through which money is poured into the Hamas infrastructure in the Palestinian areas, and Britain has been and will continue to be provided with plenty of evidence" a security source told WorldNetDaily.

"Interpal says its funds are going to the welfare of Palestinians, but the institutions giving out the money in the [Palestinian] territories are headed by senior Hamas officials," said the security source.

The source said activities financed by Interpal include "money for the families of suicide bombers, which raises morale and provides motivation for others to become terrorists, and education services that teach kids the importance of jihad."...

In April 2003, just before the U.S. outlawed Interpal, Britain's Charity Commission announced it was reopening its investigation of links between Interpal and Hamas, but it later claimed to have found nothing.

"The [British] authorities are afraid of the large Muslim community," said a security source. "Britain's failure to close Interpal and take action against Hamas' charities is coming from internal politics."

A cleric? But how did he miss all the peaceful teachings of the Qur'an?

Of course, sarcasm aside, clerics are generally among the leaders of jihad terror groups. Search for "cleric" in the archives and you'll see what I mean. You might be interested in all the archived articles about "Abu Bakar Bashir" (spelled Ba'aysir here).

Muslim clerics leading the jihad worldwide. Now what does that fact tell you?

From The Guardian, :

A self-confessed former operative for the south-east Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah today became the first witness to directly link the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Ba'aysir to the organisation.

Nasir Abbas, a Malaysian, told an Indonesian court that Mr Ba'aysir had sanctioned the murder of non-Muslims, funded a terrorist training camp, and met the al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden. Mr Abbas described Mr Ba'aysir as the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group seen as being the south-east Asian arm of al-Qaida.

The accusation came during Mr Ba'aysir's continuing trial on terrorism charges. Prosecutors say that, as the head of Jemaah Islamiyah, Mr Ba'aysir inspired his followers to carry out the October 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, in which 202 people were killed, and last year's attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta, in which 12 died. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.

Mr Ba'aysir denied all Mr Abbas' testimony - the first to directly link the 66-year-old to Jemaah Islamiyah. Hundreds of Mr Ba'aysir's supporters jeered and shouted "liar!" as Mr Abbas addressed the court in southern Jakarta. "You are saying this because the police forced you to," one man yelled.

The US and Australia have both accused Mr Ba'aysir of being a terrorist leader in south-east Asia, and urged Jakarta to bring him to trial for a second time after he was acquitted of related terrorism offences last year.

Kudos to the Pentagon. From China's Xinhuanet, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

GAZA, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- The radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement accused on Tuesday the US Pentagon of shutting down its websites on the Internet.

The movement's media office condemned the American action, saying "several similar actions were pursued against the movement's websites as to keep the Palestinian voice silent."

Meanwhile, a Ukrainian company that hosts the movement's websites had apologized in a message for not being able to host the movement's websites, that contains news and photos supporting the Palestinian resistance.

The company said the move was taken as a direct request from the Pentagon.

"Resistance" in this case, of course, means the propagation of the jihad ideology and glorification of the mass murder of innocent civilians.

Tariq Ramadan is the world's most famous "moderate Muslim." He was slated to take a professorial job at the University of Notre Dame this year, until his visa was revoked by DHS. DHS hasn't explained why, and his case has become a cause celebre for the anti-anti-terror Left, but here is a French-language story (from the Swiss Le Temps, via proche-orient.info, with thanks to Phil), that gives a hint as to why Ramadan may have been kept out of the U.S. Here is Phil's translation of the salient part:

According to the bill of indictment, Djamel Beghal, the preacher accused to have prepared a suicide mission against the American embassy in Paris, was preparing Tariq Ramadan's speeches.

And the first thing they did after that, evidently, was call the newspapers and tell the world, thus rendering their achievement essentially worthless for any future use. From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

HAMBURG - German intelligence services have deciphered secret codes used by the Ansar al-Islam organization which is suspected of being behind many of the kidnappings and terror attacks in Iraq, according to German news magazine Focus.

In a report, Focus quotes police and intelligence authorities as saying the arrest of a man believed to have been planning an attack on Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Berlin earlier this month has led to the codes being deciphered.

Franz-Hellmutt Schuerholz, president of Baden-Wuertemberg state police department, is quoted as saying: "We have managed to break the structures of the terrorist organization from the outside."

The report said that with the help of the arrested suspect authorities deciphered coded email and mobile telephone messages going right to the top of the organization.

Bitterly ironic, this, since if the opponents of this particular "terrorist state" prevail, Bishop Nasir's coreligionists in the new Palestinian state will find themselves subject to far harsher oppression, courtesy Sharia laws of dhimmitude, than they suffer under the Israeli government. Farfetched? No: in May 1999, Sheikh Yussef Salameh, the Palestinian Authority’s undersecretary for religious endowment, said that Palestinian Christians should become dhimmis under Muslim rule. Others have echoed this idea.

From WND, with thanks to EPG:

The Bishop of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan called Israel a "terrorist state" and denied a request to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish nation.

Earlier this month, a Rev. Boiz, who reportedly said he was a pastor from Pakistan's Presbyterian Church, led a demonstration in Karachi, Pakistan, demanding the church recognize Israel. But the church this week distanced itself from the protest.

"We the Christians of Pakistan and especially the United Presbyterian Church of Pakistan categorically condemn this demand," said the Rev. T. Nasir, bishop of Pakistan's Presbyterian Church. "We believe that [the] present state of Israel is a 'terrorist state' and Pakistan should not recognize it."

Nasir said Boiz in not a pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan and "his presence and comments might not be counted as views of the Presbyterian Church."

"I wish to make it clear that my statement is based on principles and I am not trying to please the Muslim majority of Pakistan. What we see every day is enough to condemn this demand," said Nasir.

"We have seen more than enough blood and deaths of unfortunate and forgotten Palestinians at the hands of Ariel Sharon, and as such we do not support this demand. We will go to visit the holy places only after the Palestinians get their right to establish their own homeland and start living in peace. Nothing less will be accepted by us."

Another unfortunately familiar story of professorial dhimmitude, courtesy Alyssa Lappen at FrontPage (thanks to EPG):

He denounces American “imperialism” on Al-Jazeera Television. A former Zionist, he refers to jihadist suicide bombers as “martyrs.” He praised Mideast scholars for ignoring the issue of terrorism, and he regularly repeats the most twisted and paranoid claims of Islamist regimes as though they were historical fact. He is Stanford Middle East history professor Joel Beinin, and his influence extends far beyond his classroom.

If one individual can showcase all the flaws of Middle East Studies in academia, Joel Beinin is that man. A former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Beinin teaches Middle East history at Stanford University. This professor’s politics color his work; the result is mediocre scholarship, baseless conspiracy theories, and partisan classroom instruction.

Beinin’s biography reads like a parody of an American radical. Born in 1948 to Labor Zionist parents,[1] he experienced an ideological transformation at age 22 while living on Kibbutz Lahav. Beinin joined the “New Left” at Hebrew University, then migrated to Trotskyite anti-Zionism and finally to Maoism.[2] A Marxist ever since,[3] he received his BA, MA, and Ph.D. from Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Michigan respectively. He has received Ford Foundation funds, and has taught in France, Britain, Israel and Egypt.[4]

Beinin and his wife Miriam support the Jewish Voice for Peace,[5] a Bay area group and reported Palestinian front.[6] The professor appears regularly on radical Radio Pacifica,[7] although he refuses many local invitations to legitimate debate.[8] Beinin blames the United States for major problems facing the Middle East, and he attributes U.S. actions to aggression and ill will.

That sounds like someone else I know. Read it all.

From Daniel Pipes in FrontPage, with thanks to EPG. The FP article has many links.

Yasser Arafat died last month. This month, his death is prompting plans for a foreign aid bounty of $500 million to $1 billion a year for the Palestinians.

That’s the scoop Steven R. Weisman published in the New York Times on Dec. 17. He revealed that Western, Arab, and other governments plan to add a 50 to 100 percent bonus to the $1 billion a year they already direct to 3.5 million Palestinians in the territories, contingent upon a crackdown on terrorist groups and the holding of credible elections in January 2005.

(Asked about Weisman’s report, White House spokesman Scott McClellan neither confirmed nor denied it. But President George W. Bush did subsequently make some hugely ambitious statements about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: “I am convinced that, during this term, I will manage to bring peace”; and “Next year is very important, as it will bring peace.”)

Aid-wise, residents of the West Bank and Gaza have hardly been neglected until now. They receive about $300 per person, making them, per capita, the world’s greatest beneficiaries of foreign aid. Strangely, their efforts to destroy Israel have not inspired efforts to crush this hideous ambition but rather to subsidize it. Money being fungible, foreign aid effectively funds the Palestinians’ bellicose propaganda machine, their arsenal, their army, and their suicide bombers.

This, however, does not faze international aid types. Nigel Roberts, the World Bank’s director for the West Bank and Gaza, blows off past failures. Addressing himself to donors, he says, “Maybe your $1 billion a year hasn’t produced much, but we think there’s a case for doing even more in the next three or four years.”

Roberts is saying, in effect: Yes, your money enabled Arafat’s corruption, jihad ideology, and suicide factories, but those are yesterday’s problems; now, let’s hope the new leadership uses donations for better purposes. Please lavish more funds on it to enhance its prestige and power, then hope for the best.

Read it all.

From AP, :

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- Islamic extremists with links to international terror groups are believed to be using New Zealand as a safe haven, the nation's top spy agency has warned.

Security Intelligence Service Director Richard Woods said in his annual report to Parliament that "increased vigilance and effort" was needed to ensure the country was neither the victim nor source of international terrorism.

"From the service's own investigations we assess that there are individuals in, or from, New Zealand who support Islamic extremist causes," Woods wrote.

The developments "indicate attempts to use New Zealand as a safe haven from which activities of security concern elsewhere can be facilitated and/or the involvement of people from New Zealand in such activities."

"It is a process of the Netherlands, of Germany, of France redefining who and what we are. Right now, we don't know who we want to be. All we know is that we don't want it to be Muslim." From the Washington Times, with thanks to Anthony:

AMSTERDAM - Parliamentarian Geert Wilders sees himself as the legendary Dutch boy, finger in the dike, holding back a rising tide of immigrants that threatens to swamp the Netherlands and all of Europe.

"Immigration is the biggest problem that Dutch society is facing today," said Mr. Wilders, in his office in The Hague.

"We have been so tolerant of others' culture and religion, we are losing our own. ... Europe is losing itself. ... One day we will wake up, and it will be too late. [Immigration] will have killed our country and our democracy."

The intense politician spoke under the watchful eye of bodyguards, as his picture has been posted on Muslim Web sites calling for his beheading.

Mr. Wilders' passion reflects a problem confronting much of Europe.

Old, cold and settled in its ways, the Continent struggles to absorb waves of immigrants, to protect itself from the growing hatred of Muslim militants in their midst and to live with the dark fear of a world spinning out of control....

Mr. Wilders demands, and many support, a five-year moratorium on all non-Western immigration, even to unite a legally working husband with his family.

He wants illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers deported, and all immigrants to have a working knowledge of the Dutch language before they arrive.

To remain in the Netherlands, a newcomer should pass a basic civics exam, one that few Dutch could pass.

Mr. Wilders calls mosques "houses of terror and recruitment" for jihad. He describes Islam as "dangerous" and "fascist," articulating the fears of many.

He says that Muslims beat their wives and children, and occasionally kill a daughter who wishes to marry outside the faith. He says that imams preach that homosexuals — even in a society where same-sex "marriage" is legal — should be executed.

"I am talking about non-Western immigration to the Netherlands," Mr. Wilders said in a recent interview.

"The lessons of Pim Fortuyn have not been learned."...

Jan Rath, who also teaches ethnic and immigration studies at the University of Amsterdam, said that Holland's historic acceptance of religious minorities such as the Mayflower Pilgrims masks a different reality.

When Reform Protestants took power in Holland in the 16th century, Catholics were allowed to stay and worship, but only if they did so in "hidden" churches. He said the Muslims would be facing less resistance today if they were not so obvious.

"I understand the emotional difficulty of seeing your society change before your eyes. My mother is an older Catholic, and the people in her neighborhood and church are very upset that they are building a mosque in her neighborhood.

"The priest had to remind them that not so long ago there were restrictions on Catholics, like her, from building churches" in Protestant Holland, Mr. Rath said.

But are the two situations really equivalent? Hysterical polemics aside, the Catholic Church doesn't really have a comprehensive program for governing states that its adherents are pressing forward as the law of God. In other words, the Church has nothing comparable to the Sharia.

Rachid ben Larbi, a Moroccan from Tangiers, in Holland only 18 months, already speaks Dutch, to go along with his Arabic, Spanish, French and English.

"The problem is not with the new generation, but with the old generation," he said while helping customers with new cell phones, easily switching among English, Dutch and Arabic.

"How can you ask a 45-year-old woman, from the Moroccan countryside with three or four children, to integrate? The government should give her time," he said....

"Time solves a lot of things," said Mr. Rath, of the University of Amsterdam. "It is a process of the Netherlands, of Germany, of France redefining who and what we are. Right now, we don't know who we want to be. All we know is that we don't want it to be Muslim."

Update on the British controversy over terror suspects being held without trial. From AFP, with thanks to Anthony:

LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Tony Blair warned that Britain would be in danger if foreign terror suspects were freed after the nation's highest court ruled that detaining such people indefinitely without trial or charge violated their human rights.

"It is a heavy responsibility to allow people out on our street who we know, or believe, may want to cause death or destruction to our citizens," Blair told the House of Commons, the lower house of parliament.

He said he had to "put the security of the British people first" because the security services had informed the government there is a "reasonable suspicion" such people "are engaged in plotting terrorist activity." A special panel of Law Lords decided Thursday by 8-1 that the jailing of nine people on suspicion of terrorism alone breached both democratic norms and international obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The ruling does not overturn the law under which the men are held, the 2001 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, but the government will now have to return to parliament and amend the legislation to take into account the Law Lords' views. "When we discuss this with our security services, they do indicate that if we let people out we cannot guarantee that we can survey them adequately, we can't guarantee that we're not going to lose some of those people," Blair said.

From CP (Canadian Press), with thanks to Anthony:

Ontario Muslims should have the same rights as other religious groups in the province to seek arbitration based on religious laws for family disputes and inheritance cases, concludes a report by former attorney general Marion Boyd.

Some Muslim groups called Boyd’s report “naive,” and said she fell victim to pressure from right-wing fundamentalists who want to use the 1,400-year-old Sharia law to settle divorces and custody disputes for Muslims in Ontario.

“We’re being very clear, this is not Sharia law,” said Boyd.

“This is Muslim religious principles within Canadian law.”

Boyd said her report avoided the term “Sharia” law because as practiced in Middle East countries it combines criminal and civil laws, and allows the death penalty for adultery. It also considers a woman’s testimony to be worth half that of a man’s.

“We’re talking about arbitration based on certain religious principles . . . similar to our Charter values of equality, freedom and justice,” she told reporters at a news conference.

“What exactly are these Muslim principles?” asked Tarek Fatah of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

“For her (Boyd) to come here and lecture Muslims as to what Muslim family law is, and Sharia is, is despicable and racist.”

Fatah said most Muslims in Ontario want to be treated as equal citizens. Proponents of Sharia in Canada are not concerned about settling family law disputes, he added.

“They are concerned at bringing justification for introducing Sharia, and legitimizing it in Pakistan, in Iran (and) in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“She has been listening . . .to the Muslim fundamentalists . . .that this was not about Sharia.”

Boyd also called for additional safeguards to protect people from being forced into religious-based arbitration, including a recommendation for every party to have independent legal advice before agreeing not to take the case to court.

Her critics say Boyd undermined those protections by also allowing people to waive their right to legal advice before they agree to arbitration instead of going to court to settle a dispute.

“I need to sound the alarm on a recommendation that poor women should be allowed to waive their fundamental right to an independent legal opinion,” said Marilou McPhedran, legal counsel to the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

“Marion Boyd today has given legitimacy and credibility to the right-wing racists who fundamentally are against equal rights for men and women.”

Boyd was appointed last June to study the issue after the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice said it would in effect establish a Sharia court in Ontario to handle family matters.

Another of her 46 recommendations would require mediators to screen each party separately about issues of power imbalance in the relationship and domestic violence before they enter into a religious-based arbitration agreement.

Boyd also called on the government to work with mediators and other professional organizations to develop a standard screening process for domestic violence in arbitration cases.

“Tomorrow in Tehran, in Jeddah, in Pakistan, in Kabul, in Sudan, every newspaper will say that Sharia has been approved by Canada,” predicted Fatah.

“They will not come to this press conference to hear, ‘Well, we’re not talking about Sharia, we’re talking Muslim principles.’ ”

A spokesman said Attorney General Michael Bryant would not be available today to comment on the report, but added the government would study Boyd’s findings “very closely.”

Metin Kaplan update. From The Turkish Weekly:

Metin Kaplan, who was arrested in Istanbul after being extradited by Germany, is being tried on grounds of attempting to establish a religious law state by destroying the constitution,- supported jihad in his first testimony which he used words of Galileo, Socrates, Mehmet Akif Ersoy and verses of Koran.

Kaplan said:

“when I say jihad, war must not be remembered. It may be in words. Jihad may also be done with publications. The defence we are doing right now is a way of jihad.”...

Kaplan who denied that he described Turkey as the place of war, said: “Turkey is the place of Islam, it is not true that I ordered attacks in several places in Turkey.”

From Expatica, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BRUSSELS – The Belgian state is to fund the wages of 245 imams in a bid to end discrimination against the Islamic faith.

Although Islam has been recognised as an official religion in Belgium for the last 30 years, it hasn’t been given the perks of other beliefs.

On Thursday, the federal parliament voted to grant EUR 4.83 million in 2005 to pay for imams in around 100 mosques....

The funding is a significant financial boost for Belgium’s mosques. Last year, Islam was granted just 0.5 percent of the overall religious budget, with EUR 1.27 million. The Catholic Church was given 88 percent of the cake, almost EUR 202 million.

Next year, some churches will not receive funding for assistant curates, a decision made partly because there is a shortage of curates.

Why not? Slavery is taken for granted in the Qur'an. It was only abolished in Saudi Arabia in 1962, and there are many indications that it still exists there and elsewhere in the Muslim world. From the BBC, with thanks to Kemaste:

After three attempts at making slavery illegal, the latest as recently as 1981, Mauritania has finally enacted a law which goes further than ever before, making slave ownership punishable with a fine or prison sentence.

But a year on, and no-one has yet been prosecuted under the new law. "We enacted it just to meet international standards," says Bamariam Koita, director of the government's Human Rights Commission.

Mr Koita maintains that no-one has been prosecuted because slavery was abolished long ago in Mauritania.

"Have you seen a slave? Have you seen a slave market? Of course you haven't," he puffed, confidently answering his own question.

He has a point. Human beings in chains are not bought and sold in the full glare of Nouakchott's market. It's even worse than that, according to Boubakar Messaoud, founder of the local association SOS Slaves.

"A captured slave knows freedom, so to keep him you have to chain him," says Mr Messaoud.

"But a Mauritanian slave, whose parents and grandparents before him were slaves, doesn't need chains. He has been brought up as a domesticated animal."

Rape

Skyra was born to a slave mother so there was never any question she would be anything else. She remembers the years she spent treated like an animal.

"They raped me often," she says shaking with anger.

"At night, when everyone was asleep, they came for me and I couldn't stop them. If I had been free I would never have let this happen to me".

A living reminder of her slavery nestles in Skyra's lap, another sleeps at her feet, on the floor of her corrugated iron shack.

"My master is the father of my first child, my master's son is the father of my second child and my baby girl's father was my master's nephew".

In this way says Boubakar Messaoud, "We have achieved what the American plantation owners dreamed of - the breeding of perfectly submissive slaves".

Count the slaves

Skyra was not perfectly submissive. Her small insurrections earned her beatings until she found the strength - and the opportunity - to run away. She was determined that her children would not be born into slavery as she had been.

Mohamed escaped his master when soldiers passed by his isolated village in the desert. "When my master demanded the soldiers hand me over, I told them I would rather they shot me dead and buried me right there than return with my master."

In answer to the Mauritanian government's assertion that slavery no longer exists in Mauritania, Mohamed recites the names of the family members he left behind in slavery. "If I tell you their names, can you count them?" he asked shyly. "I was never taught". There are eight members of his immediate family still living as slaves, and Mohamed tells me there are many more in Mauritania.

It is difficult to know how many though. International human rights organisations such as Amnesty International are prevented from entering the country to conduct research.

"Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention," says Amnesty, "it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant such organisations official recognition."

Boubakar Messaoud and other members of SOS Slaves have been imprisoned and harassed by the authorities for their anti-slavery campaigning.

It seems the government has little interest in really wiping out slavery. Meanwhile slavery remains Mauritania's best kept open secret.

"Everyone knew we were slaves," said Mohamed. "It's a normal thing, to have slaves in Mauritania."

From Expatica, with thanks to Susan:

Awa is accused of twice setting fire to his 16-year-old girlfriend in his Leeuwarden home in August this year. He allegedly acted out of jealousy because the girl had kissed another boy. Awa is also accused of assaulting a 15-year-old girl.

The youth admitted on the first day of his trial on Thursday that he had assaulted the girls, claiming he wanted to punish them for indiscretions. He said was prepared "to die for Allah".

Friends said Awa saw women as slaves and possessions. Psychologists have confirmed that the suspect cannot build relationships with girlfriends based on equality, news service NOS reported.

"I was Awa's possession," the 15-year-old girl said in a statement. Both girls have written a statement, which was read to the court. "I cannot express how painful burn wounds are," the 16-year-old said.

More indication that the problem of jihad terrorism, and the attendant questions about the Islamic presence in Europe, is not a matter of race. From the Times Online, :

THE most wanted terrorist in Iraq is recruiting cell members in Britain and Europe. Terrorism experts believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is preparing his new recruits for attacks somewhere in Europe.

Al-Zarqawi, who has a $25m reward on his head and now leads Al-Qaeda in Iraq, is also thought to be using Europeans for his terror campaign against the Americans in Iraq.

Rohan Gunaratna, one of the world’s foremost Al-Qaeda experts with access to intelligence, said last week that al-Zarqawi was a growing threat.

“He is the biggest recruiter in Europe. He has become better known among extremists in Britain and Europe and his group is becoming very multinational,” said Gunaratna, author of Inside Al-Qaeda and a former research fellow of St Andrews University’s centre for the study of terrorism and political violence.

From the Times Online, :

NEW evidence of Osama Bin Laden’s attempts to acquire radioactive material for a “dirty bomb” has been revealed by an aide to the Al-Qaeda leader.

In a book to be published shortly, the insider shows that Bin Laden bowed to pressure from hawks within the terror group’s leadership to buy the material through supporters in Chechnya. He had initially been cautious about such a dramatic increase in its armoury.

It is the first time that such a senior Al-Qaeda figure has revealed the internal tensions and debates within the group, and shows it was far less unified than had been thought.

During the American bombardment of Tora Bora in Afghanistan where the leadership had fled in 2001, the book says, Al-Qaeda was hopelessly split and faith in Bin Laden declined. Bin Laden had also fallen out with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.

Excerpts from the book appeared last week in a London-based Arabic newspaper and are believed to have been written by Abu Walid al-Misri, an Egyptian who spent years in Afghanistan where his son was killed fighting the Russians.

Misri, who was with Bin Laden in Tora Bora, is thought to be one of Al-Qaeda’s leading theorists. When they fled Afghanistan, his book records, the organisation had been devastated by the death of Mohammed Atef, its military commander, killed by American bombing near Kandahar....

Misri also criticises the growth in Al-Qaeda training camps, saying many of them were compromised by spies and that they lacked discipline. “The last months in the life of Al-Qaeda (in Afghanistan) were a tragic example of an Islamic movement being run in a terrible way,” he says.

Turkey's EU entry could undo the last vestiges of Kemalist secularism. From The Telegraph, with thanks to Susan:

On Friday, as Imam Gecgel digested the news that Turkey was finally on track to join the European Union, he was too excited by his vision of the future to dwell on the past. Paradoxically, like most Turkish religious leaders he is robustly pro-European – not because he approves of Western mores, but because he believes that accession will extend his powers.

"Turkish people in my position want to be in Europe because it will mean greater liberty for us,'' he said.

Although modern Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, it is in some respects a more fiercely secular state than most of the EU. The powerful army, upholder of the Ataturk legacy of a modern country, refuses to let the government introduce stricter religious observance even though the ruling party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is strongly Islamist. The army has ousted governments that attempted to defy it.

In an effort to keep a lid on fundamentalism, all mosques are government-owned and imams are civil servants. Religious symbols are banned from other state property, girls are not allowed to wear headscarves in schools and court officials may not grow beards. One effect of this is that the prime minister's wife is not invited to official receptions at the presidential palace because she insists on wearing a scarf.

Mullahs have no chance to write and deliver impassioned speeches to the faithful at Friday prayers because the Chief Mufti of Istanbul faxes out the sermon, which must be delivered in identical form across the country.

Yet this tight grip on religion jars with Western, and EU, concepts of religious freedom. As a result, Turkey's Islamists believe that membership will allow them greater freedom to worship as they like.

The language the imams use can be unsettling to Westerners who are wary at the prospect of almost 80 million Muslims joining a community of predominantly Christian nations. "We ask our government to allow us rights and freedoms but our government cannot deliver them," said Imam Gecgel.

"In Turkey there are higher powers that answer to Jewish and American controllers which do not allow the government to grant us these freedoms. We have been controlled for far too long."

The apparent secularism of the proposed EU constitution does not bother Imam Gecgel. "The secular impulses in Turkey and Europe are different," he said. "In Europe, secularism doesn't target anyone's religion or attempt to control what they believe."

From The Australian, with thanks to Nicolei:

THAI Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has linked militants responsible for violence in Thailand's south with Indonesian and Malaysian Islamic extremists, fuelling fears the domestic insurgency has connections to global terrorism.

Of course it has connections. If Thaksin and the global media knew anything about the doctrine of jihad, and paid attention to what the "insurgents" themselves were saying, they would know that.

In comments that prompted an angry reaction from Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, Mr Thaksin said the militants were trained in the jungles of the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan.

"They had recruited prospective youths and trained them in the jungles of Kelantan," Mr Thaksin said in his regular weekend radio address.

But he also said the violence was influenced by "extremists in Indonesia", although he gave no details about whether the Indonesian-based regional terror group Jemaah Islamiah was involved. "These strange acts have been learned from extremists in Indonesia. Many are students who have studied (religion) in Indonesia."

The comments mark the first time Mr Thaksin has suggested the influence of Indonesian militants. While many analysts fear groups such as al-Qa'ida and JI may capitalise on the unrest in Thailand's south, most agree there is no direct evidence of their involvement.

From The Scotsman, with thanks to Teri:

A SUSPECTED terrorist whose imprisonment without trial was judged illegal by Law Lords is set to walk free within days after his lawyers made a court application for bail.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that a High Court judge is currently considering whether to grant bail to Abu Rideh, one of 12 men held on suspicion of terrorism following the September 11 attacks.

The Palestinian is suspected of having links to associates of Osama bin Laden both in the UK and overseas and has been detained without trial for the past three years.

Rideh, 33, from Surrey, is currently being held at Broadmoor because of his severe psychiatric problems. While there, he is alleged to have taken a female member of staff hostage and to have tried to cause an explosion.

An interesting theory from Peter Brookes in the New York Post (thanks to Nicolei):

December 20, 2004 -- WHATEVER you do, don't dismiss Osama bin Laden's newest audio mes sage. Sure, it's just the latest of 17 cameos by the terrorist thug since 9/11. But it may be his scariest yet.

Why? Because Osama's latest appearance shows he's changing tactics, and he's onto something that just might work this time.

Everyone — most of all Osama — knows that his al Qaeda movement is losing steam. Today, major al Qaeda terrorism is confined to Iraq, where Abu Musab al Zarqawi, not bin Laden, holds center stage.

Cowering in a cold, dank cave for the last three years is causing Osama's stock to fall precipitously among the terrorist faithful. His campaign of global death, destruction and despair isn't leading al Qaeda to world domination as he had promised.

In fact, by terrorizing Muslims and Muslim governments, he's actually signing al Qaeda's death warrant. Realizing that he's no longer the king of the terrorist universe, Osama has embarked on a new campaign — a terrorist makeover of sorts.

Now, instead of calling exclusively for the violent overthrow of governments on historically Muslim lands, he's downsized his global ambitions to a chunk of Middle Eastern sand — and tempered his message. Masquerading as a terrorist statesman of sorts, he's pushing for a peaceful revolution (yes, peaceful change) in Saudi Arabia as a parallel path to a violent overthrow.

Osama has decided that world Muslim domination just isn't in the cards for al Qaeda at the moment. But getting a fundamentalist foothold in the holiest Islamic land (anyway he can) just might be the key to overthrowing neighboring Muslim governments.

Think of it as al Qaeda's domino theory. First, Saudi Arabia falls, then Yemen, Oman, the Gulf States and so on.

So why should we be alarmed by this? Because Osama's new strategy, announced on the same day as planned anti-regime protests in Saudi Arabia, smacks of the plot that successfully brought down the Shah of Iran 25 years ago at the hands of Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Exiled for opposing the Shah's reforms in 1963, Khomeini settled in the southern Iraqi Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, where he called for religious rule in Iran.

Under pressure from the Shah, Saddam Hussein expelled Khomeini in '78. Moving to Paris, he called for the Shah's overthrow, communicating through radio broadcasts, written statements and taped sermons that were smuggled into Iran.

Unhappiness with the Shah's repressive policies and Khomeini's mythical stature (supported by local clerics) instigated widespread riots in Iran in late 1978. Reading the handwriting on the wall, the Shah left the country in January 1979 on a "vacation" and never returned.

Without firing a single shot, Khomeini, now a veritable Muslim rock star, returned to Iran, establishing the first Islamic fundamentalist state. The aftermath of Khomeini's "peaceful revolution" was anything but peaceful.

Twenty-five years later, revolutionary Iran stands as: a) the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism; b) a highly repressive regime, and c) a near nuclear weapons state.

Could this happen in Saudi Arabia? Sure.

Read the rest!

I wonder how long it will be before they come for us. I hope some of you will visit me in prison. More on the outrageous Australian religious vilification case verdict. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Nicolei:

"The frightening thing is, so-called 'hate-crime' legislation is very much in vogue in Western democracies and will be coming soon to a Senate or Congress near you," Jeff King of the Washington-based group International Christian Concern said in response to the ruling.

King said the case was "a classic example of the results of well-meant but terribly flawed legislation."

Dr. Gordon Moyes, a prominent Australian theologian and state lawmaker, was one of many critics who said Higgins' decision was essentially a ruling against freedom of speech.

"It is a basic human right to have the ability to decide whether and what religious faith one may adhere to," Moyes said. "This also involves the critical examination and assessment of belief systems in general."

Australian Christian Lobby head Jim Wallace also slammed Higgins' finding, saying it presumably meant that Australians would be unable to quote from another religion's texts and discuss them without legal repercussions.

People have always been free to publicly debate the Bible, but this decision seems to indicate that this same freedom does not extend to other religious texts," Wallace said. "This decision means that a person can not hold a view of the Koran that is contrary to the 'official view' -- however one determines that."...

Critics pointed to what they saw as several ironies in the case.

One was the fact that the Pakistan-born Scot was one of the early victims of his homeland's notorious blasphemy laws in the mid-1980s. He fled Pakistan under threat of prosecution for allegedly insulting the Islamic prophet, Mohammed, and made a new home in Australia, a Western democracy with a strong Christian heritage.

Another irony was seen when Scot during the tribunal hearing quoted references from the Koran and other texts about the inferior status of women in Islam, he was asked by the female lawyer acting for the ICV to give only the references, because reading the verses out aloud in the courtroom constituted vilification.

"How can it be vilifying to Muslims in the [court]room when I am just reading from the Koran?" Scot asked the tribunal -- a question observers said basically could have applied to the entire case.

That episode suggests that the whole case was decided before it was tried.

"Muslims face rising suspicion in Europe," says the Times Online (thanks to Ixnay). The Times is worried that "Europe's reputation as a tolerant haven for people of all religions may be under threat": it's all about racism and "Islamophobia," you see. The Swedes are suffering from both; the British are faring better. No one, of course, has anything to say about Sharia, or the general intentions of many Muslims in Europe to subvert the states in which they are living. That wouldn't fit the Chomskyit/Saidist paradigm: it all has to be the Europeans' fault, you see.

EUROPE’S reputation as a tolerant haven for people of all religions may be under threat. Muslims are apparently being viewed with high levels of disapproval, a survey has revealed.

Sweden emerges as the most pessimistic west European nation; 75% of Swedes questioned said there is “definitely a lot” or “rather a lot” of disapproval of Muslims.

Britain is relatively tolerant. Just 39% of respondents said they believed that a significant number of people were opposed to Muslims.

The survey was conducted in the wake of the September 11 attacks and the Madrid train bombings to examine religious attitudes. Researchers asked 1,000 people in 19 European countries: “Do you think nowadays there is a lot of, a little of, or no disapproval of Muslims living in European society”.

In Holland, 72% said there was a lot of disapproval of Muslims and in Denmark the figure was 67%. On average, 52% of people interviewed across western Europe believed that there was large-scale unhappiness about Muslims....

Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin, deputy director of the Islamic Foundation, a Leicester-based centre that promotes understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims, said the study “reflects the general perception now prevalent in our society”.

He added: “Anyone who has the wellbeing of society uppermost in his mind cannot but feel deeply concerned at these findings. Being a Muslim I am worried that Europe is replacing its anti-semitism with yet another cancer — Islamophobia. There is nothing worse than the feeling that you are not trusted or are viewed with suspicion by your neighbours and fellow citizens.”

He added that Muslims viewed Britain more positively than other countries in Europe: “We feel we are much better treated here than anywhere else — the society as a whole is much fairer than the other European countries.

“In France for example (Muslim girls) are denied wearing the hijab in schools and in Germany, while the Turkish population have been living there for more than 30 years, they are still treated as guest workers and not allowed to be part of mainstream society.”

Azher Basharat, 35, a shop worker and devout Muslim from Forest Gate, east London, said: “Things have got a little worse since September 11, but in the main things are fine. People in Britain are very tolerant.

“What has changed, though, is that some people look at us with greater suspicion. You can see it in their faces — they look a little uneasy. I’ve not been attacked or anything, though — and I can’t remember anyone saying anything racist or Islamophobic to me.”

From Bulgaria's Novinite, with thanks to Anthony:

Thousands of supporters of Italy's Northern League party protested in Milan against the start of talks to accede Turkey to the European Union. The protestors warned against a "Muslim invasion" and demanded a referendum on the issue.

The banners, that people carried, read "After the Chinese, now the Turks: businesses are at risk" and "Yes to Christian roots".

"Without our history we are dead, our history is not up for sale," Umberto Bossi, leader of the anti-immigration Northern League, who is recovering after a stroke, said in a statement from his sickbed.

Organizers say 50,000 people joined the rally.

The Chechen jihadists don't see Beslan as their last stand. From Russia's Interfax, with thanks to Anthony:

NAZRAN. Dec 18 (Interfax-South) - Two armed residents of Chechnya have been detained in the neighboring Ingushetia, a source with the Ingush Interior Ministry told Interfax on Saturday.

One of the two men apprehended by the police is from Grozny and the other from the Achkhoi-Martan district. They were detained in the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia's Sunzha district.

This Daily Star article, "Jordan's Christians may feel safe, but they are also leaving," detailed how thoroughly Jordanian Christians have adopted, in dhimmi fashion, the political positions of the Muslim majority. However, it still isn't enough to make them think Jordan is a place where they have a future. (Thanks to Ruth King for the link.)

Jordan's indigenous Arab Christian minority is not in high spirits these days. Political uncertainty next door, both in Iraq and Palestine, and growing popular perceptions of a new global crusade being waged against Islam and Arab culture in the name of the "war on terror," are souring their mood.

As a result, many in this dwindling community - it now makes up less than 3 percent of the kingdom's 5.2 million population compared to over 6 percent a century ago - are facing a dilemma. They are caught between the rock of the U.S.-led war on terror, and the hard place of having to remind their compatriots that the West sees them as Arabs, first and foremost. In fact, followers of Islam and Christianity in Jordan - from the ruling political and economic elite, down to the ordinary man in the street - find themselves in the same predicaments, internally and externally.

On the external front, both communities are facing pressure from the neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists who are steering Washington's foreign policy these days. Both Christians and Muslims are outspoken critics of continued Israeli atrocities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and want to see an independent Palestinian state emerge next door. They also want to see an end to the American occupation of Iraq, and a return of law and order, key factors that continue to encourage many Iraqi Christians to emigrate to the West.

And the two communities are facing similar domestic challenges in a socially conservative country, amid growing Islamic radicalization throughout a largely autocratic region that is partly a reaction to rapid globalization, unemployment, poverty and lack of democracy and human rights.

A worthwhile piece from Christopher Caldwell in The Weekly Standard, with thanks to Ruth King:

THE SMALL CITY of Schiedam, on the Nieuwe Maas river near Rotterdam, has played a big role in the Dutch imagination of late. Five years ago, the historian/journalist Geert Mak entranced the country with a long narrative called My Father's Century. It is still in bookshop windows and is now in its 27th printing. It begins in Mak's great-grandparents' sail-making business in Schiedam, and follows the lives of his family members as they collide with Dutch history in the twentieth century: the Dutch Reformed faith they drifted in and out of, the herring they ate, how much money they made, what it felt like to live under Nazi occupation, their shyness (or boldness) about sex, the jokes they told, and how they faced the 1960s. The book consoled Dutch people that however tumultuous the changes the 20th century had wrought, there was an ineffable "Dutchness" that somehow perdured. Schiedam played the role in the Dutch imagination that Macomb County, Michigan, or Luckenbach, Texas, did in the American imagination in the mid-1980s: You could look there to see how the "real" people in the country lived.

Early this month, another Schiedam native, a 30-year-old man known in his police dossier as Farid A., was found guilty of issuing death threats over the Internet. When the conservative Dutch politician Geert Wilders described Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last year as a "terrorist leader," Farid A. posted a picture of him on an Islamist website urging: "Wilders must be punished with death for his fascistic comments about Islam, Muslims, and the Palestinian cause." That was a year ago, and since then, Wilders has done even more to tick off Muslim radicals. He left the conservative Freedom and Democracy People's party (VVD) after a personal spat with the party leadership, promising to launch his own "Geert Wilders List," along the lines of the one-person movement that turned the gay populist Pim Fortuyn into the most popular politician in the Netherlands in early 2002. Wilders has focused on Turkey, crime, and the unsustainability of high immigration. He has warned that many of the more than 1 million Muslims who live in the Netherlands "have already opted for radical Islam," and has urged closing extremist mosques.

There is a market for his forthrightness. In early November, a poll in the left-leaning daily de Volkskrant showed that Wilders could win several hundred thousand votes, which would translate into nine seats in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of the national legislature. When the gadfly filmmaker Theo van Gogh was shot and knifed in southeastern Amsterdam on November 2, the letter that his killer pinned with a knife to his corpse contained a promise to do the same to the Somali-born feminist VVD member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Wilders got similar threats shortly thereafter. There were two results for Wilders. First, his popularity shot through the roof: A second poll in de Volkskrant showed Wilders would now win almost 2 million voters, taking 28 seats, or a fifth of the parliament, and that he was drawing support across party lines and in every single sector of Dutch society, despite--or perhaps because of--perceptions that he is a single-issue candidate.

But Wilders also had to go into hiding. He now appears in public only for legislative sessions in the Hague, where he travels under armed guard. He complained in mid-December that the death threats had hampered his ability to build his party. The head of a conservative think tank told newspapers he had been advised by security personnel to stay away from Wilders. Anyone who declared himself for one of those 28 seats that looked ripe for the plucking would thereby place himself on a death list, too. One strange but highly professional video that can be downloaded off the Internet shows drawings of machine guns, then photographs of Wilders with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and then captioned panels reading:

name: geert wilders
occupation: idolator
sin: mocking Islam
punishment: beheading
reward: Paradise, in sha Allah

In early December, an appeals court in the Hague confirmed the punishment of Farid A. of Schiedam. He was sentenced to 120 hours of community service.

Pope Shenouda III seems to have gone into seclusion as a protest against the mistreatment of Copts in Egypt. From the BBC, with thanks to JJP Mackie:

Tensions flared during the last three weeks over fears that Christians were being forced to convert to Islam.

At least 34 Copts were arrested during a demonstration in Cairo and sectarian violence also erupted in Upper Egypt.

"The seclusion of His Holiness the Pope will continue until he reaches a solution [with the government] that satisfies his conscience to the problems related to the Copts," the pope's secretary Bishop Armia told Reuters news agency.

Other Church sources have been quoted as saying he will not resume his duties until the authorities release those people arrested in Cairo.

Controversial case

The generally calm relations between the authorities and the Coptic minority - which makes up 5-10% of Egypt's population - became strained over the case of priest's wife Wafa Constantine.

Government officials had said Mrs Constantine, 48, wanted to convert to Islam but was being prevented from doing so by her family.

Rumours that she had been abducted and forced to convert began circulating among Copts, sparking angry protests outside Cairo's St Mark's cathedral.

A number of police and worshippers were injured in protests where stones were allegedly thrown and arrests were made at demonstrations deemed illegal.

The clashes and a sit-in at the cathedral ended when protesters were told that Mrs Constantine was back under the Church's protection.

"The patriarch granted her his mercy and assured her that she remained in the Church," the pope's office said.

Last Thursday, Egypt's prosecutor-general said that Mrs Constantine had gone to police saying she wanted to change her religion, but had decided to remain a Christian after meeting Church officials.

'Discrimination'

Also this month, police said they had arrested 25 people after sectarian violence erupted in the Upper Egyptian village of Munqateen.

Police were reported to be keeping Muslims and Christians apart after three Christian-owned shops were set ablaze, Christian homes were stoned and police cars were wrecked.

Why? Because they conceived of their attack as a religious act. No doubt they were praying for success, and to be accepted as martyrs in Islamic Paradise. From Australia's The Advertiser, with thanks to Nicolei:

THE Muslim militants accused of bombing Australia's Embassy in Indonesia stopped to pray at a mosque next to a government ministry moments before they carried out the attack, police have revealed.

The disclosure came yesterday during a police reconstruction of the group's alleged movements ahead of the September 9 blast.

The attack killed 10 people, one of them apparently a suicide bomber, and injured more than 100.

It's a common tactic for jihadists and their allies to question the intelligence and knowledge of their opponents. Jihadists, Islamic apologists, and self-aggrandizing snake oil salesmen accuse me of knowing nothing about Islam so often that one would think I had never heard of the word. (I have yet to see, however, any succesful refutation of any factual statement I have made about jihad or any other Islamic doctrine.)

Anyway, I thought this little hate message that came in earlier was amusing. Headed "idiots," it read in its entirety:

i am very suprisedd at the amount of idiots you can fit on to one web site,

the level of intellegence of this web site is pathetic

The misspellings are, I assure you, in the original.

From The Scotsman, with thanks to Teri:

FURTHER humiliation was heaped on David Blunkett yesterday as the Law Lords dealt a shattering blow to the government’s anti-terrorist strategy.

They ruled that foreign terror suspects cannot be detained indefinitely without trial, presenting Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and Charles Clarke, the new Home Secretary, with a massive problem the morning after Mr Blunkett resigned....

In yesterday’s judgment, the Law Lords ruled eight to one that the human rights of foreign suspects held for up to three years without charge or trial had been breached, severely undermining a central plank of Labour’s security-based general election strategy. It also delivered a blow to Mr Blunkett’s legacy.

He had brushed aside protests from civil liberties groups to rush the law through Parliament in the wake of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. He claimed that their "airy-fairy, libertarian" view did not match the harsh reality, adding that he "didn’t give a damn" how many foreign suspects were detained.

Mr Clarke had barely got his feet under the desk at Queen Anne’s Gate before the Law Lords’ ruling that indefinite detention of foreign nationals without trial contravened human rights laws.

In an overwhelming condemnation of Mr Blunkett’s Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act, they said that indefinite detention of foreign nationals without trial was unacceptable.

One law lord described the legislation as a "Draconian" measure. Lord Hoffmann went so far as to suggest that the act itself was a bigger threat to the country than terrorism.

Hmm. I'm not sure that the act was a good idea in every particular, but I wonder what Lord Hoffman would say after a large-scale attack in Britain -- perpetrated, say, by one of those he has made sure will be released.

Journalistic jihad. From The Times via The Australian, with thanks to Meredith:

BAGHDAD: Sliding out of the insurgents' house in Fallujah, the Iraqi journalist headed out of town with the Arab fighters' threat echoing in his ears: "Interview us or we will kill you."

Before he had reached his car, masked Iraqi fighters sensitive about the presence of foreign guerillas in the city countermanded the order, presenting him with an impossible dilemma. "Broadcast that and we will kill you," they told 30-year-old television journalist Mohamed Abdul Razzaq.

One day into the campaign for the January election, Iraq's media are feeling the squeeze in a country where decades of dictatorship has left no legacy of tolerance for free speech.

The London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat closed its Baghdad office yesterday after rebels threatened to blow it up if the paper did not publish within one week a story about Omar Hadeed, the Iraqi guerilla said to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's deputy in Fallujah.

"The men said that they sever the heads of those who malign them like they cut off the heads of sheep," the newspaper said.

Sixty journalists have been killed in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. Although most of the attention is on Western journalists, those in the Arabic media face daily risks to their lives, and complain of intimidation by insurgents and arrest and confiscation of material by trigger-happy US-led forces.

A cartoon from the Dutch cartoonist 'AU tochtoon,' courtesy the excellent Dutch Disease weblog:

More attempts to ensure that democracy fails and Iraq becomes a Sharia state. From Reuters, :

SAMARRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Insurgents have launched attacks on election offices in northern Iraq, killing two people and wounding nine six weeks before Iraqis are due to go to the polls.

Police and hospital sources said two people were killed and eight wounded on Saturday when mortars landed on an election office in Dujail, one of many around the country registering and educating potential voters ahead of the Jan. 30 election.

Among the wounded were six Iraqi National Guards, who were guarding the office against attack in the Sunni Muslim town, 30 miles north of the capital.

A mortar also landed on an election office in the oil city of Kirkuk, where ethnic tensions are running high ahead of a poll many want delayed there.

The office was closed when the mortar hit on Friday night, but a guard was seriously wounded, police said.

The Washington Post today contains a story about several men who are being held on secret evidence without charge. There is a full-throttle weepy component to the story, what with the children of one of the men coming to the prison to visit him and not being able to play, but later on we're told this:

Mahjoub, 44, is accused by the government of belonging to a radical splinter group of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad organization, working on a Sudanese farm run by Osama bin Laden, staying briefly with a top-ranking member of al Qaeda, and lying about the stay when he entered Canada in 1995. He was working as a store clerk when he was arrested in 2000.

Adil Charkaoui, a Moroccan who worked in a pizza shop in Montreal, has been held on a security certificate since May 2003 for allegedly training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. Similar allegations have been made against Hassan Almrei, 30, a Syrian held since October 2001; Mohamed Harkat, 36, an Algerian held since December 2002; and Mahmoud Jaballah, 41, of Egypt, who has been held since June 2000 for allegedly making phone calls to an Egyptian Islamic Jihad group in London.

Well, what should be done with such men? If they are released, or even deported, they could become part of a terrorist strike. This is the Canadian government's dilemma:

"You can't use the ordinary machinery of law," responded Bissett, the former immigration director. "To wait for an offense to be committed and then use due process of law is fine for dealing with criminals. It's not fine for terrorists. You can't wait for them to blow up several thousand people and then charge them."

Now available in pdf form at www.dhimmitude.org: the Preface to Bat Ye'or's critically important book Eurabia (thanks to Andy).

Read it here.

This story is surprising on many levels. Chief among them are Prince Charles's involvement itself; second is the fact that everyone involved seems to take for granted that there is indeed a death penalty in Islam for those who leave it. There is, of course, but when was the last time you heard a Muslim in the West admit it? But ultimately the fact that the indomitable and heroic Patrick Sookhdeo was unhappy with the outcome indicates that the meeting was essentially worthless, or worse. From The Telegraph via The Age, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Prince Charles is brokering efforts to end the Muslim death penalty on converts to other faiths, it emerged yesterday.

He held a private summit of Christian and Muslim leaders at Clarence House this month to explore the centuries-old Islamic law under which apostates face persecution and even death.

His intervention follows mounting anger at the treatment in a number of Islamic states of Muslims who have converted to Christianity.

As an advocate of inter-faith dialogue, the Prince has come under pressure to criticise the religious law that, campaigners say, has resulted in hundreds of executions in countries from Iran to Sudan.

Among the Christians at the confidential meeting was an Anglican archbishop from a part of Nigeria where Islamic Sharia law is enforced.

Others included the Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, and the Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.

It is believed the Muslim group, which included the Islamic scholar Zaki Badawi, cautioned the Prince and other non-Muslims against speaking publicly on the issue.

It argued that Islamic moderates could have more influence on the traditional position if the debate remained largely internal.

A member of the Christian group said on Friday that he was "very, very unhappy" about the outcome. Patrick Sookhdeo, the international director of the Barnabus Fund, which campaigns on behalf of persecuted Christians abroad, stressed that he was speaking on the record only because details of the meeting had already leaked.

He urged the Prince and Muslim leaders in Britain to criticise openly the traditional Islamic law on apostasy, calling for it to be abolished throughout the world.

"My view, and I think the other Christians shared it, is that when something is wrong it must be stated as a wrong."

More on "UNRWA's Hamas problem" from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to GG:

Much ink has been spilled about UNRWA's pro-Palestinian bias. Of course, it's biased. Today UNRWA is a Palestinian organization with a thin UN veneer.

In its Gaza and West Bank field offices, UNRWA has 12,916 employees, of whom only 37 are not Palestinian.

No one should have been surprised when UNRWA Commissioner Peter Hansen admitted that UNRWA employs Hamas members or sympathizers. Can anyone expect those 37 internationals to screen almost 13,000 Palestinian employees – mostly residents of the refugee camps – for Hamas affiliation, even if they wanted to?

UNRWA cannot even prevent posters of suicide bombers from being plastered on the walls of its schools, or teachers from extolling suicide bombers.

THAT HANSEN did not see the hiring of Hamas members as "a crime" is just the latest example of his unfitness for the UN post.

During Operation Defensive Shield he lent credence to Palestinian lies about Jenin:

"I had hoped that the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid these were not exaggerated and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history."

Apparently, Hansen's "recent history" did not extend back three weeks to the Passover massacre in Netanya, where more civilians died than in Jenin.

When the reports from Jenin, including his own, were completely refuted, Hansen offered no apology or even acknowledgement.

Peter Hansen is only part of the UNRWA problem. In addition to employing Hamas members or sympathizers, UNRWA likely feeds and loans them money too.

The US government's General Accounting Office asked UNRWA whether it screens its beneficiaries for ties with terrorist organizations, as required by section 301(c) of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.

UNRWA replied that it could not, because its staff would be endangered.

Reporting on one incident, the General Accounting Office highlights the extent to which the Palestinian street, not the UN, controls UNRWA.

The houses of six Palestinian families on UNRWA's registry were "destroyed during bomb-making activities," yet UNRWA concluded there was not enough evidence to deny them benefits under the terrorist-exclusion rule.

American and European taxpayers provide those benefits via the US government's and European Union's support for roughly 75% of UNRWA's budget.

Democracy will have a different meaning? What meaning has it had up to now? Human rights and freedoms will be practiced better? Keep practicing, Erdogan, and someday you may get it right. From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Thousands of cheering supporters showered Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with ticker tape Saturday as he returned to Ankara from a European summit, vowing to press forward with reforms and the country's bid to join the bloc.

The European Union on Friday offered to begin talks aimed at bringing Turkey into the EU. The long-coveted invitation came despite widespread European misgivings about welcoming a poor, highly populated Muslim nation - and despite continued differences over Cyprus, Turkey's longtime adversary and an EU member since May.

The talks will begin Oct. 3, 2005, the beginning of a process that could take years and could transform the political and social landscape of both parties.

But joyous supporters presented Erdogan with flowers at Ankara's Esenboga airport, and some 5,000 gathered in near-freezing weather to greet Erdogan in the city's central square.

``Turkey has turned the critical corner,'' Erdogan told the crowd, which waved flags and balloons with Turkish and EU flags. ``Our road is open, you should not have any doubt about it.''

``From now on, democracy will have a different meaning and human rights and freedoms will be practiced in a more meaningful manner, the economy will perform better,'' Erdogan said. ``By this, Turkey will take its rightful place among modern and civilized countries.''...

EU leaders have imposed tough conditions on Turkish membership. Turkey must recognize Cyprus before the talks open in October and must show progress on Kurdish rights, improving the economy and limiting the military's influence in politics. Ankara is also expected to treat ethnic and religious minorities equally....

The deal nearly fell apart because of an EU requirement that Turkey initial an agreement Friday expanding its customs union with the EU to include Cyprus and nine other members that joined in May. The agreement would have to be signed by October.

Erdogan balked at the requirement, which EU diplomats said amounted to tacit recognition of the Greek Cypriot government. After hours of negotiations, the EU agreed to accept a statement from Erdogan that he would sign the customs agreement before the talks start and that the move would not constitute recognition of Cyprus.

Much of the Greek Cypriot press criticized the EU decision.

Cyprus was ``the greatest loser'' declared the top-circulation Greek Cypriot daily Phileleftheros on Saturday.

The EU ``surrendered to Ankara's terms yielding to the blackmail of Erdogan,'' declared the right-wing Simerini newspaper.

From Victor Davis Hanson in National Review, with thanks to JJP Mackie:

To regain credibility, the Left must start to apply the same standard of moral outrage to a number of its favorite causes that it does to the United States government, the corporations, and the Christian Right. Here are a few places to start.

1. There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia” — at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves — here in the U.S., in the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel — to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

So both here and abroad, the Western public believes that there is a double standard in the moral judgment of our left-leaning media, universities, and politicians — that we are not to supposed to ask how Christians are treated in Muslim societies, only how free Islamists in Western mosques are to damn their hosts; or that we are to think beheading, suicide murdering, and car bombing moral equivalents to the sexual humiliation and roguery of Abu Ghraib — apparently because the former involves post-colonial victims and the latter privileged, exploitive Americans. Most sane people, however, privately disagree, and distinguish between a civilian’s head rolling on the ground and a snap shot of an American guard pointing at the genitalia of her terrorist ward.

Moreover, few of any note in the Arab Middle East speak out against the racial hatred of Jews. Almost no major Islamic religious figure castigates extreme Muslim clerics for their Dark-age misogyny, anti-Semitism, and venom against the West; and no Arab government admonishes its citizenry to look to itself for solutions rather than falling prey to conspiracy theories and ago-old superstitions. It would be as if the a state-subsidized Ku Klux Klan or the American Nazi party were to be tolerated for purportedly voicing the frustrations of poor working-class whites who “suffered” under a number of supposed grievances.

What is preached in the madrassas on the West Bank, in Pakistan, and throughout the Gulf is no different from the Nazi doctrine of racial hatred. What has changed, of course, is that unlike our grandfathers, we have lost the courage to speak out against it. In one of the strangest political transformations of our age, the fascist Islamic Right has grafted its cause onto that of the Left’s boutique “multiculturalism,” hoping to earn a pass for its hate by posing as the “other” and reaping the benefits of liberal guilt due to purported victimization. By any empirical standard, what various Palestinian cliques have done on the West Bank — suicide murdering, lynching without trial of their own people, teaching small children to hate and kill Jews — should have earned them all Hitlerian sobriquets rather than U.N. praise.

Meanwhile: "A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on elected representatives and government officials to address the rising level of Islamophobia in America." (Thanks to DC Watson.)

This message from Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald was, as you can see, intended for subscribers, but in view of the season I decided to post it for the delectation of all.

Robert, When you asked if I had anything to put in the Christmas stockings of subscribers, in this season for bearing gifts and travelling afar, I went to the cupboard, but was chagrined to discover that I hadn't a thing to bear. I quickly scrolled down through the last few days of posts, plucked out a few items among those that were less sober, and more high-spirited -- as befits the season of eggnog and B-minor masses. I tied them up with a sprig of festive holly, and one synecdochic twig of Balsam fir and I'm enclosing them with this note. Perhaps, if you get a chance, you can slip them in among the oranges and walnuts and small rubber balls that I assume you will be putting in the stockings again this year. And we all know about Christmas mail, so I better to get this to you sooner rather than later. Things being what they are, it can't be rain nor snow nor sleet nor gloom of night that stays the email courier from his appointed rounds. But something does. I'm beginning to think that Dr. McAfee and Dr. Norton are right; there is a new virus going around. Well, if you do manage to receive these tokens of the season, and can distribute them in the nick or even St. Nick of time, please add my to your Merry Christmas.

So here are Hugh's gifts to you. Watch for oranges, walnuts, and small rubber balls later.

UK: Police forge links with Muslim community

One hopes that the Birmingham police in fact "do the police in different voices" and that the appalling effort reported above is part of a carefully-crafted campaign of pretend-yielding, cunning efforts to let the local Muslims think that the Infidels are remarkably innocent and stupid.

And then one looks at the evidence in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and all over Europe, where the tone of appeasement is set, both from the top down, and from the bottom up, and even sideways, in chanceries and in local police stations, in the Vatican and from the local priests and ministers, in ministries of education (the new syllabi that carefully include units on Islam and the "Islamic contribution to Europe" etc.) and in the acts of individual teachers (time to celebrate the Birth of Little Red Riding Hood, etc.).

It is everywhere, on all sides, from all directions. Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty provides a gloss on "Jabberwocky" ("Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogoves/and the mome raths outgrabe."), and this is the way, I recall, that the word "wabe" was explained: it is the area around a sundial, you see, because it is "a way before, and a way behind, and a way beyond in both directions."

Dhimmitude, pre-emptively assumed or pushed or yielded to all over Europe, is like that "wabe" --"a way before, and a way behind, and a way beyond, in both directions."

In this fantasy-land that is being constructed by the fools who rule us instead of instructing and protecting us, who could do it all greater justice than Charles Dodgson of Christ Church and Christ Church Meadows?

Lewis Carroll, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
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In one French translation of "Jabberwocky," the word "wabe" was, I recall, translated as "alloinde," as Humpty Dumpty says, "parce que c'est loin devant, et loin derrière, et loin de chaque côté." So, for the French contingent, the same observations remain, and in the silent-film version, with the girl flailing about in the water, the title will come on as the piano-roll furiously turns and the keys go up and down: "Monsieur Lewis Carroll, au secours! ou Marianne sauvée des eaux," which waters, mind you, are those of the Mediterranean that is in the crazed world-view of Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, D. de V., Le Monde, RFI, Canal Cinq, the only thing standing in the way of the natural harmony of Europe and the world of Islam (beginning with the Maghreb), the "deux rives" of which we hear so much, and which will be united in holy matrimony by that welcome and enriching and altogether wonderful growing Muslim presence, fixing to make this marriage of convenience, as the Muslims see it, the ticket to a permanent carte de sejour in the Bilad al-Kufr which will, in turn, become more Muslim, more full of mosques with minarets, and madrassas, and Qur'an-maddened imams.

Before pronouncing a couple "man and wife," the minister looks around the room and asks if anyone objects to this alliance, and ends:

"Speak now or Forever Hold Your Peace."

Well, many may want to object to this marriage of Europe and Arabia. Poor little Europe is allowing itself to be railroaded into it, and doesn't know how, at this point, to say no. But the guests are moving about uneasily, shuffling, coughing, talking among themselves. Now one hears a French-inflected voice -- Bat Ye'or in the back. And over there, wearing the clothes of an Anglican minister, and with English that betrays subcontinental origins, is Patrick Sookhdeo. And here is Hans Jansen speaking in Dutch. And some fiery high-cheekboned Italian woman, in a torrent of Tuscan : Oriana. And now Charles Moore, and Will Cummins, and the Parisian delegation -- Alain Finkielkraut, and Claude Gilliot and Yvan Rioufol, and Alexandre del Valle -- now the whole room is becoming noisy. Everyone is objecting, except the smoldering bridegroom and his family, all of them sitting in one corner, the women all wearing hijabs and the men bearded, and just look at how the expression on Tariq Ramadan's face has changed from that fixed smile to barely-suppressed and murderous fury.

Pandemonium has broken out. This ceremony will not take place. There will be no wedding after all. There has been a last-minute change of plans. Yes, enormous changes at the last minute.
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Turkey will be Islamic "Trojan horse" in Europe: Kadhafi

Truth from Tripolitania!

This just in. Muammar Khadafy, the man whose Homeric epithet is "mercurial," and who not infrequently, in his interviews, will offer up truth and fantasy in equal parts, has told a hom e truth abroad. Or rather, two. In the first place, he said that there is "not room for two viable states" between the Jordan and the Mediterranean (we'll ignore his "Israstine" solution, which is simply a prescription for the final subjugation of the Jews of Israel, pushed back into the status of dhimmis, by the overbreeding and overbearing "Palestinian" Arabs).

But it is his second truth, accidentally spilled, that needs to be focused on: that the admission of Turkey to the E.U. is devoutly wished for even by the Arabs who hate the Turks, because they regard it, rightly, as a major step in the islamization of Europe, or put another way, the takeover, by adherents of the belief-system of Islam, of the land mass which gave rise to, and possesses still all the cultural treasures of, Western civilization.

Qaddafy is "mercurial" just as much as Odysseus is "wily" or Athena "grey-eyed" or the dawn "rosy-fingered." Now he is the great leader of the Arabs of the Maghreb, a new Abd el-Kader. And now he is the Great Libyan Leader of His Grateful Libyan People, with his Little Green Book, and his unorthodox view of Islam, and all the rest of the trappings of perfection and greatness, primitive third-world style. Now he is the clever weapons man, outsmarting the West, putting his chemical weapons plant deep underground, and covering up his frantic but futile nuclear project with that supposed Great Man-Made River Project. And now he is the leader of the Arabs, the only honest man among them, and the bane -- and even the would-be assassinator of -- the corrupt members of the House of Al-Saud. And now he is no longer the Great Leader of the Arabs (wasn't that Saddam Hussein's role, and before him, that of Nasser? Who is the latest Great Leader? Hard to keep up with them, they rise and fall so fast), because he, Muammar Khaddafy, is fed up with the people he calls "the Arabs," and has become -- an African, the Great Leader of Africa (including the Africa that provided such a nice steady supply of black slaves for Muslim Arabs, and still does, and who except an occasional reporter for the Corriere della Sera is going to report on the persecution and murder of black immigrants in Libya, or even remember when, during the anti-African riots a decade ago, the hanging of a black Chadian diplomat on the street in Tripoli? I mean, who can remember that sort of thing?). Libya is in Africa, Khaddafy runs Libya, so of course Khaddafy now has a message, and a meaning, for all of Africa.

Great Leader of Libya, Great Leader of the Arabs, Great Leader of the Africans (take your pick). But then why, when we look at him, does only Ozymandias and “desarts vast” and blowing sands come to mind?
But remember that Khaddafy does, occasionally, drop into the truth. And among the nonsense and silliness of his words to that Italian interviewer (Khaddafys, father and son, would, on the whole, rather be in Philadelphia -- I mean, Perugia -- instead of in Tripoli or anywhere where there are Muslims and Arabs. In fact, not only Perugia, but even the smallest Italian hill town contains more culture, more humane behavior, more places of interest, more humor, more wit, than all of Libya or indeed, than all of the Maghreb. And that is because of what a certain belief-system does to people.
Turkey's future entry into the E.U. (which will NOT happen) is, Khaddafy points out, seen as a stalking-horse, or Trojan horse, or horse of a different color (green), and that entry is earnestly desired by other Muslims, even by Arabs who do not like the Turks. For those Arabs, and other Muslims, see Turksih entry into the E.U. as both a way to facilitate the illegal entry of other Muslims through Turkey (which of course it would be), but more importantly as a way to push the E.U. completely into the arms of Islam. For as 70 or by then, 80 million Turks join the E.U., Turkey will be the most populous country in the E.U., and five or ten million of those Turks, in a country with huge unemployment, the highest in that E.U., will fan out across Europe, for work or for study, they will build mosques. They will build madrassas. They will become more, not less, fervent in their Islam -- just as the Turks in Germany have. For in their physical baggage will be, not the works of Ataturk, but the Qur'an. And as they meet, as inevitably they must, as all people do, with difficulties, as they feel, as all immigrants must, a certain homesickness and longing, they will turn for comfort to Islam, to its teachings, to its constant message that You, Believers, Are the Best, and You, Believers, Deserve to Dominate and Not to Be Dominated. What a wonderful message, how soothing, how uplifting, and what a comfort in days of despair or loneliness or any kind of personal or professional désarroi or disappointment.

And those Turks will not help to "unite" Europe, but rather, will keep the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe, who deserve a chance to improve their own lot after four decades of rule by ideological puppets and agents of the Soviet Union. For instead of hiring Bulgarians and Hungarians and Rumanians, some of whom might wish to start as workers in France or Italy, both to be trained, or to acquire know--how that can be used at home, or simply to earn money some of which would undoubtedly be remitted home, all of that work will be taken -- in this new market that is built not with any regard for Europe as a civilization, as a matter of culture, of thought, of art and science, but purely as a place where homo economicus rules.

What is the E.U. but the most extreme example of a Midwestern Chamber of Commerce, where business and boosterism for business are everything, and nothing else matters.

And as those Turks take the low-paying jobs (but what is the real price of those workers, what is the price that is not internalized or shown in their wages?), and the long-suffering peoples of Eastern and Central Europe cannot find work in the west, even though it is they who would without difficulty integrate, for in their mental baggage they bring no belief-system, as the Turks do, and will even more to the Lands of the Infidels, a belief-system that that only lead, inevitably, to a way of life for the indigenous Infidels that is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous, and which will lead -- has already led -- to some Infidels simply packing up for the U.S., Canada, Australia. All of which, of course, are also, simultaneously, under assault from Islam without and within.

Perhaps the last act of Khaddafy might be, as suggested afew days ago, to get dreams of grandeur that paint him as the great "Berber leader" of North Africa, so that he might use Libyan money to re-berberize those who over the centuries have come to believe that they are Arabs when in fact they are Arabic-speaking Berbers. If "the Arabs" can be reduced to their essential presence in the peninsula, that can only help in the containment of Islam. Khaddafy's rhetoric over the years suggests he has a problem with the whole idea of "the Arabs." They, in turn, have anathematized him. Imagine all those "Arab" Algerians or "Arab" Moroccans realizing, perhaps through the irrefutable work on Berber and Arab DNA in North Africa (see the work of G. Semana and other French investigators in Rennes on the genetics of the Berbers and Arabs in Tunisia)-- that they are "proud Berbers," and starting to speak Tamazight, and meeting with their friends and reading Kateb Yacine denouncing Arab imperialism, and all the rest. There could even be secret Berber meetings, in Paris, Marseille, and Algeria itself, in the Kabylia.

And this campaign for Berberia would provide Khaddafy's son, by the way, with a much-desired opportunity to get involved with Italian cinema as he already has with Italian soccer teams. He could produce a movie all about the re-awakening of Berber consciousness in North Africa, financed by Libya. Shot -- well, in Morocco, or if things get too hot, in Arizona.

Now, as I see it, the main problem we have is what to call that movie about the Great Berber Uprising that will follow upon the Great Awakening of Berber Consciousness, financed in part by the Great Self-Appointed Leader of the Berbers, Muammar Khaddafy?
So here's my suggestion, especially fitting because Khaddafy fils is no doubt a big Fellini fan.

What about: Notti di Kabylia?
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Fadlallah urges Vatican to join forces with Muslims

Fadlallah now calls on the Vatican, which has been so appreciative of his efforts to help the Maronites of Lebanon, to reciprocate by helping Muslims oppose those carrying on what he calls a "campaign" against them, and further declares that

"This campaign against Islam is part of a prefabricated plan to create an enemy for Westerners, following the collapse of the Soviet Union."

It has come down to this: when the Fadlallahs of this world have learned to prate fashionably about the "creation of the Other" ("to create an enemy for Westerners"), the whole wide world has gone off its rails.

But why, really, should anyone be surprised by anything anymore? The distance, morally and intellectually, from Fadlallah to many of the members of MESA (the Middle Eastern Studies Association of America) is not very far. And apparently, when not sending fatwas, which become rockets, Israel-wards, he likes nothing better than to sit down with a little Foucauld or Derrida, and one French agent reported back to headquarters that Fadlallah was once caught furtively reading through Emmanual Levinas' "De l'existant à l'existence" after he had seen it mentioned in Le Figaro Litteraire, and then read soon afterwards a glowing omnium-gatherum review of Levinas’ works in the TLS – which, by the way, happens to be Fadlallah's favorite weekly.

When Fadlallah is eventually invited to the United States to deliver his inaugural address as the president of MESA (rumor has it that he is even now the clear front-runner to succeed Laurie Brand as head of that association of disinterested scholars), one good way to share his travel costs between two proud sponsors would be to invite him, at roughly the same time, to speak at the annual meeting of the MLA. Fadlallah has been known to galvanize audiences, especially in Lebanon, with his well-known observations, which might so easily be recycled for an American audience, on the subject of, as his last talk was called, "When Demonizing the Other is a Duty: Paul de Man and Roger Garaudy on Speaking Truth to Power."

As his spoken English is not perfect, possibly Rashid Khalidi or Rami Khoury or Fawaz Gerges can render Fadlallah’s words into passable English, and then those words can be rendered back into something appropriately incomprehensible for the MLA by the inimitable Hamid Dabashi.

A spectacle not to be missed.

More on the SLA soldiers who are likely being sent to certain death. From WND, with thanks to JJP Mackie:

Seven Lebanese are scheduled today for deportation from Canada into the hands of terrorists likely to imprison, torture or kill them, say activists working on their behalf.

They say Canada may be in violation of the 1984 International Convention Against Torture by deporting the seven veterans of the South Lebanon Army, formerly allies of Israel.

Two recent examples illustrate these international law violations by Canadian immigration authorities, say human rights activists Jerry Gordon and Brigitte Gabriel.

In the first example, an SLA vet had fled South Lebanon via Israel in 1992. He entered Canada and obtained his citizenship after more than 12 years of residency. He was arrested in July 2004 at the Beirut International Airport, detained and tortured in Lebanon. He went on a compassionate mission to visit his sick elderly parents living there. The SLA vet had a Canadian passport and a valid Lebanese visa.

In the second example, SLA vet Ibrahim el Khoury along with his wife Norma Ata and his two children Kamal and Elie (the infant being a Canadian citizen) were arrested on their arrival at Beirut International Airport Sept. 27, 2004. Ibrahim was imprisoned and tortured while the family was detained for a few days and harshly interrogated.

"Little time remains for effective action to save the SLA veterans from almost certain death at the hands of Hezbollah operations and militias now in control of Southern Lebanon," said Gordon and Brigitte [Gabriel] in a prepared statement. "It is absurd that Canada, one of the world’s premier human rights advocates and sanctuaries would permit this travesty of justice to unfold."

They blame false allegations by Hezbollah terrorists and their allies in Canada.

A call to anti-dhimmitude by longtime Jihad Watch reader DC Watson:

Oh, you didn’t know? No one’s told you? The threat…to our culture, no one’s said anything to you? What threat? Did you know that radical Muslims consider you an "Infidel" because you're non-Islamic? Let me ask you: when you look into your future, what do you see? Please accompany me through this column. I and millions of our American brothers & sisters have something very important to tell you. You just have to promise not to keep it a secret. Do you remember the morning of September 11th, 2001? We all kissed our loved ones goodbye that morning. We came home that night, but because of Muslims living among us, who in their minds, were commanded by their God to commit murder against us, 3,000 people didn’t. Since that rotten day, with terror-related arrests, convictions, and deportations of Muslims residing in America, and with everything else we have learned, our government still insists on telling us that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Are we supposed to believe that all Muslims in America differ from the Muslims wreaking havoc all over the world? I know a few ex-Muslims who are eager to share their knowledge with everyone: http://www.apostatesofislam.com/main.htm

http://www.faithfreedom.org/

Perhaps you don’t feel that Muslims pose a threat. After all, they’re polite, they smile at you, and they’re soft-spoken, right?

Qur’an: "Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians as friends, for they are friends with one another." (Surah 5:51)

Were you aware that some Muslims residing inside our borders consistently insist that accommodations be made for them even if their demands disrupt American communities, or American businesses’ production schedules?

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11174

Did you know that several Muslim “Charities” operating inside the U.S. have been shut down by our government for funneling money to terrorist networks?
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/levitt/levitt081403.htm

When their demands are refused, they accuse us of “religious intolerance.” And even though they’ve broken a city ordinance, or other policies, our “leaders” give in.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1255513/posts

Not all Muslims are bad people. Then again, we discover issues like this:

We’re told that a prominent American Muslim was quoted as saying: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m going to do it through education.”

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/

Through education? They’ve been speaking in our schools all over the country, talking to our kids. Is this just a coincidence?

2002: Excelsior Elementary School in Byron, California required seventh-grade students to pretend they're Muslims, wear Islamic clothing, memorize verses from the Qur’an, pray to Allah and even to play "jihad games" in California public schools.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36118

Recently, at Irmo High School, Columbia, SC, a public school teacher, who is Muslim:

• Required the students to create a pamphlet, which would teach people about Islam.

• Told students that the United States is a 'Judeo-Christian-Muslim' nation…according to the beliefs of the founding fathers.

http://www.anti-cair-net.org/press_040_04

"Infidels," is this what you want? Is this what you pay taxes for?

Earlier, I asked you what you see when you look into your future.
Imagine a few of the possibilities in an Islamic State:

• Being forced to renounce your current faith and convert to Islam, or being tortured for refusing.

http://www.acpp.org/uappeals/2004/040518s1.html

• Public flogging if you’re caught drinking alcohol.

http://www.holycrime.com/CrimeFlog9.asp

• Even if you haven’t stolen anything, “religious police” may beat a confession out of you. If they’re successful, say goodbye to your right hand: it’s about to be lopped off with a sword.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000003.php

• Rape victims being hanged in public for criticizing an Islamic Judge.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/002936.php

Even our “Saudi friends” demonstrate the compassionate, tolerant side of Islam:

http://www.persecution.org/Countries/saudi_arabia.html

It’s called Shari’ah law. Isn’t it a marvelous picture? Is this what American Veterans have fought for, what we’ve worked for, or what we elect people to public office for?

Our unwillingness to fall for the “peaceful religion” facade is labeled “Islamophobia.” Here are some facts you won’t see in the mainstream media with regard an “Islamophobia” seminar recently held at the United Nations:

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16340

In truth, if Muslims are really honest and peaceful, there should be no need to ask for our tolerance.

Although not all Muslims are odious, some have openly expressed their desire for global conversion to Islam. Having the mindset that “it’ll never happen here” is very dangerous: if we don’t protect our culture, happen it will. Europe is already having substantial problems with Muslims demanding that Shari’ah laws be implemented there.

There’s a threat living among us. We can stop it, but it’s going to take some hard work to undo the mess that political correctness and open border policies have created. Contacting your school boards, town councils, Mayors, Judges, and State and Federal elected officials. Let them know that you know, and that they can be replaced with people who’ll look out for you — not infiltrators from foreign lands expecting you to change your culture to theirs.

We, the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States)

Our founding fathers obviously possessed more forethought than their modern day successors. Muslims wanting to replace our Constitution with Islamic law should immediately be plucked from our society and shipped off to live in a nation that is already Islamic. With the exception of the Holy Bible and New Testament, the United States Constitution is our most sacred document. We must protect it at all costs, against all assaults. Give anyone who tells you that they’re offended by America or by Christianity directions to the airport!

Always remember: This is your country; let no one take it from you. Cherish your arms, and your right to bear them.

This morning I found this email in my Jihad Watch inbox:

i want u brothrs to continue your holy jihad adainst the coward jews, they will defeat and u will win this battle. Merajuddin From afghanistan,

That's all it said, but that was enough. Of course, Merajuddin is not the first Muslim jihadist to mistake this site for one that is pro-jihad. It's interesting, however, to get a renewed indication that this mindset is alive and well -- even as Merajuddin must jostle for space in my inbox with indignant blinkered Westerners who lecture me for not knowing that jihad is a spiritual struggle within the soul of the believer.

From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:

The Berlin imam, a Turkish citizen who has lived in Germany for some 25 years, will be deported to his native country, the authorities said.

The cleric spawned controversy with remarks during prayers at Berlin's Mevlana mosque in which he admonished his listeners to resist temptations of the flesh.

"You don't want to become like the Germans who revel in eating pork and drinking beer, both iniquitous to good Muslims, and whose women don't even shave under their arms.

"You don't want to be like them and stink both physically in the eyes of man and morally in the eyes of God," he was quoted in news reports as having said....

The cleric initially denied having made the comments. When confronted with tape recordings of his remarks, he later said the remarks had been taken out of context and apologised for any misunderstanding.

That last paragraph could be applied verbatim to virtually any story in the last five years involving a Muslim found to have said something that arouses infidel indignation.

From Amnesty International via the Persian Journal, with thanks to Anthony:

An Iranian woman charged with adultery faces death by stoning in the next five days after her death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court last month. Her unnamed co-defendant is at risk of imminent execution by hanging. Amnesty International members are now writing urgent appeals to the Iranian authorities, calling for the execution to be stopped.

According to reports, Hajieh Esmailvand was sentenced to five years imprisonment, to be followed by execution by stoning, for adultery with an unnamed man who at the time was a 17 year old minor. Although the exact date of her arrest and trial are not known, it is reported that she has been imprisoned in the town of Jolfa, in the north west of Iran, since January 2000.

The Iranian Penal Code is very specific about the manner of execution and types of stones which should be used. Article 102 states that men will be buried up to their waists and women up to their breasts for the purpose of execution by stoning. Article 104 states, with reference to the penalty for adultery, that the stones used should “not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones”.

All death sentences in Iran must be upheld by the Supreme Court before they can be carried out. In November 2004, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against Hajieh Esmailvand but changed the lower court's verdict from ‘death by hanging’ to ‘death by stoning’. Reports suggest that the Supreme Court has ordered that the remainder of Hajieh’s five year prison sentence be annulled so that the stoning sentence can be carried out before 21 December.

Amnesty International UK Media Director Mike Blakemore said:

"This is an urgent case. Hejieh could be killed in the next five days if we do not act quickly. Our members here in the UK are writing to the Iranian authorities, imploring them to stop this brutal execution. Campaigners in Iran are also taking action. But we need more people to stand up and be counted, to tell the Iranian authorities that this is not acceptable....

The news follows reports of a 19-year old girl, "Leyla M", who has a mental age of eight, reportedly facing imminent execution for "morality-related" offences in Iran after being forced into prostitution by her mother as a child. According to a Tehran newspaper report of 28 November, she was sentenced to death by a court in the central Iranian city of Arak and the sentence has now been passed to the Supreme Court for confirmation.

Leyla M was reportedly sentenced to death on charges of "acts contrary to chastity" by controlling a brothel, having intercourse with blood relatives and giving birth to an illegitimate child. She is to be flogged before she is executed. She had apparently “confessed” to the charges.

Leyla was forced into prostitution by her mother when she was eight years old, according to the 28 November report, and was raped repeatedly thereafter. She gave birth to her first child when she was nine, and was sentenced to 100 lashes for prostitution at around the same time. At the age of 12, her family sold her to an Afghan man to become his “temporary wife”.

His mother became her new pimp, “selling her body without her consent”. At the age of 14 she became pregnant again, and received a further 100 lashes, after which she was moved to a maternity ward to give birth to twins. After this "temporary marriage", her family sold her again, to a 55-year-old man, married with two children, who had Leyla’s customers come to his house....

For more information visit: www.amnesty.org.uk/svaw....

For details of how to help stop the executions of Hajieh and Leyla M, please go to: www.amnesty.org.uk/action/

Let's see. They were taking an innocent three-month-long hiking trip through Pakistan, and got caught in a peaceful shootout with Pakistani police. But they aren't involved in terrorism or anything. From The Star of South Africa, with thanks to PJS:

Two Gauteng hikers caught in a shoot-out with Pakistani anti-terrorist police and then detained as suspected associates of an al-Qaeda bomb maker flew home this week.

Upon arrival in South Africa they were again taken into custody. After questioning by South African law enforcement and intelligence agencies, they were released on Wednesday into the care of their grateful families. The authorities made public the men's release only on Friday night.

Ismail's brother, Firhad, told a local radio station: "The family is overjoyed that Zubair is back with us. We thank Almighty Allah for bringing him safely back to us.

"We would like to thank the South African authorities for whatever help they were prepared to assist us with [that] eventually got him back to us."

Na'eem Jeenah, president of the Muslim Youth Movement, said on Friday night: "We are pleased that they have been returned to South Africa. We certainly would not have wanted them to be held in Pakistan or threatened to be sent to America.

"They would not have received a just hearing there."...

Ganchi resigned from a private health-care group on July 10, intending to take a three-month hiking tour through Pakistan with a friend, Zubair Ismail, 20, a medressa student from Laudium, Pretoria. Ganchi was due to take up a specialist post in South Africa on October 1....

On July 10 Ganchi and Ismail flew to Pakistan on a regular SAA flight going via Dubai. They were booked to return on September 24, but Ganchi's wife said she became worried "because for some reason his cellphone's roaming was not working. He usually contacted me every two to three days."

The last time she heard from Ganchi was on July 16 when he called her from somewhere "a little north of Lahore." Then, silence. She filed a missing person's report with the Department of Foreign Affairs.

On July 25 she was shocked to read in the local press that two men identified as South Africans "Feroze" (sic) and "Zubair Ismail" had been arrested along with four other adults following an intense eight-hour gunbattle in the city of Gujrat, one of several anti-terrorist sweeps conducted in Pakistan this year.

The police said they seized arms, explosives, laptop computers and world maps at the house, which was extensively damaged in the battle.

Meanwhile, Pakistan claimed in local newspapers that the arrested men were suspected members of an al-Qaeda "logistics and communications" cell operating from the rented house in Gujrat. Islamabad also claimed the "cell" was linked to an assassination attempt on a Pakistani military officer in Lahore earlier this year.

Other newspapers claimed the detainees were "suspected al-Qaeda militants" trained in Afghanistan and Iran who had been working secretly in Pakistan for the past three years - not the case with Ganchi and Ismail.

On July 29 came the revelation that one detainee was believed to be on the US's list of most wanted terrorists. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, of Tanzania was hunted around the globe over the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that left more than 200 people dead. Ghailani had a bounty of $25-million on his head.

Ganchi, Ismail and the other four adults were interrogated at a safe-house in Gujrat by a "joint interrogation team" representing all of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Pakistan has been under intense pressure from the US to prove it is an ally in the "war on terror" and not providing a haven for al-Qaeda cells....

An AFP news agency report on August 3 claimed that Ganchi and Ismail told their interrogators they were planning to carry out attacks on Johannesburg's main tourist attractions.

But that report - and a claim in May by Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi that eight foreigners, seven of them later deported, were arrested for planning to bomb the British QE2 luxury liner when she docked in South Africa - were rejected by the Intelligence Ministry.

On Friday night Inspector Dennis Adriao, spokesperson for the National Police Commissioner, said Ganchi and Ismail "are free men and they are not being detained".

Ah. Now it all comes clear. The EU is anxious to get Turkey in because Turkey's military would make the EU a world-class military power. This coalesces exactly with Bat Ye'or's finding -- explained in the soon-to-be-published Eurabia -- that the European Commission decades ago conceived of its cooperation with the Arab League as a means to become a global counterweight to the United States.

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Age, with thanks to JE:

Brussels leaders name a date for final talks on admitting the European Union's first Muslim member.

Advocates of the European Union as a fully fledged superpower have predicted that the addition of Turkey's military would make it a true global player.

Ankara's forces are greater than those of France and Britain combined, with 514,000 men under arms and 380,000 in reserve, plus a robust air force with American fighters.

A NATO official described the forces as "very experienced and well-trained", after years of battles against Kurdish guerillas.

From the IHT, with thanks to Anthony:

MOSCOW Russia's Parliament gave initial support Friday to a new anti-terrorism bill seen by some deputies as undermining people's rights, but the government immediately reacted by saying it should be toned down.

The bill, initiated by parliamentary allies of President Vladimir Putin, was proposed in the wake of the Beslan school siege in September in which more than 330 hostages were killed - half of them children - after a Chechen rebel attack.

The bill would give Russian authorities the right to impose a 60-day security clampdown in any part of the country solely on suspicion that a terror attack was being planned. The draft would allow the imposition of "a state of terrorist danger" if authorities receive information - even unconfirmed - that suggests an attack is being planned.

During that period, even if no attack takes place, the authorities could introduce emergency measures, including banning public demonstrations, tapping telephones, conducting spot street checks and restricting movements of people and traffic.

The bill easily passed a first reading in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament.

But in documents distributed to Duma deputies, the government said some restrictions contradicted the Constitution, and it called on the Duma to amend the bill before a second reading.

Charles Moore replies to the critics of his earlier piece in The Telegraph, with thanks to JS:

The reaction to my own article shows the problem. The Muslim Association of Britain (not to be confused with the MCB) said that what I had written was "repulsive", composed out of an "arrogance borne by only the most zealous of racists". Because of my "filth and drivel", I should be dismissed from The Daily Telegraph, and the paper should apologise. Just in case the point was missed, the MAB reminded the paper of the lessons of the Salman Rushdie affair.

It also referred readers to a website, IslamOnline.net, which globalises the denunciation of my column with a Cairo dateline and offers a link to a discussion of what should happen to non-Muslims who insult the Prophet ("In Islam, it is well known that the punishment for the one who insults the Prophet is to be killed… However, we Muslims are advised to be forgiving and pardoning.")

Who are the Muslim Association of Britain? I've been looking them up. They have close links to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, one of whose leaders, Qutb, advocated takfir, the branding of all Muslims as infidels unless they conform to sharia. Some MAB activists support Hamas and its policy of suicide bombing.

One of its senior chaps, Azzam Tamimi, has boasted of this "human bomb" against the Israelis: "We love death, they love life." The IslamOnline website is the mouthpiece of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. It debates, among other things, whether the best treatment for homosexuals is 100 lashes or chucking them over a cliff, and Qaradawi rejects interfaith dialogue in favour of "the language of the sword and force". The Taqwa Bank, of which he is a shareholder, has had its assets seized by the US Treasury because of its suspected terrorist links.

On the same programme on which Miss Mactaggart appeared (Radio 4's Today), a spokesman for the MAB popped up to support the religious hatred law and said that people should not be allowed to shout things like "Bin Laden" at Muslims in the street. (By the way, why does he see that, from his point of view, as an insult?)

So here we have a body with activists who support the killing of Israeli Jews, telling people in Britain that they must stop displaying religious intolerance - all of this listened to respectfully by the BBC. I am trying to avoid the word "Orwellian", but I can't.

Read it all.

Maybe if the American Muslim advocacy groups and their allies keep telling us this is against Islam long enough, it will drown out news like this. From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked a car in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Friday, killing three foreigners and their Iraqi driver before cutting off the head of one of the victims in a bloody daylight massacre....

A photographer for Reuters saw four bodies lying on the street close to the Mosul blaze, three of them apparently foreigners.

Witnesses said one of the men appeared to be Turkish and two others looked European. One of them had been beheaded.

A fourth person, apparently an Arab, could be seen lying near the car, his body partly consumed by flames.

Witnesses said one of the foreign men, two of whom looked to be in their 20s and 30s and were dressed in jeans and windbreaker tops, was briefly taken hostage by the insurgents.

When he tried to flee they decapitated him, leaving the head lying in a pool of blood near his body on the street.

It sounds terrible: restricting their civil liberties. Until you read into the story and find that they're talking about registration, profiling, and monitoring of mosques and Islamic organizations. Horrors! Registration may inconvenience some people, but after all, a lot of people were inconvenienced on 9/11; as with all these measures, if one is not doing anything seditious, one is unlikely to have anything to fear. Profiling? Unless you think our law enforcement tax dollars are well spent making sure that the FBI investigates an equal number of Methodist grandmothers and Muslim imams for terrorist ties, it's just common sense. And monitoring mosques? This is something the American Muslim community should welcome, and aid in -- if they really accept and value the free society in which they live. From AP, with thanks to JJP Mackie:

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.

"It's sad news. It's disturbing news. But it's not unpredictable," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society. "The nation is at war, even if it's not a traditional war. We just have to remain vigilant and continue to interface."

The survey found 44 percent favored at least some restrictions on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. Forty-eight percent said liberties should not be restricted in any way.

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising....

James Shanahan, an associate professor of communications who helped organize the survey, said the results indicate "the need for continued dialogue about issues of civil liberties" in a time of war.

While researchers said they were not surprised by the overall level of support for curtailing civil liberties, they were startled by the correlation with religion and exposure to television news.

Mark Durie, who was deeply involved in the Australia religious vilification case, has sent me this message about an element of the judge's decision I noted below: that one of the pastors is supposed to have called Muslims "demons." Surprise! He didn't say that:

The finding is hard to make sense of in places, e.g. Scot at one point in the seminar that in the Qur'an there were jinn (spirit beings) which became Muslims in response to the message of Islam. However, in his summary the judge appears to interpret this as Scot saying that Muslims are demons. So "Some demons are Muslims" becomes "Muslims are demons"! Perhaps I have missed something here! The Judge's phrase that Scot said "Muslims are demons" has now gone into the media reports.

The reasons for the findings are not yet available - hopefully next week. Penalties will be handed down in January some time.
Finding of court costs against the two Daniels could involve hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Durie has also kindly sent along this pdf containing a summary of the finding.

Here is a press release about the terrible decision against the Christian pastors in Australia, from the Tears of the Oppressed group (thanks to Mark Durie):

Sex and politics are fine, but don’t talk about religion!

The human rights of average Australians are threatened as two Christian pastors are pronounced “guilty” under the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001.

The announcement of the guilty verdict in the test case, Islamic Council of Victoria vs Catch the Fire Ministries, indicates that it is no longer possible to discuss religious ideas in a public context without fear of prosecution in Victoria. Consequently two basic human rights – the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom of religion – have been infringed.

“The message to the Australian public is this: ‘Sex and politics are fine… but don’t talk about religion!’ ” says Tears of the Oppressed’s President, Senator Grant Chapman.

“In practice, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 has allowed one religious group to take another religious group to court over a difference in religious opinion.

“However, under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – to which Australia is a signatory –

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

“The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act interferes with the right to express religious opinions.

“The guilty verdict in this case indicates the freedom of expression – and consequently the freedom of religion - of the average Australian has been compromised.

“The religious ideas and interpretations raised during the court hearing have been in the public domain for years.

“They have been documented in books, the internet, discussed in the academic world, and in churches and mosques since time immemorial.

“Since religions make claims to truth and morality, they should be subject to scrutiny and challenge,” Senator Chapman said.

“Moreover, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 18

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others, and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

“It is the role of teachers in every religion to demonstrate why their faith is worthy of adoption, and this may involve showing why – in their opinion – other religions may be less truthful, or even in error.

“Neither should the right to critically examine a faith be restricted to adherents of those faiths.

“Critical examination of other faiths is integral to the process of adopting the faith of one’s choice.

“Critical examination of a belief system is therefore a religious activity.

“The Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001, however, limits critical examination by exposing Victorians who make critical or negative comments about a religion to accusations of vilification.

“In the past, Australians have always been free to make critical or negative comments about religion.

“That’s part of what it means to have a religiously free society.

“Until now, we have been able to belong to a religious faith, or not belong to a religious faith, as we choose.

“Now the Australian public needs to be aware that their human right to freedom of religion and its expression is being whittled away by insidious laws which, under the guise of protecting religious freedom, actually diminish it.

“Mainstream public opinion has deterred other States from proceeding with similar legislation.

“The pressure of public opinion must be brought to bear urgently on the Victorian Government to remove this heinous law from the statute book.”

Background:
Tears of the Oppressed is an interdenominational Christian human rights organization. Its primary focus is religious freedom, particularly religious freedom for minority Christian communities suffering severe religious persecution in other parts of the world.

Contact: For further information, contact Senator Grant Chapman, President of Tears of the Oppressed, on 0408 812 296.

Tears of the Oppressed
PO Box 188
Calwell ACT 2905
Ph. 02 6291 0900
Fax. 02 6291 0900
Email contact: Elizabeth Scott, National Director - escott@tearsoftheoppressed.org

From AP, :

CONCORD, N.H. -- A Pennsylvania congressman who is writing a book about an Iranian plot to conduct an attack on the United States says a terrorist group in that country is planning to attack New Hampshire's Seabrook nuclear plant.

But state and federal officials are playing down the comments from Delaware County Republican Curt Weldon, reported this week in The New York Sun. They say they know of no specific threat against Seabrook.

"There is always that general possibility (of a terrorist attack on the Seabrook reactor)," said Jim Van Dongen, state Emergency Management spokesman, "but we haven't received any information that it's going to happen tomorrow."

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said no particular sites have been threatened.

"As we have said before -- and it continues to be the case -- there has been no credible threat against a specific nuclear power plant," NRC spokeswoman Sue Gagner said. "We are in regular contact with intelligence and other federal officials on such matters."

A message seeking comment was left Friday morning with Weldon's press secretary in Washington.

Weldon, the vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told The Sun that a source with high-level Iranian government contacts had told him a terrorist group in Iran plans to hijack Canadian airliners and crash them into an American reactor.

Update on the firebombing of the Montreal Jewish school. From the Montreal Gazette, with thanks to Michael:

He was an average teenager who hung out at Tim Hortons and worked at Canadian Tire.

But in the wee hours of April 5, Sleiman Elmerhebi left a house party, took six canisters of kerosene and launched them through the windows of a Montreal Jewish school, igniting an inferno that engulfed the library and fanned flames of fear on the eve of Passover.

Elmerhebi left an alarming political tract taped to the door of the United Talmud Torahs school in St. Laurent, claiming the attack was to avenge Israel's assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the terrorist group Hamas.

But a psychiatrist testified yesterday that Elmerhebi committed the internationally deplored hate crime in a bid to appear cool....

The defence is attempting to portray Elmerhebi as a normal kid who made a grave mistake.

But even though a charge of conspiracy that had been under consideration was withdrawn by the Crown yesterday, Jewish leaders were skeptical that this was the impulsive gesture of an immature young man acting independently.

"I definitely do not believe this person acted alone," said Jeffrey Boro, president of the Quebec branch of the Canadian Jewish Congress. "This was an act that was thought out, that was premeditated, that he had time to reflect on.

"I can't see that it was a childish prank," Boro said.

Those suspicions were heightened yesterday when Elmerhebi took the stand.

Quebec Court Judge Jean Sirois questioned him - essentially attempting to find out why he did what he did.

But the long, lanky teen had difficulty explaining his actions, as well as what motivated him to write a tract signed "Sheik Ahmed Yassin Brigades."

"It was a weakness on my part, I don't really have words to describe it," Elmerhebi said. "I think it's just something that came into my head because at that point I was watching a lot of TV."...

Elmerhebi said he is neither politically motivated nor religious, and professes to be somewhat ignorant of events in the Middle East, Surkis pointed out.

Yet the tract left at the school is "a shocking letter," Surkis said.

It contained this chilling message: "Here are the consequences of the crimes of your occupation. Here is the comeuppance of your assassins. ... Today our target was an empty place. Our goal was to sound the alarm without causing death, but this is only the beginning. ... Next time, we'll strike harder."

Breaking news from the TimesOnline, with thanks to CC:

Prime Minister Tony Blair and fellow European leaders have paved the way for Turkey to join the EU as its first Muslim country. A deal on starting formal talks with Ankara emerged on the second day of a fraught summit in Brussels - more than 40 years after Turkey first knocked on Europe's door seeking club membership. Agreement almost slipped away as Turkish Premier Recep Erdogan haggled for better terms for launching talks than those on offer from the EU.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer will appear on these programs tonight and tomorrow:

1. Radio: "The World Tonight" with Rob Breakenridge tonight at 10:00 PM EST. The World Tonight is a Canadian daily talk-radio show focusing on world events and politics. It is broadcast in Calgary, Edmonton and throughout Alberta. You can listen online at the CHQR website.

2. TV: A blurry fast, now-you-see-him-now-you-don't appearance on Fox News tomorrow around 2:15 or 2:30 PM EST, discussing for about three minutes the difficulties Christians are having celebrating Christmas in Islamic lands.

Some fascinating exchanges, including some excellent observations by Rod Dreher, at the Dallas News blog (thanks to R. Solomon), some of which indicate that many Americans, even those who should know better, have no clue what Khomeini was all about, or the significance of the pro-Khomeini conference held recently in Dallas. For chronological accuracy, read from the bottom up:

Re: Rod, get it right Rod, You wrote Jim, in yesterday's board meeting, you suggested that we should try to consider the good side of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his teachings.

Again, I didn't say we should look for the good in the Ayatollah. But is there a Islamic context that views the Khomeini as --- I don't know, a George Washington, for lack of a better example, due to his overthrow of the Shah.

Frankly I don't what most defines Khomeini in the Islamic world, the overthrow of the Shah, fundamental adherence to Allah, the American hostage drama or something else. That's the reason for my question.

posted by jim mitchell @ Dec 16, 3:58 PM

Re: Rod, get it right

Jim: Rod, First put me back in context, before you attack me.

I wasn't "attacking" you. I was asking you to explain your comment. If I didn't understand you correctly, I apologize, but that's why I asked you to explain your point.

Let me make it really clear for you this time. What I asked was whether there is another context --- namely a non-American, perhaps Islamic context, that can be instructive in understanding Khomeini and why muslims might praise him or attend a conference honoring his memory. (Like his overthrow of the Shah, who wasn't exactly a human rights advocate, perhaps.)

I consider Khomeini evil, and the American hostage crisis is prime evidence for me. But parts of the Arab world would call George Bush evil. For me to mention that perspective doesn't mean I believe or endorse it, think Bush is evil or Khomeini harmless.

I don't know the answer to the question I posed. That's why it's a question.

This is helpful to me in understanding what you were getting at, and I don't think I accused you of thinking Khomeini was good, or harmless. I thought you were saying that to some Muslims, Khomeini is a positive figure for whatever reason, and we need to try to understand why that is. That can be a useful exercise, but there is always the danger inherent in that French proverb, "To understand all is to forgive all." I cannot imagine any context in which the Ayatollah Khomeini is a figure worth paying tribute to. Perhaps in the year he overthrew the shah, or the year or so after that. But given what he turned Iran into, and the incredible evil he has spread in the world, there is absolutely no sense in which going to a pro-Khomeini "tribute" conference can be condoned. If they call him good, then they are calling evil good.

Hitler, after all, ended inflation in Germany, and built the Autobahns. It is important for a student of history to understand why he appealed to ordinary Germans. It would be inappropriate, it seems to me, for editorial writers to stop to consider why people in this country who went to a Hitler tribute conference might have had good reasons, from their own perspective, for doing so. We would condemn it outright. I see little difference between Khomeini and Hitler, except Hitler killed a lot more people. We shall see what the contemporary followers of Khomeinism in power in Tehran do once they get the atomic bomb.

posted by Rod Dreher @ Dec 16, 3:35 PM

Rod, Get it right first

Rod, First put me back in context, before you attack me.

I did not say consider the good side of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his teachings. Maybe that's what you wanted to hear, but that's not what I said.

Let me make it really clear for you this time. What I asked was whether there is another context --- namely a non-American, perhaps Islamic context, that can be instructive in understanding Khomeini and why muslims might praise him or attend a conference honoring his memory. (Like his overthrow of the Shah, who wasn't exactly a human rights advocate, perhaps.)

I consider Khomeini evil, and the American hostage crisis is prime evidence for me. But parts of the Arab world would call George Bush evil. For me to mention that perspective doesn't mean I believe or endorse it, think Bush is evil or Khomeini harmless.

I don't know the answer to the question I posed. That's why it's a question.

posted by jim mitchell @ Dec 16, 3:18 PM

Rod and Muslims

Rod, thanks for the post explaining your conviction on the subject of radical Islam. Odd, I sit 25 feet from you and I didn't know this.

Beating the drum on the subject keeps us awake to a phenomenon many of us don't deal with because of its complexity and unpleasantness.

I can't think of another separatist group in modern U.S. history with a stated goal of destroying the larger society -- especially when you factor in seemingly limitless support from around the world.

Coming to grips with this is like dealing with cancer. You want to deny it and ignore it. It's mysterious and largely unseen. But it won't go away by itself.

posted by Rodger Jones @ Dec 16, 11:32 AM

Harun Yahya's idea of love

Harun Yahya is the pen name of a prolific Muslim author who wrote a book called "Only Love Can Defeat Terrorism." Yet as Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org points out, he is also the author of this disturbing Islamic catechism for kids, which is linked to off the MOMIN website in Irving (the host of the pro-Khomeini conference). Here's the part of Yahya's teaching to children that worries me:

Having even a little bit of love towards the unbelievers would never be a proper attitude for a believer. Believers are seriously warned in the Qur'an as below verse expresses:

"O ye who believe! Take not my enemies and yours as friends (or protectors),- offering them (your) love, even though they have rejected the Truth that has come to you, and have (on the contrary) driven out the Prophet and yourselves (from your homes), (simply) because ye believe in Allah your Lord! If ye have come out to strive in My Way and to seek My Good Pleasure, (take them not as friends), holding secret converse of love (and friendship) with them: for I know full well all that ye conceal and all that ye reveal. And any of you that does this has strayed from the Straight Path."
(AL-MUMTAHINA 1)

So which is it? How can "love" defeat terrorism if Muslims, according to Harun Yahya, quoting the Koran, are not supposed to have "even a little bit of love" towards non-Muslims? Somebody please clear this up for me.

posted by Rod Dreher @ Dec 16, 11:20 AM

The good side of Khomeini

Jim, in yesterday's board meeting, you suggested that we should try to consider the good side of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his teachings. I've heard that from another DMN writer since we talked, and I'm struggling to understand this point. I think that what y'all are getting at is that there is conceivably some positive aspect to Khomeini's vision, and that that might be what attracted local Muslims to the "tribute" this past weekend. To me, though, that's like saying, "Well, Hitler did build the Autobahn, so let's get together to praise him for advances in transportation technology."

I'd appreciate it if you could explain what you meant. Thanks.

posted by Rod Dreher @ Dec 16, 9:55 AM

Re: Muslims and 9/11

(Before anybody accuses me of trying to pull emotional rank on anybody else in this debate, I want to make clear that I'm not trying to claim that having been present for 9/11 and its aftermath gives my arguments more legitimacy. If I'm wrong on facts or logic, then that's true no matter where I happened to be on that day. I was just trying to explain to blog readers who might not know this about me why I'm passionate on the subject of Islamic extremism.)

posted by Rod Dreher @ Dec 16, 9:52 AM

Re: Muslims

I've thought about this overnight, and it seems to me that for the benefit of readers, I should explain why this issue means so much to me personally. It certainly has nothing to do with Islam per se; I moved to Dallas from a New York neighborhood that had a fair-size population of Muslims. I never had any problem with them, and in fact had gotten to be friends with some Muslim merchants, who were very kind to me and my family. If I still lived there, I'd consider them friends to this day.

It's not Islam itself, but radical Islam that concerns me. I stood on the Brooklyn Bridge and watched thousands of people die in a matter of seconds, thanks to radical Islam. Among those who died were seven or eight firefighters from our local firehouse -- men who used to let my little boy climb into their firetruck and play around. Eight people from my church died that morning, too. We had a memorial service on 9/12 at the parish; there were many people in the parish who had grown up in Beirut during the civil war, and they pointed out to me that the sweet smell lingering in the air was the aroma of roasting human flesh. I went into a church in another part of Brooklyn the next day (the smoke was still coming over the harbor into our neighborhood), and saw it full of New Yorkers praying, while the dome of the church inside was filled with that sweet smoke. They were breathing in the remains of human beings while they wept and prayed. All because of radical Islam.

I went to several firefighters' funerals that autumn. I saw wives and children, their hearts ripped out, mourning their husbands and fathers. All over New York there were "missing" posters put up by desperate people who hoped against all odds that their loved ones had survived. But almost no one survived. All because of radical Islam.

About a mile from my neighborhood in Brooklyn sits the al-Farooq mosque. It was once an al-Qaeda recruitment and fundraising center. It is still a center of Islamic radicalism. I've shopped in the bookstores around the mosque. I have on my desk at work a book I bought there, advising Muslims that it is their solemn duty before God to have no love for Christians, Jews and other infidels. Maybe if we had all paid closer attention to this sort of ideological cancer spreading among us, and stood up to it in every possible way, 9/11 might not have happened. We'll never know. But because of what I lived through and saw with my own eyes, I have this deep determination not to be silent when I see Islamic radicalism at work. Like Tony Blair said, if the 9/11 hijackers could have killed 30,000 of us, they would have.

It is not enough to hold disapproving opinions of Islamic extremism. You have to be prepared to do something about it. A long face is not a moral disinfectant.

posted by Rod Dreher @ Dec 16, 7:25 AM

In Islam Unveiled and elsewhere I point out that Islamic reformers will always face the immense difficulty of having their loyalty as Muslims questioned by those who take the Qur'an's directives to wage war at face value. Here is an example of just that.

I have never been overly impressed with the moderation of the self-professed moderate Muslims at the website known as Muslim Wakeup, particularly since Omid Safi -- a professor who apparently dismisses any rational discussion of the roots of Islamic terror as "Islamophobia" -- is held up there as an authority.

However, Muslim Wakeup now has other troubles: the site has been hacked by jihadists who take a dim view of the Islamic bona fides of these "progressives." Here is their message, which for the moment has taken over the main page of Muslim Wakeup. It is directed at the staff of Muslim Wakeup, and is headed "Murtad Wakeup" -- that is, Apostate Wakeup. Underneath that it says: "Naive enough to believe we are Muslims?" -- "we," in this case, clearly being the "progressives" of Muslim Wakeup. Then it continues:

we are sorry....MWU is recieving a PENALTY from the Islamic 0xChallenge Brigades!!

Bismallah Ar Rahman Ar-aheem

due to the continues violation by Muslim Wake Up website and its vile attack on Islam for a long period of time we at the Islamic 0xChallenge Brigades decided to deliever a powerful message to the people behind this website and so we started with an attack on MWU forum , all praise be to Allah the attack was successful but unfortunally the people running this website didn't understand our message and continued their attack on Islam and so we decided to deliever yet more powerful message and here we are!!

IT'S YOUR FINAL WARNING, MWU CREW!!

• No more slandering of the Mujahdeen
• No more peverts allowed to speak about Islam like Mohja Kahf and her warm fluid fantasies
• No more using our beloved prophet name in one of your dirty pornographic stories
• No more slandering of the respected scholars of Islam
• No more anti hijab articles

>> Optional

• remove the pic of the Egyptian girl with half bare breasts from your "Pornogrphy and the Ummah" section
• ask mohja Kahf to get a life
• stop being a minbar [pulpit] for hypocrites and learn the real Islam!
• move "hug a jew" to "sex and the Ummah" section......go figure why!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Allahu Akbar and All praise be to Allah

Islamic 0xChallenge Brigades

December 13, 2004

NOTE: NOTHING WAS DELETED FROM THE SERVER EXCEPT FOR THE RIDICULOUS SEX SECTION WHICH WAS INSULTING TO ISLAM IF THERE IS SOMETHING EVIL BEING DONE THEN STOP IT BY ALL MEANS AND WE HAVE DONE THIS BY HACKING THIS SITE AND STOPPING YOU FROM SPREADING THE FITNA [unrest] AND EVIL.

I don't know anything about this alleged "pornography" at Muslim Wakeup, but I do think the hacker's calls to the "progressives" to "learn the real Islam" and stop "slandering" the mujahedin are extremely telling.

From AFP, with thanks to Anthony:

PARIS (AFP) - A French court sentenced 10 people to prison terms of up to 10 years for taking part in a conspiracy to blow up a Christmas market in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Mohamed Bensakhria and Slimane Khalfaoui, who were said to be the group's leaders, were given 10 years, and Mohamed Yacine Aknouche was given eight. Rabah Kadri, who is in detention in Britain, was given six years and was banned from entering French territory.

They and the others, who received shorter terms, were all found guilty of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."

The men provided logistical support for a group of Islamists based in the German city of Frankfurt, who were arrested in possession of plans to blow up the Strasbourg market in December 2000....

The German court was shown a videotape made of the market, with a voiceover by one of the men convicted saying that the passers-by were the "enemies of God" and would burn in hell.

This is extraordinarily bad news: the two Christian pastors from Catch the Fire Ministries on trial in Australia under its new religious vilification laws have been found guilty -- essentially for telling the truth about Islam. From The Australian, with thanks to all who sent in stories about this:

In a decision handed down today in a key test of Victoria's three-year-old racial and religious vilification laws, Judge Michael Higgins found in favour of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which took the action against Catch The Fire.

Judge Higgins found that Catch the Fire and Pastor Scot had breached section eight of the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act.

Also found in breach was church leader Pastor Nalliah, who was an unsuccessful senate candidate for the Family First party in this year's federal election.

Judge Higgins will decide on penalties, which could include orders for an apology or damages, early next year.

Judge Higgins said the seminar run by the ministry, a newsletter on its website, and a website article written by an author identified as Richard all breached the Act.

In a summary of reasons for his decision, Judge Higgins said Pastor Scot had throughout the seminar made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct.

"It was done, not in the context of a serious discussion of Muslims' religious beliefs," Judge Higgins said.

"It was presented in a way which is essentially hostile, demeaning and derogatory of all Muslim people, their God, Allah, the prophet Mohammed and in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices."

Judge Higgins said that, during the seminar, Pastor Scot had claimed that the Koran promoted violence, killing and looting and that Muslims were liars and demons.

Pastor Scot also had said Muslims had a plan to overrun western democracy by violence and terror and wanted to turn Australia into an Islamic nation, and he exaggerated Muslim population numbers in Australia.

"I find that Pastor Scot's conduct was not engaged in reasonably and in good faith for any genuine religious purpose or any purpose that is in the public interest," he said.

Judge Higgins evidently was unmoved by direct evidence from the Qur'an promoting violence and killing (see 9:5, 9:29, 2:191, etc.). As for the idea that "Muslims were liars and demons," that is extreme and inaccurate, and I don't know what the pastors really said, but there is an Islamic doctrine of religious deception (taqiyya or kitman), based on Qur'an 3:28 and 16:106. This doesn't make all Muslims liars, much less demons, but it certainly should make one unsurprised when discovering a Muslim lying.

Yasser Soliman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said it had been important to make a stand against vilification of Muslims in the community.

"We also had the support of the Catholic Church, the interfaith community and the Uniting Church and the Jewish community" Mr Soliman said.

"Because it was very important that we all stood together against vilification and understand that vilification is a tool used by extremists, and we must always condemn extremism and vilification.

"That was important, because left unaddressed, it was limiting the (Muslim) community's ability to be seen as average Australians.

"People were being demonised, (being denied) the ability to get jobs, to be friends, to be safe.

"We had to act upon it and felt it was important to have it determined by law."

Certainly no one should be demonized, and innocent people should not be made to feel unsafe. But if it is against the law to say that a book that directs believers to kill or subjugate unbelievers is promoting violence, the line is being drawn improperly here. It is chilling any reasonable discussion of the nature of Islam, the connection of Islam to terrorism, and the significance of large and growing Muslim minorities (of which untold numbers are certain to be attached to the Sharia, and hoping one day to implement it) for the continued survival of Western pluralistic societies.

Finally, Ali Dashti has sent in a helpful collection of links about the global assault on free speech:

This assault on Australian freedom has been going on for some time:

An outrageous attempt to muzzle the Australian press

First of all, I would like to remind everybody that the killing of people for blasphemy, criticizing Muhammad and Islam, is a part of the Sunna, Muhammad's personal example, and as such a part of Islam, despite what PeeCee media may claim. Non-Muslims such as the poetess Asma bint Marwan were murdered by Muhammad's thugs for doing nothing else than daring to criticize his teachings. Read more about it here:

List of people killed for opposing Muhammad

This is the immediate and direct Islamic cause why Theo van Gogh was murdered, and why Ayaan Hirsi Ali is fearing for her life:

Muslims demand suppression of movie-production 'Submission II' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There is right now a coordinated, global Islamic attack on Western freedom of speech, designed to intimidate us into submission just like the early Muslims and Muhammad himself did with their opponents. As an example, I want to mention a conference in Birmingham in August, in which more than 20,000 Muslims from many countries participated. Some called for the UN to declare defamation of Muhammad an international crime.

It seems as if the UN has shown some willingness to listen to this:
UN Forum Explores Ways To Fight 'Islamophobia.'

This direct attack on our freedom and democracy is happening at the same time, from the UK to Denmark and from Belgium to the USA. It needs to be fought with all our strength, or democracy itself will be lost:

UK: Is it only Mr Bean who resists this new religious intolerance?

British Muslim leader comes out for censorship

UK: Will Cummins fired for articles on Islam

Norway: Muslim activists want stricter blasphemy law

Denmark: Moderate Muslims afraid to speak out

Can It Happen Here? Sweden’s "Hate Speech" Laws Hateful—And Unequally Enforced

French priest fined for "anti-Muslim" comments

Belgian politician critical of radical Muslims goes into hiding after death threats

ACAIR Threatened With Lawsuit by CAIR

CAIR demands apology from Paul Harvey

CAIR Calls on Wiesenthal Center to Repudiate "Islamophobia"

Scholar researches origins of the Qur'an, fears for his life

Ali Dashti has sent in an interesting analysis of that great statesman Recep Tayyip Erdogan's recent threats regarding Turkey's desire to join the EU:

Is Erdogan saying, "Admit Turkey to EU -- or else"?

Erdogan is just keeping with a very common view of Jihad, which states that not only can Jihad be started against those who attack Islam; it can be waged against those who place "obstacles" in the way and prevent the spread of Islam. He's just being the good Muslim he is. If the EU should in the end block Turkey from joining, it would place obstacles in the way for the spread of Islam in Europe, and by many Muslims this will be regarded as a declaration of war.

Basically, absolutely any steps we take to prevent the Islamization of our lands and retain our freedom will be seen as an "attack" on Islam.

It is a consensus from the scholars of Islam that Jihad is, “fighting the kuffar to remove the obstacles in the way of making Allah’s (Subhanahu Wa Ta’aala) word the highest”, note here that there are two distinct points, the action is “Fighting the kuffar to remove the obstacles”, the reason “making Allah’s (Subhanahu Wa Ta’aala) word the highest”.

And from the Pakistan Times:

The Islamic state reserves the right to use military force against foreign states that engage in persecuting Muslims or, preventing the spread of Islam within their lands.

And from the South African imam Ebrahim Desai:

Thus what is meant by the passage in Tafsir Uthmani, is that if a country doesn't allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants in a suitable manner or creates hindrances to this, then the Muslim ruler would be justifying in waging Jihad against this country, so that the message of Islam can reach its inhabitants, thus saving them from the Fire of Jahannum. If the Kuffaar allow us to spread Islam peacefully, then we would not wage Jihad against them.

And from the Qur'an (in three translations, all made by Muslims):

005.033 YUSUFALI: The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter;

PICKTHAL: The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom;

SHAKIR: The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement,

And from a noted commentary on the Qur'an:

`Wage war' mentioned here means, oppose and contradict, and it includes disbelief, blocking roads and spreading fear in the fairways.

Islamic teachers? But...didn't they know Islam is a religion of peace? From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai authorities said Thursday they have arrested four Islamic teachers accusing of masterminding "terrorism" in the kingdom's violence-racked south.

The four, detained in sweeps Tuesday and Wednesday in the south, were charged with treason and terrorism which carry the death penalty, the Southern Border Provinces Peace-Building Command said.

Its head General Sirichai Tanyasiri told AFP the four, all of whom taught at private Islamic schools in Yala province, would be flown to Bangkok Friday to appear before a criminal court.

"These suspects are key mastermind figures, especially Waeyuso Waedoramae who ordered the theft of government firearms and the attacking of government officials as well as innocent civilians," the command said in a statement from Yala.

From icBirmingham, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Police officers from South Yorkshire and Merseyside were gathering at Birmingham Central Mosque to share ideas about the best way of strengthening ties with Muslim communities.

West Midlands Police said visiting officers would meet leaders of the Mosque in Highgate to learn about work undertaken locally to forge links with its members.

The officers would also sit in on morning prayers.

PC Anthony Fisher, based at Digbeth police station, said he hoped the visit would highlight the benefits of good communication.

He said: "Our relationship with the Mosque started through our policing of traffic and parking in the area during the busy Friday morning prayers but has developed a great deal since.

"Officers have been liaising with the Mosque for about 18 months which has helped us to form a link. Someone is now continually in touch with the Mosque."

He added: "We're hoping to send a positive message to other police forces across the country, showing that communication with Asian or other ethnic minority communities is beneficial for both parties."

The threat in Indonesia was serious. From AFP, with thanks to Melmere:

Indonesian police said they had found two separate collections of bombs as they imposed a major alert following foreign warnings of an impending terrorist strike.

The discovery came as police were being deployed across Indonesia in a huge security operation after Australia said terrorists may be plotting to strike in the run up to Christmas, specifically naming the Hilton hotel chain.

Britain and the United States have also warned that their citizens in Indonesia over Christmas and the New Year faced a "heightened risk" of attack.

New Zealand has cautioned against non-essential travel to the country.

National police chief Da'i Bachtiar told reporters that nine tubes of explosives were found on a bus in West Java, a heavily-populated area thought to be a major recruiting ground for Islamic extremists.

From Reuters, with thanks to all those who sent this in:

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Unknown perpetrators have dressed Denmark's best-known tourist attraction, the "Little Mermaid" statue, in a traditional Muslim robe in a protest over possible Turkish EU membership.

"Turkey in the EU?" read a sign hung around the statue, covered from head to foot in the black "burka" worn by many devout Muslim women, Danish broadcaster DR News reported on Thursday....

In Denmark, 49 percent are against opening talks with the mainly Muslim state, according to a Gallup opinion poll.

The bronze statue of a naked mermaid sitting on a rock on the seafront in downtown Copenhagen is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale.

From AFP, , who remarks cogently, "Not that we believe anything Qaddafi says."

ROME, Dec 16 (AFP) - Turkey will be an Islamic "Trojan horse" inside the European Union if it is allowed to join the bloc, to the advantage of Al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden and other extremists, Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi said in an interview with Italian radio reported Thursday.

"The Islamic world, including Islamic extremists up to bin Laden, is rejoicing at Turkey's entry. It is their Trojan horse," Kadhafi was quoted as saying by the daily La Repubblica in extracts from the RAI interview published before its broadcast.

Kadhafi said he had not opposed Turkey's EU membership but warned of its possible consequences.

"I say only that there will be consequences from the entry of this Trojan horse," he added, without elaborating.

Too much Cola Turka, Chevy?

The Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist) reports that has-been comic Chevy Chase said of President Bush: "This guy started a jihad."

Whatever one may think of the President, it would seem that Chevy has forgotten about 9/11. And the attack on the USS Cole. And the destruction of the Marine barracks in Beirut. And the Khomeini regime and the hostage crisis. And thousands of other incidents, stretching back in time to when Muhammad led the first Muslims in the first jihad. All Bush's fault, I guess. All of them.

This isn't really about Bush at all. It's about the fundamental myopia shared by all too many analysts: that we have caused all this somehow, and if we adjust our policies in some way, it will all go away. Whatever pretexts those analyses fasten upon, that's all they are: pretexts. Whatever one points to as having caused a jihad is sure to have been preceded by another jihad, all the way back to Muhammad -- thus giving the analysis the lie. Yet for all their vaunted multiculturalism, most Western analysts don't seem to be able to cast the noble Third World in anything but a reactive victim mode. The idea that Muslims might be fighting for reasons of their own, that ultimately have little or nothing to do with George Bush or the other pretexts of today, never seems to occur to them.

No consideration of the possibility that DHS might really have something on Yusuf Cat Stevens Islam and Tariq Ramadan. No consideration of all the many questions surrounding CAIR, most notably why several CAIR officials have been arrested on various terror-related charges. From OfficialWire, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (OfficialWire) -- 12/15/04 -- On Monday, December 20, a coalition of community, interfaith and civil rights organizations will host an emergency town hall meeting to discuss what they say is the unfair targeting of Muslims by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Invited speakers will include representatives of DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), FBI, and Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as local attorneys and family members of immigration detainees. Hundreds of community members are expected to attend.

Over the last few months, several Muslim religious leaders in California have been detained on minor immigration infractions and have been denied bail. Recent cases include the detentions of Imam Wagdy Ghoneim (Islamic Institute of Orange County in Anaheim), Abdul Jabbar Hamdan (West Coast Islamic Society in Anaheim) and Abdel Malik (Islamic Center of Irvine). According to their attorneys, these individuals have been in the country legally and have filed all necessary documents to maintain their status.

Dozens of complaints of harassment have also been filed by American Muslim travelers. The incidents include being unable to remove their names from the 'No Fly List,' repeated stops and interrogations at airports, exclusion from entry to the United States, and revocation of visas for no stated reason. Islamic leaders and activists prevented from entering this country include Yusuf Islam (formerly known as Cat Stevens) and Swiss professor Dr. Tariq Ramadan.

"While we are all in full support of securing our nation and its borders, we believe the selective application of the law only reinforces the widespread perception that government officials are targeting Islam and Muslims," said Sabiha Khan, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Southern California (CAIR-LA).

CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has 30 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

If CAIR really wants to promote mutual understanding, why won't they answer my questions?

And why not? Islamic law forbids Muslims to leave Islam. The prophet Muhammad himself says: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." (Bukhari, IX:84:57). From WND, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Saudi religious police arrested a 30-year-old citizen who converted from Islam to Christianity.

Emad Alaabadi, who has a wife and four children, is in prison in Jeddah after his Nov. 29 arrest in the town of Hufus, reports International Christian Concern, a Washington, D.C.-based human-rights group.

Alaabadi was driving his children home from school Nov. 29 when he was intercepted by police. The police escorted him home to drop off the children then took him to prison in Hufus before being transferred to Jeddah.

The Saudi man made contact Dec. 4 with his mother in Australia, who said he sounded very weak.

ICC said if Alaabadi's case is like others, he probably has been tortured as the religious police attemp to reconvert him to Islam.

Saudis are forbidden by law from converting to another religion.

Muslims must not love unbelievers -- even a little bit? Uh-oh! Is this another "Islamophobic" production, complete with "out of context" quotes from the Qur'an? Nope. This is part of a Muslim catechism for children -- written by Muslims for Muslims. It comes from a site called Play & Learn (thanks to MCJ), which also features an Islamic coloring book and other material for children.

Note also that this little valentine was written by none other than Harun Yahya, a foremost "moderate Muslim" who got a bit of publicity after 9/11 for loudly proclaiming that Islam condemns terrorism, etc. I discuss some of the points he makes in Islam Unveiled.

No Love Towards The Unbelievers

In order to live with the morals of the Qur'an, one should completely leave the culture and all the moral values of the profane society. One of the first things to be left is the love towards it.

In a profane society, all the relations are based on selfish interests. A person gets along with the other one only if there is a benefit from him or if he is been taken care of the other or at least he treats him good. Another measure is the family tie. People love others just because that they are from the same family; or from the same dynasty, or from the same society or sometimes even from the same nation.

However these are not the criteria for the believers. Because, believers love Allah more than anything or anyone.

"Yet there are men who take (for worship) others besides Allah, as equal (with Allah): They love them as they should love Allah. But those of Faith are overflowing in their love for Allah. If only the unrighteous could see, behold, they would see the penalty: that to Allah belongs all power, and Allah will strongly enforce the penalty."
(AL-BAQARA 165)

Believers respect Allah above anything, therefore the believers love people according to their sincerity with Allah, and they dislike them according to their disobey to Allah. No matter if these people are close to him or not. This characteristic of the believers is described in the Qur'an as:

"Thou wilt not find any people who believe in Allah and the Last Day, loving those who resist Allah and His Messenger, even though they were their fathers or their sons, or their brothers, or their kindred. For such He has written Faith in their hearts, and strengthened them with a spirit from Himself. And He will admit them to Gardens beneath which Rivers flow, to dwell therein (for ever). Allah will be well pleased with them, and they with Him. They are the Party of Allah. Truly it is the Party of Allah that will achieve Felicity."
(AL-MUJADILA 22)

Having even a little bit of love towards the unbelievers would never be a proper attitude for a believer. Believers are seriously warned in the Qur'an as below verse expresses:

"O ye who believe! Take not my enemies and yours as friends (or protectors),- offering them (your) love, even though they have rejected the Truth that has come to you, and have (on the contrary) driven out the Prophet and yourselves (from your homes), (simply) because ye believe in Allah your Lord! If ye have come out to strive in My Way and to seek My Good Pleasure, (take them not as friends), holding secret converse of love (and friendship) with them: for I know full well all that ye conceal and all that ye reveal. And any of you that does this has strayed from the Straight Path."
(AL-MUMTAHINA 1)

This is a pretext for the UK's new religious hatred law. The paradox here is that the religious hatred law will only fuel resentment and lead to an increase in such incidents. From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

LONDON (Reuters) - The number of British Muslims who say they experience discrimination has nearly doubled in the past four years, according to a survey.

Some 80 percent of the country's 1.8 million Muslims say they have been discriminated against because of their faith compared to 45 percent in 2000 and 35 percent in 1999, the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said on Thursday.

Muslim men are now just as likely as women to experience prejudice -- a significant change which the IHRC blamed on an increase in the number of police and security checks carried out on Muslim men since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

White British Muslims report more discrimination than any other ethnic group, suggesting Britons are intolerant of apostates who convert to Islam.

"What's happened, post 9/11, is that some very deeply rooted prejudices -- things that weren't articulated in the public realm -- have found expression," Arzu Merali, one of the authors of the report, told Reuters.

An attempt to silence or at least mute Christian anti-jihadist activities. Will the dhimmis in the Vatican urge the Pope to accept? From Lebanon's Daily Star, with thanks to Anthony:

BEIRUT: Senior Shiite cleric Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah called on the Vatican Wednesday to join forces with Muslims in facing the "war on terrorism," saying that the campaign was harmful to both Christians and Muslims.

In his weekly seminar, Fadlallah denounced the Sept. 11 2001, attacks, saying they were being used as an opportunity to stir hatred against Islam, especially in the West.

According to Fadlallah, the Sept. 11 attacks had been planned to be used later as an excuse to initiate a war against Muslims and launch a harmful propaganda campaign against Islam in the West.

"This campaign against Islam is part of a prefabricated plan to create an enemy for Westerners, following the collapse of the Soviet Union."

Fadlallah condemned the countries supporting the West in its campaign, or those who "look the other way and thus indirectly encourage practices against Muslims, especially in third-world countries or countries rich in natural resources."

Jihad Grinch in Oz. From CNN, with thanks to Fanabba:

SYDNEY, Australia -- Australians have been given a specific warning to stay away from international hotels in Indonesia over the Christmas period for fear of a terrorist attack.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave the warning late Wednesday, saying it had intelligence that an attack was being planned.

"We have received credible new information suggesting terrorists are ready to carry out an attack shortly in Indonesia, possibly targeting a Hilton Hotel," the department's travel warning said.

"Other targets cannot be ruled out. In light of this information, Australians in Jakarta, and elsewhere in Indonesia, are advised to avoid all international hotels and other places where foreigners are known to gather."

Bravo, WND -- and let's not forget Internet Haganah, where they do this sort of thing every day.

From WND, :

Official Hamas websites being hosted in the United States were shut down yesterday following inquiries by WorldNetDaily for an article about the terror group's online activities in Western countries.

Hamas has been using the Internet - through service companies in the U.S., Eastern Europe and East Asia - to maintain communication with its own networks, talk to other terror organizations and spread anti-Israel and anti-American terrorist propaganda to large audiences, intelligence sources said.

A list of official Hamas sites, along with technical specifications, names of hosting companies and registration information was obtained by WorldNetDaily and used to call various American companies for comment, leading to a major clampdown on U.S.-hosted Hamas sites.

The website of the Islamic Bloc, Hamas' student wing, www.alkotla.net, which was being hosted by Co-Location.com Inc. of Beverly Hills, Calif., was shut down yesterday upon inquiry. The site urged students to become "martyrs," encouraged anti-Israeli terrorism and praised suicide bombers.

http://www.alkotla.net/

The site was rented by Co-Location to a secondary hosting company, Online Horizons, which leased the online space to a group called Al-Kutla al-Islamiyya. The Online Horizons agent who represented the transaction, Ahmed Muhammad, would not comment....

Also shut down upon WND inquiry is www.alresalah.org, a weekly online Arabic periodical published in Gaza on behalf of the Islamic Salvation Party, a branch of Hamas. The website, which was hosted by Rackspace.com of San Antonio, Texas, contained research articles and Hamas background information, and called for terrorism against Israelis. The site also targeted the "moderate leadership" of the Palestinian Authority.

Intelligence officials told WorldNetDaily the site was "an experimental Hamas publication."...

Indeed, those identified as Hamas' primary group of websites, including the terror groups stated official website, Palestine Info, are serviced directly or through subcontractors by four companies in Russia and Ukraine.

Palestine Info, which recently communicated with WorldNetDaily and openly admits to being controlled by Hamas, features a Hamas news portal in Arabic and is supported by several secondary websites hosted in Malaysia and Ukraine that contain information on the Hamas movement and its history, official Hamas announcements, interviews with senior Hamas members, incitement against Israel and messages praising terrorism and suicide bombers.

Palestine Info maintains secondary sites in Arabic, French, Russian, Malay, Urdu, Farsi and English.

The ISPs for the Arabic site, originally registered in Beirut, have been identified as Colocall Ltd. in Kiev, Emirates Telecommunications Corporation in Dubai and Telekom Multimedia in Malaysia.

An e-mail recently sent to Palestine Info by WorldNetDaily inquiring about the site was returned by someone identifying himself as Omar.

"Sorry, we do not talk to American infidels," wrote Omar.

While the UN wrings its hands over "Islamophobia" and Kofi Annan laments that "Islam's tenets are frequently distorted and taken out of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or to symbolize a rich and complex faith," Osama bin Laden (or someone purporting to be Osama) has, inconveniently enough, issued a new statement in which he shows, much more clearly than anyone at the UN, why many people in the world have come to be suspicious of Islam and jihad. From CNN, :

"While the struggle in Saudi Arabia appears to be internal, it is part of the struggle between believers and non-believers" of Islam, the speaker said.

Near the end of the approximately 70-minute tape, the speaker asks for God's blessings for "our brothers who stormed the American consulate in Jeddah."

"We pray to Allah to accept the mujahedeen who stormed the U.S. consulate in Jeddah as martyrs," the speaker says....

The quality of the recording is poor, but al Qaeda expert Paul Eedle says the voice seems to be that of bin Laden.

A Saudi militant group with ties to al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the December 6 attack in Jeddah, posting its claim on several Islamist Web sites often used by militants.

A U.S. State Department official had also said that al Qaeda was suspected in the attack....

The group that claimed responsibility called itself the Qaeda al Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula.

In the Internet post, the group said: "This operation comes as part of several operations that are organized and planned by al Qaeda as part of the battle against the crusaders and the Jews, as well as part of the plan to force the unbelievers to leave the Arabian Peninsula."

The group said its fighters "managed to enter one of the crusaders' big castles in the Arabian Peninsula and managed to enter the American consulate in Jeddah, in which they control and run the country."

This is the same station that was just banned in France. From CNN, :

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department plans to designate Hezbollah's television station, Al-Manar, as a terrorist organization for broadcasting incitement, a senior State Department official said Wednesday.

The designation could come later this week, the official said.

Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based group linked to the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 servicemen. It is already designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

Al-Manar, which was licensed by the Lebanese government in 1997, has come under renewed scrutiny amid claims that the organization is inciting terrorism and has made outrageous claims against Israel and other nations.

In one recent broadcast, according to The New York Times, Al-Manar claimed Israel spread the AIDS virus and other diseases throughout the Arab world.

The station, which can be seen in the United States via satellite, has also shown images of a skeletal Statue of Liberty dripping blood and pictures of Adolf Hitler and his forces juxtaposed with President Bush and American troops.

The station's Web site says: "Al-Manar is the first Arab establishment to stage an effective psychological warfare against the Zionist enemy."

It is clear that the nature of Islamic terrorism will call for some new legal formulations. They haven't been found yet. From AP, :

LONDON, England (AP) -- Britain's highest court has ruled that the government cannot detain terror suspects indefinitely without trial.

Nine Law Lords ruled on Thursday in favor of a group of men jailed without charge for up to three years whose lawyers say their detention is incompatible with human rights laws.

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer writes in FrontPage today about the UN's "Islamophobia" seminar:

Last week Kofi Annan presided over a UN seminar on "Islamophobia," explaining with a straight face: "When the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry -- that is a sad and troubling development. Such is the case with 'Islamophobia.' The word seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, the weight of history and the fallout of recent developments have left many Muslims around the world feeling aggravated and misunderstood, concerned about the erosion of their rights and even fearing for their physical safety."

The focus, not unexpectedly, stayed mostly on the aggrieved, misunderstood Muslims, with no questions raised about the Islamic roots of jihad terrorism. Nor was there any discussion of the compatibility of Islam with universally accepted ideas of human rights, as embodied in the UN's own 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Islamic world has seen fit to formulate two major responses to this document: the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we owe to the courageous Charles Malik of Lebanon, states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief..." You will find no analogous guarantee of the freedom to change one's religion in either of the Islamic declarations: indeed, Islamic law mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam. What's more, the Cairo declaration states: "Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari'ah." If Sharia is the norm, women's rights as well as those of non-Muslims will be severely restricted.

These two documents were not written by "Islamophobes," but by some of the foremost Muslim thinkers in the world. But the world is not supposed to notice: that was made clear again this week by the Council on American Islamic Relations' predictably venomous reaction to some observations by former CIA official Bruce Tefft at the Canadian branch of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. CAIR objected to statements by Tefft such as "Islamic terrorism is based on Islam as revealed through the Qur'an"; "To pretend that Islam has nothing to do with September 11 is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events"; and "There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, which is a totalitarian construct." The Islamic advocacy group called on the Wiesenthal center "to condemn these Islamophobic remarks in the strongest possible terms. Characterizing Islam and its revealed text as promoting terrorism can only lead to increased anti-Muslim prejudice and intolerance."

"As an organization that says it is committed to 'fostering tolerance and understanding,'" CAIR fulminated, "the Simon Wiesenthal Center must immediately repudiate all Islamophobic rhetoric and hold its Canadian office accountable for failing to challenge the speaker's hate-filled views."

Since this is all about "fostering tolerance and understanding," CAIR could go a long way toward doing so by answering a few questions itself:

1. What steps have you taken to keep jihad terrorists from "characterizing Islam and its revealed text as promoting terrorism"? In light of the fact that many Muslims advocate jihad as warfare against unbelievers, and base their arguments on the Qur'an and Sunnah, it isn't as if Tefft invented this connection himself. So what are you doing to refute it at its actual source, which is within the Islamic community worldwide?

2. Do you deny that there was any actual connection between Islam and September 11? What, then, do you make of Osama bin Laden's own statements to the contrary? Please provide, for the reassurance of the American people, a detailed refutation of Osama's Islamic arguments, showing us how you keep such ideas from spreading among American Muslims.

3. Please explain the difference that you see between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. Please explain how you intend to stop the spread of Qur'anic literalism in the Islamic community, and how you intend to blunt the force among Muslims of such verses as 9:29, 9:5, and many others.

These are the only important questions when "Islamophobia" is equated with examining the real source of jihad terrorism. But they went unasked at the UN seminar -- in which CAIR representatives participated. It is unlikely that the free world can host these whitewashes and leave such questions unasked while remaining free for long.

And remember: Canada is a haven for terrorists, by the admission of Canadian officials. From AP, :

TORONTO (AP) -- Canada's security net is full of holes, with most border crossings guarded by a lone staffer and airport security so lax that missing security badges and uniforms recently turned up for sale on eBay.

A new Senate security report calls for reform, a boost in defense spending and improved cooperation with the United States. Canadians have relied too long on luck to avoid a terrorist attack, it says, scolding: "Unfortunately, luck is notoriously untrustworthy."

The 315-page report by the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defense, the first released under the year-old government of Prime Minister Paul Martin, said most of Canada's 160 land and maritime border crossings have only one person at the posts.

"The potential damage to the Canadian economy and other consequences that would come with allowing a terrorist to infiltrate the U.S. through Canada are massive," the report said.

On December 7, I wrote an article in FrontPage about the Chomskyite/Saidist scholar Mark LeVine of the University of California at Irvine. LeVine replied a few days later; I first saw his reply when it was posted here in a comments field. I replied there before I knew that LeVine's reply had appeared on Juan Cole's website; now it is making the rounds, and several people have sent it to me.

That made me think it was prudent not to leave my response to his reply in a comments field, so I am placing it here for easy access by anyone who may be interested. And there is also, of course, a further message from me, which you can find here, after an email exchange with LeVine, as well as Hugh Fitzgerald's blistering take on LeVine, found here.

Dear Dr. LeVine (with a capital V, as you may not have noticed I wrote it consistently in my article; the headline, which I sent in with a capital V, lost the capital when it was printed):

Thanks so much for your reply. It is good to hear from you.

A few notes below:

You say: "First of all, thanks so much for titling a piece you did about me "Noam Chomsky as Rock Star": (http://www.frontpagemag.com/
Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID= 16220) This is the best blurb I've gotten yet for my forthcoming book!"

Please feel free to use it! You can credit me as "director of Jihad Watch and author of 'Islam Unveiled' and 'Onward Muslim Soldiers.'" Thanks.

You say: "More seriously, however, it seems that you did not read most of what I have written before writing your critique of my work. I say this because I have discussed in detail most every thing you have accused me of not discussing--the origins of Hamas, the immorality and futility of suicide bombings, hatred for Israel and the like. It would be nice to be accused of something that I didn't do, instead of being accused of not doing something I have in fact done. Then at least I could learn from the criticism, which is always a good thing."

Well, let's talk seriously, indeed. In fact I did read what you had to say about those issues, but it all seemed to me to be overshadowed by your call for a "hudna," and other issues I mentioned in my piece. You are here accusing me of something I didn't do, because I do not say that you never discuss these issues. What I actually said was this: "Glaringly absent from this analysis, and from most of what LeVine also writes, is substantive respect for these 'mosquitoes' as actors in their own right in today's great global drama." "Most," as the great linguist Chomsky could tell you, is not the same word as "all."

You say: "Perhaps you just googled a few recent articles of mine and made your judgements from those?"

In fact, no.

You say: "You could also have checked my CV, which is online, and found articles in Le Monde, the Christian Science Monitor and Tikkun magazine dealing with these issues. May I suggest that it might be time for you to hire a new research assistant?"

Thanks, but I do not have a research assistant, and I read the LeMonde, CSM, and Tikkun pieces, as well as other material linked at your CV. Nice page.

You say: "Your main issue with me, beside my taste in music and linguists, seems to be that I naively argue for a 'hudna' or truce between Americans and Muslims, especially radical Muslims."

Precisely.

You say: "This is certainly debatable advice on my part. In fact, I offered it precisely so it would be debated. However you, your criticism sadly does not contribute to a much-needed debate; instead it falls into the orientalist trap of trying to use Islamic legal compendiums dating back well over 600 years (Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, the author of the source you cite for your analysis of "hudna," 'Umdat as-Salik, died in 1386) to define for all times what Muslims think about a particular issue. This is probably not the best way to understand what Muslims think about various issues today; just as basing the opinions of Jews solely on the writings of Maimonedes or even Americans based solely on the views of the authors of the Declaration of Independence (or better, the Magna Carta) would likely produce a distorted understanding of contemporary views."

Thank you for calling me an "Orientalist." May I use your "Falls into the Orientalist trap" as a blurb on my forthcoming book?

Meanwhile, your point about the age of 'Umdat as-Salik is irrelevant. Al-Azhar in 1991 certified that it "conforms to the practise and faith of the orthodox Sunni community." That is, today, not 600 years ago. I use it because it is readily available in English, so that readers can verify the truth of what I am saying. But I am sure that you know that what it says about a hudna is not eccentric, and is echoed in numerous other legal manuals used by Muslims. Are you willing to declare flatly that Hamas does not by a hudna mean a 10-year respite to gather strength?

You say: "But such thinking is among the primary ideological moves in Orientalism and the larger discourse of imperialism (if saying this makes me a "Saidist"--a term I've never encountered before. Shouldn't it be "Saidian"?--then so be it)"

I do indeed prefer "Saidist," but I cannot claim credit for the marvelous term. I believe it comes from Ibn Warraq's evisceration of the late poseur:

http://www.secularislam.org/articles/debunking.htm

You say: "This doesn't mean that some, or many Muslims, might want to use a truce to regroup or grow stronger in order to better attack 'us' later."

Great. Thanks. That's my point.

You say: "Nor does it mean that some extremist Muslims use medieval texts to justify terrorism or violating agreements (what the US Government uses to justify these things is an equally interesting matter, but it seems not to interest you)."

Let me make sure I understand: you are accusing the US government of terrorism?

You say: "Moreover, you seem to think that all you need to do to understand Muslims is read religious texts and look at extremists. The 99.9% of Muslims who don't engage in violence against the West..."

I invite you to read more of what I write, and you will find that you have mischaracterized my positions.

You say: "Let's just take the example of Hamas, since you seem so knowledgeable, or at least interested, in this group."

Ad hominem attacks are so much fun, aren't they?

You say: "He looked at me like I was crazy, and actually said, 'Are you crazy? We want a divorce, not to live closer to Jews.' You can interpret it however you want. His interpretation, offered in his next sentence with a lot of exasperation, was 'Just give us a state and leave us alone already.'"

At the risk of raising more of your contempt by citing yet another text, are you suggesting that Hamas has abandoned the goals stated in its Charter?

You say: "On a few other notes, who exactly do you mean by 'aging rock glitteratti' that I supposedly hang 'hobnob' with?"

Robert Plant.

You say: "And what exactly is 'hobnobbing'?"

I suggest Dictionary.com, or Merriam-Websters online.

You say: "And since when has Noam Chomsky's star 'faded.' Please correct me if I'm wrong, but last I saw he had lot more bestsellers in the last three years than you and all your friends put together have had in your entire careers."

Do you really know who my friends are? Anyway, I don't know how you can say this when you quote me, just a few lines later, acknowledging that Chomskyites and Saidists have total control of the Middle East Studies establishment today. The "faded" reference was in terms of their credibility.

You say: "As for Edward Said, didn't your mother tell you not to speak ill of the dead? And while I would love to take credit for making Chomsky and Said 'cool again,' can you show me when they went out of style?"

As for speaking ill of the dead, what do you think of Arthur Jeffrey? D.S. Margoliouth? A.S. Tritton? As for Said, see the Ibn Warraq link, cited above.

You say: "Your argument that they've put it in a straitjacket is one made by someone who never has actually read them in any detail and in fact knows absolutely nothing about the field of Middle Eastern studies, most of whose practitioners predicted exactly the terrorism that happened with 9/11 when our Government and spy agencies were busy elsewhere, and who rightly predicted exactly what would happen when the US invaded Iraq (so far that makes it Middle East Studies 2, Bush/Neocons 0 by my count)."

I suggest that you may have overlooked the fact that there are not just two horses (MES and Neocons) in this race. As for the accurate predictions, I remember Esposito's (now substantially revised) book on the Islamic threat too well to be able wholeheartedly to agree with you. Cf. also Martin Kramer's work.

You say: "How can I accuse you of this? Well, you write "LeVine owes his status [as wunderkind] to his willingness to place the responsibility for the strife between the West and the Islamic world squarely on the shoulders of the West." And where exactly did I write that I 'place responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the West'? Can you please show me where I've written that? I'm not saying I haven't, but I sure don't remember doing so (perhaps all those years on the road have taken their toll). If I did write that somewhere, then that was not very smart of me and I appreciate your calling it to my attention."

Well, this passage does seem to suggest that the US can end terrorism by changing its policy. Certainly what else must be done is not specified: "Let's only hope they will have the courage to explain to president Kerry (or even Bush) that, without both an acceptance of responsibility for past policy and the transformation of future policy toward the Islamic regions of our planet, there will be no solution to terrorism, only continued violence and war."

You say after that that I should have read the article through to the end, and that you do say Muslims must reappraise their positions. Unfortunately, the sentence I quoted above is what is actually at the end of the article.

You say: "What I did write was, among other things .... 'Beyond the criminal minority, the 9-11 report was right to demand that Muslims worldwide confront the violent and intolerant version of their religion that is poisoning their societies and threatening the world at large.'"

Yes, I saw that. I have called for that many times myself. I didn't quote it in the article because your call for a hudna seemed to deprive it of any substance. Perhaps you can explain how they go together.

You say: "Is it inappropriate for me to suggest that you get some tutoring in effective reading strategies before your next expose?"

Yes, I think it is, but thanks. See above about the hudna.

You say: "And while we're at it, you quoted but never answered or rebutted the following argument of mine: 'Not just Palestinian activists, but foreign peace activists and even Israelis are routinely beaten, arrested, deported, or even killed by the IDF, with little fear that the Government of Israel would pay a political price for crushing non-violent resistance with violent means.... Not surprisingly considering this dynamic, a poll I helped direct earlier this year revealed that Hamas has now surpassed the PLO as the most popular Palestinian political movement.' I think it's a good argument, so thanks for publicizing it. But can you rebut it? I don't think so..."

I know that Hamas is now most popular. The point I was making was clear in the article -- that you place responsibility for Hamas' popularity on Israel, at the expense of other salient causes.

You say: "Let me close, Mr. Spencer, by saying that I would be happy to debate you publicly if you'll take the time actually to read what I write rather than going off about what you wish I'd have written. You have a standing invitation to come to UC Irvine anytime. I'll get a nice big room and some bottled water. You make arrangements with C-SPAN, as I assume you have better connections there than do I. Not being a rock star, and considering the budget cuts at the University of California, I can't offer you a free dinner, sorry. However, since you seem to need help thinking straight how about inviting Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis along to help you? I'd love to get the three of you on a stage. For that, I'll spring for dinner."

Let's not debate your work; let's debate the facts of the situation that confronts us. Contact me at director@jihadwatch.org to set it up. I don't know Lewis, and I am happy to go it alone, if you don't mind. What exactly do you propose we debate?

Best regards and thanks again,
Robert Spencer

Iqbal Sacranie of the Muslim Council of Britain, a foremost "moderate" leader, has written this Telegraph piece (thanks to Miss Moneypenney) defending Britain's new religious hatred law.

Sacranie begins by recounting the flap over Charles Moore's discussion (and dismissal) of the possibility that Islam's prophet Muhammad was a pedophile. Then he argues that the new law isn't really new:

Yet the proposed legislation does not create a new offence as such. Such an offence already exists in relation to the Jewish and Sikh communities, by dint of their being regarded as mono-ethnic communities. It also exists in relation to all faith and belief communities in Northern Ireland. The Home Office proposal simply extends the current provisions to all faith communities in mainland Britain. If the present provisions in relation to Jews, Sikhs and Northern Ireland raise no concerns - and there is no real campaign to remove these provisions - why should they raise concerns if extended to other religions in Britain?

So, the incitement to religious hatred proposal is not a matter of advancing privileges for British Muslims. It's about establishing equality under the law.

The current loophole in our legislation has resulted in far Right groups such as the BNP modifying their racist rhetoric of yesteryear - no doubt out of fear of prosecution - into a more explicitly and aggressively anti-Muslim invective, this time without fear of breaking the law.

Stirring up hatred against people simply because of their religious beliefs or lack of them ought to be regarded as a social evil. The BNP's ongoing Islamophobia can and has led to criminal acts, abuse, discrimination, fear and disorder. At the moment, there are laws against those who are stirred into committing these offences, but not against those that do the stirring. In opposing the incitement to religious hatred provision, Charles Moore, Rowan Atkinson and the National Secular Society are unwittingly strengthening the hand of those, such as the BNP, who peddle religious hatred.

This is slickly done. However, if an article like Moore's would really be ruled out by the new law, then in effect it will chill reasonable discussion of uncomfortable matters pertaining to Islam, as well as veritable "hate speech." Also, Sacranie is wrong that such protections already exist for other religions and groups. If that were true, Omar Bakri would have been behind bars long ago for his Al-Muhajiroun seminar, "The Obligation of Inciting Religious Hatred." But as of this writing, he is still at large.

What this law does is make Muslims a protected class, beyond criticism, precisely at the moment when Britain needs to examine, honestly and thoughtfully, the implications of having admitted into the country a large number of people with greater allegiance to the Sharia than to the present British state. The long night for Britain is just beginning.

A report on the UN's Islamophobia seminar from Alexander Joffe of Campus Watch at FrontPage:

The United Nations has a justly deserved reputation for catering to extremists of every sort and for entertaining not only extremism but distortion as part of its everyday fabric. Nowhere was this more on display than at the recent seminar on 'Islamophobia,' forced upon an all-too-willing UN in exchange for holding a seminar on anti-Semitism earlier in 2004. Conceived as part of a series on "unlearning intolerance," the seminar aimed to confirm prejudices of the Islamic world toward the West, and especially the United States, as the sources of all Islam's failure and weakness.

The tone was set from the top, by the aristocratic Kofi Annan, whose platitudes included the ritual assertion that Islam is not "monolithic," and stunningly, that questioning the compatibility of Islam with democracy, modernity and womens' rights were forms of Islamophobia. The "Other" was invoked, along with Islam's 'tolerance' for Christians and Jews (as legally defined second-class citizens), as was the qualification that the "historical experience of Muslims included colonialism and imperialism by the West, both direct and indirect." Terrorism and violence "in the name of Islam" were merely cases where a few give a bad name to the many.

Read it all.

Malmø update. From the Swedish Sydsvenskan, with thanks to Ali Dashti, who summarizes the article thusly:

The ruling Swedish Socialist party is planning a proposal in which the city of Malmø will start preschool classes where all the education given is in Arabic. The idea is that once immigrant children learn the language of their parents, it will become easier for them to learn Swedish later. The idea has already met strong criticism from the Conservative party Moderaterna, who claim that such a move would increase segregation, not diminish it.

Indeed it would, as we have learned with bilingual education in the US.

The New York Times (thanks to Ali Dashti) is puzzled by Seif el-Islam Qaddafi:

TRIPOLI, Libya, Dec. 13 - Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, the son of this country's idiosyncratic leader, was just 14 in 1986 when American bombs destroyed his home and killed his 4-year-old sister. Despite that harsh experience he has emerged in the past few years as the new, Western-friendly face of this former pariah state.

His fingerprints are on almost every major international move the country has made since it began its recent rehabilitation, from compensating the families of victims of past terrorist attacks to abandoning the program to produce unconventional weapons. Most recently he has been preaching democracy in a part of the world where strongmen have long been the norm.

"Democracy is the future," Mr. Qaddafi, 32, said at his Moroccan-style villa outside Tripoli, where he keeps a white tiger, Freddo, among other exotic pets. "We have to be ahead of the world in our region, the Middle East, and not to be lagging behind, because the whole world is heading toward democracy."...

Seif al-Islam, whose name means sword of Islam, took a guest on a tour of the manicured grounds of the estate. He had arrived at the hilltop home, built as a gift to his father by King Hassan II of Morocco, behind the wheel of a dark gray B.M.W. It is not a new car. It is expensive, because of its armored body and bulletproof glass, but still surprisingly modest for the man who many people whisper is being groomed as his father's political heir.

In March, he told the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera that "you have to bring democracy to your countries," adding that "the Arabs should either change or change will be imposed on them from outside."

Those were surprising words coming from a man whose father has ruled for 35 years largely by decree.

It's too bad that nobody has asked him about his refusal to condemn suicide bombing when given the opportunity by Amir Taheri. When Taheri asked him if he approved of suicide bombings by Palestinians, he replied: "It is not a question of approval or disapproval. They have a philosophy behind what they do. They are acting in accordance with the holy Koran and the law of retribution." When Taheri challenged this, invoking the Qur'an's prohibitions of suicide and the killing of non-combatants, Qaddafi replied: "We obviously have different readings of the Koran." He also echoed bin Laden's justification for attacks on American civilians: "There are no civilians in Israel. All Israelis are either in the army or have been or shall one day be soldiers."

Yeah, a real moderate, democratic kind of guy.

"They are just trying to make us angry. It is their last chance to cause trouble against us." This sneering article puts "genocide" in quotes and presents it all as something "historians believe," but it isn't really a disputed question for any honest person. See, for example, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus by Vahakn N. Dadrian. From the Times Online, with thanks to Full Namespace:

TURKEY has reacted angrily to a demand by France that it accept responsibility for a "genocide" against Armenians nearly 80 years ago, which is thought to have influenced the Nazi Holocaust. Michel Barnier, the French Foreign Minister insisted that Turkey must officially recognise the 1915 genocide before it joins the European Union. Historians believe that Turkish authorities orchestrated the killing of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, who were indigenous inhabitants of Turkey, in a brutal attempt to make an ethnically pure nation. However, the Turkish Government has always said that only a small number were killed in spontaneous acts of violence....

[Barnier] later referred to it as a genocide, the first time the French Government has used that word, having previously preferred tragedy. Many parliaments in Europe have called on Turkey to recognise the slaughter, which is marked by monuments in many European cities.

However, a Turkish government spokesman said: "There was no such genocide, so there is no question of recognising a genocide that did not happen."

One Turkish official said: "They are just trying to make us angry. It is their last chance to cause trouble against us."

Here is an illustration of Emanuele Ottolenghi's prediction that in Europe, "freedom will be curtailed to protect intolerant cultures and communities. Citizens will grow increasingly alienated from this state of affairs. They will vent their frustration by supporting extremist political groups, or by taking justice into their own hands and unleashing violence against the minorities they resent."

It's a vicious circle: the media and government elites in Europe have tagged any discussion of the presence of jihadist sentiments in European mosques as racist. This silences many decent people who might otherwise have spoken out, and leaves the field to ... actual racists such as the BNP. That in turn reinforces the caricature of the elites, and further chills rational debate.

From This Is South Wales, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Racists have launched a vicious hate campaign in Swansea to protest against the opening of a new mosque. Thousands of leaflets have been pushed through letter boxes in the Sandfields area of the city to whip up anti-Muslim sentiment, it is claimed.

The area has been targeted by doorstep campaigners from the British National Party because of plans to open a new mosque in St Helen's Road.

Activists from the party found out about the plan to convert the old St Andrews United Reformed Church from a leading Islamic website.

The building is currently derelict after it was gutted by arsonists two years ago. Conversion into a mosque would save it from being pulled down....

Unite spokesman Jane Richmond said today: "This is simply an attempt to persecute Muslims.

"We have seen precisely the same tactic before. There of course not a grain of truth in it.

"The conversion of a derelict church to a Mosque not only saves a building but keeps it for the use it was intended, that is as a place of worship.

"We will not let this attempt to scapegoat Muslims go unchallenged.

"We call on all those who wish to ensure that the BNP and others like them fail in their attempt to bring racism to Swansea to join us in this campaign."

Haze Motes, call your office. The latest from "moderate" Malaysia, from AsiaNews, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The Malaysian government has decided that the public celebration of Christmas on December 25 in the presence of King Syed Sirajuddin and Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi will be done without any reference to Jesus in order to "protect Muslim sensibilities": no biblical reference will be allowed, nor will any representation of the Nativity scene. For O.C. Lim, an outspoken Kuala Lumpur priest, it "is outrageous, scandalous and sacrilegious".

About 50,000 local residents and tourists are expected to attend the national Christmas celebration at Petaling Jaya, near the capital Kuala Lumpur, an event which the Malaysian government and the Christian Council of Malaysia are promoting as a mega 'Christmas party'. The Council, an umbrella organisation for the country's Christian Churches, said it would go along with the informal request made by officials not to sing hymns and carols that overtly mention or praise Jesus at the party on Christmas night.

Officials said that the request was made by 'moderate Muslims' concerned that "Muslim clerics might exploit the situation and raise the fundamentalist ire".

This is already happening, with the closure of free speech in Britain. From Emanuele Ottolenghi in the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Behind Europe's commitment to liberal democracy lurks an illiberal tradition. Every time freedom has failed in Europe, it is to that tradition – of violent repression, totalitarianism, xenophobia, and intolerance – that Europeans have reverted....

Now racial and cultural tensions are brewing in the heart of Europe. They stem from Europe's failure to integrate first- and second-generation immigrants from the lands of Islam, and in some cases from the immigrants' failure to embrace the values of the societies which sheltered them.

Europe should ponder well its own legacy. The new challenge to European liberal democracies – Islam's appearance across the continent – may well lead to the same rapid descent into the abyss of intolerance.

For too long mainstream European political parties labelled as racists those clamoring for restricted immigration or aggressive integrationist policies.

The result? Voters have turned to extremists who have no shame in fanning the flames of hatred.

Europe's default option – hatred in the wake of tolerance's failure – is but a stone's-throw away....

JUDGING BY the way race relations are handled in Europe, two clear patterns emerge.

Freedom will be curtailed to protect intolerant cultures and communities.

Citizens will grow increasingly alienated from this state of affairs. They will vent their frustration by supporting extremist political groups, or by taking justice into their own hands and unleashing violence against the minorities they resent.

We are already seeing this happening too. Yet the European elites could have prevented it, if they had faced the challenge of Islam more realistically.

The jihadist goal of destroying Israel and reclaiming all the land for the Dar Al-Islam remains. From Arutz Sheva:

A top PA official has reiterated the end-goal of the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel: a Palestinian state instead of Israel.

In a seeming re-affirmation of the PLO's 1974 "destroy Israel" program, commonly known as the Phased Plan, Fatah co-founder Farouk Kadumi termed the struggle for a two-state solution just a “stage” on the road to “only one [state].”

Kadumi spoke on Nov. 29th with Iran’s Al-Aram television station. When the interviewer asked Kadumi, “What is the future of Palestine?” the PLO leader answered: “At this stage there will be two states. Many years from now there will be only one.”

Asked why he has not softened his stance against Israel’s existence, Kadumi replied, "Our enemy always says, 'This is Judea and Samaria' ... They haven't changed their discourse. If they change theirs, we will change ours, and if not, we will keep saying that armed resistance is the way to Palestine."

He expressed confidence in the Arabs' ultimate victory, saying, “[There are] 300 million Arabs, while Israel has only the sea behind it.”

Ariel Cohen on Al-Jazeera at Tech Central Station:

While the West is basking in the tunes of Christmas carols, a different tune is being played by the two leading Jihadi TV channels, al Jazeera and al Manar. The radical Sunni al Jazeera, broadcasting from Qatar, the flagship of anti-Western Islamist propaganda, is funded and tolerated by the Qatari royal family, reportedly to the tune of $30 million a year. It has become the main conduit of Al Qaeda tapes to the Arab and Muslim world, suggesting an exclusive arrangement with the elusive jihadi leaders Usama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.

Al Manar, a Shi'i satellite and cable operation out of Lebanon, belongs to Hizballah and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran to the tune of $15 million a year, and is even more anti-American in its pitch. Both channels are available world wide, including the US, via satellite. Canadian cable operators are now offering al Jazeera and al Manar via easily obtained and cheap subscriptions.

Robert Spencer, Director of the NGO Jihad Watch says that al Jazeera provides foreign-based terrorists with a source of news, encouragement and instruction. It serves radical Muslims as a useful recruiting tool. For jihadist recruiters, al Jazeera is like an electronic madrassa beaming the teachings and perspective of radical Islam into the living rooms of Muslims around the world twenty four hours a day, Spencer says.

Nor is Al-Jazeera the only one. Websites doing similar work abound.

The New York Times (thanks to JJP Mackie) takes notice of taqiyya, and of violent Palestinian rhetoric that we have noted here many times:

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Dec. 10 - It was another inflammatory broadcast on Palestinian public television.

"We are waging this cruel war with the brothers of monkeys and pigs, the Jews and the sons of Zion," Sheik Ibrahim Mahdi, a cleric, said in September on his weekly program. "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: 'O Muslim, observant of God, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him.' "

This is not just Mahdi's fevered imagination. It is a well-attested and oft-repeated hadith: cf. Sahih Bukhari IV:52:176; IV:52:177; IV:56:791; Sahih Muslim 6981-6985; etc.

For most of the past four years, since the second Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, Palestinian airwaves have welcomed such talk. Video clips of young men maimed in fighting with Israelis were repeatedly shown, accompanied by wailing mothers and patriotic music. News broadcasters routinely called Israeli troops "the savage occupation forces."

But something significant has shifted in recent weeks, since the death of Yasir Arafat, according to those who monitor the broadcasts. Suddenly there is talk of reconciliation. Israeli troops are called by more neutral terms. Scenes of destruction have fallen away. And the regular Friday sermons have become considerably more moderate.

"We must respect the human mind, recognize the 'other,' respect his humanity and show tolerance to him," a cleric, Muhammad Abu Hunud, said in his sermon on Dec. 3 from a mosque in the Gaza Strip, broadcast across the area. Several senior Palestinian politicians attended, including Mahmoud Abbas, the favorite in the election for president to be held next month.

"One must not coerce," the preacher added. "Through this Islamic way of preaching, the ideas of 'the golden mean' and moderation and the avoidance of any kind of extremism or inclination to violence or fanaticism becomes ingrained in people's minds."

Although Palestinian officials have been hesitant to discuss the change, the more moderate voice in the Palestinian news media seems to be part of the overall improvement in the atmosphere between Israelis and Palestinians as both sides reassess their positions after Mr. Arafat's death.

Mr. Abbas, who has taken over as chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has delivered "a clear declaration of intent against incitement," said Yigal Carmon, an Israeli who is president of the Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri, a group based in Washington that has a Jerusalem office.

On Palestinian television, the archival scenes of violence were already appearing less frequently in the past year and had not been seen recently at all. Even some Palestinians had begun to complain about them, saying they could no longer stomach the stream of gory images.

"At the beginning of the intifada the media was totally different, showing fighting and playing national songs," said Nashat Aqtash, a Palestinian professor of mass communications at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah. "Now there is much more talk about social and political issues. After four years of violence, both sides are interested in changing the tone."

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer is on now with Brad and Britt on WZTK.

(Apologies for the short notice.)

SOUTH BEND, Ind.(AP) A Muslim scholar whose work visa was abruptly revoked after he was hired by the University of Notre Dame said Tuesday he has resigned his appointment. "I'm abandoning the idea of moving to the United States," Tariq Ramadan told The Associated Press from Geneva. "I want to maintain my dignity." Ramadan notified the university on Monday, citing the stress on him and his family from the uncertainty of their situation, said R. Scott Appleby, director of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, was barred from working in the United States in August just days before he was to begin teaching at Notre Dame. The Department of Homeland Security cited security concerns but released no specifics.

There is a great deal to condemn about the BNP, a white separatist party with a history of neo-Nazi dalliances. But this is a free speech issue, and if even the obnoxious don't have it, no one has it.

LONDON (AFP) - The leader of the rightwing British National Party(BNP), Nick Griffin, was arrested Tuesday after he called Islam a "vicious, wicked faith" in a television documentary.

Griffin, 45, was arrested on suspicion of "incitement to commit racial hatred" and held for questioning by police in northern England before he was released on bail several hours later.

When asked if he considered Islam a "vicious, wicked faith", Griffin urged reporters to study the Koran for themselves before saying: "There are aspects of that religion which are wicked."

Rod Dreher and several others have kindly alerted me to this conference that was held in Dallas last weekend: a "Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary," Ayatollah Khomeini.

Dreher comments at the Dallas News blog (thanks to R. Solomon):

Take a look at who the guest speakers were. There was Imam Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque, a religious leader widely regarded outside the Islamic community as a moderate. Do real moderates agree to speak at a conference in praise of Ayatollah Khomeini? Just wondering.

Another speaker was Imam Mohammed Asi of...Washington, DC. Asi co-hosted a National Press Club forum not long after 9/11, in which militant Islamic speakers trashed Jews, Christians and America; according to this report from Michelle Malkin, he did nothing to stop them. Malkin writes of the rally, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, "If this event had been an anti-Muslim rally, the story would be front-page news."

Imam Shamshad Haider, another local speaker, has publicly condemned Islamic terrorism. Good for him. But if he really means it, how can he host a conference praising Khomeini? Inquiring minds want to know. An unnamed representative of Dallas's Council on American-Islamic Relations was set to speak at the Ayatollahpalooza; again, they say they're against terrorism, but it's hard to square being against it with making a "tribute" to a devil like Khomeini.

Also on the bill at Khomeinifest: Dallas Mavs player Tariq Abdul-Wahad, who says on his website that he prays at the Richardson mosque -- presumably, that's the Dallas Central Mosque.

Would someone from the Muslim community please write to explain to me why this conference in "tribute" to one of this country's worst enemies, and an avatar of worldwide Islamic radical revolution, is not something that I, or anybody else, should worry about? I'll post your comments, promise.

Not long ago I wrote a column about an Islamic demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan, in which several demonstrators held aloft large pictures of the Ayatollah. I think the last bit of it bears repeating:

It is unlikely that the protestor knew that in 1985, Sa’id Raja’i-Khorassani, the Permanent Delegate to the United Nations from the Islamic Republic of Iran, declared, according to Amir Taheri, that “the very concept of human rights was ‘a Judeo-Christian invention’ and inadmissible in Islam. . . . According to Ayatollah Khomeini, one of the Shah’s ‘most despicable sins’ was the fact that Iran was one of the original group of nations that drafted and approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

I wonder if anyone at the Dearborn protest realized that the appearance of these signs in Dearborn, Michigan, exalting this man as a hero, indicated that Khomeini’s vision for society is alive in America today — and that it is dangerously naive to assume that all Muslims immediately and unquestioningly accept American pluralism and the idea of a state not governed by religious law. The Netherlands is just finding out, thanks to the cold-blooded murder and attempted decapitation of the “blasphemer” Theo van Gogh by a Muslim who appears to have been part of a larger jihadist cell, that not all the Muslims in Holland are the committed pluralists and secularists that they have been assumed to be by credulous European authorities.

With Khomeini a hero in Dearborn, Americans may be finding that out for themselves before long. Just where American Muslims stand on Khomeini’s doctrines — and how many stand with Khomeini — are still forbidden questions for the major media. But if the old man could have spoken from his sign in Dearborn, he might have said, “Ignore me at your own risk.”

UPDATE: The link has been removed, so I put up a jpg of the conference announcement, courtesy LGF.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald regards the UN's conference on "Islamophobia" with a gimlet eye:

“When the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry -- that is a sad and troubling development,” Annan said. “Such is the case with ‘Islamophobia.’ The word seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, the weight of history and the fallout of recent developments have left many Muslims around the world feeling aggravated and misunderstood, concerned about the erosion of their rights and even fearing for their physical safety.”

The “world” was not “compelled to coin a new term” -- it was Muslims who coined the word, and they did so deliberately. For that word so deliberately kept undefined is merely a weapon employed to deflect criticism, to label all those who may offer criticism of Islam and of its adherents, basing their criticism not on some blind prejudice, but on their own observations and study. Indeed, the entire Western world -- its political leaders, its media, its university departments of Middle Eastern studies -- have all been engaged in a massive effort to deflect criticism or disarm it. It is despite all that that Infidels everywhere are coming to some conclusions about Islam, and the more they study, and the more they observe, and the more “Interfaith” gatherings and little Muslim Outreach evenings they attend, all of which end up being dismal exercises in Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque argumentation, the more wary, and critical, and indignant, and sometimes more, they become. The game is up. From a Beslan school full of children to a Bali nightclub full of revellers, from Madrid subways to Moscow theatres, from New York skyscrapers to Najaf mosques (where Sadr’s bezonians tortured, killed, and stacked the bodies of Iraqis who had opposed their reign of terror), from Istanbul to India, the evidence just keeps piling up. And the evidence, too, of what is actually in the Qur’an and hadith and sira -- and how many Infidels, a few years ago, even had heard of the “hadith” and the “sira,” or had any idea what was really in the Qur’an, or had ever heard of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya -- is now online, and it can easily be read. And all the excuses, all the nonsense, can no longer be offered up -- for we Infidels, fortunately, have the guidance of defectors from Islam, ex-Muslims such as Ibn Warraq (whose own three-part guide, posted at Jihad Watch, to debating Muslims, and how not to be intimidated or snookered, will for many prove invaluable).

Kofi Annan, as Oriana Fallaci notes in her Fallaci Intervista Fallaci, looks, on the surface, to be far more presentable, and far more decent, and far more intelligent -- grey hair, gravelly voice, grave mien -- than in fact he is. The words quoted above are the words of a simpleton. Perhaps Edward Mortimer, that early admirer of Khomeini and Nazi-Zionist conspiracy theorist, who feels a special responsibility to protect Islam, is the main puppet-master here, or perhaps it is Ms. Rishmawi (the “Palestinian” behind-the-scenes operative who was so influential with Mary Robinson, she of the antisemitic lynch-mob meeting in Durban in September 2001). Or perhaps it is Annan -- the man who is responsible for more black African deaths than anyone since Leopold III of Belgium, who really thinks that the word “Islamophobia” came into use because it actually described a real, and deplorable condition -- that is, unfair, unjust, prejudiced and irrational (i.e. without foundation, against reason and logic) phobia, or hatred, of Islam. What is unreasonable or irrational would be the opposite -- that is, the continued inability of many Infidels to regard Islam as just another “religion” worthy of respect, perhaps at the edges a bit rough, but hijacked by a few extremists, or even many extremists, but having a decency at its core, a real religion of “peace” and “tolerance” as a number of Western leaders have insisted.

If, upon reading and studying Qur’an and hadith and sira, and if, after looking around the world over the past few years, and if, after having studied the history of Jihad-conquest and Muslim behavior toward dhimmis -- Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists -- you do not feel a deep hostility toward the belief-system of Islam and toward its adherents (for the category of “moderate” is nearly meaningless, given the dangerous use to which “moderates” can be put in continuing to mislead the unwary Infidels), then it is you who are irrational, and need to have your head examined.
Kofi Annan is not the worst secretary-general of the U.N. That prize, so far, goes to Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim. But Annan still has some months, or even years, to go. It may soon be neck-and-neck. It may be a photo finish. And that’s not all that will be finished.

The word “Islamophobia” must be held up for inspection, its users constantly asked precisely how they would define that word, and they should be put on the defensive for waving about what is clearly meant to be a scare-word that will silence criticism.
So let us ask them which of the following criticisms of Islam is to be considered “Islamophobia”:

1) Muhammad is a role-model for all time. Muhammad married Aisha when she was 6 and had sexual intercourse with her when she was 9. I find appalling that Muslims consider this act of Muhammad to be that of the man who is in every way a role model, and hence to be emulated. In particular, I am appalled that virtually the first act of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a very orthodox and learned Shi’a theologian, was to lower the marriageable age of girls in Iran to 9 -- because, of course, it was Aisha’s age when Muhammad had sexual relations with her.

2) I find appalling that Islam provides a kind of Total Regulation of the Universe, so that its adherents are constantly asking for advise as to whether or not, for example, they can have wear their hair in a certain way, grow their beards in a certain way, wish an Infidel a Merry Christmas (absolutely not!).

3) I find appalling the religiously-sanctioned doctrine of taqiyya -- would you like some quotes, sir, about what it is, or would you like to google “taqiyya” and find its sources in the Qur’an?

4) I find appalling many of the acts which Muhammad committed, including his massacre of the Banu Qurayza, his ordering the assassination of many of those he deemed his opponents, even an old man, a woman, or anyone whom, he thought, merely mocked him.

5) I find appalling the hatred expressed throughout the Qur’an, the hadith, and the sira for Infidels -- all Infidels.

6) I find nauseating the imposition of the jizya on Infidels, the requirement that they wear identifying garb on their clothes and dwellings, that they not be able to build or repair houses of worship without the permission of Muslim authorities, that they must ride donkeys sidesaddle and dismount in the presence of Muslims, that they have no legal recourse against Muslims for they are not equal at law -- and a hundred other things, designed to insure their permanent, as the canonical texts say, “humiliation.”

7) I find the mass murder of 60-70 million Hindus, over 250 years of Mughal rule, and the destruction of tens of thousands of artifacts and Hindu (and Buddhist) temples, some of the Hindu ones listed in works by Sita Ram Goel, appalling.

8) I find the 1300-year history of the persecution of the Zoroastrians, some of it continuing to this day, according the great scholar of Zoroastrianism, Mary Boyce, which has led to their reduction to a mere 150,000, something to deplore. There are piquant details in her works, including the deliberate torture and killing of the dogs (which are revered by Zoroastrians), even by small Muslim children who are taught to so behave.

9) I find the record of Muslim intellectual achievement lacking, and I attribute this lack to the failure to encourage free and skeptical inquiry, which is necessary for, among other things, the development of modern science.

10) I deplore the prohibition on sculpture or on paintings of living things. I deplore the horrific vandalism and destruction of Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Buddhist sites.

11) I deplore the Muslim jurisprudence which renders all treaties between Infidels and Muslims worthless from the viewpoint of the Infidels, though worth a great deal from the viewpoint of the Muslims, for they are only signing a “hudna,” a truce-treaty rather than a true peace-treaty -- and because they must go to war against the Infidel, or press their Jihad against the Infidel in other ways, on the model of the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, no Infidel state or people can ever trust a treaty with Muslims.

12) I deplore the speech of Mahathir Mohammad, so roundly applauded last year, in which he called for the “development” not of human potential, not of art and science, but essentially of weapons technology and the use of harnessing and encouraging Muslim “brain power” for the sole purpose of defeating the Infidels, as a reading of that entire speech makes absolutely clear. Here -- would you like me to read it now for the audience?

13) I deplore the fact that Muslims are taught, and they seem to have taken those teachings to heart, to offer their loyalty only to fellow Muslims, the umma al-islamiyya, and never to Infidels, or to the Infidel nation-state to which they have uttered an oath of allegiance but apparently such an oath must be an act of perjury, because such loyalty is impossible. Am I wrong? Show me exactly what I have misunderstood about Islam.

14) I deplore the ululations of pleasure over acts of terrorism, the delight shown by delighted and celebrating crowds in Cairo, Ramallah, Khartoum, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and of course all over Saudi Arabia, when news of the World Trade Center attacks was known -- and I can, if you wish, supply the reports from those capitals which show this to have taken place. I attribute statements of exultation about the “Infidels” deserving it to the fact that Islamic tenets view the world as a war between the Believers and the Infidels.

15) On that score, I deplore that mad division of the world between Dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, and the requirement that there be uncompromising hostility between the two, until the final triumph of the former, and the permanent subjugation, and incorporation into it, of the latter.

16) I deplore the sexual inequality and mistreatment of women which I believe I can show has a clear basis in the canonical Islamic texts, and is not simply, pace Ebadi and other quasi-”reformers,” a “cultural” matter.

17) I deplore the fact that Infidels feel, with justice, unsafe in almost every Muslim country, but that Muslims treat the Infidel countries, and their inhabitants, with disdain, arrogance, and endless demands for them to bend, to change, to what Muslims want -- whether it be to remove crucifixes, or change the laws of laicity in France, or to demand that “hate speech” laws be extended in England so as to prevent any serious and sober criticism of Islam.

18) I deplore the emphasis on the collective, and the hatred for the autonomy of the individual. In particular, I believe that someone born into Islam has a perfect right to leave Islam if he or she chooses -- and that there should be no punishment, much less the murderous punishment so often inflicted.

19) I find the record of Muslim political despotism to be almost complete -- with the exception of those Muslim countries and regimes that have, as Ataturk did, carried out a series of measures to limit and constrain Islam.

20) I deplore the fact that while Muslims claim it is a “universalist” religion, it has been a vehicle for Arab imperialism, causing those conquered and Islamized in some cases to forget, or become indifferent or even hostile to, their own pre-Islamic histories. The requirement that the Qur’an be read in Arabic (one of the first things Ataturk did was commission a Turkish Qur’an and tafsir, or commentary), and the belief by many Muslims that the ideal form of society can be derived from the Sunna of 7th century Arabia, and that their own societies are worth little, is an imperialism that goes to culture and to history, and is the worst and most complete kind.

21) I deplore the attacks on ex-Muslims who often must live in fear. I deplore the attacks on Theo van Gogh and others, and the absence of serious debate about the nature of Islam and of its reform -- except as a means to further beguile and distract Infidels who are becoming more wary.

22) I deplore the emptiness of the “Tu Quoque” arguments directed at Christians and Jews, based on a disingenuous quotation of passages -- for example, from Leviticus -- that are completely ignored and have not been invoked for two thousand years, and I deplore the rewriting of history so that a Muslim professor can tell an American university audience that “the Ku Klux Klan used to crucify (!) African-Americans, everyone standing around during the crucifixion singing Christian hymns (!).”

23) I deplore the phony appeals of the “we all share one Abrahamic faith” and “we are the three monotheisms” when, to my mind, a Christian or a Jew has far less to fear from, and in the end far more in common with, any practicing polytheistic Hindu.

24) I do not think Islam, which is based on the idea of world-conquest, not of accommodation, and whose adherents do not believe in Western pluralism except insofar as this can be used as an instrument, temporarily most useful, to protect the position of Islam until its adherents have firmly established themselves.

25) I deplore the view, in Islam, that it is not a saving of an individual soul that is involved when one conducts Da’wa or the Call to Islam, but rather, something that appears to be much more like signing someone up for the Army of Islam. He need not have read all the fine print; he need not know Islamic tenets; he need not even have read or know what is in sira and hadith or much of the Qur’an; he need only recite a single sentence. That does not show a deep concern for the nature of the conversion (sorry, “reversion”).

26) I deplore the sentiment that “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated. “ I deplore the sentiment “War is deception” as uttered by Muhammad. I deplore what has happened over 1350 years, in vast swaths of territory, formerly filled with Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, much of which is now today almost monotonously Islamic. I do not think Islam welcomes any diversity if it means the possibility of full equality for non-Muslims.

27) I deplore the fact that slavery is permitted in Islam, that it is discussed in the Qur’an, that it was suppressed in 19th century Arabia only through the influence of British naval power in the Gulf; that it was formally done away with in Saudi Arabia only in 1962; that it still exists in Mali, and the Sudan, and even Mauritania; that it may exist in the Arabian interior, but certainly the treatment of the Thai, Filipino, Indian and other female house workers in Arab households amounts to slavery, and it is no accident that there has never been a Muslim William Wilberforce.

I could go on, and am prepared to adduce history, and quotations from the canonical texts. And so are hundreds of thousands of Infidels who have looked into Islam, or in their own countries, had a close look at the Muslim populations which have made their own Infidel existences far more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous than they would otherwise be.

If this is “Islamophobia” -- show me exactly why it is irrational (i.e. not based on facts or observable behavior, or a study of history), an “irrational” dislike or even hatred of Islam. If you cannot show that, then perhaps the word should not be invoked. But if you do invoke it, be prepared to have copious quotations from Qur’an and hadith and sira constantly presented to audiences so that they may judge for themselves, without the “guidance” of apologists for Islam, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

From CP, with thanks to Susan:

The Calgary Health Region has placed doors in front of a stained glass portrait of St. Luke, the Beloved Physician, at the Foothills Hospital chapel so that it is no longer visible.

A note posted on the doors explains the decision was made because the chapel is a multifaith sanctuary, and that any representation of the human form inside a place of worship is offensive to Muslims and Jews. But the decision is inane, according to Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop Fred Henry, who said covering the saint is going too far.

Quite so.

Ahmed Sattar update. From Newsday, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Morvillo grilled Sattar in Manhattan about his knowledge of the sheik, the Islamic Group and their goals to overthrow the secular Egyptian government. Sattar insisted the Islamic Group sought, "not to overthrow the government, but to replace it."

There's a distinction without a difference if I ever saw one.

Morvillo also questioned Sattar about a list of 14 convicted terrorists that was found in his possession that included their inmate numbers and mailing addresses.

"You have corresponded with people convicted of terrorism-related charges?" Morvillo asked.

"Yes," Sattar replied. "They were sending me letters asking for me to assist ... some were calling me that they are in need of money and, as a point of the charity for many Muslims, especially during Ramadan, I used to send them money. Yes, they are criminals, but they are also human beings."

Morvillo asked Sattar if he knew Yousef, and Sattar replied, "I never met Ramzi Yousef ... I never spoke to him."

"Wasn't it true you had some letters from him?" Morvillo asked.

"Yes, I had a letter," Sattar said, explaining that he had published a Muslim newspaper and that after he stopped publishing it, Yousef "sent me a letter asking me why we stopped sending it to him. That was my only contact with him ... "

Sattar also attempted a bit of taqiyya, but failed:

Morvillo asked Sattar if "jihad" to Abdel-Rahman meant "jihad by the sword." Sattar insisted "jihad" was a struggle in one's heart, adding, "it could mean by hand, by intention and the act of opposing something."

Morvillo showed him one of the sheik's sermons found among Sattar's possessions in which the sheik declares, "If God ... say do a jihad, it means do it with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenade and with the missile; this is jihad."

Sattar conceded, "Right here in this sermon ... he is saying that, yes."

This is another illustration of the dangers of whitewashed history: it becomes the foundation for contemporary political action. Here is a columnist in a North Carolina paper saying with a straight face that "we could do far worse...than imitating Spain's Islamic era at its best." Oh really? I am confident that Sarah-Ann Smith (a "former diplomat"!) didn't really mean that we should institute a Sharia state with institutionalized discrimination against Christians and Jews -- but that's because the whitewash of history she has read (Menocal's Ornament of the World) didn't tell her, except briefly and breezily, that those were elements of Muslim Spain at all.

From the Asheville Citizen-Times, with thanks to Anthony:

My recent trip to Spain has prompted some thoughts about our post-Sept. 11, 2001, relationship to the Islamic world. A wonderful book, "The Ornament of the World" by Maria Rosa Menocal, had excited my interest in Spain's medieval Islamic period, and I had to see the relics of that beautiful culture for myself....

More important than the remains of the buildings is the culture they recall. In Islamic Spain adherents of all the three great Western religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - coexisted under a government that recognized their common biblical foundations. The Islamic system protected and gave each a place in the society as a whole - a place more tolerant by far than that accorded Jews and Muslims in the succeeding Christian era, dominated by the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.

As Menocal notes, "This was the chapter of Europe's culture when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side and, despite their intractable differences and enduring hostilities, nourished a complex culture of tolerance ... it found expression in the often unconscious acceptance that contradictions ... could be positive and productive."

The era ended in 1492, with the Spanish Christian monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand conquering the Alhambra, the last Muslim stronghold, and also expelling the Jews from Spain (as well as financing Christopher Columbus's journey of discovery).

Some Jews remained, perhaps as many as half the total number, along with an Islamic remnant, both being required to convert to Christianity. But, for the Jews at least, as contemporary Spanish writer Antonio Munoz Molina notes, "those who stayed behind ended up as alien in their homeland as those who left ... scorned not only by those who should have been their brothers in their new religion but also by those who remained loyal to the abandoned faith."

Thus, Molina demonstrates, present-day Spain continues to struggle with a past characterized by a diversity that its Christian rulers spurned 500 years ago. The Muslim issue has again become one that must be dealt with, and not only in terms of the terrorist threat demonstrated so tragically in last spring's train bombings that killed 192 people.

Spain currently has an active Islamic population, reaching close to a million, whose needs the Spanish authorities realize they must consider. Spanish Prime Minister Zapatera [sic] has called for "an alliance of cultures" between the West and the Islamic world, to isolate the violent fringe.

In 2003 a new mosque was opened in Granada to serve the city's estimated 15,000 Muslims. It was financed in large part by a United Arab Emirates sheik, to show, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, he reportedly said, "that Islam is fundamentally moral rather than political in nature." At the opening ceremony Granada's deputy mayor expressed the hope that the mosque would promote the religious tolerance that characterized the city in the past.

This event was far from free of controversy. The mosque's construction was delayed for years, partly by the opposition and lawsuits of local residents. And since the March bombings, many Spaniards have been even more nervous about the increasing numbers of North African Muslim immigrants, since the main suspects in the bombings are Moroccans. Others, however, recognize the importance of a dialogue with moderate Muslims. Spaniards' ambivalence is currently being played out in the trial of suspected terrorists, at which the former and current prime ministers are testifying.

From the point of view of an ordinary traveler, it appears that the understandable nervousness in the wake of the March bombings has not resulted in a paranoid anticipation of repeated terrorist acts. And the tourist industry at least is more than happy to highlight the magnificence of the remains of Spain's Islamic past.

Back home, I keep thinking of Spain's experience, contemporary and historical, in all its complexity, and realize that, for better or worse, we're all in this post- Sept. 11 world together - Christian, Muslim, Jew and, yes, secularist.

And the only way to genuine peace and security, and freedom from fear, is through tolerant acceptance and appreciation of our differences and mutual encouragement of the best in all our traditions. We could do far worse in this respect than imitating Spain's Islamic era at its best.

And now for some reality about Muslim Spain, first from Menocal herself. Even she acknowledges in her book that the laws of dhimmitude were very much in force in this Islamic paradise of tolerance:

The dhimmi, as these covenanted peoples were called, were granted religious freedom, not forced to convert to Islam. They could continue to be Jews and Christians, and, as it turned out, they could share in much of Muslim social and economic life. In return for this freedom of religious conscience the Peoples of the Book (pagans had no such privilege) were required to pay a special tax — no Muslims paid taxes — and to observe a number of restrictive regulations: Christians and Jews were prohibited from attempting to proselytize Muslims, from building new places of worship, from displaying crosses or ringing bells. In sum, they were forbidden most public displays of their religious rituals.

So much for a paradise of tolerance and multiculturalism. Historian Kenneth Baxter Wolf observes that “much of this new legislation aimed at limiting those aspects of the Christian cult which seemed to compromise the dominant position of Islam.” After enumerating a list of laws much like Menocal’s, he adds: “Aside from such cultic restrictions most of the laws were simply designed to underscore the position of the dimmîs as second-class citizens.” These laws were not uniformly or strictly enforced; Christians were forbidden public funeral processions, but one contemporary account tells of priests merely “pelted with rocks and dung” rather than being arrested while on the way to a cemetery.

Yet if such laws were on the books in al-Andalus, then a fundamental premise of Menocal’s thesis (or what others like Sarah-Ann Smith have made of it) is undercut. If Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peaceably and productively only with Christians and Jews relegated by law to second-class citizen status, then al-Andalus has precisely nothing to teach our age about tolerance. The laws of dhimmitude give all of Menocal’s accounts of Jewish viziers and Christian diplomats the same hollow ring as the stories of prominent American blacks from the slavery and Jim Crow eras: yes, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington were great men, but their accomplishments not only do not erase or contradict the records of the oppression of their people, but render them all the more poignant and haunting. Whatever the Christians and Jews of al-Andalus accomplished, they were still dhimmis. They enjoyed whatever rights and privileges they had not out of any sense of the dignity of all people before God, or the equality of all before the law, but at the sufferance of their Muslim overlords.

There is more on this in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

Anti-Semitism in Europe is an action of the radical Muslims who wish to remake Europe according to the dictates of the Sharia. Consequently it is everyone's problem, not just in general as a human rights issue, but as a specific threat to the European polities.

From Haaretz, with thanks to Nicolei:

David Amar, head of the Jewish community in Marseilles, says in an interview with the Shalem Center journal Tchelet (Azure) that in the last four years it is possible to distinguish two expressions of the rise of anti-Semitism in France: anti-Semitic actions against the dead and actions against the living. The vandalism and desecrations of Jewish cemeteries are mostly done by the extreme right, but most of the violent attacks on living Jews are being done by young North African Arabs living in France. According to Amar, the danger of radical Islam in Europe has evolved and is now recognized as not merely a Jewish problem. Senior officials in France regard the Jews as a barometer for social stability in France. Amar said that even a minister known for his sympathy for the Arabs, like Dominique de Villepin, told him that he anticipates difficult problems from extremist Islam in France.

Public opinion in leading states in the European Union is bothered nowadays by the danger posed to European society and its values by radical Islam. The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and the wave of violence that swept over Holland in its wake shocked Western Europe. There is talk in Germany, Italy and Britain about legislation against terror, and they are implementing rules that harm the sacred freedoms of the individual. The Germans watched on TV as an incendiary speech was delivered by an imam in a Berlin mosque promising that "the German non-believers would burn in hell."

This week, German police raided dozens of apartments and offices attributed to the Al Aqsa organization, which funnels financial donations to Hamas.

The European press is now using the term "clash of civilizations." With 20 million Muslims in Europe, the words of Bassam Tibi, an academic of Syrian origin now residing in Germany, echo. He said there is only one choice: "Either Islam becomes European, or Europe becomes Muslim."

Now here's a refreshing bit of anti-dhimmitude. From AFP, with thanks to Anthony:

BRUSSELS, Dec 13 (AFP) - France wants Turkey to acknowledge the World War One massacre of Armenians during negotiations on its membership of the European Union, Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said Monday.

"It is a request that France will make, to recognise the tragedy from the start of the century .... Turkey must carry out this task as a memorial," he told reporters after talks with his EU counterparts in Brussels.

France's Armenian community has vowed to press President Jacques Chirac to prevent negotiations on Turkish membership of the European Union until Turkey acknowledged responsibility for the massacre.

One of the world's most wanted jihadists. From Reuters, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan security forces have captured Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's personal security chief as he travelled in a van to the southern city of Kandahar, provincial officials have told Reuters.

The capture of Toor Mullah Naqibullah Khan, who headed Mullah Omar's household security during his time in power, could help U.S. and Afghan forces track down his boss, one of the most wanted fugitives in the U.S.-led war on terror.

Osama bin Laden, who ran his al Qaeda network in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban, is also believed to be at large in the area.

"We have arrested top Taliban figures Toor Mullah Naqibullah Khan and Mullah Qayoom Angar on the way between Arghandab and Kandahar. They were carrying a satellite telephone and some important documents," said a senior Kandahar security official, who requested anonymity.

"We are hopeful we will arrest more Taliban figures and we hope that we can arrest their leader Mullah Omar," he said on Tuesday.

Khalid Pashtun, spokesman for the provincial government, confirmed the arrests.

How many more deaths like those of Fortuyn and van Gogh will there be in the Netherlands? From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

The last movie by slain Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh -- a fictional thriller about the first political killing in the Netherlands -- premiered at a screening attended by his family and national movie celebrities.

Van Gogh was putting the final touches to "06/05," a feature-length film about the May 2002 assassination of populist anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn, when he himself was shot and stabbed to death on an Amsterdam street, allegedly by an Islamic radical.

The movie weaves together real news footage of Fortuyn's murder with a fictional conspiracy between the U.S. government and the Dutch secret service -- and throws in some nudity to keep with traditional Dutch cinema.

The story is told through the eyes of a freelance photographer who unwittingly takes pictures that capture the participation of Dutch authorities in Fortuyn's murder. Photographer Jim de Booy finds himself on the run from secret service agents who ransack his home and threaten his family....

Some of Van Gogh's friends and family wept after the movie was shown Sunday.

"It's not only a beautiful tribute to Fortuyn, but sadly it is also a tribute to Theo," said actress Tara Elders.

Layla M update: "Mentally-ill girl who was sold for sex faces death penalty in Iran." From The Independent, with thanks to Anthony:

A teenage girl with a mental age of eight is facing the death penalty for prostitution in Iran. The trial comes only four months after the hanging of another mentally ill girl for sex before marriage in a case that has prompted a human rights lawyer to prepare a charge of wrongful execution against the presiding judge.

The girl, known as Leyla M, is in prison while the Supreme Court decides on her "acts contrary to chastity", among the most serious charges under Iranian law. Under the penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be executed.

In an interview on a Persian-language website, the 19-year-old says she was forced into prostitution by her mother at the age of eight. Amnesty International refers to reports that say she was repeatedly raped, bore her first child aged nine and was passed from pimp to pimp before having another three children.

She told the website: "The first time I was taken to a man's house by my mum I was eight. It was a horrible night and I cried a lot but then my mum came the next day and took me home. She bought me chocolate and cheese curls."

Iranian press reports say Leyla was charged with controlling a brothel, having sex with blood relatives and bearing an illegitimate child. Amnesty says the court refused to admit social workers' evidence of her young mental age and convicted her on the basis of confessions.

Her prosecution echoes the fate of an even younger girl, Atefeh Rajabi, executed in August. In her case a judge known as Hajj Rezai reportedly put the noose around her neck himself after convicting her on the basis of her confessions for the fourth time in two years. She begged for her life while being led to the gallows, shouting "repentance".

They banned it because it says Islam spread by force and persecuted Christians. Are the "experts on Islamic history" who commented on the book in Cairo really experts on Islamic history, or on the whitewashing of that history?

All this is especially ironic in light of the fact that the New York Times quoted a Muslim spokesman just the other day, saying that "for centuries Muslims have been told that Islam was spread by the sword." Muslims can say it; men named George Bush can't.

From Reuters, with thanks to JS and Ali Dashti:

CAIRO (Reuters) - The censors at al-Azhar, Cairo's center of Islamic learning, have recommended the government ban a 19th century biography of the Prophet Mohammad by a scholar portrayed in the Arabic media as an ancestor of President Bush.

An al-Azhar official, who asked not to be named, said on Monday the ban applied to the original English version of The Life of Mohammad by the scholar George Bush, first published in 1830 and reissued in the United States in 2002.

He did not give a reason but press articles on an Arabic translation of the book have criticized its account of early Islamic history. They quote Bush as saying Muslims spread Islam by force and persecuted Christians, for example.

Excerpts have appeared in the Cairo daily Nahdet Misr, with critical comments by experts in Islamic history.

Of course, the whole world now knows that foreign jihadists have been streaming into Iraq. I gave details of some of this movement even before the war in Onward Muslim Soldiers. But most analysts present these men as largely newly-minted, radicalized by the Iraq war itself, when in fact there is a population of intinerent warriors that has gone from Afghanistan to Bosnia to Chechnya and elsewhere in search of the latest jihad. Iraq is just a stop along the way.

From Bill Gertz in the Washington Times, :

U.S. military forces captured more than 30 foreign fighters during recent combat in Fallujah and found equipment used by terrorists to make fake passports and documents, a senior military official in Iraq said.

"We found a lot of evidence in the city of foreign fighter involvement, to include equipment for making and forging passports and official documents, rolls, books or ledgers with names and countries of origin of foreign fighters that were located within the city," the senior officer said.

However, al Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi and other insurgent leaders fled the city and are believed to be moving constantly. Some are operating in the Mosul area in northern Iraq, the senior officer in Iraq told The Washington Times.

One finding of the battle of Fallujah was that no single nation was the main home of the foreigners who were killed or captured. The list of foreign fighters who were identified included nationals from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Algeria, said the officer, speaking on condition that he not be named.

In addition to the 30 captured foreign fighters, the remains of more than 40 others have been identified as non-Iraqis. Many of those killed in the recent fighting also may have been foreign terrorists, but did not carry any identification.

"The number of foreign fighters that were found in the city was lower than we expected," the official said, adding that many fled the city and others were killed but not identified.

In FrontPage, Daniel Pipes comments on the significance of the Boim case:

Counterterrorism efforts got a major boost last week when a U.S. district court found three Muslim organizations and one individual, mostly based in the Chicago area, guilty of funding Hamas and fined them an astonishing $156 million (U.S.)....

Third, as the Boims' lawyer, Stephen J. Landes explains, it shows that "the American court system is prepared to bankrupt the Islamist terror network," just as it earlier destroyed the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, two extremist and violent organizations, "by bringing unpayably large judgments against them."

Finally, the case confirms a pattern of culpability among even the most innocent-appearing of Islamic institutions. Two of the three liable groups have known ties to Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group; Holy Land Foundation serves as its fundraising arm, Islamic Association for Palestine as its political front. But the Quranic Literacy Institute appeared wholly unconnected to Hamas. It is a religious group based in a Chicago suburb that since 1991 has engaged in the pious work of translating Islamic sacred texts from Arabic, then publishing them in English.

But appearances can deceive. In June 1998, Federal authorities charged QLI with having for nine years supported "a conspiracy involving international terrorist activities and domestic recruitment and training in support of such activities" and seized $1 million of its cash and assets....

QLI's complicity in terrorism has great significance, for it is no rogue outfit but a stalwart of the Saudi-backed "Wahhabi lobby" in the United States. QLI's founding president, Ahmad Zaki Hammad, is a scholar of Islam boasting advanced degrees from Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University and the University of Chicago. He has served as president of the lobby's largest organization, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and sat on the board of the North American Islamic Trust, its mechanism for taking over mosques and other Islamic properties.

When the QLI's assets were impounded in 1998, leading organizations of the Wahhabi lobby - ISNA, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Students' Association - leapt to its defense, declaring themselves "shocked at this unprecedented action taken against members of the Muslim community." Nearly a thousand supporters rallied on QLI's behalf, chanting "Allahu Akbar."

And yet, we now know that this innocuous-appearing organization did have a key role funneling money to Hamas.

Muslim institutions too often are not what they seem to be. The "Progressive Muslim Union" is actually reactionary. Mosques harbor criminals. Honey companies and Islamic "charities" fund terrorism. A "mainstream" Muslim leader pleads guilty to an assassination scheme.

The lesson is clear: Wahhabi organizations like the QLI cannot be taken at face value but must be scrutinized for extremist, criminal, and terrorist connections. Extensive research, including undercover operations, is needed to find out the possibly sordid reality behind a seemingly benign exterior.

Read it all.

A revealing look inside the soon-to-be newest member of the EU. From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

ISTANBUL, Turkey - It's the sort of scene that rattles Turkey's Western-looking establishment: angry demonstrators raising fists for Islam and waving posters supporting Chechen separatists, the Iraq insurgency and hard-line Palestinian factions such as Hamas.

"Islamic resistance will win!" chanted nearly 400 protesters, including women wearing green headbands with Quranic verses — similar to those worn by suicide bombers in farewell videos.

Radical cries from the fringe — like these in Istanbul last weekend — are driving concerns that the Muslim nation's push toward Europe may stir momentum in the opposite direction. Ahead of a key European Union vote Friday, pro-Islamic political groups appear ready to seek gains if Ankara's bid to join the EU falters and more extremist elements could use the East-West split as fresh ground for recruits in a country still stunned by bombings last year linked to al-Qaida.

"Turkey is like a firewall between radical Islam and the West," said Dogu Ergil, a political science professor at Ankara University. "The consequences if the firewall comes down are scary."

Interesting. I don't think much of Turkey as a "firewall," but it doesn't seem as if Ergil buys into the tiny-minority-of-extremists media line.

AP also seems to buy into Erdogan's veiled "Accept us or else" threat:

If the EU rejects Turkey, pro-Islamic political groups could find a springboard to reassert more power and seek stronger bonds with the wider Muslim world, including neighboring Iran. Authorities also could confront new challenges to contain extremists in Turkey, where secularism has been a pillar of the nation since it formed in 1923 from the remains of the Ottoman Empire.

"An EU rejection of a Muslim Turkey is also going to reinforce the notion that the West is, indeed, now engaged in a war against Muslims worldwide," said John Robertson, an expert in Middle Eastern affairs at Central Michigan University....

Meanwhile, on a Constantinople street:

Istanbul's Carsamba neighborhood is a case in point. Nearly the entire place pushes the panic buttons of the nation's secular circles.

Men openly wear skullcaps and religious-style robes — technically illegal for everyone but clerics inside mosques. Bookstores offer volumes about perceived "Zionist" conspiracies against Islam and extolling the Palestinian intefadeh. Street peddlers hawk CDs about Muslim commandos in Chechnya waging "holy war" against Russia and sermons from firebrand Turkish imams silenced by the state.

Nearly every woman has a head scarf and many wear a full chador that hides all but their eyes. A five-minute cab ride brings the Turkey that EU proponents want the world to see: miniskirts, designer stores and wine bars.

"Islam is reclaiming its rightful place in Turkey," said Kenan Alpay, an organizer at Ozgur Der, or Freedom Association, a conservative Islamist group. "We have been on the sidelines of politics and society too long. That's ending."

Attempts to disrupt the election continue. They will no doubt continue after the election as well. Attempting to establish democracy in Iraq is a dubious enterprise, as I have long noted; not because the Iraqis are somehow less capable of it than other people, as the President has occasionally charged his opponents on this issue with believing, but because Islam is inherently political, and from its inception has contained a mandate for the governance of states. Modern-day jihad terrorism was not born when the US entered Iraq, or when Khomeini took over in Iran, or when Israel was founded, or when any number of other events took place that are now fashionable to point to as the root cause. In fact, the first modern jihadist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the father of Hamas, Al-Qaeda, and other groups, was founded in the late 1920s as a response to the abolition of the caliphate in Turkey in 1924.

This in itself should be enough to show people that political Islam, which was largely embodied before that in the caliphate (which in turn stretched in all its permutations back to the time of Muhammad), has been a constant of history; it is not a new invention and will not disappear no matter how much the United States changes its policies in Iraq or elsewhere. The ongoing attempts to disrupt the Iraqi elections can only be fully understood in this light.

From AP, :

BAGHDAD, Iraq – An al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew up his vehicle Monday near cars waiting to enter the Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and Iraq's interim government, killing 13 Iraqis on the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's capture.

As insurgents continued to step up attacks against U.S. and Iraqi forces ahead of next month's elections, the country's interim president said Washington was wrong for dismantling Iraq's security forces, including its 350,000-strong army, after last year's invasion.

"Definitely dissolving the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior was a big mistake," Ghazi al-Yawer told British Broadcasting Corp. radio, saying it would have been more effective to screen out former regime loyalists than to rebuild from scratch.

He added: "As soon as we have efficient security forces that we can depend on, we can see the beginning of the withdrawal of forces from our friends and partners. And I think it doesn't take years, it will take months."

U.S. military commanders, however, say American forces will be in Iraq for several years.

Commanders have said troop numbers will rise from 138,000 to 150,000 before the Jan. 30 national elections, which many Iraqis fear could be targeted by militants opposed to the occupation and bent on derailing the political process.

UPDATE: And again: "Seven killed in another blast in Baghdad."

And why? Because the French don't have the courage to say that the threat they face comes from the Muslim jihadists who want to make France over into an Islamic state. They don't have the courage to say that Islam contains within itself something that is qualitatively different from Christianity, Judaism, and all other religions, precisely since it contains — inherent within it — specific directions for the governance of states as well as individual and collective piety. Thus they don't have the courage to ban the headscarf alone, as a symbol of this will to subvert their government and society, without banning also Christmas Santas and crosses and the like.

From AP, with thanks to BHall and Susan:

PARIS - They arrived as they do every December: gaily wrapped gifts destined for children at a kindergarten in rural northern France.

But this year, teachers unwrapped a few, took a look and sent all 1,300 packages back to City Hall. The presents were innocent, but strictly speaking, illegal: seasonal chocolates shaped like Christian crosses and St. Nicholas.

As Christmas approaches, France is awakening to the realization that a new law banning conspicuous religious symbols at schools — a measure used mainly to keep Muslim girls from wearing traditional Islamic head scarves to class — can cut both ways.

“It’s an unhealthy political affair. Absolutely regrettable,” said Andre Delattre, mayor of the northern town of Coudekerque-Branche, which has shipped the traditional chocolates to local schools for 11 years.

“What’s the point? It’s the children who are being penalized for this difference of opinion,” he said. “They’ve been deprived of a festive moment.”

Challenge to Christian imagery

The law, which took effect in September, bans overt symbols such as Islamic head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses at public schools.

More than a dozen teenage Muslim girls have been expelled from high schools for refusing to remove their scarves, along with three Sikh boys kicked out of a Paris-area school for wearing turbans.

But last week’s dispute over the chocolates was the first time the law — France’s response to what many perceive as a rise in Muslim fundamentalism — has been used to challenge Christian imagery.

Important reflections on the Christian communities of the Middle East from Habib Malik, one of the most superbly insightful commentators on the scene today. From Lebanon's Daily Star, with thanks to Ted Robertson and Dagald Walker:

Christian communities native to the Middle East are passing through turbulent times. In Egypt, where the Copts constitute the largest concentration of Christian Arabs anywhere in the region, the community finds itself caught in the crossfire between an authoritarian government and radical Islamist groups. The Copts, despite sharing strong sentiments of Egyptian nationalism with the Muslim majority, are often beset upon by both the authorities and the fanatics because they are perceived as a convenient scapegoat. In southern Sudan, though a peace agreement may be near, Christians were locked in a 20-year civil war with an Islamist government in Khartoum bent on imposing Sharia on them by force.

Christians in growing numbers are daily fleeing the chaos in Iraq, where their churches have been bombed and their livelihoods threatened by Islamist militants leading the armed insurgency against U.S. and coalition forces. In the Holy Land, in places where ancient Christian communities reside, like Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, the Christian presence has shrunk dramatically due mainly to emigration, as Christians see themselves being marginalized by a conflict increasingly defined in terms of Jews versus Muslims. And in Lebanon, following 15 years of war that resulted in open-ended Syrian domination, the Christians, who number close to 40 percent of the population, have seen their freedoms steadily erode, their numbers dwindle, and their political influence shrivel.

Two distinct historical narratives define the way of life and the destiny of the Middle East's diverse indigenous Christian communities: a narrative of subjugation and a narrative of freedom. On one side lies the vast majority of Christian Arabs - over 90 percent - in their respective regional and cultural contexts. Since the rise and spread of Islam these communities have been relentlessly reduced to dhimmi status, or second-class status in their own homelands, being forced to forfeit any semblance of free existence. The Christians of Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Syria and the Holy Land belong to this vanquished category.

On the other side stand the Christians of Lebanon, numerically a minority, but with a unique historical experience of freedom that was defended and preserved over the centuries at a high cost in terms of blood and treasure. Here the entrenched Maronites, affiliated with Rome since the year 1180, serve as spearhead for a host of other lesser denominations who have thrown in their lot with them to form an exceptionally rooted and tenacious Christian community largely resistant to the ravages of "dhimmitude." However, the combined toll in recent years of war, foreign occupation, economic deterioration, and attrition through emigration has weighed heavily on Lebanon's Christians, causing them for the first time since the mid-19th century to experience an appreciable loss in the precious freedoms to which they have clung so fiercely for so long.

I urge you to read all of this magnificent piece, which goes on to examine the differences in mindset between dhimmis and free Christians in the Middle East.

In mid-November I posted about a story from California's Paradise Post about an ex-Muslim who now calls himself Mujahid-El-Masih, who was quoted as saying that "the main theme of jihad is the murdering of Christians and Jews." I also posted about the furious reaction from CAIR, in which post I noted that "the Qur'an actually mandates warfare against Christians and Jews not simply to murder them, but to offer them three choices: conversion, death, or subjugation as inferiors under Islamic law (cf. Qur'an 9:29). Many Muslim commentators throughout history and today have understood this to be the Qur'an's last word on jihad."

I have just received an email from Mujahid-El-Masih in which he says that he was misquoted by the Paradise Post: "I did not say that the main theme of Jihad is murdering Jews and Christians. I said the main theme of the Quran is Jihad. The Jihad can be done in three main ways: when Muslims invade any country they give three choices to the people.

1. Accept Islam.
2. Pay Tax.
3. Death By the Sword."

This is, of course, absolutely true, in line with Muhammad's directions in this hadith:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war...When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, ac