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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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.

UPDATE: The authorities say that when Westerners are paying attention, but at other times they say things that are quite different -- proving that the old dhimmi laws restricting Christian testimony and inheritance, among other things, are still alive and well in Egypt. Witness this material that was kindly sent in by Andrew Bostom:

A Judicial Case in which the Supreme Court of Egypt Decided that Christians Are Infidels and Could Not Testify in the Court Against Muslims. Supreme Court, Domestic Section, Egypt, 5/19/1970

A childless, wealthy Christian woman donated half of her property to a Christian charity organization in Alexandria; the other half was left to her relatives. When she died, she was buried in a chapel built with her money. One of her nephews (a Muslim) claimed that his aunt adopted Islam before her death, making him the only beneficiary according to Islamic principles. There were no official records to confirm his claim according to the government requirement of registering religion changes. The nephew bought his aunt’s cook (a Muslim) and her husband to support his claim. The Christian charity organization and other relatives brought the priests and nuns who took care of her during her illness. All of them were Christians. The decision of the court was as follows:

All the witnesses of the defendants are non-Muslims (Christians). Their testimony is invalid because they are infidels. No infidel can testify against a Muslim. The Muslim nephew was given all of his aunt’s property, because according to Islamic principles, no non-Muslim should inherit property from a Muslim.

A Judicial Case in which the Supreme Court of Alexandria Decided that a Muslim Girl Who Converted to Christianity Is Legally Dead.

District Attorney, Alexandria, Egypt, 5/28/1972

As long as the defendant was a Muslim who adopted Christianity and got married, she is considered dead. Her marriage to a Christian is invalid and she should be separated from her husband or jailed.

A Judicial Case in which the Administrative Court of Egypt Decided that a Former Christian Who adopts Islam Cannot renounce Islam and Adopt Christianity Again.

Administrative Court, April 8, 1980

The Case

Mr. Gamel Youssef Hanna, a Christian, adopted Islam on 3/14/1953 and changed his name to Gamel Youssef Badawi and has an identification card as a Muslim. On 5/31/1974 he rejoined his church and readopted Christianity. He applied to change the religion on his identification card. The Identification Department refused to make such change because there is no apostasy in Islam. Mr. Gamel Youssef Hanna (now) presented his case to the Administrative Court.

The Court Decision

As long as the plaintiff has adopted Islam and became Muslim, he is considered as apostate if he renounces Islam and adopted another religion. And according to Islamic principles which he is bound by them as a Muslim, his apostasy is not acceptable. Therefore, he is not allowed to change his religion to the former one of his identification card.

According to article 46 of the Egyptian Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion does not contradict the second article which states that Islam is the state religion, because Islam calls for such freedom. This freedom which is guaranteed by the Constitution gives to every person the right to believe in any of the heavenly religions according to his conscience without coercion. However, such freedom does not supersede the Islamic principles for those who adopt Islam. In this case Islamic principles should be applied on those who adopt Islam which forbid the Muslim to change his (or her) religion. Thus, he does not have the right to renounce Islam.

***********************

Washington DC (4/26/2001)--U.S. Copts Association received the following story from Egypt.

The government moves to abduct two Coptic children from their own mother and hand them to strangers, under the name of Islam!

Washington DC (4/26/2001)--U.S. Copts Association received the following story from Egypt.

During the year of 1990 Emad Ayad Bishay of Beny Soweif, Egypt converted to Islam to obtain a divorce form his wife Fayza Abd El-Shaheed Tawfiq. The divorce was finalized in 1991 with court order 113. The couple made up in July 1995 and Emad Ayad Bishay left Islam and came back to Christianity. The Holly Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church accepted Emad Ayad Bishay back into the church on February 1st 1996. Since the Coptic Church does not recognize civil divorces without the approval of the Holly Synod and since the Holy Synod never gave concession to the divorce, the couple were always considered married.

On December 6 1996, Emad Ayad who had a history of heart problems passed away leaving his wife Fayza and two children (Nermeen and Ayman).

The death of Emad sparked a lengthy fight with the general prosecutor over the custody of the children, Nermeen and Ayman. According to court papers obtained by US Copts Association, the general prosecutor writes the following in the filling papers:

“According to court order 44 issued on Jan. 29th 1975, the child of a Muslim (boy or girl) should follow the Islamic religion, since Islam is the supreme religion among all religions”

“According to court order 44 issued on Jan. 29th 1975, and according the holy verse {the only religion accepted by God is Islam}. And, since it is legally agreed on according to Islamic Shari'a that {no authority of non -Muslims over Muslims}. We, therefore, ask and leave the decision to the court to select the best-fitting Muslim guardian to take custody of the children Nermeen and Ayman Emad Hamdy El-Said (Emad Ayad Bishay before entering Islam)”

Since Emad’s death and for over 5 years now, his widow Fayza had been fighting the general prosecutor to keep her children. In spite of a certificate from the Holly Synod stating that Emad Ayad Bishay came back to Christianity and died Christian, the government still persist on taken the children away from their own mother and give them to strangers, just because their father made a mistake and changed his religion for few years. The government used the above court order to justify its case and ignored another court order issued on 12/28/1998 (number 255 for judicial year 6) which stated that “if a chilled is born to Christian parents he/she should remain Christian until they have reached a legal age”.

The government, represented by the general prosecutor, also seems to ignore a court order that awarded the custody of the children to their mother Fayza Abd El-Shaheed Tawfiq on 7/3/1996.

On April 21, 2001, Fayza was called to court -yet another time- in order to fight a government that does not seem to want to give up and let these children live with the only mother they have known. Fayza is a nurse who provides for her elderly parents on the top of her two children and lives on an income of less than $20 per month. These court battles strained her, financially and emotionally, and left her fighting and struggling for her daily bread.

This case is a direct result of the application of article II in the Egypt constitution, which states that the Islamic law is the only source for legislation. Article II was amended in 1972 based on a recommendation from President Sadat.

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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."

Andrew Bostom writes in FrontPage on what is certain to be the most important book of 2005 and possibly of the entire decade: Bat Ye'or's Eurabia.

The importance of Bat Ye'or's work cannot be overestimated. She is the pioneering scholar of dhimmitude — indeed, she coined the term. And now her work on the suicide of Europe is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in defending what remains of Western civilization before it's too late.

On a recent trip to Switzerland, I encountered a gigantic mural in the Zurich Airport which depicted a proto-typical Swiss goat and sheep herder leading his flocks over an Alpine mountain pass, meeting a fully cloaked and turbaned Arab camel herder. Below the mural, a caption read, "You never know who you'll meet in Switzerland." This bucolic image struck me as bizarre, not having been personally conditioned to Western Europe's deliberate sociopolitical transformation over the past 30 years. I was reminded of these prescient words, written a quarter century ago by the great historian of Medieval European Islam, Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, who was concerned (even then) that historical and cultural revisionism might precipitate a recurrence of

"...the upheaval carried out on our continent (i.e., Europe) by Islamic penetration more than a thousand years ago...with other methods."

Within a decade after Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq's death in 1982, the historian Bat Ye'or (from a 1991 French interview, published in English translation in 1994) echoed his intuitive concerns about Europe's re-Islamization, and warned more broadly,

"I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years..."

Eurabia: the Euro-Arab Axis portrays Western Europe's recrudescent dhimmitude, chronicled in real time, by our most knowledgeable contemporary scholar of the dhimmi condition, Bat Ye'or. Living as an eyewitness in Geneva, a major European center influencing this phenomenon through NGOs and other international fora, Bat Ye'or describes in painstaking detail, the ongoing transformation of Europe into "Eurabia," a cultural and political appendage of the Arab/Muslim world.

Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia" clearly transcends attempts to analyze the same contemporary phenomena by pundits such as Robert Kagan and Bernard Lewis. This remarkable book is the product of her serendipitously apposite prior expertise, painstaking new research, brilliant insight, and intellectual courage. Bat Ye'or's analyses have profound implications for Western Europe which may be incapable of altering its Eurabian trajectory; her research may be even more important for the United States if it wishes to avoid Europe's fate.

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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 fa