October 2005 Archives

I received this message from a friend about an article in the LA Times, "Killers rendered in shades of gray," that is aptly characterized as an "erudite and subtle propaganda piece."

Below is a discussion of a new movie that tells the story of a pair of suicide bombers. The author of the article refers to them at one point as "the two heroes."

Increasingly, you will be expected to "understand" the "why" of suicide bombing. Read this erudite and subtle propaganda piece that "squarely places the blame" on the "occupation." But do you have the tools to recognize what is missing from this analysis? To wonder why no mention is made of the brainwashing of Muslims into the ideology of jihad?

There is a total absence of any reference to the perpetual hate messages in the "Palestinian" media; the ingrained Jew-hatred in Muslim society; the role of Muslim clergy who encourage, justify and endorse suicide bombing; and, above all, to the role of Islam in supplying the ideology for such bombings and the promise of their just reward: Paradise.

Do you wonder why the article does not mention how the "occupation" came into being? Why the writer did not tell you that it resulted from relentless warfare and terrorism by Arab states determined to destroy Israel? That when the same land was under Jordanian and Egyptian occupation prior to 1967, its inhabitants were treated to unremitting cruelty, neglect and rejection by their own Arab brethren? And, lastly, do you wonder why the author did not inform you that failed but unremitting aggression against Israel spawned the realization that terrorism would achieve what conventional warfare could not?

Suicide bombing is the Muslim weapon of choice, not because of despair, humiliation or "occupation," but because the Muslim world believes that suicide bombing works.

But now we are asked by our own media to, essentially, "give suicide bombing a chance." See the positive in it. Blame Israel for it. Remove all responsibility from the shoulders of those who recruit for it, finance it, promote it, practice it, celebrate it, reward it, perpetuate it and glorify it. In short, Israel's enemies are absolved.

Clearly, the writer with the obligatory Jewish name is counting on your naivete and ignorance.

Sharia update from Iran! "Alluring mannequins" are now verboten in Iran, and are being impounded. This is in the interests of public chastity, you see. After all, we can't have men falling for mannequins, can we? It might lead them to...join biker gangs!

You Can't Make This Stuff Up Alert: "City tackles titillating mannequins," from Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Police in northeastern Iran are launching a new morality drive by confiscating alluring mannequins from boutiques and clothes stalls in the bazaar, authorities in the city of Bojnourd said on Monday.

A spokesman for the city's judiciary, who asked not be named, explained the drive would tackle problems of "public chastity". Sixty five mannequins have been impounded so far.

He explained the crack-down on tailors' dummies was part of a larger offensive against anti-social behaviour such as vandalism and biker gangs.

Update on the jihad murders in India. "Militant-Linked Group Claims India Blasts," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

NEW DELHI -- A little-known group that police say has ties to Kashmir's most feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi....

A man called a local news agency in Indian Kashmir to say the militant Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, or Front for Islamic Uprising, staged the bombings, which police said killed 59 people and wounded 210.

The caller, who identified himself as Ahmed Yaar Ghaznavi, said the bombings were "meant as a rebuff to the claims of Indian security groups" that militants had been wiped out by security crackdowns and the Oct. 8 earthquake that devastated the insurgents' heartland in the mountains of Kashmir.

A senior police officer in India's Jammu-Kashmir state said the caller's name was not familiar to intelligence agencies, and New Delhi's deputy police chief, Karnail Singh, said the group had not been very active since 1996.

However, while Singh refused to comment on the claim of responsibility, he said the group is linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of the dozens of Kashmiri militant groups.

A leading anti-terrorism expert said earlier that the timing and nature of the blasts appeared to indicate the work of Lashkar.

"It looks like Lashkar. They are the most active group here," said Vikram Sood, the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's foreign intelligence agency.

Tiny minority of extremists update from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of Kabatiya, south of Jenin, Wednesday night to celebrate the suicide bombing in Hadera, which was carried out by local resident Hassan Abu Zeid.

Chanting Allahu Akbar (God is great), some 3,000 people, including Fatah and Islamic Jihad gunmen, converged on Abu Zeid's home to "congratulate" his family on the success of the attack, which killed five people and wounded more than 30.

They also called for more suicide attacks in Israel.

"With blood, with soul, we redeem Hassan," the crowd chanted. "Oh Jihad, Jihad, give us more [suicide] bombings. Oh [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, prepare more coffins."

Jihad from the University of Geneva computer system. From The Register, with thanks to Twostellas:

Swiss police last week arrested two African men who allegedly used the University of Geneva's computer system to disseminate Islamic fundamentalist hate messages and justifications for terrorist attacks, AFP reports.

The two - a 27-year-old Moroccan and a 41-year-old Algerian, both staying illegally in Switzerland - were fingered by German-language newspaper Weltwoche which reported the activity to the uni's authorities.

Because he dared to portray a Christian. "Terrorism: Internet Terror Threats to Omar Sharif," from AKI, with thanks to Erick Stakelbeck:

Rome, 28 Oct. (AKI) - Death threats to the Egyptian-born actor Omar Sharif have appeared in Islamist forums on the Internet, after Sharif's appearance as a Christian, Saint Peter, in an Italian biblical epic for television. A threatening message from user 'bachirma1' on one of the forums used by jihadi groups linked to al-Qaeda, reads:"In my view Omar Sharif is an infidel - enter here". Inside it continues; "He is a crusader who offends Islam and Muslims and is applauded by the Italian people. I give you some advice, my brothers, you should kill him."

From the exchange of messages it would appear that the sender of the death threats may be in Italy. A flurry of insulting messages endorse the condemnation of the 73 year old actor who shot to international stardom in the classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and with the title role of Doctor Zhivago (1965).

"A police union spokesman says a Paris suburb is seeing 'civil war.'" More on the Muslim riots in Paris from Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:

BOBIGNY, France (Reuters) -- Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday defended his tough crime policies against claims they helped increase tension after a fourth night of rioting in a Paris suburb in which tear gas was fired into a mosque.

It was not clear who had fired the tear gas and Sarkozy, addressing police officers, vowed to find out what had happened.

Youths hurled rocks and set fire to cars in the northeastern Clichy-sous-Bois suburb of the French capital, where many immigrants and poor families live in high-rise housing estates notorious for youth violence.

French television said six police officers were hurt and 11 people arrested in violence partly fueled by the incident at the mosque.

"I am, of course, available to the Imam of the Clichy mosque to let him have all the details in order to understand how and why a tear gas bomb was sent into this mosque," Sarkozy told about 170 police officers at the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture in Bobigny, the local authority which oversees Clichy-sous-Bois.

He also met the president of the Muslim community for the Clichy area.

The violence began four days ago among residents of Clichy-sous-Bois over the deaths of two teenagers believed to be of African origin who were electrocuted while fleeing police.

Shazad Tanweer, a thoroughly English lad according to his father, was not buried not in Twickenham or Surrey or Newcastle-on-Tyne, but in Pakistan -- in the shrine of an Islamic saint. Now why is that? Could it be that his family and others think of Tanweer as having done something honorable on July 7? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? From UPI, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The remains of a British-born suicide bomber involved in the July 7 London bombings were buried at an Islamic saint's shrine in Pakistan.

The funeral for 22-year-old Shahzad Tanweer, one of four bombers who blew up a subway train killing seven, was held in the village of Chhotian Kota in Pakistan where family relatives live, the Independent reported. Tanweer was born in Bradford, England.

The burial was attended by about 200 people, including Tanweer's father, Mumtaz Tanweer, a police official said.

Al-Qaeda, HizbAllah and others have been involved with cigarette smuggling. From the Times Union, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ROTTERDAM -- State Police rounded up 20 men in Rotterdam Wednesday night on felony conspiracy charges related to a cigarette smuggling ring, according to authorities....

One of the men, Elhadi Abdalla, 42, of 180 Lark Drive in Albany, has a history of marijuana convictions and faces extradition to his native Sudan, according to records from federal district court in Buffalo....

In Wednesday night's arrests, Abdalla was charged with fourth-degree conspiracy. Also charged were: Mamoun Ahmed, 28, and Walid Soliman, 36, both of 937 Cutler St., Schenectady; Salah Alsaedi, 30, of 145 Madison Ave., Albany; Nimzet Ilmic, 42, of 518 Wettmore St., Utica; Ali Jahmee, 53, and Mohammed Jahmee, 20, both of 200 Remsen St., Cohoes; Mohammed Mugalli, 32, of 530 Blondina St., Utica; Mohammed Salahuddin, 36, of 526 Columbia St., Hudson.

Also, Kajlid Yousif, 19, of 1121 Eighth Ave., Schenectady; Noaman Abdulla, 38, of 67 Grand St., Albany; Adel Abuzaid, 35, of 596 Jacob St., Troy; Fuad Azzobaidi, 29, of 149 Second Ave., Albany; Jassim Hasan, 36, of 1827 Fourth St., Rensselaer; Hayel Hussain, 31, of 2337 Van Vranken Ave., Schenectady; Nawaf Mohammed, 26, and Salah Mohammed, 21, both of 106 Fourth St., Troy; and Frank Nistico, 66, of Frankfort, Herkimer County.

Abdullah Alawaqi, 62, of 1572 Second Ave. in Manhattan, was charged with fourth-degree attempted criminal possession of stolen property. Hashim Mohammed, 41, of Crane Street, Schenectady, was charged with trademark counterfeiting.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses what might happen if Jerusalem is turned over to the "Palestinians," as Muslims around the world called for on Friday's Al-Quds Day:

The history of Muslim conquest all over the world is nothing less than a virtually unmitigated history of destruction. The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, now lost forever to the violent fanaticism of the Taliban, were spared until recently only because in the past, machine-guns and Western-invented explosives were not available. Then there are the tens of thousands of Hindu temples, listed in a 2-volume work by Sita Ram Goel and others, and the churches of Constantinople alone: go to the second floor of the Archeological Museum at the Topkapi Complex, and you will see a diorama of Constantinople just before it was conquered by Mehmet Fatih on May 29, 1453, and a color-key will show you the hundreds of churches that existed then, and that no longer exist. And the same was true all over the Middle East and North Africa -- destroyed, the stone quarried to build mosques. Leaf through Paul Lester Stenhouse’s translation of the Futuh Al-Habasa and you will see the Muslim chronicler complacently noting the wholesale burning of Abyssinian churches by the warriors of jihad.

In some cases a building that was not Islamic at all was appropriated for Islam. Thus the Dome of the Rock, it now appears from the convincing work of Christoph Luxenberg (see his essay in the just-published "Die dunkel Anfang"), while it has Arabic writing, the writing is neither Qur'anic, nor even Islamic, but rather Christian in its significance. Too many people confuse Arabic writing with Islam, but Arabic is independent of Islam, and certainly was in the first century of Islam. And the Omayyad Mosque in Damascus is nothing but a reworked version, an expansion upon, the Church of St. John the Baptist. And those who worked on it were Byzantine craftsmen working in the Byzantine tradition.

For mishandling nearly two million dollars worth of charitable donations. Of course, it's because the authorities "hated" his beard. "Dhafir gets 22 years in prison," from the Post Standard, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Dr. Rafil Dhafir will spend the next 22 years in federal prison....

Dhafir, 58, was convicted in February of 59 felonies, which included mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and money laundering. A jury decided Dhafir had mishandled nearly $2 million from his charity, Help the Needy....

Assistant prosecutor Michael Olmsted said he knew many supporters perceived Dhafir's "adamance as religious conviction. We see it as simple arrogance."...

Investigators and prosecutors, he said, "became obsessed with Dhafir; it became purely personal," Dhafir said in his statement.

"They didn't like the way I look, the way I dress. Oh, they hated my beard," he said. "They didn't like the way I drive or even how I park my car. I could not take a single breath without them interpreting it as a coded message with a nefarious intent."...

After the 17-week trial, a jury determined that Dhafir had laundered $2 million in donations collected through Help the Needy, Dhafir's charity founded to feed and clothe Iraqi children. Instead, he used that money as his personal slush fund for more than eight years.

He also was convicted of violating U.S. sanctions by sending aid to Iraq without a license, overbilling Medicare by $316,000 in his medical practice, claiming he was in the office during treatments when he was, in fact, out of the state and sometimes even overseas.

By fraudulently deducting his own donations to the charity, Dhafir underpaid his federal income taxes by $400,000, the jury concluded.

Mordue said he doesn't dispute that Dhafir did many good things in his life, but "he has been convicted. I heard the proof and I heard the jury."

Defense lawyer Devereaux Cannick said both the verdict and the sentence reflect an anti-Muslim sentiment pervasive in the United States since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Vowing he will appeal the sentence, Cannick said it proved it is "not a good time to be a Muslim in this country, especially with regard to the judicial system."

Prosecutors, however, disputed the characterization.

"I don't care what race, what religion or who you are in this country," Suddaby said. "If you commit these kinds of crimes, you're going to be prosecuted."...

[Dhafir] also objected to the conditions at Jamesville Penitentiary, where he said he was treated with disrespect, forced to be around others with "hygiene issues" and TV fare included the likes of Jerry Springer and "The Simpsons."

"I endured this travesty," his statement said, referencing the trial and incarceration. "The question is will my accusers be able to endure their punishment in the Hereafter? We shall see who will be laughing at whom."

Yes, we will.

1938 alert from WND, with thanks to JE:

JERUSALEM – The suicide bombing north of Tel Aviv that killed five Israelis and wounded more than 30 this week was directly backed by Syria and Iran, security sources said.

Meanwhile, a member of a terrorist groups reportedly involved in the blast told WND a Palestinian terror leader in Damascus demanded the suicide attack be carried out.

"The reaction of [Islamic Jihad leader] Ramadan Abdullah Shallah from his base in Damascus [to Israel's killing earlier of a senior Jihad member] was a clear demand to the Palestinian resistance, especially to Islamic Jihad to take revenge," said Abu Carmel, a West Bank leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party.

Abu Carmel was speaking to WND after a suicide bomber exploded in an open-air market in the coastal city of Hadera Wednesday. The attack was carried out in front of a falafel stand at the entrance to the market. Hadera has been a frequent target of bombings during the past five years.

The Islamic Jihad terror group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, saying the bombing was retaliation for the death of one of its senior leaders in an Israel Defense Forces raid in the West Bank earlier this week. Sources close to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades told WND the group was involved in the attack as well.

All is not rosy in Mullahland. From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

TEHRAN, Iran - Pro-democracy reformers denounced Iran's hard-line president Sunday for calling for Israel's annihilation, saying it harmed the country's international standing.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Israel is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map," prompting international condemnation and an Israeli demand Iran be expelled from the United Nations.

On Sunday, Ahmadinejad said his comments represented Iran's long-standing policy toward the Jewish state enunciated by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, said.

"These words are the same ones that the late Imam (Khomeini) said," Ahmadinejad said, explaining that he only added one sentence about "the powers of arrogance," seen as a reference to the United States. Iran does not recognize the existence of Israel and Khomeini had repeatedly called for its destruction.

But former reformist president Mohammad Khatami criticized Ahmadinejad, saying "those words have created hundreds of political and economic problems for us in the world," IRNA said.

It was the first time in a quarter century that there was a clear-cut rift over a major policy position drawn up by Khomeini.

"Ahmadinejad's remarks harmed Iran. It was irresponsible and illogical," said Rajabali Mazrouei, a prominent reformer and former deputy. "We can't be more extremist than Palestinians themselves."

Morad Veisi, a leading political analyst, said it was the first time that an Iranian head of state was openly calling for the destruction of Israel.

"Khomeini was a spiritual leader, not head of government. Ahmadinejad apparently is not even familiar with the world of politics," he said.

Extremists, however, were motivated by Ahmadinejad's remarks. About 300 men and women turned up Sunday at the offices of the Headquarters for Commemorating Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement to volunteer for suicide bomb attacks against Israel.

A spokesman for the group said it had signed up more than 45,000 volunteers to undergo training for suicide attacks since it began recruiting in June 2004.

The Vatican comments on this attack, which was indeed barbaric. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

THE Vatican yesterday called the beheading of three Indonesian schoolgirls from a Christian high school a "barbaric" attack....

The Vatican said the Pope was praying for renewed peace between the region's people.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer, senior associate scholar at the Political Science department at Rutgers University, and author of Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East, writes this at History News Network about the Denmark Muhammad cartoon controversy:

So, here we are: part of the Muslim community is in the thrall of a totalitarian ideology which turns young Muslims into human bombs. Photos of Muslim and non Muslim civilian body parts flying in the middle of markets, mosques, discos and hotels have become routine. Beheadings of Christian and Jewish men and women are no longer surprising. And what do the ever-silent and passive-defensive Muslim countries, Organization of Islamic Conference and the Arab League vociferously condemn? They are condemning the publication of cartoons featuring Muhammad in a Danish paper. The absurdity of this action is only matched by its hypocrisy.

Read it all.

What's causing jihadist sentiments among French Muslims? Must be a shortage of mosques! Yeah, that's it! If we fund mosques, any idea that Sharia must someday be imposed in France will vanish from among French Muslims!

That seems to be the line of reasoning. But is there any evidence to back it up? Any support for it at all? Do they think that if French Muslims come to depend upon the French government for money, they will moderate to please it? Has it escaped their notice that the Saudis have a good deal of money themselves? Will they make it illegal for mosques to receive foreign money? That is not mentioned in this article. Will they attach requirements for teaching to the money, so that mosques will lose their funding if they teach that Sharia must someday reign in France? Will they fax sermons to French imams and not allow them to preach their own, a la the Turks? None of that is mentioned in this article. "Church-state debate revived by call for mosque funding," from AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

PARIS, Oct 31 (AFP) - A call for a change to a century-old French law to allow the state to fund new mosques has sent sparks flying in a society deeply attached to the separation of religion and state.

Concerned that a shortage of mosques is allowing extremists to gain a foothold among Frances 5.5 million Muslims by funding places of worship, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month named a panel to look into the prickly question.

Due to report to the government in June next year, the committee is being asked, among other things, to suggest ways of reviewing the 1905 secularity law that bans the state from funding places of worship.

The initiative placed Sarkozy squarely at odds with both president Jacques Chirac and prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who sees the century-old law as one of the pillars of our republican system and rejects the idea of updating it.

True, more work is needed to recognise the rightful place of France's Muslims, de Villepin said, but as members of a strictly secular community....

Sarkozy has repeatedly argued that breaking the French taboo to provide public money for mosques and imams would be the best way of bringing the Muslim community into the mainstream, out of the garages and basements it is often forced to use as unofficial prayer rooms.

"To separate French Islam from foreign influences," Sarkozy said last month, "let us give it the means to be independent."

Islamic radicals are already thought to control 20 mosques in the country, according to France's domestic intelligence service, which also says militants are increasingly congregating in secret prayer-rooms, out of sight of the authorities....

In 2003, French Islam obtained its first ever officially-recognised representative body, the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), which has responsibility for issues ranging from the funding of mosques to the ritual slaughter of animals.

Now a recognised public institution, it is the government's main point of contact with the Muslim community.

And in June this year a government-backed 'Foundation for Islam' was also set up to oversee the financing of the religion in France, grouping private donations from France and abroad, held in a state-owned bank to ensure maximum transparency, to pay for building and renovating mosques as well as training imams.

Many in the political establishment are against taking the states role any further, including the CFCM president Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Paris mosque, who immediately backed de Villepin in opposing any change to the secularity law.

But other voices within the CFCM took a less hostile view and the influential rector of the Lyon mosque, Kamel Kabtane, supports a review of the 1905 law.

A blow against the financial jihad, and against Canada's Al-Qaeda family. From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

SALT LAKE CITY - A soldier wounded in a firefight in Afghanistan and the widow of his slain comrade won a default judgment against the estate of a suspected al-Qaida financier.

The lawsuit alleged the late Ahmed Said Khadr failed to control his then-15-year-old son and prevent him from intentionally harming others in the July 2002 battle....

Morris’ attorney, Donald Winder, said he will seek money from the assets frozen by the U.S. and Canadian governments and the United Nations. The lawsuit claims the funds come from an Islamic charity used to set up and run an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" How many passing Londoners realized that this was a call for genocide and/or subjugation? From IslamOnline, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON, October 31, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - At least two thousand demonstrators, including several anti-Zionism Jews, marched though London on Sunday, October 30, to mark the annual Al-Quds Day.

"It is our duty as Muslims to attend every single time, because no one in the world is listening to the truth," Zaynab Ziaei of Manchester told IslamOnline.net.

"We come every year to show what the truth really is."

Adults and youth of all ages marched enthusiastically to the quick beat of drums and chants as they fervently yelled slogans against US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon.

Transforming the Iranian flag into a bandana tied around checkered Palestinian scarves, girls walked hand in hand chanting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!"

Bystanders clapped as the demonstration proceeded towards Trafalgar Square.

Let's see. Osama bin Laden was his hero. Hmmm. We may be getting warmer. "I don't know what made my son become suicide bomber," from the Yorkshire Post, with thanks to Bryce:

THE father of Yorkshire suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer has spoken for the first time about the "terrible act" his son committed on July 7.

Mohammed Mumtaz Tanweer, 56, from Beeston in Leeds, said he and his family were still mystified by his son's motivation.

Mr Tanweer, a Pakistan-born businessman who ran South Leeds Fisheries in Beeston, was speaking after he had taken the remains of his son to Pakistan for burial last week in the family's home village.

The 22-year-old, the first bomber to be buried, killed himself and seven others when he detonated a rucksack bomb at Aldgate station.

Mr Tanweer, in his first interview since the terror attacks, said: "All the bombings and killings were awful. Only the group of four (bombers) or God alone knows why they carried out this terrible act."

He does not know how his son – who looked upon Osama bin Laden as his hero – could have become a terrorist.

"As far as I can understand, my son was more British in his orientation than anything else," said Mr Tanweer. "He has planned his career in sport. Even on the night before he died, he was playing cricket."

Why not? The idea that jihadists reject out of hand anything Western has been disproven again and again. One can play cricket and hold to the jihad ideology. It is time to realize such elementary points.

Jihad for kids! From Expatica, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

AMSTERDAM - Arabic television station Aljazeera launched a channel for children in Amsterdam on Friday.

The channel will be available by satellite in the Netherlands.

Programme buyer Lou Murrin told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that the channel will enable Arab children to identify with characters on television.

"Everything revolves around identity, said Murrin.

"A Lebanese boy wants to recognise himself in the kids shown on television and that just isn’t possible with American comic strip characters."...

Shaikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, chairman of the board of Aljazeera Group, said: "In view of the existing state of television, where children are exposed to violent and inappropriate material on a daily basis, her highness Shaikha Mozah made a momentous decision to establish Aljazeera Children’s Channel’.

Yes, I'm sure there will be nothing violent or inappropriate coming from Al-Jazeera.

The state-run Iranian media maintains its harsh rhetoric with ire directed at opposition leader Maryam Rajavi for her condemnation of Mr. Ahmadinejad's "wipe Israel from the map" speech. From Iran Focus:

“Maryam Rajavi has written a letter to the leaders of the European Union, saying that Iran is the enemy of peace, democracy and humanity”, wrote the hard-line daily Kayhan. “Rajavi is using the recent event to curry favour with the Europeans”.

The state-run Mehr News Agency, which is close to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, wrote that “in the wake of President Ahmadinejad’s speech at the World Without Zionism conference, Maryam Rajavi claimed that the Monafeqin [the Iranian government’s term for the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK) opposition group] is the key to rid the Middle East of terrorism”.

Another news agency controlled by Iran’s ultra-Islamists, Fars News Agency, carried an equally severe attack on Rajavi, who has been nominated by the opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran as interim president for the transitional period.

Western news agencies reported on Saturday that Rajavi had lauded the United Nations Security Council for condemning the “repugnant remarks by the mullahs' President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad”. Earlier, she had condemned Ahmadinejad’s speech in its entirety, saying that his statement “clearly contradicted the United Nations’ Charter and international law” and was “an unacceptable incitement to war of religions and civilisations”.

“As long as the clerical regime is in power, it would not abandon the export of terrorism and fundamentalism as well as enmity to peace and tranquillity”, Rajavi said.

“I think this is significant coming from the Iranian opposition, because Tehran has been trying hard in the past few days to say that Ahmadinejad was speaking for all Iranians”, said Abdullah Haddad, a political analyst based in Dubai.

Could another Iranian revolution be close at hand?

This woman, ordered gang raped by her local village council, has been allowed by the Pakistan government to travel after all. "Rape survivor brings fight here," from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Three years ago, Mukhtar Mai was gang-raped on the order of a village council in her native Pakistan, sparking international outrage when she reported the crime. On Saturday, Mai stopped in Chicago to speak out against the feudal justice system that continues to victimize Pakistani women.

"I am fighting against oppression and cruelty where the rights of poor men and women are violated by landlords and feudals," Mukhtar said through an interpreter to a crowd of about 60 people at DePaul University. "You and I will get the victory."

Mukhtar was a 30-year-old Quran teacher in the Pakistani village of Meerwala when she was ordered gang-raped by a tribal council, or jirga, after her 12-year-old brother was seen walking with a girl from a higher-ranking tribe. Mukhtar's brother also was beaten and sodomized for the offense...

On Nov. 2, Mukhtar will be the recipient of one of 12 "Woman of the Year" awards given by Glamour magazine for work on behalf of women's rights.

Before she arrives in New York for the award ceremony, Mukhtar is on a cross-country speaking tour to help raise money for her "I can survive" fund, which will help develop a resource center for victims of violence in Pakistan...

Mukhtar, a soft-spoken woman who could not read or write when she was attacked, stressed that tribal councils that sanction rape and murder do not act in accordance with Islam.

"Where does it say in Islam that you should violate women? Our Islam does not allow this, absolutely not," Mukhtar said, through her host and translator, Dr. Amna Buttar...

A Qur'an teacher who is unable to read or write, no doubt because she is female, speaks authoritatively what is in the Qur'an, informing us that the circumstances in which she finds herself have nothing to do with Islamic law. Of course, if Islam were just applied more perfectly, social harmony would be the natural result...(yes, that's sarcasm).

The outspoken fanaticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun to hurt Iran’s burgeoning stock market, scaring away billions of dollars in foreign investment. Responding to the complaints of investors and some government officials, Ahmadinejad recently outlined his relatively simple economic reform plan, according to Iran Focus:

Tehran, Oct. 30 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the latest cabinet meeting in the Iranian capital that “if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever”, according to a Tehran-based newspaper.

Ahmadinejad was addressing a cabinet meeting held to discuss the rapidly deteriorating situation at the Tehran Stock Exchange, the daily Ruznet reported on Sunday.

Ministers and experts disagreed with all the different views and proposals raised at the meeting, which came to an end without any concrete results. Tempers flew high and participants shouted at each other during the discussion, according to the daily. Frustrated with the inability of his economic advisers and experts to come up with any solution, Ahmadinejad told them that the only way out of the current stock exchange and financial market problems was to “frighten” speculators by hanging two or three of them.

Iran’s ultra-Islamist President first sent jitters through the country’s markets when he said on the eve of the presidential elections in June that “stock exchange activities are a kind of gambling and we are against them”. Gambling is banned in Islam.

Nervous investors have been transferring their capital to other countries, and Dubai has benefited palpably from the flight of capital from Iran. The Tehran Stock Exchange has lost 20 percent of its value in the past four months.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses how Arab-ness is in many ways inextricable from Islam -- a phenomenon that has had effects even among dhimmi populations.

Within Islam, a supposedly universalist religion where all Muslims in the ummah are equal, there is a special place for the Arabs. But how could it be otherwise? Islam itself, a mishmash of pagan Arab lore, Judaism and Christianity, has its origins in the attempt to take what was available and construct out of it something, a belief-system, that would both promote, and justify, Arab attacks on, and Arab conquest of, far more advanced, settled, and wealthy populations of Christians, Jews, and pagans -- and with the attack on Sassanid Persia, Zoroastrians.

Within Islam, the supremacist ideology is expressed first, and perhaps most importantly, in linguistic and cultural imperialism. The Qur'an is written in Arabic, and was delivered to, given to, revealed to, the Arabs, that best of people. That best of men, Muhammad, was an Arab, and so were the Companions. The Qur'an itself should ideally not be read in any language other than Arabic (the Arabic in which it was written, not in any simplified or updated version). Qur'anic recitation is in Arabic. The students in Pakistan or Indonesia or elsewhere who pass their young lives memorizing Qur'anic passages are essentially memorizing Arabic, a language that they do not know at all, and understand most imperfectly. Yet it is 7th century Arabs, real or imaginary, who must serve as a guide to existence. Was Muhammad against sculptures? Against music? Against painting of living creatures? Very well then. For all time, and in all places, good Muslims will emulate Muhammad. For he is central to Islam, far more significant than Jesus is in Christianity. Yes, it is true that "Allah knows best" but so to does Muhammad – see Qur’an 33:21. They both know best.

Think of all the Pakistanis, clearly the descendants of persecuted or terrified Hindus, who have taken Arab names, or appropriated the honorific Sayeed to indicate their connection to the Prophet. Think of how the Berbers and other non-Arab Muslims have had to struggle to save their own language. The Iranians supposedly managed to prevent linguistic arabization through the superior quality of their own poets -- for after all, "Islamic literature" is mostly a product not of Arabs but of Persians. High Islamic civilization was very much a product both of non-Muslims and Muslims, and in the latter category, the Arabs played a much smaller role than the Persians.

The riots in Tizi-Ouzo a few years ago -- unreported in the Western world except in France -- reflect the unhappiness of the Berbers with this cultural and linguistic imperialism. So does the greater participation of Berbers in such organizations as "Maghrembins laiques" in France. The Kurds, the black Africans with their marabouts and syncretism, and even those described as Malaysian "intellectuals" and Indonesian "intellectuals," have realized that the Arab supremacist view, which encourages all Muslims to ignore their own pre-Islamic or non-Islamic history and heritage, leaves a lot to be desired. This is similar to the phenomenon in Brazil, where what prevails is not always orthodox Christianity, but some blend with pagan African beliefs and traditions that gives rise to Candomble.

Several people have asked me why I didn't put up a story yesterday about the blasts in New Delhi that killed 61 people. The answer is that while Indian officials said that the blasts were the work of "terrorists," they were not specific -- and there are terror groups in India that are not jihad groups.

Contrary to what is sometimes claimed of us, we do not rush to judgment here. We don't even post, as has also been claimed, any crime involving a Muslim. I didn't post the story about the man who was putting feces on pastries, because I wasn't sure of his motive -- although in that case I think now that I paid insufficient attention to the fact that poisoning food with feces is detailed as a tactic in the Al-Qaeda manual found a few years ago by British intelligence.

In the case of the India bombs, I checked story after story for something more conclusive about the identity of the bombers, and found nothing all day yesterday. However, this piece, "Indian Police Hunt for Clues to ID Bombers," from Herald News Daily, identifies the tactics as characteristic of the Kashmir jihad group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

It's no surprise, of course, especially since the blasts targeted shoppers preparing for Diwali, but I am not in India at the moment and was not going to make the judgment myself. Anyway, it looks as if these blasts are still more evidence that the arguments moderate Muslim spokesmen advance about the impermissibility in Islam of targeting civilians simply aren't convincing the jihadists. What are the self-proclaimed moderates going to do about that?

NEW DELHI - Investigators searched Sunday for clues to trace the bombers who killed 61 people in two crowded markets in New Delhi, offering rewards for information and detaining more than 20 people in raids on dozens of small hotels across the capital....

They said they were looking for a man in his 20s who refused to buy a ticket on a bus and got off in the Govindpuri neighborhood, leaving behind a large black bag. When some of the 40 passengers raised an alarm, the driver and bus conductor examined it and threw it out just as the blast occurred, injuring them both. That was the only one of the three explosions in which no one was killed.

Though officials avoided pointing fingers, a leading anti-terrorism expert said the timing and nature of the blasts indicated they were the work of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared militant group in Kashmir.

"These are not entirely unexpected. It is a wake up call for all those who think of open borders" between India and Pakistan.

Opening the border is extremely sensitive for India because of a 16-year insurgency by Islamic militants in Kashmir who seek to make the Indian portion independent or unite it with Pakistan.

Pakistan condemned the multiple attacks in New Delhi....

The attacks targeted the many people shopping just days before the festival of Diwali, a major Hindu holiday during which families exchange gifts, light candles and celebrate with fireworks.

Iran is assassinating Iraqi Sunni pilots who were involved in the Iran-Iraq war, so Talabani is offering them safe haven in...Kurdistan, where some of them gassed civilians. "Iran 'sponsors assassination' of Sunni pilots who bombed Teheran," from The Telegraph, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Iran is backing a Shia insurgent campaign of systematically assassinating former elite Iraqi air force pilots as part of a covert sectarian war against Sunnis, according to senior politicians in Baghdad.

The spate of murders of pilots has prompted an intervention from Jalal Talabani, Iraq's president, who has offered them safe haven in his native Kurdistan even though some of them were involved in dropping chemical weapons there.

More on Iranian adventurism from Middle East Newsline, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- An Iranian-sponsored insurgency group, flushed with significant funding, has established a support network in Israel.

Israeli officials said Islamic Jihad has spent tens of thousands of dollars to establish sleeper and support cells in Israel. The officials said the cells facilitated the entry of Jihad insurgents for attacks in major Israeli cities.

"For years, Jihad was at the mercy of other terrorist groups for logistical support," an official said. "That is no longer the case. Jihad has now bought its own network in Israel."

Here is fruit of the immigration-without-assimilation policy the French have pursued so thoughtlessly for decades -- as detailed in Bat Ye'or's Eurabia. "A police union spokesman says a Paris suburb is seeing 'civil war.'" From CNN, with thanks to Fjordman:

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Hundreds of French youths fought with police and set cars ablaze in a suburb of Paris early Saturday in a second night of rioting which media said was triggered when two teenagers died fleeing police.

The two teenagers were killed and a third seriously injured on Thursday night when they were electrocuted in an electricity sub station as they fled from police investigating a break-in, media reported.

Firefighters intervened around 40 times on Friday night in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois where many of the 28,000 residents are immigrants, mainly from Africa, police and fire officers said.

Unidentified youths fired a shot at police but no one was hurt, police said.

A police trade union called for help from the army to support police officers.

"There's a civil war underway in Clichy-Sous-Bois at the moment," Michel Thooris, an official of police trade union Action Police CFTC, said .

"We can no longer withstand this situation on our own. My colleagues neither have the equipment nor the practical or theoretical training for street fighting," he said.

Fjordman has much more.

When not busy disgracing his nation and his family through his various peccadilloes, the future king of England, Prince Charles, has regularly assumed the position of lead European missionary in the service of the Islamic faith. As he will tell President Bush this week, it is not Islam's fault that thousands of non-Muslims have been murdered in recent years, but rather the racism of the West. From the Telegraph:

The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.

The Prince, who leaves on Tuesday for an eight-day tour of the US, has voiced private concerns over America's "confrontational" approach to Muslim countries and its failure to appreciate Islam's strengths.

The Prince raised his concerns when he met senior Muslims in London in November 2001. The gathering took place just two months after the attacks on New York and Washington. "I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.

It is understood that Prince Charles did not - and does not - believe that the actions of 19 hijackers should tarnish the reputation of hundreds of millions of law-abiding Muslims around the world.

Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Bar, was also at the meeting at St James's Palace. "His criticism of America was a general one of the Americans not having the appreciation we have for Islam and its culture," he said.

The prince's actions should not strike anyone as surprising, as Charles is hardly a newcomer to the field of Islamic apologetics:

Prince Charles, who is about to embark on his first official foreign tour since his marriage to the Duchess of Cornwall, wants Americans - including Mr Bush - to share his fondness for Islam. He has agreed to attend a seminar on religions at Georgetown University, Washington, on Thursday: the only event where he will not be accompanied by the Duchess.

"The seminar will look at how faith groups can alleviate social problems in their community," a royal aide said.

The Prince and Duchess will attend a lunch and dinner with President Bush and his wife, Laura, at the White House on Wednesday.

Prince Charles has done more than any other member of the Royal Family in history to understand Islam. He said in 1994 that when he became Supreme Governor of the Church of England, he would rather be "defender of faiths" than "defender of the faith".

A year earlier Prince Charles made a speech, acclaimed throughout the Arab world, on relations between Islam and the West. He urged the West to overcome its "unthinkable prejudices" about Islam and its customs and laws.

He spoke warmly of the West's debt to the culture of Islam and distanced moderate Muslims from misguided militants. "Extremism is no more the monopoly of Islam than it is the monopoly of other religions, including Christianity," he said.

Richard the Lionheart is rolling in his grave.

A response to the rocket attacks from Gaza. From AP:

BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip - Israeli aircraft and artillery bombarded open areas in northern Gaza on Saturday as part of an intensifying campaign against Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli border areas....

Artillery shells were fired after Palestinian militants sent a homemade Qassam rocket slamming into southern Israel, the Israeli military said. Israel uses artillery shelling more sparingly than air strikes because it is less accurate and poses a higher risk of harming Palestinian civilians.

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef, meanwhile, told his security chiefs that "firm and serious action" would be taken against facilities used to manufacture or store weapons, his office said in a statement released Saturday.

But there was no talk of disarming militants, as Israel has demanded, and the statement said Palestinian security forces "would not enter any house looking for weapons."

In other words, the jihad will go on as before.

Serge Trifkovic explains just why the UK's new Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is so wrong, and dangerous, in this superb piece in Chronicles (thanks to Andy and Steve):

The House of Lords is clashing with Tony Blair’s Labour government over its proposed Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This is an Orwellian piece of legislation. Its real purpose of preventing any meaningful discussion of Islam. If passed it would enable authorities to charge people with “inciting religious hatred” even if they speak or write the truth about the Kuran, the hadith, the historical practice of jihad, or the long-term aspirations of the Muslim diaspora in the West.

The proposed measure has been denounced by human rights groups and prominent individuals as a new blasphemy law in a dangerous new guise. Stephen Fry, the actor, said the plans were unworkable: “Religion, surely, if it is worth anything, doesn’t need protection against anything I can say.” Rowan Atkinson, one of Britain’s best known comedians, has warned that the prime motivating energy for the Bill did not come from communities seeking protection from bullying,

but from individuals with a more aggressive, fundamentalist agenda, those who have sought, from the very day of the publication in 1989 of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, to immunise religions against criticism and ridicule—or at least to promote legislation that is so sinister and intimidating, it can provide that immunity without even the need to prosecute anyone. In other words, to impose self-censorship.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the intended criminalization of “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” was hailed by Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, as a “long overdue” measure. Sher Khan, chairman of the group’s public affairs committee, criticized opponents of the bill, and particularly Mr. Atkinson, for having created “a media frenzy by claiming that the proposed law will ban criticism of religious beliefs; it certainly will not.”...

If Racial and Religious Hatred Bill is passed, we will be a step closer to the fulfilment of T.S. Eliot’s warning that the West would end, “not with a bang but a whimper.” In 1899, a 26 year old Winston Churchill expressed hope

that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some—even in these modern days—who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things and tamely survive the disaster.

Even Churchill’s prescience could not envisage the possibility that “the invader” would have his Quislings and abettors at No. 10, at the Old Bailey, and at London’s County Hall.

Read it all.

The Iranians are beginning to back off a bit. At least verbally. Sort of. "Iran 'withdraws' Israel threats," from the BBC, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Iran says it has no intention to attack Israel despite a call by its president to have it "wiped off the map".

Iran's foreign ministry said Tehran respected the UN charter and had never used or threatened to use force.

But it also rejected a UN Security Council statement condemning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his remarks....

"The Security Council condemns the remarks about Israel attributed to Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said the statement agreed by all 15 members....

But in the same reaction on Saturday, Iran's foreign ministry said: "The declaration published by the Security Council - proposed by the Zionist regime to cover its crimes and give an image at odds with reality - is unacceptable."

It expressed surprise that the Council had never condemned threats made against Iran by the US and Israel or the "crimes" of the Israeli regime.

Ahead of the UN session demanded by Israel, President Ahmadinejad stood by his "just" remarks.

He attended the Jerusalem Day rally in Tehran which Iran organises every year to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.

Shouting "Death to Israel, death to the Zionists", the protesters dragged Israeli flags along the ground and set them on fire.

Mr Ahmadinejad said: "My words were the Iranian nation's words.

"Westerners are free to comment, but their reactions are invalid."

So sorry, Mahmoud. Henceforth I will check my comments with you to make sure they're valid.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores some of the delusions that pass for truth today, and how it is that they have become so widespread:

The world of Islam is a world of nonsense and lies and denial and deception and filial piety that refuses to face up to facts. It could be called, too sweetly in my view, the "Dream Palace of the Arabs." Come to think of it, it has been called that by Fouad Ajami, who is too intelligent not to know the truth about Islam, but too afraid that he would be cutting his ties, and his career prospects, and his usefulness, if he were to engage with the real subject that underlies his "we were all Nasserites in those days, sitting in Beirut cafes and drinking endless cups of thick muddy coffee..." (or words, and shtick, to that effect).

The Arab Mind by Patai is said to be read earnestly at The Pentagon. Fine. But it continually failes to relate the behavior of Arabs, as uber-Muslims, to Islam itself. A better book for those purposes, which has been mentioned endlessly at JW, is Andre Servier's The Psychology of the Musulman, last published in 1923.

The sheer craziness that Islam induces is abetted by Western journalists who quickly -- too quickly -- adapt to it, and silently make allowances for it. Why do they apply the lowest of standards to Muslims and to Arabs, and even at times participate in the farce -- as when the most absurd statements about so-called "atrocities" of Americans or Israelis are bruited about? How lazy, how weak, can these journalists be? How monstrously they have covered Islam: never has the American, or the Western television-viewer or radio-listener, or newspaper-reader been given any hint of the thick miasma of lies that one immediately encounters throughout the Muslim world, in minds that find reality too painful. Whenever they can find solace by blaming Infidels, by lying about them, they will. And they will continue to do so until things are as they are now in the Islamic Republic of Iran -- where Islam itself is put on trial in the mental courts of all who can think, and is found guilty as charged.

Jihad in Europe update from the Telegraph, with thanks to Filtrat:

An Islamic terror cell has smuggled two surface-to-air missiles into Europe in a plot to shoot down planes at one of France's main airports, it was claimed yesterday.

French and Algerian extremists with links to al-Qa'eda bought the Russian SA-18 Grouse missiles from Chechens in 2002 and smuggled them via Georgia and Turkey, according to French anti-terror sources quoted in Le Figaro.

Both missiles and several of the extremists are reportedly still at large.

French anti-terrorism investigators learned of the missile terror plan while interrogating a Jordanian al-Qa'eda operative close to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the Islamic terror group in Iraq.

Adnan Muhammad Sadik, alias Abu Atiya, is now being held by the Jordanian authorities.

He is believed to have been al-Qa'eda's chief in the Caucasus and responsible for training foreign "holy warriors" - many of whom returned to their countries of origin to set up sleeper cells.

According to Abu Atiya, one such group, the so-called "Chechen network", returned to France with the missiles and chemical and biological agents such as botulin, ricin and cyanide.

Someone recently asked me why I cover women's issues at Dhimmi Watch. The simple answer is that under Sharia, women face discrimination and second-class status, as do dhimmis. This conference aims to undo that. While the stated purpose of holding it in Spain was to reach Muslim women in Europe, I think it is likely that these women are aware of what might have happened to them if they had tried to hold it in Riyadh or Lahore.

From the BBC, with thanks to Leveller:

Women from the Islamic world are attending the three-day conference Organisers of the first international congress on Islamic feminism are calling for a "gender jihad".

Organiser Abdennur Prado Pavon says the struggle for gender equality in Islamic countries involves refuting chauvinist interpretations of Muslim teachings.

The congress is being held in Spain, organisers say, because they want their message to reach the growing number of Muslim women in Europe.

Around 300 delegates are looking at women's rights in the Islamic world.

Mr Prado, of the Catalan Islamic board, believes a common misconception in the West is that women's liberation is not possible in Muslim societies.

Activists representing the Islamic feminist movement are in Barcelona to counter that view and discuss ways of achieving female equality in an Islamic context.

Collaboration

Among the delegates is the Pakistani feminist Riffat Hassan, regarded as one of the pioneers of Islamic feminist theology.

Also here are representatives from the international association, Islamic Feminism.

Islamic Feminism argues that the inferior legal and social status of women in Muslim countries is a result of misogynistic distortions of the teachings in the Koran.

Well, we have been here before. 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).

Are these verses capable of a non-misogynistic interpretation?

They were walking to school. "Three Indonesian girls beheaded," from the BBC News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Three girls have been beheaded and another badly injured as they walked to a Christian school in Indonesia.

They were walking through a cocoa plantation near the city of Poso in central Sulawesi province when they were attacked.

This is an area that has a long history of religious violence between Muslims and Christians....

Police say the heads were found some distance from the bodies.

It is unclear what was behind the attack, but the girls attended a private Christian school and one of the heads was left outside a church leading to speculation that it might have had a religious motive.

A religious motive? When Muslims behead Christian schoolgirls in a country where Islamic jihadists have declared their intention of establishing a Caliphate Sharia state? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?

It is always a pleasure to report the outcome of past Jihad Watch posts, especially when justice is served. Tonight, Jihad Watch would like to report two such updates.

The first is an October 2004 Jihad Watch post concerning a Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim doctor accused of sending money to Iraq. As it turns out, the good doctor will not be allowed to practice his "humanitarian" arts for quite some time. From the AP:

An Iraqi doctor once tagged as a terrorism suspect and later convicted of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions was sentenced Thursday to 22 years in prison.

The second update of a December 2004 Jihad Watch post concerns a Mohamed Harkat, an Algerian residing in Canada. Mr. Harkat, a terror suspect who fought extradition back to Algeria on the grounds that he would be tortured appears to be losing a battle that only a Western country would wage to ensure his safety. From the Ottawa Citizen:

Canada is moving closer to deporting terror suspect Mohamed Harkat after federal officials received diplomatic assurances that he won't be tortured in his native Algeria, his lawyer revealed yesterday.

Please read all links.

Yasir Arafat, of course, was a master at this, but he only had the Internet to play with in his declining years. Now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is proving to be a worthy dissembler as well. Jihad Watch reader Adam has alerted me to the differing front pages of his English and Farsi websites. I don't know how long they'll stay this way, so I have taken the screenshots above.

You don't have to be able to read Farsi to tell that the lead story on the Farsi site concerns Ahmadinejad's now-infamous remarks at the "World Without Zionism" conference last Wednesday in Tehran. But on the English front page that story is not only not featured; it is nowhere to be found.

Now this may be because the English site simply hasn't been updated yet. The date on the Farsi site, 4 Aban, 1384, corresponds to October 26, 2005, and the English site is dated October 23, 2005. Thus once the English site is brought up to October 26, it may carry the same genocidal anti-Semitism as the Farsi site. But there is no reason for a time lag here: IRNA has plenty of English translations available that the President could pick up if he so desired.

Anyway, it is too late for the Thug-In-Chief to present a moderate face to the West while breathing threats and murder for the home crowd. The cat is out of the bag. Whether Western leaders will do anything beyond tut-tutting is as yet unclear, but they can't say they didn't know.

UPDATE: This morning both sites are the same, leading with a story entitled, "President slams Zionists' ambitious policies."

My book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) has for the week of November 6 once again made the New York Times Bestseller List (paperback nonfiction). It is at number 23 in its eleventh week on the list.

The book has had a remarkable run -- far beyond anything I expected for it. And it is all the more surprising given the fact that while I appeared on well over a hundred talk radio programs, the mainstream media ignored the book, and it was reviewed only in Human Events, the American Thinker, and Front Page.

I suspect that other publications (both liberal and conservative) didn't review it because they couldn't show that I was incorrect. Since they couldn't run a list of the book's errors and inaccuracies, they opted to pretend it didn't exist. To them I issue a standing invitation: go ahead. Prove me wrong. If you're right and I have made a false statement in the book, I'll acknowledge it publicly right here. But you can't do that, can you?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali once again speaks truth to power. From the NIS News Bulletin, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Eric Schwappach:

THE HAGUE, 29/10/05 - Measures to prevent terrorism will not succeed if these do not go hand in hand with the awareness that Islam is the core of the problem, according to conservative (VVD) MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She lashed out at Justice Minister Donner in an interview with public broadcaster NOS on Friday.

Hirsi Ali says Donner does not want to link religion to the murder of her friend Theo van Gogh for strategic reasons. "I consider this (position) fundamentally wrong", said the MP. Politicians must not be afraid to acknowledge that the core of the problem of terrorism "is puritan Islam", in her view. "If politicians run away from that, citizens will always keep the feeling: 'do they actually understand' (the problem)?"

Indeed. The killer attached a note to Van Gogh's body containing Qur'an verses. He said in court that he killed Van Gogh for his religion. The sooner European -- and American -- authorities stop ignoring that and start taking realistic steps to deal with the fact that there are many more Bouyeris out there, the safer we will all be.

Cheeky Humans of the world, unite! Yes, Ahmadinejad, we Cheeky Humans will continue to resist your quest for Islamic supremacism and genocide. In "Iranian president stands by anti-Israel remark," from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist, Ahmadinejad brushes aside criticism of his call for a new Holocaust:

“They are free to talk but their words do not have any validity. It is natural that if a word is right and just it will provoke a reaction,” he was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

“My words are the exact words of the Iranian people,” said the hardline president.

The report said he went on to criticise “international Zionism and the expansionist policies of the world arrogance” - terminology usually used to refer to the United States and Israel.

“They are cheeky humans, and they think that the entire world should obey them,” Ahmadinejad said. “They destroy Palestinian families and expect nobody to object to them.”

Projection alert: it is Ahmadinejad who has predicted that "the wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world," i.e., that the entire world will one day obey the mullahs, and non-Muslims and women will be relegated to second-class status. All Cheeky Humans -- men, women, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secular Muslims, whatever -- must unite to make sure his dream is never realized.

It was supposed to highlight human rights abuses. Instead it became a freedom of speech case. "Harper pulls photo exhibit upon Muslim protest," from the Daily Herald, with thanks to SAC:

An art exhibit that included photographs of nude Muslim women wearing only a head covering was taken down Thursday afternoon just hours after opening for public viewing at Harper College in Palatine.

Muslim students at the college protested to officials about the pieces on display in Building C.

Several students say the pieces — some showing young Muslim men with machine guns — were downright offensive.

“I think they should rip this down,” student Matt George said.

Another student, Hussein Ali, says a number of Muslim students at Harper now are thinking about leaving.

“The Muslim students are thinking about boycotting Harper because of this,” said Ali, 23, of Schaumburg.

Ahmad Basalat, 21, of Bartlett said the exhibit expressed hatred toward Muslims....

The school invited Chicago photographer Amir Normandi to exhibit his works depicting Muslim women in Iran defying the wearing of the jilbab.

Johnson said he thought the exhibit would be an interesting topic because it deals with human rights.

Salma Habed, 20, of Hoffman Estates said some of the pieces continued with the stereotype that Muslim women are oppressed.

“We go to school. We have careers. It’s not like we’re oppressed like some people feel for some reason,” Habed said....

It's a low-key day here in the Jihad Watch Towers in Secure Undisclosed Locationville: Hugh and I played a little shuffleboard and then we all retired to the sitting room for some cognac, to mark the second anniversary of the beginning of the Jihad Watch website.

People continue to wake up to the magnitude of the menace, and to just how seriously threatened are the principles of universal human rights upon which Western societies are based. We are now averaging over 400,000 hits per day -- over twenty thousand daily visits -- and that is considerably more than what we were getting when we started. In the past year I have given information on Islam and jihad to a Senate committee, a Congressman, and even to some mainstream media outlets that won't have me onscreen, but don't mind getting the facts from me behind the scenes -- which means that the truth is, little by little, here and there, getting out.

Still, two years on, and ignorance still blankets the nation. This year I have been speaking all over the country, two or three a month, and while some audiences are quite well-informed, most are dumbfounded and some even hostile when I tell them about the root causes of jihad activity, the goals of the jihad movement, the extent of jihad activity in the United States and Europe, and what non-Muslims and Muslims of good will need to do in order to combat this scourge.

So there is a great deal more work to be done. On to Year Three.

From "Revealed: JI's graduates, the militant class of 2004," from The Australian, with thanks to KSJ:

Philippine and Australian counter-intelligence officials estimate there are between 30 and 60 wanted JI suspects on the run in The Philippines....

Most of those wanted are the suspected planners of the two Bali bomb attacks - Azahari bin Husin, Umar Patek and Dulmatin, who has a $13million bounty on his head.

They were spotted at a meeting in June with the chief of the Abu Sayyaf terror group, Janjalani, and the leader of the Rajah Solaiman Movement, Hilarion del Rosario Santos, who was captured on Wednesday.

An Australian counter-terror official told The Weekend Australian that the group, comprising Filipino overseas guest workers who had converted to Islam while working in the Middle East, was an emerging threat.

Another indication of Syria's complicity in jihad activity. From Al-Jazeera (hence the labeling of Hizb Allah as a "resistance group"), with thanks to Kemaste:

Lebanon's Hizb Allah resistance group has said it would stand by Syria, blasting the United Nations for what it said was political incitement against Damascus over the killing of a Lebanese ex-premier.

"We say clearly that we stand by Syria, leadership and people, in the face of its targeting by the Americans and Zionists and attempts to punish it politically for standing by Lebanon and its resistance," Shaikh Hassan Nasr Allah told a big rally in Beirut's southern suburb on the occasion of Jerusalem (al-Quds) Day on Friday.

In my book Onward Muslim Soldiers I discuss how jihadists move from country to country to fight in the latest jihad. Here is another example: a portion of a jihadist document that appears in Der Spiegel, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist. Spiegel's heading: "He fought in Tajikistan, Chechnya and Bosnia, sat in Saudi Arabia in prison and died in Kurdistan: Suhail al-Sahil was one of the veterans of the international jihad."

This is the story of the leader of the mujahedeen in Kurdistan, Suhail al-Sahli from the land of the two holy cities (editor's note: Saudia Arabia), one of the pure and committed members of the community of faithful. (...)

He was raised by parents of integrity, in the spirit of integrity and faith towards God. God enjoyed showing him the way to jihad. The first jihad battlefield on which he set foot was in Tajikistan. On the way there, he had to overcome many obstacles. He was still young in years when he arrived, (...) but his good heart and faith made him stand out. There was nothing bad about him. He joined the community of Ja'qub al-Bahr, may God accept him! He was injured, losing some of his ability to see. (...) God later had mercy on him, and corrected his sight....

As things began moving ahead in Iraq, (...) he flew to Kurdistan. The mujahedeen there were overjoyed at his arrival (...) because of his wealth of experience in jihad. (...) They unanimously chose him to lead the local Arab troops. During a battle with the Peshmerga fighters (editor's note: Kurdish troops) and the hypocrites, he stood like a lion (...) and fell as a martyr on the path to God. The scent of musk spread and everyone could smell it and so ended one page in the pages (in a book) of the mujahedeen. (...)

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald demonstrates some admirable foresightedness as he begins planning now for the relocation of Europe's treasures:

When Eurabia is a fully-realized entity, what will become of European art? It's never too early to start planning.

Memo to Philippe de Montebello: begin raising money now for that special "Louvre" wing of the Metropolitan that you are going to have to build in 10-20 years. It will require at least that time for all the planning. Actually not a wing -- I'm afraid you are going to have to have a space as big, or even bigger than the Louvre, because everything is going to have to be flown out if it is not to offend Muslim sensibilities, and you know what Muslims do to statutes and paintings of living things, don't you? And for the smaller museums, the Musee Guimet, the Musee Nissim Camondo, and all the rest -- well, why not just reproduce them, as is, and place them in nice cities and towns around the country?

First we (and England) got Panofsky, and Friedmann, and Jakob Rosenberg, and Rudolph Wittkower, and E. H. Gombrich, and Ernst Kitzinger, and Gisela Richter and George Hanfmann and Rudolf Arnheim and so many others, and all of the people they helped to train, and the standards they helped to raise and, for a while, maintain -- and now the art will soon be following.

Are we Americans lucky, or what?

Pictures may be found here. From Hebron News:

Hebron Arabs, celebrating the impending conclusion of the month of Ramadan, today desecrated dozens of Jewish holy books, at Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Hebron residents discovered the remains of the books, torn to pieces, in the garden behind the "Gutnick Center," which is in front of Ma'arat HaMachpela. Ripped-up books were discovered on the ground, spread out throughout the garden, and in a garbage pail....

A Hebron spokesman issued the following statement: It seems that military and political leaders are more concerned with "Arab sensitivity" as opposed to desecration of Jewish holy books. One can only imagine the response had Arabs discovered 'desecrated Korans' in the vicinity of Ma'arat HaMachpela. It should be remembered that an Israeli woman, Tatiana Soskin, was jailed for two years for 'desecrating' a Koran. It is unheard of that such a desecration should be left unpunished. We demand that Ma'arat HaMachpela be closed to Muslim worship until the culprits responsible for this crime are apprehended, tried and punished.

The imam is wrong when he asserts that "radicalisation and extremism does not take place in mosques." We have seen again and again that it does. From the MuslimNews, with thanks to Kemaste:

Religious leaders have expressed alarm at the Government’s new controversial proposals to give the police powers to close places of worship, which fail to comply with an order to prevent them from being used to foment extremism.

Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has been accused of failing to listen to the advice of Muslim task forces set up in the wake of the July bombings in London in a whole raft of anti-terrorism legislation.
Imam Ibrahim Mogra, Deputy Convenor of the working group on Imams and Mosques said that he was surprised by Clarke proceeding to issue a consultation paper on ‘Preventing Extremism Together – Places of Worship’ on October 5 after he rejected suggestions that mosques would be targeted when welcoming the task forces’ recommendations last month.

“Charles Clarke told us on September 22 that the Government was not intending to close down any mosques but that he wanted cooperation and assistance from the Muslim community,” Mogra told The Muslim News. “I told the Home Secretary that mosques are doing good work and we need to celebrate good practice,”he said.

The Leicester-based Imam, who chairs the Muslim Council of Britain’s Mosques and Community Affairs Committee, warned that the Government’s focus was misdirected. “Radicalisation and extremism does not take place in mosques. It takes place elsewhere. So the shift has to be to other areas where young people are vulnerable,” he said.

They were planning suicide attacks in Europe. "Arrests in planned European suicide-bomb attack," from IOL, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Four men suspected of belonging to a network planning a suicide terror attack in Europe have been arrested by police in Denmark.

All four are Danish Muslims, aged between 16 and 20 and their homes in Copenhagen have been raided and computers, discs and books seized.

I received this email this morning:

Hi,

You might remember me I run one of the very rare german language
anti-islamist blogs in Austria under http://iblis.twoday.net.

Well, I did so until this morning.

In Austria there is no such thing like the first amendment - so my blog was shut down by my internet provider in order to keep up with their perverted idea of "political correctnes".

I had some 45.000 visitors in the first 120 days - I guess this was by
far too much truth for certain people in the p.-c.-establishement...

Maybe you'd like to spread the message - maybe even in your newsletter
and blog... maybe you'd like to ask my provider some questions:
[address removed]

Thanks anyway & best wishes!
iblis
mail2iblis@hotmail.com

If you write to his provider, remember: be polite and respectful. Any insults of any kind will only reinforce his prejudices. Ask him why the blog was shut down. Perhaps offer him information about jihadist activity in Europe, to underscore the urgency of getting this message out.

UPDATE: I just received an email from Iblis' provider asking that his address be removed from here, and I have complied. He says he is talking to Iblis now.

Still more evidence that the freedom of conscience is still severely restricted in the Islamic world, even in countries deemed "moderate." "House Church Faces Crushing Opposition: Village strongman mounts vicious attack against local Christians," from Compass Direct, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Christians in a remote village of Uzbekistan are being beaten, publicly humiliated and hounded out of their homes and jobs for converting to Christianity.

Kaldibek Primbetov, leader of the beleaguered group of Protestants in Janbashkala village, near Turtkul in southwestern Uzbekistan, said one man is orchestrating this harsh opposition against their small congregation.

“There is no place here for Christians,” Primbetov was warned two years ago, when the village’s most wealthy and influential man mounted a vicious campaign against fewer than 100 Protestant believers.

“Our whole population here is Muslim,” village strongman Tokhtabay Sadikov told the families who had converted to Christianity. “So you’d better go to Kazakhstan or Russia, if you want to be Christians.”

As the most powerful man in the village, Sadikov since early 2004 has pressured local police and civic officials, the prosecutor’s office, the secret police and Muslim clerics to impose punishing measures against every villager known to have “abandoned the Muslim faith of their parents” to become Christian.

Protestant believers in the predominantly Kazakh village of 12,000 are now refused access to drinking water for their homes, with men, women and even children subjected to severe beatings for their faith, Primbetov told Compass. Others have lost their jobs or businesses, had their homes attacked or confiscated and faced astronomical fines for participating in house church meetings.

As promised. From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

TEHRAN, Iran - Tens of thousands of Iranians staged anti- Israel protests across the country on Friday, repeating calls by their ultraconservative president for the Jewish state's destruction.

World leaders have condemned Wednesday's remarks by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who repeated the words of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution, by saying: "Israel must be wiped off the map."

On Friday the Iranian embassy in Moscow tried to soften the impact of Ahmadinejad's comment.

"Mr. Ahmadinejad did not have any intention to speak in sharp terms and engage in a conflict," the Iranian embassy in Moscow said in a statement following a wave of international criticism.

Yeah, surrre.

I discuss Ahmadinejad's latest saber-rattling in FrontPage this morning:

The same day that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared at a conference in Tehran entitled “The World without Zionism” that Israel should be destroyed, an Islamic Jihad suicide attacker murdered at least five people in the Israeli city of Hadera. No doubt Ahmadinejad had this kind of thing in mind when he stated that “there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world”: if he condemns attacks against civilian non-combatants, he has kept it to himself.

Imagine if George W. Bush had announced that he intended to wipe Iraq, or any other nation, off the map: the domestic and international outcry that would follow would effectively end his presidency. But in the context of Israel the world has always had a higher tolerance for such talk. The Hamas Charter states that its goal is to “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine,” and quotes Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” Hamas attacked Israel with 113 suicide bombers from 1993 to 2005 in pursuit of this end. Yet some Western analysts have actually advocated Hamas’ inclusion in the political process in the Palestinian Authority, as long as the group renounces violence. Is the obliteration of Israel more acceptable if it takes place without violence?

It hasn't been widely reported, but Ahmadinejad called not only for the destruction of Israel, but of America as well. From Asia Times, with thanks to Craig:

Addressing a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled "The World Without Zionism", Ahmadinejad said, "To those who doubt, to those who ask is it possible, or those who do not believe, I say accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible."

To a cheering audience that at several points erupted with chants of "death to Israel, death to America, death to England", Ahmadinejad continued, "Once, his eminency Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini - leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution], stated that the illegal regime of the Pahlavis must go, and it happened. Then he said the Soviet empire would disappear, and it happened. He also said that this evil man Saddam [Hussein] must be punished, and we see that he is under trial in his country. His eminency also said that the occupation regime of Qods [Jerusalem, or Israel] must be wiped off from the map of the world, and with the help of the Almighty, we shall soon experience a world without America and Zionism, notwithstanding those who doubt."

Gee, I wonder why? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CAIRO, Egypt - Arab governments remained silent Thursday as international condemnation grew over a call by Iran's new president for Israel to be destroyed.

Despite the silence, analysts in the region said Tehran's Arab rivals may quietly be pleased to see the radical regime further isolated by its extremism.

However, some Palestinians — who would have the task of destroying Israel according to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — rejected the remarks.

"We have recognized the state of Israel and we are pursuing a peace process with Israel, and ... we do not accept the statements of the president of Iran," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. "This is unacceptable."

European governments condemned Ahmadinejad's comments, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair saying they increased concerns the clerical regime is a threat to global security and may even trigger pleas for pre-emptive action against Iran.

"I have never come across a situation (with) the president of a country saying they want to wipe out" another nation, Blair told reporters Thursday.

French President Jacques Chirac called the remarks "completely irresponsible" and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed "dismay" at them, in a rare rebuke of a U.N. member state.

In contrast, newspapers across the Middle East reported Wednesday's speech by Ahmadinejad without comment, many of them on their front pages.

Egyptian Foreign Ministry and Cabinet officials said Cairo would have nothing to say on the address.

Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher also declined comment, apparently to avoid further aggravating relations with Iran, which the kingdom has accused of interfering in Iraq to strengthen the Shiite influence in the Middle East.

"The world will see the anger of the Islamic world against this regime." Oh, we've seen it before. And I wonder: how many of those who are planning to turn out would prefer to be at an anti-mullahocracy demonstration if such wouldn't put them in line for torture and death? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranians will hold massive demonstrations Friday to back their president in the face of international criticism of his remarks that Israel should be destroyed, Iran's foreign minister said.

Manouchehr Mottaki said Thursday the demonstrations will take place in Tehran and other parts of the country to mark al-Quds Day — the annual event when Iranians protest Israel's control over Jerusalem.

"The world will see the anger of the Islamic world against this regime," state-run television quoted him as telling ambassadors from Islamic countries. He added that the "Zionist regime is illegitimate."

On Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told students that Israel should be destroyed. In a speech, Ahmadinejad also said a new wave of Palestinian attacks against Israel "will wipe this stigma from the face of the Islamic world."

He then cited the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and said: "Israel must be wiped off the map."...

In 1979, Khomeini declared the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as an international day of struggle against Israel and for the liberation of Jerusalem.

Now this is odd: the Rumpled Academic is resting his entire defense on freedom of speech: "The government has not proven Dr. Al-Arian has done anything but speak." Sure. All he did was speak: speak to call for death to America and death to Israel. Speak to bring Ramadan Shallah, who is now head of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, to Florida. Speak -- above all -- to raise money to provide for more murderers of Israeli civilians. "Fired professor presents no defense in terrorism-support trial," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

After hearing from government witnesses for nearly five months, an attorney for a fired college professor charged with aiding Palestinian terrorists rested his case Thursday without calling a single witness.

After summoning more than 70 witnesses, federal prosecutors rested their case earlier Thursday morning against Sami Al-Arian and three other defendants accused of raising money and supporting the murderous mission of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad or PIJ.

Al-Arian's attorney, William Moffitt, stunned most in the courtroom when he told U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr. that he also would rest. Attorneys for Al-Arian's three co-defendants began presenting their cases, which could take weeks more.

When asked about the decision, Moffitt would say only that Al-Arian has done nothing wrong and the U.S. Constitution protects his right to speak.

"The government has not proven Dr. Al-Arian has done anything but speak," Moffitt said....

Prosecutors built their case around hundreds of pages of transcripts of wiretapped phone calls and faxes they say proves that the defendants raised money to fund the cycle of suicide bombings that killed hundreds.

The conversations and correspondence, intercepted by the FBI from the mid-1990s to about 2003, have included discussions about the direction and financing of the PIJ. Other times, the participants appear to celebrate suicide attacks that killed Israelis and speak glowingly of the Palestinian "martyrs" who carried them out.

About time. "Israelis launches [sic] offensive against Islamic Jihad," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

JENIN, West Bank (AP) — Israeli troops entered this West Bank town Thursday and arrested a top Islamic Jihad leader, pushing forward with what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called a "broad and non-stop" offensive against the Palestinian militant group after a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis. Israel launched the operation with four airstrikes in Gaza early Thursday, targeting open fields used by militants to fire rockets, the army said.

In the afternoon, about 35 jeeps, backed by Apache helicopters, entered Jenin and troops surrounded the home of Abdel Khalim Izzadin. After a brief standoff, Izzadin and three other men surrendered, witnesses said. The army confirmed it carried out an operation in Jenin and said troops were withdrawing.

The offensive — launched a day after the bombing for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility — will include airstrikes and artillery attacks in Gaza and arrest raids in the northern West Bank, where Wednesday's bomber came from, a military official said on condition of anonymity under military regulations.

As a last resort, Israel could re-enter Gaza, which it evacuated last month. Israeli media reported that troops would also retake Palestinian towns and conduct house-to-house searches....

The attack came hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised suicide bombings and said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

Sharon, during a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, called for Iran to be tossed out of the United Nations for the president's comments, which drew wide international condemnation.

"The prime minister said that a state which calls for the destruction of another people cannot be a member of the United Nations," according to a statement released by his office.

Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz approved the latest offensive in a series of overnight telephone calls, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

"Islamic Jihad has declared war on every Israeli civilian and of course we're 100% entitled to take the appropriate action to defend our civilians," Regev said.

The jihadist bloodshed continues in Thailand, where Islamic militants have recently accelerated their attacks on local civilians, per Reuters:

Five villagers and two militants were killed overnight in southern Thailand when Muslim separatist insurgents launched about 50 raids on remote villages in the restive region, the army said on Thursday.

The newly appointed army chief -- the first Muslim to hold the position -- responded by telling troops to be on extra alert over the following week as the Muslim fasting month of Ramandan draws to a close.

"October 29 to early November is a very sacred part of Ramadan when those who die will go to heaven. Therefore, they will stir a lot of unrest, and we have to be on extra alert," General Sonthi Boonyaratglin told reporters.

Of course, religion plays no role in this…

Most of the Wednesday night attacks targeted members of civilian militias created by the government to counter a 22-month insurgency that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in the three southernmost provinces and rattled foreign governments and investors. "The attacks came at around 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. while all the men were praying at mosques. They left shotguns with their families at home," Colonel Acra Tiprote of the southern Army command told Reuters by telephone.

"We are hunting for the suspects with lots of help from villagers, both Buddhists and Muslims."

About 90 weapons, mostly government-issued shotguns, were stolen while three militants were captured alive, the army said.

"Our daggers and rifles will pursue them until the extraction of the last Jew from our land." Rumpled Academic update from the Tampa Trib, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA - -- A series of Palestinian Islamic Jihad communiqués posted on the Internet was shown to jurors Tuesday in the terror-support trial of Sami Al-Arian and three other men.

Prosecutors used them to bolster their claim that Islamic Jihad attacks are a form of extortion intended to drive Jews out of Israel.

"Either they leave Palestine or we will make it a graveyard for all of them," stated one Web posting, which listed 196 attacks the group claimed between 1984 and 1999.

They were sorted by year and included the nature of each attack: stabbings, bombings, grenades and others.

"Our daggers and rifles will pursue them until the extraction of the last Jew from our land," was one comment from a 1990 attack.

Al-Arian, Ghassan Ballut, Hatem Fariz and Sameeh Hammoudeh are charged with four conspiracy counts, including racketeering, providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to commit murder abroad.

In cross-examination, defense attorney Linda Moreno pointed to other passages that said the attacks were in response to Israeli violence.

Oh, that makes it ok, eh? Even if that were true, it would not justify calls for mass genocide.

New law aims to clamp down on jihadist activity on the Internet. I'm all for that. But I wonder if politically correct myopia will lead to its being used to clamp down on anti-jihadists as well. From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

PARIS - A new proposed anti-terror law in the US, presented on Wednesday, aims to clamp down on terrorist activity carried out via the Internet as the Al Qaeda network develops increasingly dangerous online activities.

The proposed law would introduce measures such as extending the period for which cybercafes have to keep records of Internet connection data, but faces a tough battle against “cyber-jihadists” who avoid being tracked through cunning and the fluid nature of the Internet, according to experts.

Terrorists use the Internet for “communication, recruitment, planning” and, importantly, for military instruction, said Rita Katz, head of the Washington-based institute Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE), which monitors Islamist websites.

“Everything is there, it replaces the training camps,” she said.

One method attributed to the suspected head of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, is the “dead letter box” system: someone creates an email account, gives the password to several members of a group and communicates by saving messages in a draft messages folder without sending them.

Communication by this method cannot be monitored because government systems for tracking emails work only if someone sends an email, said Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore.

“It was used by Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who was the mastermind of 9/11, to communicate with the global network,” Gunaratna said.

The people behind some sites promoting terrorism “are more savvy than a lot of us normal typical internet users,”, said Rebecca Givner-Forbes, an intelligence analyst who monitors the Internet for the Terrorism Research Centre, a company employed by the US government.

“They often use Japanese and Chinese upload web pages because they don’t ask for an email address or any information from the person uploading a file,” she said. “They’ve become very savvy about how they evade detection on the Web.”

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald lists some of the things we have lost already because of this business of Islamic terror, and what we stand to lose in the future in the West if our supine dhimmitude in the face of an increasingly obvious and large-scale cultural challenge continues:

What have we lost because of Islam? A short list:

Security: At every airport, subway station, bus station, at every sports event, at every public lecture, in every office building, at every museum, at every large gathering and many small gatherings all over this country (particularly those that are specifically Christian or Jewish or Hindu, and certainly all those that are devoted to discussing the menace of Islam), there are now security guards, security checks, long waits that use up, at airports alone, billions of man-hours that were never used up in such fashion before. Why? All is because of the threat not of "terrorism" but rather of Muslim terrorism. Measures may also soon be taken to monitor emails, telephone calls and so on, all of which may affect all of us, and none of which would have been necessary in the absence of Muslim terrorist threats which come out of Islam.

Freedom to travel over much of the world: How many of us now realize that it will be difficult or dangerous from now on out to visit all of the sites of classical antiquity that can be found in North Africa, or the Middle East, or in Turkey, because these lands are in the grip of increasingly restive and aggressive Muslims, not all of whom are content merely to take the dollars of Western tourists? Think of how many attacks there have been, prompted in the minds of the perpetrators by the tenets of Islam, the doctrines of Islam, the attitudes of Islam, against Swiss tourists at Luxor (68 stabbed to death, and many decapitated), or tourists elsewhere in Egypt, or at Djerba in Tunisia, or at Marrakech in Morocco. One may well be indifferent to the little created under Islam, but what is now off-limits is the much created before Islam, or despite Islam.

Welcome to the New Europe. From The Copenhagen Post, with thanks to Filtrat:

Police have arrested six members of a Pakistani family for hunting down and killing a 19-year-old girl, who had married against the family's wishes.

Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten reported that with two further arrests in the case, five men and one woman were now in remand for the suspected honour killing of Ghazala Abbas, who was shot to death in front of the central station in the western Zealand town of Slagelse on 23 September.

The day before, Abbas had married a 27-year-old Afghan-born man....

Police said the investigation was hampered by the implicated persons' reluctance to talk, but that the last four arrests had led to a breakthrough in the investigation.

Five of the people arrested are Ghazala's close relatives, including her father and her older brother, who was the one that shot her to death and severely injured her husband in front of a large group of witnesses in broad daylight in Slagelse.

The couple was married the day before they were attacked, supposedly without the bride's family's consent.

Daily newspaper BT reported that a network of Pakistani taxi drivers and the woman arrested had helped the brother track his sister down.

The Washington Post seems to see Abu Theeb's abandonment of violence for political action as a positive development, and from the standpoint of those he might have murdered, it most assuredly is. However, the Post doesn't pay much attention to the fact that Abu Theeb is working for the same goal by different means, and that that goal, a Sharia state in Iraq, bodes ill for non-Muslims and women there. Would the bare fact that a Sharia state was democratically elected make it a good thing? Was Hitler's regime a good thing since his party received a plurality of votes and he was duly asked to form a government by the German President?

"The New Sunni Jihad: 'A Time for Politics': Tour With Iraqi Reveals Tactical Change," from The Washington Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

NORTH OF BAGHDAD -- For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."...

"Politics for us is like filthy, dead meat," he said, referring to pork, which is eschewed by observant Muslims. "We are not allowed to eat it, but if you are crossing through a desert and your life depends on it, God says it's okay." Even if politics gets him a result he likes, he said, he will continue to wage war against the Americans, because he views them as occupiers....

Now why would they do this? They are Shia and the Al-Qaeda men are Sunni, and they hate each other, right? And all the conflicts that each frame as jihad are just disguised nationalistic struggles, right? So why would 25 high-ranking Al-Qaeda members roam free in Tehran? What's that? Because they actually do share the same jihad ideology, and are operating along the lines of the principle enunciated by the old Arabic saying, "My brother against my brother, but both of us against our cousin"? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?

From The Australian, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

IRAN is permitting around 25 high-ranking al-Qaeda members to roam free in the country's capital, including three sons of Osama bin Laden, a German monthly magazine reports.

Citing information from unnamed Western intelligence sources, the magazine Cicero said in a preview of an article appearing in its November edition that the individuals in question are from Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Europe.

They are living in houses belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the report said.

"This is not incarceration or house arrest," a Western intelligence agent was quoted as saying.

"They can move around as they please."

The three sons of Osama bin Laden in Iran are Saeed, Mohammad and Othman, Cicero reported.

Another person enjoying the support of the Revolutionary Guards is al-Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaib, the report said.

A reaction to the Muslim anti-Copt riots in Egypt from the International Christian Union (ICU) and American Coptic Association (ACA):

UNION CITY, NJ: Fearing a repeat of the recent riots against the Coptic Church in Alexandria, which left four dead, over 80 wounded and seven churches defaced, the International Christian Union (ICU) and American Coptic Association (ACA) are calling on the U.S. Government and the United Nations to take immediate action to stop the bloodshed and destruction of churches.

Exclusive video footage released by the ICU/ACA today, reveals the destruction of the Assemblies of God Church for Evangelical Copts in Moharam Bek, on Friday, Oct. 21.

"We are receiving numerous reports that Fanatic Muslim groups are planning to surround the Alexandria churches again on Friday, Oct.28, and at the end of Ramadan on the following Tuesday, promising the death of Christians and the continued destruction of churches throughout Egypt," Dr. Monir Dawoud, president of the ICU/ACA, said.

Dawoud faults the security forces for encouraging violence by first "giving the green light to the mob," and then failing to control the resulting riots. "If the momentum of the riots is allowed to continue, the crowds will be impossible to contain," Dawoud said.

Over 5,000 Muslims demonstrated outside of the Alexandria Coptic Orthodox Church last Friday to protest the production of a drama staged at the church two years ago. The protestors say the play blasphemes Islam. According to recent statements by the Coptic Church, however, the play does not defame Islam.

"Copts and other minorities in Egypt are continually subjected to physical and verbal harassment by extremist Muslim groups. Yet we do not destroy their houses of worship or call for bloodshed," said Amgad Zakhari, one of the youth leaders with the ICU/ACA.

In addition to the protests, the Egyptian newspaper, El Fagr, published threats made by Muslim radicals against the Coptic Pope Shenouda III. According to this report, Muslim radicals publicly announced their threats through mosques in the outskirts of the city of Alexandria and were calling for the death of the Pope in revenge for an alleged insult to Islam's prophet.

The ICU and the ACA are planning a demonstration in front of the UN next week to protest the persecution of Christians in Egypt.

"Is this not disrespectful of a plural society?" Why, yes, it is. Islamic tolerance alert from Malaysia. From SA, with thanks to Cyca:

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia's government has endorsed a university's ruling that requires non-Muslim women to wear headscarves on its campuses, a report said on Wednesday.

The minister in charge of national unity, Maximus Ongkili, said the decision by the International Islamic University earlier this year was not a religious one, but merely part of university procedures.

"As the rule was approved by the university senate, it is not religious in nature but a matter of uniforms that must be followed. It does not breach basic human rights," Ongkili was quoted as saying in the Star daily....

The growing influence of Islam on Malaysian society over the past two decades has seen a major increase in the number of Malay Muslim women wearing headscarves as a sign of religious devotion.

Formulated

Ongkili told parliament that Malaysians had to respect rules formulated by the government and other institutions to prevent social unrest.

"In a multi-racial country each community must respect one another. But at the same time we must respect the laws of the country, institutions and organisations to ensure there is no disturbance to the community," he said.

He was responding to opposition leader Lim Kit Siang, who had read out an email from a non-Muslim undergraduate from the university complaining she was forced to wear a headscarf to her graduation ceremony.

Lim accused the government of recanting on an April statement that non-Muslims would be "encouraged" but not forced to wear headscarves.

"So why the change now? Is this not disrespectful of a plural society," he said according to the Star.

Rachel Ehrenfeld in FrontPage details how a Saudi billionaire has used English libel laws to try to silence her:

I was prevented from attending a meeting last weekend that I organized in the U.K. on "How to Combat Terror Financing." Had I gone, I would have been in jeopardy due to British libel laws.

I have been sued for libel in London by the Saudi billionaire Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz because my book, Funding Evil, documents how his charity, the Muwafaq Foundation, “transferred at least $3 million, on behalf of Khalid bin Mahfouz, to Usama bin Laden, and assisted al Qaeda fighters in Bosnia,” according to testimony of former National Security advisor Richard Clarke. Bin Mahfouz sued in London, because British libel laws guarantee that he could win without challenging the facts.

The British libel laws are so destructive that they affect writers and publications who never set foot in Britain and never published there. They are used effectively by Saudi billionaires who can afford the steep legal fees to silence successfully writers and publishers around the world who attempt to expose how the Saudis have funded and continue to fund the spread of Wahhabism, Islamist radicalism, and indoctrination that leads to global terrorism.

Will earthquake aid really win over Pakistani hearts and minds? This article, "For Devout Pakistani Muslims, Aid Muddles Loyalties," from the New York Times (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist), suggests that it does win over those who are not politicized, but that jihadists and their sympathizers are unswayed -- as I observed about the tsunami relief effort in this article.

This highlights another problem that I have often noted: that peaceful Muslims are susceptible to being politicized by jihadists, thereby rendering hearts and minds initiatives void. Continued protestations that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked, and refusals to look squarely at the ways jihadists use Islamic theology and tradition to justify their actions and recruit, only exacerbate the vulnerability of non-politicized Muslims by cutting the ground out from under anyone who would oppose this jihadist activity in any effective way. No one can fix a problem when they will not even admit that it is a problem.

BASSIAN, Pakistan, Oct. 24 - Asmat Ali Janbaz's explanation for the American military helicopters flying over this isolated mountain valley last Thursday afternoon was familiar.

Mr. Janbaz, who lives in the area and who describes himself as an Islamic hard-liner, contended that the Americans were not ferrying injured earthquake victims to safety; instead, they were secretly establishing an American military base in northern Pakistan to encircle China.

"This is the mission!" he declared triumphantly. "Not to help the people of Pakistan."

Yet after Mr. Janbaz departed, something extraordinary happened. Here in a mountainous corner of northern Pakistan long thought to be a center for militant training camps and religious conservatism, three men dismissed his theory and heartily praised the United States for aiding victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake, which killed more than 53,000 Pakistanis.

"People don't believe such things; people only believe in what they are seeing," said Manzur Hussain, a 36-year-old hospital worker whose brother, sister and two sons died in the earthquake. "People who give them aid, they respect them."

While it is too early to reach firm conclusions, anecdotal interviews with earthquake survivors in this picturesque mountain district, known as Mansehra, suggest that American assistance may be improving Pakistanis' perceptions of the United States - an image that has been overwhelmingly negative here since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq....

Muhammad Farid, a homeopathic doctor in the devastated town of Balakot, said he still deeply disagreed with the American invasion of Iraq and other policies. But the dispatch to Pakistan of 14 American military helicopters and more than 20 foreign search and rescue teams surprised him.

"It has changed our opinion about the United States," he said, adding that hard-line clerics' descriptions of debauched foreigners have proved untrue. "They have been accusing all these people of spreading immorality, but these are the people who came to save our lives."

Pakistani officials and political analysts cautioned that any relief-related change in perceptions would be limited. The international aid may sway the perceptions of moderate Pakistanis, particularly well-educated city dwellers, they said, but it is unlikely to sway the country's small core of militants who support Al Qaeda.

"Even if paradise is delivered to them, they'll keep abusing us, the Americans and the Jews," said a close aide to President Pervez Musharraf, a military ruler and religious moderate who has survived at least three assassination attempts from suspected Islamic militants. "This is going to take a long time."

Islamists are also doing their best to aid earthquake victims and curry support, and in an unknown number of cases, succeeding....

Al Qaeda, whose senior leaders are thought to be hiding several hundred miles to the southwest along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, also joined in. In a videotaped message released on Sunday, the group's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Muslims to help earthquake victims.

"I call on all Muslims in general, and I call on all Islamic humanitarian associations in particular, to move to Pakistan to provide help to their Pakistani brothers, and that they do it quickly," Agence France-Presse reported him as saying. "All of us know the vicious American war on Muslim humanitarian work."

Mr. Janbaz, the self-described hard-liner, echoed those sentiments in an interview in Bassian, a village just outside Balakot. He painted the American relief effort in sinister terms and identified himself as a member of the Movement to Enforce the Law of Shariah, a banned militant group that dispatched volunteers to fight American forces in Afghanistan in 2001.

But he appeared to have few takers around Balakot, a riverside town of 150,000 people that appears to have suffered most of the 13,285 deaths in the Mansehra district....

"She also spoke about the need to promote universal human rights..." I wonder how this squares with the words of CAIR's former Board Chairman Omar Ahmad: "Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam ... Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

A CAIR press release (thanks to Diana West):

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- (OfficialWire) -- 10/26/05 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday night hosted the State Department's seventh annual "Iftar," or Ramadan fast-breaking dinner, in Washington, D.C.

The dinner took place after sunset, in accordance with Islamic practices. Muslim participants broke the fast with water and dates before performing their sunset prayers. (Ramadan is the month on the Islamic lunar calendar during which Muslims abstain from food, drink and sensual pleasures from break of dawn to sunset.)

Those in attendance at the dinner included Nihad Awad, executive director of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as well as representatives of other local and national Muslim organizations, Muslim students, diplomats from Islamic countries, and State Department officials.

In her remarks, Secretary Rice reflected on the meaning of Ramadan and thanked Muslims for their generosity in donating to relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquake in South Asia. She also spoke about the need to promote universal human rights and mentioned the legacy of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, who died Monday at the age of 92.

"Police told to respect traditions," from the Herald Sun, with thanks to Terry:

POLICE are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits.

Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together.

Women's groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence.

The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers that also recommends special treatment for suspects of Aboriginal, Hindu and Buddhist background...

Police are told: "In incidents such as domestic violence, police need to have an understanding of the traditions, ways of life and habits of Muslims."

They are told it would be appreciated in cases of domestic violence if police consult the local Muslim religious leader who will work against "fragmenting the family unit".

Islamic Women's Welfare Council head Joumanah El Matrah called the guidelines appalling and dangerous.

"The implication is one needs to be more tolerant of violence against Muslim women but they should be entitled to the same protection," Ms El Matrah said.

"Police should not be advising other officers to follow those sorts of protocols.

"It can only lead to harm."

Ms El Matrah said Muslim leaders should be brought into domestic violence investigations only if requested by the abused woman.

May have gotten Abu Dua. From AP, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

A US warplane struck a suspected insurgent safe house near the Syrian border Wednesday and may have killed a senior al-Qaida in Iraq figure who assisted in smuggling Syrian and Saudi fighters into Iraq, the US military said.

A military statement did not give details of the airstrike. But it said intelligence sources indicated that the al-Qaida member, identified only as Abu Dua, was inside the house at the time of the attack. His body has not been recovered, the military said.

Abu Dua was part of a network that included al-Qaida figures in a network of towns along the Syrian border northwest of Baghdad, the statement added.

The statement said Abu Dua set up religious courts to try Iraqis charged with supporting the Iraqi government and coalition forces.

Lynne Stewart, who thinks that by helping jihad terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman she is aiding the struggle against racism and sexism, is still guilty. "Verdict Vs. Lawyer in Terror Case Upheld," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Freedom of speech offers no protection for a lawyer convicted of providing material support to terrorists for publicly releasing messages from a notorious jailed sheik, a judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl rejected all of attorney Lynne Stewart's arguments that the February verdict should be tossed out.

Stewart, 65, had argued that her client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, was engaging in protected speech when he expressed his opinion about a cease fire by Islamic militants in Egypt that Stewart passed along in a 2000 press release.

Koeltl said the sheik's actions were not constitutionally protected, citing the sheik's participation in a conspiracy to kill people in a foreign country while serving a life sentence.

Abdel-Rahman was convicted in 1995 of seditious conspiracy for his advisory role in a plot to blow up New York City landmarks, including the United Nations.

Stewart, who continued to represent the sheik after that trial, agreed to special rules established by the government to prevent Abdel-Rahman from communicating with the outside world.

She was convicted of defrauding the government and making false statements after prosecutors said she broke her promise to abide by the rules when she helped pass messages between the sheik and his followers.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers some ways and means to counter the ongoing problem of jihad recruitment in American prisons:

Members of various Da'wa groups and individuals are busily promoting Islam with what is, of course, a captive population. Already nicely identified by their condition as economically and socially marginal, with an axe to grind (and sometimes with justification), these prisoners are Jihad-fodder. They can be offered spiritual guidance by smiling and plausible souls, who tell them such things, palpably untrue, as that Islam is devoid of racism. But in fact Islam is the most racist of all belief-systems, for it requires complete identification with, and mimicking of, the mores and manners of a particular people: the Arabs, who are "the best of people." Islam even goes so far as to insist that the Qur'an must be read in Arabic (a rule that seems in recent years to have been honored in the breach) and that converts take on new, Arabic names and slough off their pre-Islamic identities, histories, and interests. There has never been an imperialism, a cultural and linguistic imperialism, so successful.

That is what Islam is really like. It asks the new convert to strip himself of his identity. It asks him to take a new name. It asks him to give up art -- no sculpture, and no paintings of people or other living things. It asks him to give up music -- no gospel music, no jazz, no nothing. In some Arab countries, this ban is violated -- but the ban is part of Islam, and that should be clear (one has only to consult al-Qaradawi). How many people will be willing to trade in, for example, their music for -- silence? "There is no place for humor in Islam," wrote Ayatollah Khomeini. How right he was. There isn't -- just look not at the hysterical faces of those frenzied mobs in Rawalpindi or Gaza, but simply at the dour hijabbed faces you can see in photographs -- with those Muhammad Atta deadfish eyes. Surely that is worth pointing out. There is hardly any science in Islam and there has not been for a thousand years, that is, not since the gates of ijtihad were closed (for the best "Islamic" scientists, such as ar-Rhazi, were in fact freethinkers and skeptics, and always in danger of being punished, even executed). Science has been thin on the ground in Islam since the pre-existing populations of Christians and Jews, who were the translators of those works of Greek science that quite a few, including converts and those born into Islam give such exaggerated signficance to, were after a few centuries reduced by conversion and dhimmitude to irrelevance. Any histories of science written today devote, on average, 1% of their text (I have checked) to the so-called "enormous discoveries" that Muslims routinely like to cite, and lazy non-Muslims often accept or parrot, because they figure that it is just too time-consuming to go and look up the real significance of "Islamic science." For more on this, one could consult the book by Rodney Stark on why modern science developed in Christian Europe, and not under Islam, nor in China. And for still more, one can find online exchanges on the reasons for the decline of science in Islamic societies between the sober historian of science Toby Huff, and the hysterical George Saliba, eager to protect Islam at all costs. His defensiveness grows ever more shrill and absurd as he attempts to impugn Huff's motives for even considering what is, after all, a major question: why, after a few centuries, did science under Islam (not "islamic science") disappear, save for a handful of astronomers who did not, pace Saliba, anticipate Copernicus. Here again, the confusion of history with self-esteem studies, which so many Muslim and Arab professors seem to make, is quite extraordinary.

Islamic Jihad continues its murderous work. "At least five killed in Hadera suicide bombing," from Haaretz, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

A suicide bomber exploded in the open air market in the coastal city of Hadera a little before 4 P.M. Wednesday afternoon, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.

At least six people were said to be in serious condition; another four sustained moderate wounds.

The explosion occurred in front of a felafel stand at the entance to the market in downtown Hadera, a city that has been a frequent target of attacks during the past five years of violence.

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack soon after the blast, saying the bombing was retaliation for the death of its military leader, Luay Sa'adi, in an Israel Defense Forces raid in the West Bank several days ago.

So once again, in response to the killing of a "military leader," a man who planned violent attacks against civilians, his organization kills more civilians.

Faced with a school board that decided against giving all students in Hillsborough County, Florida holidays for Yom Kippur, Good Friday or Eid ul-Fitr, Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, unsurprisingly concluded that this was of course "just an excuse to hide bias against the Muslims." (This is from "Schools Scrap Religious Holidays," from Tampa Bay Online, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

It did not occur to him that Catholicism and Judaism, as well as Islam, are minority religions in America, but that in keeping with our American principles of government by the majority with respect for the rights of the minority, students have been excused from school without penalty for religious holidays -- a policy that will continue.

School Board Attorney Tom Gonzalez explained:

"A school board cannot recognize a religious holiday for the sole purpose of recognizing a religious holiday," Gonzalez said at a meeting packed with dozens of members of the Muslim community, some pleading to have no school on holidays for all religions. So many people celebrate Christmas that businesses can't operate on that day, Gonzalez said. If large numbers of students and teachers are absent on other religious holidays, the district may opt to again make those days off, he said.

That is in fact the case in some Michigan and New Jersey school districts where Eid is already a school holiday. School holidays do not imply government sanction, just recognition of the wishes of significant numbers of the population. Of course, it is hard not to notice that the C-word is not used in the calendar:

Winter holidays-- Dec. 18-Jan. 1

The "spring holiday," meanwhile, is nowhere near Easter. It's contemptible that they cannot call it a "Christmas holiday" and that they can't have an "Easter holiday," since the majority of their students celebrate those days. But the confusion the ACLU has sown about the establishment clause predates pressure from CAIR about Eid.

Where Muslims are in significant numbers, there is no problem with schools putting an Eid holiday on their calendar. Muslim students in Hillsborough County can already take a day off from school for Eid without penalty. That that is not enough for Bedier indicates that he does not understand the parameters of American pluralism. And that the school board responded by banning all religious holidays is an unwarranted dhimmi overreaction.

Sharia alert from AKI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Tehran, 26 Oct. (AKI) - The wave of censorship in Iran, which began with the rise to power of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continues after the targeting of newspapers, journalists, internet sites and bloggers. In the past few days, sites and blogs that focus on women's rights and issues have now been censored. Iranian web surfers have been blocked from navigating in particular the websites of 'Womeniniran', 'Irwomen', 'Iftribune' and 'Womeniw', four of the most popular feminist websites in the country.

In total, it is estimated that there are 130,000 websites which Iranians have been prohibited from navigating.

The main Iranian women's groups are currently involved in collecting signatures for an appeal to protest against censorship in Iran. The petition by Iranian women can be accessed at http://new.petitiononline.com/womeno/petition.html.

From the Which-Side-Is-The-PA-On Department (as if anybody with any sense didn't already know), from Israel National News, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

(IsraelNN.com) In an interview with the Al-Ayyam newspaper, Palestinian Authority official and negotiator Saeb Erekat characterized the most-wanted terrorist of Judea and Samaria, who was killed in battle with IDF forces on Sunday, as an "innocent Palestinian".

Erekat told the PA newspaper, "At a time when the Palestinian side is seeking to increase the frequency of meetings, in order to move forward in the peace process, the Israelis are invading Tulkarem and murdering innocent Palestinians." Erekat went on to warn that "such actions break and destroy the ceasefire between Palestinians and Israelis, and return us to the cycle of violence...."

As if the Hamas rocket attacks didn't already destroy the ceasefire.

How many more stories like these do you think there will have to be before Germany begins to restore sanity to its immigration policies? "Germany convicts terror plotters," from the BBC, :

Four Arab men accused of planning attacks on Jewish targets in Germany have been sentenced to jail terms of between five and eight years.

Three members of the group were convicted of supporting a terrorist organisation, al-Tawhid - which is said to have links to al-Qaeda....

The Jordanians - Mohammed Abu Dhees, Ismail Shalabi, and Ashraf al-Dagma - were convicted of plotting attacks and belonging to a terrorist organisation....

The Algerian, Djamel Moustfa, was found guilty of plotting attacks and supporting a terrorist group.

Much of the case against the four was based on evidence from Shadi Abdellah, who was arrested at the same time, in 2002, and confessed to plotting to attack Jewish targets.

Abdellah, who was jailed for four years on similar charges in 2003, said the group discussed targeting Berlin's Jewish Museum and a Jewish-owned discotheque or bar in Dusseldorf.

That Ahmadinejad would be considered anything but a thug and a terrorist by any regime on earth is itself a measure of the moral myopia that today blankets the earth. "Iran Leader Calls for Israel's Destruction," from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line president called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.

"There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called "The World without Zionism."

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury, any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," Ahmadinejad said.

Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August.

The Thug-In-Chief also treated his hearers to a bit of conspiracy paranoia:

Ahmadinejad referred to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a "trick," saying Gaza is part of the Palestinian territories and the withdrawal was meant to make Islamic states acknowledge Israel.

These converts to Islam somehow got the idea that their religion teaches them to wage war. Of course, this has been happening for some time all over the world (cf. John Walker Lindh et al), but the mainstream (liberal and conservative) unwillingness to discuss the role of Islam in all this prevents the formulation of any coherent counter-strategy. "Philippines arrests nine terrorist suspects," from Deutsche Press Agentur, with thanks to Bryce:

Manila (dpa) - Nine suspected Filipino Moslem terrorists were arrested Wednesday in a pre-dawn raid on their hideout in a southern Philippine city, the military chief said.

The joint team of soldiers and policemen also seized a cache of mortar bombs from the hideout in Zamboanga City, 875 kilometres south of Manila, according to armed forces chief General Generoso Senga.

An assault rifle, ammunition, blasting caps, parts of M16 rifles, computers and electrical tools were also confiscated.

Senga said among those arrested was Hilarion Santos, alias Ahmad Santos, a member of the al-Qaeda-linked Moslem Abu Sayyaf rebels.

The Abu Sayyaf is the smallest but most violent Moslem rebel group in the southern Philippines. It has claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest terror attacks in the country.

Santos is also the leader of a radical group of Moslem converts suspected of plotting bomb attacks in Manila and other key cities in the country.

Things are heating up for Syria, but on the other hand, they can still count on the short-sightedness of the Russians.

But Lebanon seems to be showing more spine. From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

BEIRUT, Lebanon, AP -Nearly 400 Lebanese soldiers have deployed near the Syrian border after Lebanon demanded a militant Palestinian group hand over members who killed a Lebanese contractor, a security official said Wednesday.

The official said dozens of elite commandos supported by tanks are among the deployment, which started moving into place late Tuesday near the remote southeastern village of Helweh, a few miles from the Syrian border.

The pro-Syria Fatah Uprising group has a training base in Helweh and members of the group on Tuesday allegedly shot dead Mohammed Ismail, a civilian contractor working for the Lebanese army, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

Lebanese authorities are calling on the group to hand over those who killed the contractor, the official said....

Tension has increased along the Lebanese-Syrian border since Syria withdrew its troops from Lebanon in April, ending a 29-year military presence, amid the crisis that followed the Feb. 14 assassination of ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Lebanon has alleged in recent weeks that pro-Syrian Palestinian guerrillas have brought weapons into this country with the aim of causing disturbances. The Palestinians have denied the accusations.

The pressure on Syria is likely to intensify Wednesday when a report by the U.N. special envoy on Syria-Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen, on disarming Lebanese militias is released.

The coddling of Indonesian jihad mastermind Abu Bakar Bashir by Indonesian authorities, and their cutting of various sentences he has received, has been a recurring theme at Jihad Watch since the beginning. Here is a story from December 2003; and here is today's, from ABCNews, with thanks to JE:

Jemaah Islamiah's jailed spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, appears likely to receive another remission on his jail term within days.

A Indonesian Government spokesman says proposed law changes to stop sentence reductions in terrorism related cases will not be completed before the next round of remissions falls due.

Bashir's lawyers say they expect a 30-day cut in his jail term.

Bashir, who was sentenced to two and a half years jail in relation to the 2002 Bali bombings, received a remission earlier this year to mark Indonesia's independence day.

He sees the weakness of the democracies, just as Osama bin Laden did after the Black Hawk incident, and just as Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s. From Iran Focus, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Eric Schwappach:

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 24 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charted an intransigent course for his country’s controversial nuclear program and mocked the West’s response to the recent resumption of nuclear activities by Iran, which was sharply condemned in a European-sponsored resolution by the board of governors of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Speaking at a gathering of university students in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said of the West’s response, “At first, they made a lot of noise about it, but gradually they were made to sit down quietly”....

“The Islamic Republic reached the conclusion that continuing the status quo was harmful to our national security”, he said.

“The more we retreated, the more they stepped forward, to the extent that Mohammad ElBaradei, the secretary general of the [International Atomic Energy] Agency [IAEA] recently told us, ‘They don’t want you to have nuclear technology’.”, Ahmadinejad said, referring to the now suspended negotiations between Iran and the European trio of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

“Why should we give in?” the ultra-Islamist president asked. “Where does it say in our laws that we have to beg the Europeans for our rights?”

Ahmadinejad expressed confidence that the West will be forced to retreat in the face of the Iranian regime’s uncompromising stance, and he indicated that his government was emboldened by what it perceived as the West’s “feeble” reaction.

“God willing, the West will accept our position since Iran’s political power in the world is very great and in certain regions unrivalled. We need the world but we have shown that we can achieve development without them”.

Neville, the Gaza peace party is over. "Terror leader: Lull is history," from Ynet News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The relative lull in Israeli-Palestinian violence “is history,” an Islamic Jihad commander in the Jenin area says in the wake of the killing of the group’s West Bank leader on Sunday, followed by a Qassam rocket barrage directed at the southern town of Sderot Monday afternoon.

The rocket fire is only an initial response, Abu al-Muamen warned in a conversation with Ynet.

“Throughout the recent period, we and all the Palestinian organizations were committed to the lull,” he said. “But the Zionist enemy continued its offensives against our people, and particularly against members of the movement. At a time when our commanders and leaders are in Israel’s sights and are being eliminated one after the other, we can’t talk about respecting the lull, which in our view no longer exists. It belongs to history.”

I discussed the Taliban's work in the drug trade in Islam Unveiled; nothing much has changed since then. Haji Baz Mohammad planned to wage jihad against America by means of heroin; now he faces trial in an American court. From the New York Post, with thanks to Jerry Gordon.

October 25, 2005 -- Meet the alleged fiendish Afghani drug lord who bragged about waging jihad on America by poisoning New York's streets with heroin.

Haji Baz Mohammad, 47, used his Afghanistan poppy fields for his sickening plot against the city, boasting to cohorts "that selling heroin in the United States was a jihad because they were taking the Americans' money, and the heroin was killing them," a stunning, newly unsealed indictment reveals.

But Mohammad "now faces what all drug kingpins fear the most — justice in a court in the United States, delivered by an American jury on the very streets of New York that he'd sought to poison," said Karen Tandy, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mohammad was busted in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in January and finally extradited Friday to Manhattan to face federal charges filed here in 2003.

He became the first person to be extradited from Afghanistan to the United States on federal charges, authorities crowed.

As noted here last Friday, Muslim ambassadors from eleven nations were irked about depictions of Muhammad that appeared in a Danish newspaper. But they will get no satisfaction from Danish PM Fogh Rasmussen: Denmark, you see, has this funny little principle called "freedom of speech." "Muslim ambassadors will not be granted a meeting with the prime minister on the freedom of speech," from the Copenhagen Post, with thanks to Nosy:

Eleven Muslim ambassadors in Denmark looking to meet with Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss what they call a 'smear campaign' in the media against Islam and Muslims have had their request denied.

The prime minister had otherwise been encouraged by the opposition to meet with the group as a way to increase understanding in an increasingly controversial public debate....

Pictorial depictions of Mohammed are frowned upon by Islam.

'This is a matter of principle. I won't meet with them because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so,' said Rasmussen.

Rasmussen reiterated his message that individuals who felt offended by the tone of the public debate should bring their grievances to the courts.

'As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press - nor do I want such a power,' he said. 'It is a basic principle of our democracy that a prime minister cannot control the press.'

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald urges that Saudi Arabia be called to account even if the Senate Judiciary Committee is not at present up to the task:

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act have been canceled. Saudi Arabian accountability should not be canceled.

Though the debauches of the Saudi princelings far outdo anything mere Westerners could dream up, these practices take place behind high walls of the palaces and palacettes of Saudi Arabia, or in Belgravia, or the Avenue Foch or, especially, in villas in the south of Spain and south of France. (Prince Bandar, to be fair, has the Plantagenet hunting-lodge of Wychwood, not to mention that little place in Aspen, where he had a small American mountain earth-moved, because it annoyingly spoiled his view). Where is the CIA, collecting mountains of incriminating photographs and videos of these people, to threaten them with exposure that will cause them great difficulties among their own puritanical people, and which might be used, not to earn their friendship (which is simply not possible) but their dutiful collaboration, which is?

The tribute the ruling princelings pay, if they are to continue robbing the country (the country which, through its oligopoly rents, is robbing all the rest of us) and to spend what they grab as they see fit, requires them to support to the hilt the religious establishment, and not to veer from Wahhabi Islam. They will lie and delay and pretend that they are practically holding a constitutional convention on the American model, and talk grandly of "reform," and one or two princes will write a "daring" article that more-or-less says something close to the obvious, and we will always be on the verge of some bold new program -- just enough to let Tom Friedman wax poetic about it. A few Senators (including one or two Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee who seem quite soft on Saudi Arabia) will be pleased, and we will have the mixture as before. Saudi princes will not change course, or change their malevolent system and hostile country. They can't. They don't want to. They won't.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali doesn't get to play the torture card. From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday denied a request by a U.S. citizen, who has been charged with plotting to kill President George W. Bush, to throw out confessions he signed while in Saudi custody when he claims he was tortured.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee issued two brief orders denying requests by Ahmed Abu Ali, 24, to throw out the confessions he signed and to dismiss the case.

Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily update from the Tennessean, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

An Iraqi national living in Nashville who made threats of “going jihad” was sentenced this morning to a 57 months in prison for illegal possession of machine guns and a hand grenade, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily agreed to be deported after serving his prison term, a release from the U.S. attorney’s office said.

He had expressed animosity for the Jewish community and discussed two Jewish facilities in the Nashville area, but he gave no indication of specific plans, according to a plea agreement earlier this year.

Ostensibly the reasons were because some staff members of various Senators were unprepared, and need to devote their attention to the Harriet Miers hearings. But the hearing has not yet been rescheduled.

Here and here are two recent articles I have written on Saudi Arabia that underscore the need for these hearings, and for passage of the Act.

Daniel Pipes makes some cogent and much-needed observations about the spurious phenomenon of "Islamophobia" in FrontPage (many good links in the original):

An Islamist group named Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to bring the world under Islamic law and advocates suicide attacks against Israelis. Facing proscription in Great Britain, it opened a clandestine front operation at British universities called “Stop Islamophobia,” the Sunday Times has revealed.

Stop what, you ask?

Coined in Great Britain a decade ago, the neologism Islamophobia was launched in 1996 by a self-proclaimed “Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia.” The word literally means “undue fear of Islam” but it is used to mean “prejudice against Muslims” and joins over 500 other phobias spanning virtually every aspect of life.

In FrontPage this morning I discuss how a film on Muslim persecution of Coptic Christians spawns Muslim terror against the Copts.

The Muslim Brotherhood has threatened to kill the Coptic Pope Shenouda III. A nun was stabbed by a Muslim who burst into a Coptic church shouting “Allah akbar.” Three people were killed as thousands of Muslim protestors rioted outside a Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt. Relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt have not been this tense in recent memory.

By all accounts, it’s all because of a DVD that was shown in a Coptic church which Muslims think insults Islam. How exactly does it insult Islam? According to CNN, “The riot was sparked by the distribution of a DVD of a play that was performed at the church two years ago. The play, ‘I Was Blind But Now I Can See,’ tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and becomes disillusioned.”

"Islamist Extremist Bakri Sets up College," from Asharq Alawsat, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

London, Asharq Al-Awsat- Islamist extremist Omar Bakri, barred from returning to Britain after leaving for Lebanon last summer, indicated he had set up a college to teach Arabic for foreigners in Beirut . The former leader of al Muhajiroun (the migrants), which disbanded itself last October, expected his European students to be among the first to attend classes at the “Tawheed in Greater Syria” college after its inauguration in December 2005. He also noted that the college would have its own internet site.

At a cost of $1400 US and including accommodation and living expenses for a three-month term, students will have the opportunity to study Arabic as well as fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), aqqidah (doctrine) and usul al din (theology) under Bakri and a select number of scholars.

Professor Bakri, what time is Jew-Hating Class? I need to see if I can drop Bombmaking and pick it up while making sure I finish my Beheading prerequisite.

In case anyone is still puzzled as to why someone like the Islamic Personality of the Year would say that Islam preaches modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness and the turn around and call Jews "the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers...pigs and monkeys," here is some insight into the root causes. Paul Stenhouse, who has translated the Futuh al-Habashah [The Conquest of Abyssinia], which the British adventurer Sir Richard Burton described as the most meticulous description of jihads in Islamic literature, has kindly allowed us to post this scholarly paper, "Muhammad, Qur'anic Texts, the Sharia and Incitement to Violence."

Here it is in pdf form.

Zombie reveals some German dhimmitude:

FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN, GERMANY (Zombietone News) -- The official Iranian pavilion at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair prominently featured virulently anti-Semitic literature, in violation of German law.

The display was noticed by Hamburg-based author Matthias Küntzel, whose first-hand account appeared Sunday on both the euroneuzeit blog and on the German Jewish site Die Jüdische....

Some of the books on sale at the Iranian pavilion at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, The International Jew, and Tale of the "Chosen People."...

With 280,000 attendees this year, the Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's most important (and by far the largest) publishing industry event, with exhibitors, publishers, buyers, agents and authors from over 100 countries arriving every year to make the business deals that keep the book industry humming....

At the time of this writing (Monday, October 24), the media has not yet discovered the story: the only evidence of it is in a blog entry from UK blogger Colin Meade, who provides rough translations of portions of Küntzel's German text, and a news article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Photos, more details, and addresses to send protests -- all at Zombie's site.

In revenge for the video shown in the Coptic church. Apparently a stabbed nun and three deaths aren't enough. "Muslim radicals threaten to kill Pope Shenouda III," from the FreeCopts blogspot, with thanks to Susan:

EL FAGR Egyptian newspaper published threats made by Muslims radicals against the Pope of Alexandria. According to the newspaper, Muslim radicals publicly announced their threats through small mosques in the outskirts of the city of Alexandria and regarded the bloodshed of H.H. Pope Shenouda III as Halal (permissible) in revenge for what they considered an insult to Islam's prophet....

On the other hand, the "Mother of All Radicals" or the so called "Muslim Brotherhood" group has been giving out fliers inciting the Muslims to revenge the honor of their prophet.

You can see the flyer and the newspaper article at the Free Copts site.

More on the British headlong rush into dhimmitude and war against pigs: "Piggy banks 'offend UK Muslims,'" from AAP, with thanks to Susan:

British banks are banning piggy banks because they may offend some Muslims.

Halifax and NatWest banks have led the move to scrap the time-honoured symbol of saving from being given to children or used in their advertising, the Daily Express/Daily Star group reports here....

Salim Mulla, secretary of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, backed the bank move.

"This is a sensitive issue and I think the banks are simply being courteous to their customers," he said.

However, the move brought accusations of political correctness gone mad from critics.

"The next thing we will be banning Christmas trees and cribs and the logical result of that process is a bland uniformity," the Dean of Blackburn, Reverend Christopher Armstrong, said.

"We should learn to celebrate our difference, not be fearful of them."

Khalid Mahmoud, the Labour MP for a Birmingham seat and one of four Muslim MPs in Britain, also criticised the piggy-bank ban.

"We live in a multicultural society and the traditions and symbols of one community should not be obliterated just to accommodate another," Mr Mahmoud said.

"I doubt many Muslims would be seriously offended by piggy banks."

Well, I hope not. But banned they are nevertheless: this must have been done to please someone.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explains why we may end up losing the struggle against the global jihad:

There is nothing inevitable about the defeat of the worldwide Jihad. In fact, if one looks at the emptying out of non-Muslim populations within the last half-century or century, one finds that the non-Muslim population of North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, and Iran, consisting of Christians and Jews, has gone steadily down. And the non-Muslim population of Pakistan and Bangladesh, consisting mainly of Hindus (and some Sikhs and Christians) has gone steadily down. And the non-Muslim population in Malaysia and Indonesia has gone steadily down. In every case, forced expulsion, steady persecution, mass murder, and even genocide, as in Turkey, has helped to explain such a change.

Meanwhile, everywhere in the Lands of the Infidels, millions of Muslims have been allowed to settle. And in India and Lebanon, where they have long been present as a minority, they have been steadily outbreeding the non-Muslims. The percentage of Muslims in the population has steadily, almost it seems inexorably, risen.

Islam will never be a religion of terror or violence! Good news from GulfNews, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Dubai: The Islamic Personality of the year 2005 said Islam has never and will never be a religion of terror or violence because it preserves the individual's human rights and dignity.

Shaikh presents the Islamic Personality of the Year award during the closing ceremony of the Dubai International Holy Quran Award.

"The message of Islam and Muslims is modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness," said Dr Shaikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, the veteran Quran reader and imam of the Holy Mosque in Makkah.

Whew, that's a relief! I feel better already! Oh, and here's some modesty, fairness, security, stability, sympathy, harmony and kindness from Al-Sudais, via a January 2004 WND story, "WND goes inside 'mainstream' Muslim conference":

Last April, while addressing 2 million followers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, chief cleric Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais prayed to God to "terminate" the Jews, who he called "the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys."

Al-Sudais also urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon peace initiatives with Israel. His comments were carried worldwide by Reuters and the Associated Press. The racist characterization of Jews was not a singular occurrence, as suggested by some media. Al-Sudais has variously described Jews as "evil," a "continuum of deceit," "tyrannical" and "treacherous."

An update on this story. "'Suicide bombers' held in Bosnia," from BBC News, :

Islamists have previously been suspected of using Bosnia as a base Security has been stepped up at embassies and foreign agencies in Bosnia following the arrest of two men accused of planning a suicide attack.

The two individuals, who have been detained under anti-terrorism laws, are being held in Sarajevo.

One of them is said to have recorded a video reciting Islamic prayers which may have been intended to be found following his death.

They were arrested last week but details are only now emerging.

'Capable partner'

The two men hold Swedish and Turkish citizenship but are believed to have originally come from the former Yugoslavia.

Beila Rabinowitz at Militant Islam Monitor tells the whole sad story:

October 20, 20005 - Philadelphia, PA - PipeLineNews.org - Jihad through Da'wa [conversion of non-Muslims] in the form of domestic Islamic education has gotten a boost from an unlikely source, the U.S. government.

The administration has just presented the New Horizons Islamic School in Pasadena, California the United States Department of Education's "Blue Ribbon for Excellence" award....

The BIAE, based in Los Angeles - which plans the curriculum of the New Horizons School together with the Islamic Center of Southern California even offers an Islamized version of the Pledge of Alliance on their website. It begins with the phrase - "As an American Muslim I pledge alliance to ALLAH and his Prophet." http://www.biae.net/pledge.html...

As the curriculum provider for the Islamic School of Pasadena, the BIAE underscores the conflict of interests between Islamic education, and the goals of the US Department of Education. The latter insisting that, "schools singled out for national honors will now reflect the goals of our nation's new education reforms for high standards and accountability." This begs the question as to who will be held accountable for the decision to present an award to an Islamist school which aims to replace the Constitution with shari'a. http://www.ed.gov/programs/nclbbrs/index.html

The clash between the Islamo-fascist weltanschauung of the Islamic school enterprise in the U.S. and the ideals of American education is evident in the activities of Amina Al Sarraf [a consultant and author of textbooks and syllabi for Islamic schools] who serves as the interim principal of the Islamic School of Pasadena.

Most recently Al Sarraf spoke to ISNA [Islamic Society of North America] a Wahhabist Da'wa front.

ISNA is the foremost distributor of Islamist educational materials in North America. ISNA is the founder of the New Horizons schools – such as the one lead by Al Sarraf - both in North America and abroad.

Read it all.

Another British-born Muslim, which will continue to make the learned pundits scratch their heads and wonder why someone exposed to Western culture would do such a thing. From AFP, :

LONDON (AFP) - Police have arrested a 27-year-old man in the north of England in connection with the ongoing investigation into the July 7 bombings in London.

News of the arrest followed a claim in the News of the World newspaper that it had met a British-born Muslim of Indian origin who said he had been asked to take part in the attack....

Police said the man -- who it did not name -- was arrested Saturday in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire "on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism".

Sharia alert from AFP, with thanks to Fjordman:

RIYADH -- Some 20 years after public screenings of films were banned, the first cinema will open next month in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia, but showing only cartoons, a source from the firm handling the project said on Sunday.

The cinema will open for women and children at a Riyadh hotel at the Eid Al Fitr feast at the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan on November 2 or 3, said the source who requested anonymity....

Cinema was once shown in private clubs in Saudi Arabia until all public screenings were banned because they were considered against Islamic law in the early 1980s.

Saudi Arabia is the only country to have banned cinema houses in the Muslim conservative Arab Gulf region.

Rachel Ehrenfeld asks key questions in FrontPage. (Yes, yes, thank you, I know that jihad means "struggle," not "holy war," and that that struggle takes many forms in Islamic tradition. Warfare against unbelievers is one of its principal forms.):

Earlier this month, President George W. Bush finally declared that our war is with Radical Islam. He said: “In pursuit of their goals, Islamic Radicals are empowered by helpers and enablers…They are strengthened by front operations – such as corrupted charities – and those who aggressively fund the spread of Radical, intolerant versions of Islam.” Defeating “the murderous ideology of the Islamic Radicals,” he stated, is the “great challenge of our century.” This plague cannot be eliminated by appeasement, dialogue, or negotiated solutions.

The religious and philosophical justifications for promoting Jihad – which means holy war – around the world, is found in the Quran, says Dr. Hussein Shehata, a leading Islamic scholar at al-Azhar University in Cairo. According to Dr. Shehata, the following terms in the Quran seek to justify the spreading of Jihad: in Arabic, Al-Jihad bil-Lisan, which means Jihad of the Tongue, and al-Jihad bil-Qalam, Jihad of the Pen, both combine to promote Jihad.

These commands are complemented by Al-Jihad bil-Mal – the Financial Jihad – which is raising and contributing money to support the Jihad warriors – known as the Mujahideen. The Islamists of al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hizballah – from Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Spain, England, Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean, the U.S. and Canada – vow to convert the world to Islam. As documented by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, Director of Orient Research Group in Toronto, “if a country does not allow the propagation of Islam to its inhabitants, then the Muslim[s] ... would be justified in waging Jihad against that country.”

President Bush declared repeatedly that, “money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations.” Stopping the flow of money to the terrorists would stop the Financial Jihad which feeds the efforts to revive the Islamic Caliphate. It would also stop the financing of terror attacks, hate propaganda and education, and their undermining of democracy. In Israel, Financial Jihad has funded more than 26,000 terror attacks in the last five years, including 144 suicide attacks. This comes to at least 14 attacks a day in a country the size of Vancouver Island.

While acknowledging the dangers of Radical Islam, and the support its propagators receive from “authoritarian regimes ­– allies of convenience like Syria and Iran,” the President neglected to mention Saudi Arabia, and the illegal drug trade that provides major financial resources for Islamist and other terrorist organizations worldwide.

Despite the oil crisis, we can no longer pretend that the Saudis are our allies in the war against Radical Islam. Continuing to do so only sets us up for failure.

British MP Harriet Harman got quite the surprise last week when members of Hizb ut-Tahrir came for a visit, taking advantage of Harman’s open-door office policy. The representatives of the violent Muslim group were there to complain about the British government’s efforts to outlaw their organization, in a story recounted by Nick Cohen in the Observer:

A few weeks ago, Harriet Harman was holding a surgery for her Peckham constituents. As always, it was an open house, and every variety of south Londoner was coming to her office. She had dealt with the usual run of complaints and appeals when the door opened and for the first time in her life Harman confronted authentic anti-democrats.

If she had been less startled, she might have seen the funny side. The members of Hizb ut-Tahrir hated democracy and all that went with it - secularism, the separation of church and state, the emancipation of women. It's not just that they would establish a dictatorship if they came to power, the successor parties to the communists and the fascists would do that. The Islamists regarded it as sinful to stand in elections or even vote.

Yet here were totalitarians and misogynists going to a woman democratic politician and begging her to persuade Tony Blair not to take authoritarian measures against their authoritarian sect. The scene could have been bettered only if Harman had been a Jewish lesbian.

In fact, she is a courteous and patient politician. She listened politely to what they had to say and the more she heard the more despairing she became. As they were leaving, she said, 'you're British citizens. Shouldn't you try to play a part in British society?'

'We're not a part of British society,' they told her. 'We stay here like guests in a hotel.'

Troubling news out of London today, as the Daily Telegraph reports that the results of a secret poll conducted by Britain's Ministry of Defense indicate that a majority of Iraqis - 65% - support attacks against Western forces stationed throughout the country:

Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.

The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country.

It demonstrates for the first time the true strength of anti-Western feeling in Iraq after more than two and a half years of bloody occupation.

The nationwide survey also suggests that the coalition has lost the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, which Tony Blair and George W Bush believed was fundamental to creating a safe and secure country.

The intimidation campaign waged by Muslim groups against Indonesian Christians continues unabated, leading one Christian leader, Pastor Johan Bandi, to issue “an urgent call for solidarity for the persecuted churches in Indonesia,” per ASSIST News Service:

In recent months, Christians in Indonesia have faced a severe escalation of terrorism, intimidation and persecution.

“This escalation is part of the process to implement Islamic Sharia Law,” Pastor Bandi said.

He pointed out that some of the radical Islamic groups that are publicly known, such as the Defense of Islam (FPI) and the Alliance Against Apostasy (AGAP), have broken into churches in the middle of services, demanded the pastor stop preaching, ordered him and the congregation out of the church, and forced him to sign a statement that the building would no longer be used for church services. Many times they carried out their intimidation and terror with letters of authorization from the mayor and chief of police in their hands, and accompanied by government officials and police, who stood by doing nothing.

“This is not just a West Java problem,” Bandi said. “This is a national problem facing every church group throughout the country.”

Dr. Jeff Hammond of Jakarta-based Bless Indonesia Today, said three churches, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Pentecostal, were closed five weeks ago by the mayor, accompanied by members of AGAP

Then on Sunday, October 16, three more churches in East Bekasi (West Java, about 45 minutes drive from Jakarta) were closed.

On that same day about 150 people marched on a house church in South Sulawesi and forced it to close. The Jakarta Post reported that Muslims for at least six months had been objecting to its functioning without a permit.

Hugh Fitzgerald touches in today's Daily Hugh on the problem of recruitment of moderate Muslims for the jihad, and of course it is something I have emphasized repeatedly: self-proclaimed peaceful and moderate Muslims have made no effort to separate themselves from jihadists, and many times here at Jihad Watch we have chronicled the adventures of moderate Muslims who suddenly turned out to be...immoderate. Probably when they were at work at their dentistry office in Kfar Manda, these two appeared to be upstanding citizens, having carved out a good, prosperous place for themselves in Israeli society. But appearances, once again, were deceiving.

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Kemaste:

Two Israeli Arab dentists from the Galilee were arrested on suspicion of helping Hamas plan bombings in Israel, security sources revealed Sunday.

The two were identified as Nazmi Hassin, 35, and A'salam Zeidan. They were arrested in September, but news of the arrest was under a gag order until last night.

According to security sources, the pair had studied dentistry in Romania in the 1990s. After being recruited into Hamas they even underwent espionage training in Turkey, linked up with a handler and carried out missions for Hamas once they returned home.

Hassin, 35, from Nazareth, told interrogators that he was trained in surveillance, intelligence collecting, encryption and clandestine activity. The training was held during a five-day period in Istanbul. Plans to send him to Iran for military training fell through because he only had an Israeli passport.

Once back in his Galilee village, Hassin helped recruit Zeidan, his partner at their dentistry office in Kfar Manda. He also passed on the names of at least three other Israeli Arabs to his Hamas contact for potential recruitment.

Zeidan, 36, told his interrogators he agreed to find safe houses for Hamas members transporting "the goods." In 1999, Zeidan traveled to Turkey for training with Hamas, that included learning how to obtain fertilizer used for making explosives, bomb assembly and transmitting orders via e-mail accounts. He also served as a courier for Hamas and delivered money to a Hamas member in Nazareth. In 2002, Zeidan met with a Hamas agent in Saudi Arabia and agreed to scout out potential crowded bombing sites in Tel Aviv. Hassin aided Zeidan in maintaining contact with their Hamas handler.

The Saudi author Badriyya Al-Bishr, who is nothing if not courageous, writes this in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. From MEMRI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

"Imagine you're a woman. You always need your guardian's approval, not only regarding your first marriage, as maintained by the Islamic legal scholars, but regarding each and every matter. You cannot study without your guardian's approval, even if you reach a doctorate level. You cannot get a job and earn a living without your guardian's approval. Moreover, there are people who are not ashamed to say that a woman must have permission to work even in the private sector.

"Imagine you're a woman, and the guardian who must accompany you wherever [you go] is your 15-year-old son or your brother, who scratches his chin before giving his approval, saying: 'What do you think, guys, should I give her my permission?' Sometimes he asks for... a bribe [in return], heaven forbid! [But] your brother avoids taking such a bribe in 'cash' because his self-respect prevents him from touching a woman's money. So he prefers the bribe to be a car, a fridge, or an assurance of money that you will pay in installments [for him], until Allah gets him out of his financial straits...

"Imagine you're a woman, and you are subject to assault, beatings, or murder. When the press publishes your photo [together with] the photo of the criminals and [descriptions] of their brutality, there are people who ask: 'Was the victim covered [by a veil] or not?' If she was covered up, [the question arises:] 'Who let her go out of the house at such an hour?' In the event that your husband is the one who broke your ribs, [people will say] that no doubt there was good reason for it.

"Imagine you're a woman whose husband breaks her nose, arm, or leg, and you go to the Qadi to lodge a complaint. When the Qadi asks you about your complaint, and you say, 'He beat me,' he responds reproachfully 'That's all?!' In other words, [for the Qadi], beating is a technical situation that exists among all couples and lovers, [as the saying goes]: 'Beating the beloved is like eating raisins.'

In accord with Qur'an 4:34. Read it all.

From an April 18th Jihad Watch archive it was reported that the Philippine government was having talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the terror group which has for decades been attempting to take control of the southern island of Mindanao from the rest of the Philippines. On October 13th the Philippine government agreed "to allow Muslims in the South to draft their own constitution, impose their own tax system, and to form and maintain legal and financial institutions." Ten days later petro-dollars from Saudi Arabia have been pledged to the southern island. From ABS-CBN News:

At least $100-million worth of Saudi development funds are expected to boost government infrastructure projects in troubled Mindanao, officials said on Sunday. US$20 million would be used to fund road improvement projects in Basilan, Lanao and Cotabato provinces, the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Manila said.

The embassy said the money is part of a recent loan agreement between the two countries and would be sourced from the Saudi Fund for Development to the Philippines.

Saudi also pledged another $50 million to boost development projects in the five-province Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Governor Zaldy Ampatuan, a spokesman for the ARMM.

Basilan, Lanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Maguindanao provinces are part of the Muslim autonomous region.

MILF claims to the provinces of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi were forsaken in the government-rebel talks when MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu conceded, "Originally, we wanted the whole of Mindanao- Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Palawan -but the reality is we no longer control all these areas." So one must ask why they are now part of that Muslim autonomy? How long will it take before the Saudi-financed ARMM starts agitating for more control of the rest of the Philippines?

The conflict between secular European societies and their Muslim immigrant populations was once a niche story, relegated to smaller publications who were unafraid to touch on “racial” or “religious” issues. However, with the murder of Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim radical, even large media outlets such as the International Herald Tribune are beginning to pay attention to the growing trend of fundamentalism within the burgeoning European Muslim immigrant community. The focal point of this coming battle is the home country of Van Gogh, the Netherlands, as touched on by the IHT:

Immigration, particularly of Muslims, has long been an issue in Europe, a challenge to overburdened welfare systems and to the self-image of countries where every village hoists a church spire to the sky. But what was once a subject of worthy debate is now more a matter of survival.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Netherlands, where a familiar European combination of troubled history and quiet hypocrisy, wrapped in a veneer of tolerance, has yielded unexpected bloodshed. "We see that our much-vaunted tolerance toward immigrants was often just indifference and we are left wondering: What have we become?" said Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam.

The murders, in 2002 and 2004 respectively, of the taboo-trampling politician Pym Fortuyn and the Islam-bashing movie director Theo van Gogh have left the Dutch bereft of certainties. They are not alone in their questioning.

Islam is now of Europe, a European religion. But Europe, after terrorist killings in Madrid and Amsterdam and London, sees more threat than promise in the immigrant tide from its Muslim fringes.

Geert Wilders is a rightist member of the Dutch Parliament living in a secret location under police protection because Islamic radicals say they will kill him. That, in what was until recently the placid Western democracy par excellence, is extraordinary. "All non-Western immigration must be stopped," Wilders said. "Pure Islam is violent."

And what is the message the portly cleric wishes to convey? Why the glorification and urging of jihad, of course. From the Times Online:

THE exiled radical Islamist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad is continuing to reach his followers in Britain through websites and internet chatrooms. After a period of silence that came after Bakri Mohammad’s decision to leave Britain for Lebanon to avoid the threat of arrest and deportation, his followers have re-emerged online.

They have been detected using a chatroom labelled “Muslims in the UK” to deliver lectures that deliberately challenge proposals in the Terrorism Bill to outlaw the glorification of terrorist acts.

The nature of the material suggests that Bakri Mohammad’s movement is prepared to be more explicit in its preachings and teachings.

In one session a man calling himself Mizaan, who spoke with an English accent, said: “We should all of us glorify terrorism and we should incite religious hatred.

“Don’t worry, it’s not illegal for us to say that the Mujahidin on 9/11 were the magnificent 19, and it’s not illegal for us to say that Mohammad Sidique Khan (July 7 ringleader) and the four on 7/7, that they were the fantastic four.”

Speaking animatedly, Mizaan stated that the world was divided into two camps — Islam and kuffar — which would always be at war. He repeatedly urged his listeners to take part in that war.

He said that he was in contact with Bakri Mohammad. but it was not possible to determine from where in the world the lecture was being broadcast.

The chatroom appeared on the Paltalk internet network which is run by a New York-based company. In January The Times revealed that Bakri Mohammad used the same network to declare Britain a “land of war” and encourage his followers to join al-Qaeda.

From Reuters:

In a video tape aired on a Qatari satellite channel, Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the leading figures in Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, called on the world Muslims to send aid to the devastated Pakistani victims after a deadly earthquake hit South Asia earlier this month, killing more than 40,000 people, and driving thousands others homeless.

"I call on all Muslims in general and I call on all Islamic humanitarian associations in particular to move to Pakistan to provide help to their Pakistani brothers, and that they do it quickly," he said.

How else should we reward our certified ally in the war on terror? From Asharq Al-Awsat:

More than 10,000 Saudi students will travel to the US to attend university as part of a government-sponsored program following the adoption of new measures by the Ministry of Higher Education aimed at facilitating travel procedures for Saudis. In total, 21,000 Saudis are expected to take part in the program in the next four years.

Prospective students can submit their applications to the Ministry of Higher Education through a Ministry special office or its website for nine different specializations and will be able to benefit from assistance with their visa applications at the US embassy and its diplomatic missions throughout the country.

Fahd al Manur, a student who decided to enroll in the program told Asharq al Awsat, “I do not fear traveling to the US since Americans are a friendly people. Relations between our two countries have greatly improved recently and travel procedures are easier nowadays after being almost impossible following September 11th 2001.” Studying in the US would be a dream come true, he added, despite recent events. King Abdullah’s visit earlier this year strengthened bilateral relations and “reassured Saudis.”

Currently studying in the U.S., Mohammad al Mateeri described the initiative as an important step and described how in eight years of living in the US, “I have never been hassled, save for an increase in security checks to which a country is entitled to when protecting its citizens.”

His wife, Afaf, also a Saudi national, confirmed that Americans have been very friendly to the couple and treated them with respect. Once, however, she was detained for 24hours at a Washington D.C airport after a short visit to Saudi Arabia because of a mix up in names but was treated with respect and courtesy.

In the wake of the September 11 attacks on US cities, several Saudi students were detained around the U.S. Bandar al Qowaifal, who left home at 18 to attend university in America recalled his arrest. “After al Qaeda’s attacks, I was arrested for one whole month and extradited to Saudi Arabia . They didn’t have anything against me except some minor irregularities in my visa I hadn’t paid attention to. I am waiting for the right to time to go back to the US and resume my studies.” After applying to the exchange program and benefiting from relaxed visa procedures, Bandar is now back in the US studying at his own expense.

Are "relaxed visa procedures" another courtesy being extended to our committed allies?

From the Times Online, with thanks to treehugger:

ONE MAN was killed after violence flared in Birmingham last night following a week of racial tension after it was claimed a 14-year-old Jamaican girl had been raped by an Asian gang. Hundreds of youths ran through the streets of the Lozells area of the city attacking motorists and lines of riot police after a meeting between police and community leaders.

Tension was high after rumours circulated that the girl had been attacked by 19 Asian men but had not gone to police because she is in Britain illegally and feared deportation.

The meeting was intended to reassure the black community and appeal for the girl to come forward. But it is understood a gang of up to 30 Asian youths began throwing stones at some of the 300 people attending the meeting in a church.

Violence then broke out with bricks and bottles thrown at a line of riot police. Cars were set on fire, an ambulance was attacked and shop windows smashed as youths wielding baseball bats ran amok. The dead man, black and in his twenties, was stabbed to death.

Three men were arrested and at least a further 10 were taken to hospital, three suffering from stab wounds and two, including a policeman, having been shot with a ball-bearing gun.

A woman reporter, Alex Thompson, described being attacked in her car: “They were a large group, more than 100 hooded youths with baseball bats running through the streets. They hit my car with the bats and kicked it. They also attacked other motorists.”

India Murray, landlady of the Union Inn in Gerrard Street, said the violence began at 6pm and the pub’s windows were smashed. She locked herself and her customers inside. “Whoever is here is in here because there are no taxis coming, so they can’t leave,” she said.

The area is close to where Letisha Shakespeare, 17, and Charlene Ellis, 18, were shot dead outside a kebab shop in January 2003.

The Lost Budgie Blog has linked to reports that show the jihad doctrine taught early on to Palestinian children may have repercussions. This report concerns violence directed towards Palestinian teachers by those same jihad-taught youngsters:

Head of the Qalqilya teachers’ union, Naim Al Ashqar told PNN that the union is working to set up a group meeting that includes official and popular institutions to look into the necessary steps in light of the recent attack on a teacher. Apparently, the 10th grader struck the teacher on the back of his head with a sharp object, seriously wounding him.

The Qalqilya teachers’ union issued a statement condemning such attacks on teachers by students, calling these students, “immoral” and accusing them of undermining the entire educational process. In its statement, the union said the lack of involvement from student’s parents and school rules that limit the teacher’s disciplinary powers are two major reasons for the spread of this phenomenon.

This July 2001 BBC article shows that the educational system in Palestine IS the champion of its own corruption. There is nothing novel about Palestinian children being indoctrinated into violence. What is novel is the violence and hatred instilled in these children is now being directed towards their educators. No doubt, this is what the teacher's union considers to be an "immoral phenomenon."

Can a jihadist be rehabilitated? A Jihad Watch archive reports that prognosis to be poor. From the Internet Haganah, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

In Yemen they confront selected jihadists with a panel of Muslim clerics who seek to convince the prisoners of the error of their ways.

The idea that this program in Yemen is a real solution to the problem is undermined by the final few paragraphs, which I will present below. It reminds me of the program I used to work for that sought to 'rehabilitate' young criminals by taking them out of jail for 30 days backpacking in the wilderness. Typically their involvement in the program was arranged between them, their legal guardian, their parole officer and a judge. If they got through the program and left with a report of good behavior, it could mean the difference between being released from jail at the age of 18 or being shipped off to an adult prison - so the stakes for the participants were pretty high.

At best all we did was teach them how to better work 'The System' to their advantage and helped them buy some time until they could get out from under government supervision and get back to doing crime. Studies comparing recidivism rates of program participants with those of the general population of juvenile criminals showed a slight decrease in the severity of the felonies that program participants went on to commit after their time in the woods. This is because by the time they had fallen into the grasp of the criminal system it was already too late to "intervene" with them or "rehabilitate" them.

So if the governments of Arab/Muslim countries are going to engage in such (re)education programs, the target of such education needs to be the larger Arab/Muslim population, especially the young, and *before* they sign on with the global jihad. Because once they come to identify themselves with the jihad, it's too late. You can fight them, defeat them, contain them, do whatever it is you have to do to defend yourself, your society and your civilization from them. Eventually those who live long enough will start to lose energy and get enmeshed in simply living a life. Radicalism is generally an activity of young, and for good reason.

As a way of driving a wedge between the jihadis and the larger Muslim community such educational efforts might just work, assuming the clerics can actually make a solid case against jihadist violence. This leads us to the responsibility that the larger Muslim community has: not to issue statements condemning the latest jihadist atrocity - statements that are directed at the non-Muslim world - but to address and combat jihadist ideology from within Islam and to ensure that Muslims have the knowledge they need to combat attempts to spread jihadist ideology within their community. From the outside, we can't do that. All we can do is assume a defensive posture, and maintain that posture until the Muslims themselves either put out the fires, or are consumed by them.

Please read it all.

Just another day at school in glorious multicultural Cool Britannia. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Cindy:

Police are investigating allegations that a physics teacher warned wayward pupils that he knew how to make a parcel bomb and put it on their school bus.

The comments are being investigated after complaints from parents that their children had been left terrified led to the school calling in police.

The comments were allegedly made by Mazin Albarq to a class of 13 and 14-year-olds at the 1,200-pupil St Bede's RC School and Sixth Form College in Lanchester, County Durham.

Mr Albarq, of Darlington, County Durham, is said to have told a group of pupils who were not paying attention that he was from Bethlehem and knew how to make a parcel bomb to put on their school bus.

He's a moderate imam who lied about jail time he served for assault and about having been caught with a false French passport. Imagine what he would have done if he hadn't been so moderate. From The Gazette, with thanks to RG:

The imam of Montreal's largest North African mosque shocked his followers yesterday when he told them Canada wants to deport him for lying to get into the country as a refugee in 1997 and lying again to become a permanent resident in 1999.

Admitting he concealed information about jail time he served in France for assault in 1995, as well as having been caught with a false French passport in 1996, Said Jaziri vowed to stay at the Al-Qods mosque until he's deported....

"I'm a very moderate imam," Jaziri, 38, clad all in white, said in French under the gaze of more than 100 Muslim men who had come for Friday afternoon prayers at the mosque on Belanger St. near Iberville St.

"I'm staying here until expulsion - nowhere else," he vowed, as journalists invited for a hastily called news conference listened in, interrupted by people in the crowd declaring their faith in their spiritual leader....

Jaziri was in the news last month when he proposed using government subsidies to build a $20-million grand mosque for Montreal's rapidly growing Muslim population, an idea quickly rejected by Montreal's city administration.

For speaking the truth about the Turkish persecution of Kurds and Armenians. A Let-Them-Into-the-EU alert from zaman.com, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The investigation about the insulting expressions in the Istanbul City Guide, which was distributed by MasterCard prior to the UEFA Champions League Final Match, was concluded.

Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office demanded up to three years of imprisonment for MasterCard Southeastern Europe General Manager Ayse Ozlem Imece for degrading the Turkish identity, Turkish Republic, foundation and the state bodies in the investigation conducted in the last four months. The documents prepared by Public Prosecutor Huseyin Nazmi Okumus were sent to the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office due to the lack of jurisdiction. The case will be opened there in the following days.

The investigation was filed when the insults in the 290-page Istanbul City Guide, which belittled the Turkish Identity, Turkish Republic, foundation and the state bodies, reflected in media. The guide reportedly written by the British journalist Virginia Maxwell was published by the "Lonely Planet" publishing house based in Australia....

Some of the expressions in the booklet that was distributed during Milan-Liverpool Match in Istanbul were as follows: "In 1924, [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk banned any expression of Kurdishness in an attempt at assimilation. Speaking Kurdish was banned. Major battles and atrocities ensued throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and since 1984, nearly 30,000 people have died. The resultant outrage of terrorism (new at the time though all too familiar to us now) set-off a powerful Armenian backslash, resulting in a widespread massacre of innocent Armenians in Istanbul and elsewhere."

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald reveals what he will tell the President of the United States when George calls him in, offers him a sparkling water, and asks him for some advice:

"What serious advice by the numbers would you give the president as to how to deal with the ever encroaching threat of fundamental Islam?" -- a question to me from a posting at Jihad Watch

1. Education: Make sure that the 5-10 most relevant books are read by generals, other officers, and men -- beginning with those at the War College. And make sure that those in the Department of Justice, civilian employees in the Department of Defense, upper-level employees in the Department of Health and Human Services, and members of Congress and state and local government are properly educated on the subject of Islam. Stop misrepresenting Islam as a doctrine that encourages "peace" and "tolerance." Stop continuing to insist that those who conduct Jihad are doing so despite Islam, and not quite properly prompted by, and in the name of, and in the spirit of, Islam.

Attempt on every occasion to raise the matter of what Islam teaches and how Muslims intend to deal with these teachings, or not to, at every meeting with Muslim ambassadors and leaders. Never leave it out of any speech -- and make sure that from the top down, everyone is echoing the same sentiments, asking the same questions, wondering the same things aloud.

2. Establish a War Board which, once it has been clearly understood that the menace threatening all Infidels everywhere is properly called a "Jihad," then that War Board will seek to identify and bring to the attention of Infidels everywhere the various instruments of that Jihad. While military means are part of Jihad, whether acts of terrorism or battlefield combat (qital), they are not the most effective or most threatening instruments of Jihad. These others include "wealth" (i.e. oil revenues), "pen, speech" (propaganda), and the latest weapon, the demographic weapon. It is important to produce evidence from Muslim press, radio, television, and websites, that there is a clear understanding among Muslims of how, for example, "demographic conquest" can -- and has in the past in various parts of the world -- succeed in islamizing a place.

Christians facing persecution in the Holy Land. In the first part of this article, which I have not reproduced below, you will find Christians saying that everything is wonderful between them and the Muslims. But the record is clear, highlighting the fact that here again Christians in the Middle East know what they have to say to get along, however divorced from reality those statements are. From the Jerusalem Post:

In another case, a 60-year-old Christian man was briefly detained by one of the Palestinian security forces because he had forbidden his daughter to date a Muslim security officer. Other Christians who tried to stop Fatah gunmen in Beit Jala from firing into the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo in the first years of the intifada later reported that they had been beaten or threatened by the gunmen.

The same gunmen are also responsible for the rape and murder of two Christian teenage sisters from the Amr family. The assailants then claimed that the sisters had been murdered because they were "prostitutes" and had been "collaborating" with Israeli security forces - a claim that has been strongly denied by the victims' relatives and many residents of the town. "The gangsters murdered the two sisters so that they would not tell anyone about the rape," says a family member. "Some of the murderers were later killed by the Israeli army, but others are now living in Europe after they had sought refuge in the Church of Nativity. It's absurd that Muslim men who rape and murder Christian girls are given political asylum in Christian countries like Ireland, Spain and Italy."

Last week Beit Jala was once again the scene of religious tensions after a Christian woman complained that she had been harassed by Muslim men from the village of Beit Awwa in the Hebron area. "Such incidents have become a daily phenomenon," says Mary, who runs a small grocery in the town. "Many Christian families have sent their daughters abroad for fear they would come under attack by Muslim men."

Earlier this year tensions between Muslims and Christians in Bethlehem reached a peak after a Christian family complained that their 16-year-old daughter had been kidnapped by a Muslim man. Following the intervention of senior Palestinian officials and Muslim leaders, the girl was reunited with her family after spending a few days in a village near Hebron. With the help of American diplomats, the girl was flown immediately to the US to begin a new life with relatives and friends.

Some Christians point a finger at the foreign media and diplomatic missions in Israel, accusing them of ignoring their predicament for "political" reasons. "Although most of the foreign journalists and diplomats are Christians, they don't seem to pay enough attention to what's happening to the Christians in Bethlehem," says Bishara, a Christian tourist guide. "They're obviously afraid of damaging their relations with the Palestinian Authority."

While it's almost impossible to find a Christian who's prepared to go public in airing such grievances, Samir Qumsiyeh, a journalist from Beit Sahur, is a notable exception. Last month he was quoted by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera as saying that Christians were being subjected to rape, kidnapping, extortion and expropriation of land and property.

Qumsiyeh, who was not available this week for an interview because he was out of the country, heads a local TV station called Al-Mahd [Nativity]. In a daring step, Qumsiyeh drew up a list of 93 cases of anti-Christian violence between 2000 and 2004.

"This file is incomplete and it's not up-to-date," he told the Italian newspaper. "Look at the case of Rawan William Mansour, a 17-year-old girl from Bet Sahur. She was raped two years ago by four members of Fatah. Even though the family protested, none of the four was ever arrested. Because of the shame her family was forced to move to Jordan.

"Almost all 140 cases of expropriation of land in the last three years were committed by militant Islamic groups and members of the Palestinian police." Qumsiyeh said he was now preparing a book on the conditions of the Christian minority. "I will call it 'Racism in Action,'" he says. "The racism against us is gaining pace in staggering ways. In 1950 the Christian population in Bethlehem was 75%. Today we have hardly more than 12% Christians. If the situation continues, we won't be here any more in 20 years."

Here's the sequence: Islamic jihadists mount a major attack against non-Muslims. Officials begin investigating, whereupon Muslims begin to protest the "climate of fear" created by the investigation, and say they are struggling to understand why the attackers did what they did, and that they feel unfairly targeted by law enforcement. Rumors of beatings and torture by police begin to circulate.

Post-9/11 America? No, post-Nalchik Russia. From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

NALCHIK, Russia (AFP) - Local Muslims have denounced a climate of fear for believers and criticised state-backed Islamic officials as this North Caucasus city struggled to understand why dozens of local men took up arms against the state.

"There is complete police arbitrariness... and judges get their orders against Muslims by telephone," said Ali Pshigotizhev, 55, an unemployed former radio presenter with a charcoal-grey beard.

Pshigotizhev's son, Zaur, 29, a taxi driver, was arrested on suspicion of taking part in a wave of attacks on police and security forces outposts in Nalchik last week that officials said killed 12 civilians and 36 law enforcement officers.

Outside the main government building in central Nalchik, female relatives of the 92 militants officially reported killed in the attacks demanded authorities return their loved ones' corpses for burial.

"He saw so much injustice in the police force that he decided to retrain as a lawyer," said the aunt of Khasbulat Kerefov, 24, who said her nephew had gone missing during the attacks.

Under heavy rain, the women described beatings and humiliating abuses in local police stations. Many said their sons, brothers and nephews could not get jobs or university places because of their beliefs.

"They call us the Wahhabists. They are people and we are non-people," said Marina, 19, whose 33-year-old uncle, a builder, took part in the attacks and who declined to give her surname for fear of police reprisals....

Many believers were angered at the closure of six mosques in and around Nalchik last year.

"They were training to use weapons in the mosques... that's why they were closed down," Marina Kyasova, a local interior ministry spokeswoman, told AFP in a building still scarred by bullet holes from the militants' attacks.

"We should have acted more forcefully... We shouldn't just copy democracy and human rights from other countries -- we should adapt them to our own conditions," Kyasova said....

During the 1990s, young Muslims from the republic travelled to the Middle East for Islamic studies.

Some believers say they brought back true Islam, incurring the suspicion of the authorities but officials say problems with the police started after these men were brainwashed with extremist ideas.

Sharia alert and Ali Mohaqiq Nasab update from AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

KABUL - A court in Afghanistan has convicted the editor of a women’s magazine of blasphemy after complaints his articles questioned Islam, and sentenced him to two years in jail, a media rights group said on Sunday.

The Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association said it would complain to President Hamid Karzai about the sentencing of editor Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, who has been in jail since his arrest two weeks ago....

Nasab, editor of the monthly magazine Haqoq-e-Zan (Women’s Rights), was arrested after complaints about his articles, including one, which questioned the severity of Islamic punishments for crimes such as adultery.

Rocky Mountain jihad? Al-Turki, of course, says it is all because he is Muslim. But the Indonesian maid he assaulted and enslaved was a Muslim too. "Saudi In Aurora Probed For Possible Terror Link," from CBS4Denver.com, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Eric Schwappach:

(CBS4) AURORA, Colo. A Saudi man living in Aurora has been under investigation for possible links to terrorism, according to his attorneys.

Homaidan Al-Turki was already facing state and federal charges for enslaving and sexually assaulting an Indonesian maid.

Al-Turki, 37, is a graduate student at the University of Colorado, studying linguistics. He’s been in the United States since 1995. That’s when his lawyers said the investigation started....

Federal Court documents filed by Al-Turki’s attorneys detail the investigation against him. The documents claim the Denver Joint Terrorism Task Force has had Al-Turki under a “full fledge investigation” suspecting “he is closely aligned to terrorists and may be providing material support to terrorism.”

Al-Turki’s lawyers said the government has been looking into the proceeds from Al-Turki’s Albasheer Islamic bookstore in Aurora.

“This is very sad, but we Muslims basically after 9-11, have been profiled,” Al-Turki said. “And everything that is happening to us or every single Muslim in the community basically because we are guilty, no matter what.”

Al-Turki’s attorneys want to know more about an incident in Illinois last April.

Al-Turki was stopped by state police there on Interstate 80 near LaSalle. A message on the national crime information computer warned the officers “terrorist organization member-caution, do not alert this individual to this notice.

Al-Turki was only given a warning for having an “obstructed view.” His lawyers claim school documents in his car were copied and a 38-page fax was sent by the Illinois State Police to the FBI in Denver.

“Do you think this is happening to you because of your religion,” CBS4 asked.

“I am Saudi, I am a Muslim, and I think that’s an attraction to law enforcement by itself,” Al-Turki responded.

From the Wishful Thinking Department comes this one from the Dutch Disease blog (thanks to Cid Martel):

Holland's number one entertainment store, Free Record Shop, has started selling the Qu'ran and the Bible in one package along with a brochure written by an imam and a protestant.

"There's a lot going on in the world today," commercial director Juan da Silva says. "Maybe if we showed some more interesr in one another we would understand each other better."

To help build a bridge between the Qu'ran and the Bible, Da Silva asked imam Abdulwahid van Bommel and reverend Adri van Buuren to write a brochure about Christianity and Islam. According to both clergymen, Christians and Muslims share the same God.

Van Buuren calls the Qu'ran 'some kind of third Testament' and calls on Christians and Muslims to pray together and combine forces. "In service of world peace."

Some kind of third Testament, eh, Van Buuren? I guess Van B. hasn't seen the passage where the Qur'an calls down the curse of Allah on those who believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (Qur'an 9:30).

The UN's ties to the global jihad may have involved more than just condemnations of Israel and glorification of terrorists. From FoxNews, with thanks to Olivia:

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services, which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June.

New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda.

Islamic tolerance alert: let them put a mosque in Rome, and then these Christians will have a case when they complain about Qatar -- what's that? There is a mosque in Rome? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?

From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Qatar may be best known as the home of Al-Jazeera television, but an Anglican congregation now plans to build the country's first Christian church since Islam's arrival in the seventh century, a step that risks angering local Muslims.

Clive Handford, the Nicosia-based Anglican bishop in Cyprus and the Gulf, says construction will start in the Qatari capital of Doha in early 2006 on the $7 million Church of the Epiphany, along with a conference center and meeting rooms....

While some see the construction as a sign of increasing religious diversity throughout the world, Qatar's close-knit Muslim community may become angered if public approval is not sought, said Najeeb al-Nauimi, a prominent lawyer in Doha.

"People will be insulted," al-Nauimi said. "They respect other religions. But to impose this on them is to say that you are no longer a Muslim state. That will hurt."...

Christianity disappeared in most Gulf Arab states within a few centuries after Islam's arrival in the seventh century. But Christian expatriates have migrated to the region over the last hundred years, especially after the discovery of oil.

Tell them how Christianity disappeared, AP. Go on. I dare you. (For those who don't know, see Bat Ye'or's seminal work The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam.)

Qatar now counts some 70,000 Christians, including some 7,000 Anglicans and 50,000 Roman Catholics, largely from the Philippines, according to the World Christian Database. Qatar's Anglican community is its oldest, dating to 1916, the database says....

Energy-rich Qatar has had no purpose-built church since pre-Islamic times, when a chain of churches and monasteries stretched along the western shore of the Gulf from the fourth to the seventh century, Handford said.

Many Qataris, who follow a conservative brand of Islam, were "not enthusiastic" about the return of churches to the tiny country, Handford acknowledged.

The congregation will take security precautions and will not be decorated overtly with Christian crosses, he said, although the walkways and grounds will have crosses and flower motifs resembling those used in early Christian churches....

Public display of crosses is forbidden by the classic dhimmi laws, which exert such a continuing cultural influence that crosses on this church in Qatar will not be "overt."

"We've not yet experienced a backlash," Handford said by telephone from London, where he attended a fund-raiser for the Doha church hosted by the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion.

"I suppose these days there is always a risk, no matter where you are," Handford said. "We're not thinking of putting up razor wire or things like that."

The Anglican archdeacon in Qatar, Ian Young, said the church was one of four planned in the energy-rich Gulf state.

Also in the works are church buildings serving Catholics, Egyptian Coptic Christians and a multidenominational church serving Indian Christians, said Young, a 58-year-old Scot who has served as Doha's chief Anglican priest since 1991....

Al-Nauimi warned that few Qataris would approve of donating public land so expatriate Christians could build a church. Al-Nauimi, who as a child attended a Christian elementary school in Lebanon, said he had heard of no Qatari Christians.

"This is the affair of a foreign community that is here temporarily. Why should they get land for this?" he asked. "I don't know what the reaction will be. There is a risk."

Yes, there is. Baddala deenahu, faqtuluhu and all that, eh, Al-Nauimi?

Apparently you're never too young to join the jihad. From Ynet News, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

Five wanted terror suspects have been arrested in overnight searches conducted by the IDF in a village north of Nablus in the early hours of Saturday.

In a house where the suspects were hiding 10 Kg (about 22 pounds) of explosives were found. An extensive search of the house revealed that the wife of one of the suspects had hidden a hand-grenade under the toddler she was holding in her arms.

The army confirmed that the suspects’ apprehension almost certainly deterred a deadly attack against Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the present Western stance toward Turkey, as epitomized by former General Brent Scowcroft, and recommends an alternative:

“Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc has said, ‘we have always felt contributions of the United States to Turkey`s EU process.’ Arinc hosted dinner in honor of Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the Board of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), and accompanying delegation in Ankara on Thursday.” — from this article, October 21, 2005

Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the Board of the American-Turkish Council (ATC). Well, of course. It makes sense. Hard-on-Israel ergo soft-on-Islam Brent Scowcroft. The chocolate soldier who rose through the ranks, like the Gilbert-and-Sullivan admiral who polished up the handle of the big front door and became a captain in the Queen's navee, Scowcroft has a lifetime of polishing, apple-polishing for his civilian superiors.

And here is Turkey, the country that wishes to enter the E.U., feting Scowcroft. And here is the government of the United States pushing for Turkey's admission to the E.U., which is a clear sign to all those who think that this Administration "secretly" understands Islam and is "just playing a clever game" (which includes all those who so tiresomely keep defending the wonderful Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project in Iraq). And Scowcroft is getting how much from the Turkish government, directly or indirectly, for his new post, one no doubt among many?

And who cares if the E.U. has as its largest member Turkey, so that all Turks can, by the rules of the E.U., move freely anywhere within that same E.U, and set up doner kebab shops, and mosques, and swell the ranks still further of those ever-swelling ranks of Muslims who, almost without exception, have everywhere they have settled within Europe made life more unpleasant, more expensive, and more physically insecure for the indigenous Infidels (and for other non-Muslim immigrant groups who, unlike the Muslims, settle in Europe without making life more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for everyone else)? Brent Scowcroft doesn't. From desk-job after desk-job, he rose high. And now he lives the life of comfort, paid for by those who do not so much wish Turkey and Erdogan well, but those, and there are so many of them, who simply want the money, whether from Turkey pushing in its own way at the Gates of Vienna, or Saudi Arabia trying to prevent any understanding of what Saudi Arabia is and does and always will be and always will do.

He's a type. Brent Scowcroft. He has nothing to do with the officers and men who were in Iraq, and some of whom are paying with their lives for the decades of misunderstanding of Islam that these well-heeled denizens of official Washington receive, in a thousand ways, in order to misinform and misdirect the government, the media, and us.

Were those well-heeled denizens of official Washington suddenly to snap to their senses, here are the three things that must be required of Turkey before negotiations can be continued:

Bush continues to repeat portions of his speech from several weeks ago. It is good to see him being more forthright about who the enemy is. He would be foolish, of course, to place too much hope in the adherents of the supposedly un-distorted idea of jihad to rush to his side. From the American Forces Press Service, with thanks to Daryl:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2005 – Evoking President Ronald Reagan's leadership of America's resolve in confronting communism during his two terms in office, President Bush said today that Islamic radicalism is doomed to fail as communism did.

Bush spoke at the Ronald Reagan Library, in Simi Valley, Calif., for the dedication of the new Air Force One Pavilion at the museum, featuring the 707 jet used by Reagan during his presidency.

America prevailed in the 20th-century contest of wills between American freedom and Soviet totalitarianism, Bush noted. In the 21st century, "our freedom is once again being tested by determined enemies," he added. Terrorists like those who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, "are followers of a radical and violent ideology," Bush said.

Terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and others of his ilk "exploit the religion of Islam to serve a violent political vision -- the establishment of a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom," Bush said.

Islamic extremists distort the concept of jihad, or holy war, to command their followers to murder anyone not in agreement with their principles, including other Muslims, the president said. Like old-style Soviets imbued with the ideology of communism, today's terrorist leaders "presume to speak" for the masses, he added.

Baltimore tunnel plot update from the Sun-Sentinel, :

Speaking for the first time since he was swept up in a terror probe, the owner of a Southeast Baltimore convenience store said yesterday he knows of no plots to blow up a Baltimore tunnel, and he criticized federal authorities for acting on a tip about which they have become increasingly skeptical.

"I've been in America 23 years. I would never let anybody harm here in America," said Maged M. Hussein, a U.S. citizen from Egypt.

Hussein spoke from behind the counter of Koko Market shortly after being released from Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center, where he had been held on a gun charge unrelated to terrorism.

On Tuesday, more than a half-dozen federal authorities walked into his store on Dundalk and Eastern avenues in Highlandtown, and ordered it closed, Hussein said....

Authorities say the man who tipped them off is an Egyptian who used to live in Baltimore....

Ahmed Barbour, an Egyptian native, and his wife, Carol Barbour, say they believe the informant is a man who used to work for them at a Dundalk pizzeria. They say he came to the country with a group of Egyptians five years ago and was deported last year. He has repeatedly called members of the group to help him get back into the country and he now has a grudge against them, the couple said.

Hussein said he knows the man as a former customer.

"It's just all lies and he should be punished for that," Hussein said.

"How can you believe somebody like that, somebody that has been deported from the country?" he said. "You still take his word?"

Hussein said he is friends with the man's wife, who lives in the area. Pointing to a picture of the woman he keeps taped to a wall behind the counter in his store, Hussein denied that the relationship is anything more than a friendship.

The FBI official said agents have no information that Hussein was involved in a romantic triangle involving the informant and a Baltimore woman. The woman declined to comment yesterday.

Hussein, who is from Cairo, said he came to the United States 23 years ago, and is an American citizen. He said one of his first jobs in America was as an assistant manager in The Sun's delivery department.

Hussein, who is known as "Mike" to some of his customers, operated two stores in Baltimore before opening the Koko Market nine years ago. There, baskets next to the counter contain bags of flour from Tunisia, beans and prunes from Egypt, and candies from Syria.

Hussein, a Muslim, said he openly denounced the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001. In the weeks after, he displayed flags and other patriotic symbols in his store's windows, according to a Baltimore Business Journal story published that year.

Oh! Well, then, he must not be guilty of any involvement in the tunnel plot.

He "could not give 'any logical explanation' for having the money." What kind of logical explanation could there be for having over a million dollars' worth of counterfeit bills? "NZ Customs seize huge stash of counterfeit cash," from NZPA, with thanks to Cindy:

A smuggler arriving from Sydney has been caught at a New Zealand airport with almost $US1.3 million in counterfeit notes.

Mustafa Yousif Ibrahim was arrested at Auckland International Airport as he came off a flight from Sydney last night.

Ibrahim was born in Sudan but is believed to have been made a New Zealand resident in the early 1990s after arriving as a refugee.

A police summary of facts, presented in the Manukau District Court today, said the counterfeit money was found by customs officers as they searched Ibrahim's bags before he came through the entry gate at the airport.

"On searching the ... bags a large amount of counterfeit American currency was discovered.

"The currency was in 158 separate bundles."

Each of the bundles comprised 80 $US100 notes, with the total amount found coming to $US1.26 million, police said.

Police said Ibrahim could not give "any logical explanation" for having the money. He appeared on one charge of being in possession of forged currency.

"Ohio Terrorism Suspect Facing Possible Deportation: Kent Man Jailed For 3 Years For Suspected Al-Qaida Links," from AP, :

CLEVELAND -- A man from Ohio jailed for three years on suspicion that he has links to al-Qaida associates could be deported to his native Yemen within weeks unless a federal court agrees his safety would be at risk in his homeland.

The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., on Monday overruled an immigration judge's decision last December had stopped Ashraf al-Jailani's deportation on the grounds that he would be persecuted or tortured if he is forced to return to Yemen.

Al-Jailani, 41, of Kent in northeast Ohio, had successfully argued that the United Nations Convention Against Torture prevents his return to Yemen. Al-Jailani has not been charged, and he says he is being held without cause.

By all accounts, it's all because of a DVD that was shown in a Coptic church which Muslims think insults Islam. And the play depicted on that DVD, by the way, was performed once, two years ago.

How exactly does it insult Islam?

According to this CNN story (thanks to Special Guest):

The riot was sparked by the distribution of a DVD of a play that was performed at the church two years ago. The play, "I Was Blind But Now I Can See," tells the story of a young Christian who converts to Islam and becomes disillusioned.

So a film depiction of someone converting to Islam and then becoming disillusioned is enough to bring more than 5,000 protestors to the church and injure many, including a nun who was stabbed and three people who were killed? You can see from this how deeply Egyptian Muslims have internalized the Islamic law mandating death for anyone who leaves Islam, and the old dhimmi laws forbidding Christians to proselytize.

An earlier report from Al-Jazeera gives more details that reinforce this point:

The production features a poor Christian university student who converts to Islam when a group of Muslim men promise him much-needed money.

When he becomes disenchanted with his decision, the men threaten him with physical violence to prevent him from returning to his original faith.

So perhaps the Egyptian Muslims are offended that the student originally converted only for money, and that he was threatened by the Muslims when he wanted to return to Christianity. But this, of course, is like CAIR being offended by a book that depicts Muhammad as a warrior: both are taking offense at the truth. There are numerous reports of Copts converting to Islam under pressure, and certainly many Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere take very seriously the command in Islamic law that anyone who leaves Islam should be killed (which is based, of course, on a statement of Muhammad himself: see Bukhari, vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57).

What offends the rioters, evidently, is that attention be drawn to all this. As the Coptic Bishop Armia said, "Copts would never tolerate anyone insulting Islam." In other words, they know what they have to do to get along. As so many Middle Eastern priests and lay Christians have told me, Christians in the Middle East well know that as a matter of survival, they must say one thing in public and another in private. The Copts who showed this video violated that rule, or at least found themselves in violation of it when news of the showing became known.

It is a pity that Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere don't heed the words of Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury (from "Mockery is good for the faithful, says Carey," in the Telegraph):

"They were very offended by Satanic Verses but I said you are living in a country and civilisation where we are quite used to this," he said.

"They say: 'Why as a Christian don't you condemn the Life of Brian?' I said: 'I love the film and I think it is good for religion to be knocked, to be criticised, to be challenged because we have done a lot of damage in the past'.

"We know religion is a force for good but I don't want to control a writer not to criticise me, because I may need that criticism.

"The Church of England is a broad church, we are used to being mocked. I do believe passionately in this. I wanted to assure Salman Rushdie that although many of his statements may have been in bad taste he had the right to say it as a lapsed Muslim."

If anyone needs the criticism that is apparently contained in the Copts' DVD, it is the very Muslims who are rioting because of it. If they noted and began to work against the intimidation of Copts and the threats against those who leave Islam, life would be better in Egypt for both Christians and Muslims.

An update on the riots in Egypt. "Egyptians protest, say church play against Islam," from Reuters, with thanks to JE:

CAIRO (Reuters) - Three demonstrators were killed when thousands of people protested on Friday near a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria over the staging of a play they said was offensive to Islam, security sources said.

The demonstrators were killed during clashes between police and the more than 5,000-strong crowd which had gathered near St. George's Coptic church in the Mediterranean port city after Muslim prayers, the sources said.

Police used teargas to try to disperse the crowd, which had pelted police with stones and which regrouped on several occasions after prayer times through the day and evening, the sources said. They said protests continued late into the night.

Police formed a cordon to prevent the crowd approaching St. George's church, prompting some of the demonstrators to try to storm another church nearby, the sources said, adding that dozens of police and protesters were injured in the clashes.

Coptic Bishop Armia denied accusations the play insulted Islam, Egypt's official MENA news agency reported, as monitored by the BBC.

"Copts would never tolerate anyone insulting Islam," Bishop Armia was quoted as saying.

He did not give details about the play or what it was about. Coptic officials could not be independently reached for comment.

To prevent them from being adopted by Christian missionaries. "We will not tolerate this. It is an international conspiracy to bring Muslim children into the fold of Christianity and secularism." Horror of horrors! These children could grow up as Christians! Let us make sure they grow up as murderous fanatics instead! From Rediff.com:

The Muttehida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of six pro-Taliban religious parties, has given a countrywide call through mosque loudspeakers, banners and pamphlets, to adopt children orphaned in the October 8 earthquake.

'We have come to know that the [Pervez] Musharraf regime has decided to hand over the orphans and unaccompanied children to Christian missionaries and the Aga Khan Development Network,' said Naimatullah Khan, the former mayor of Karachi.

AKDN, which plays a key role in primary/secondary level education in Pakistan, has been given the task of revamping the curriculum, and the jihadis are venomous about it. They accuse it of promoting secularism and eliminating jihad through the new curriculum expected to be implemented soon.

'We will not tolerate this. It is an international conspiracy to bring Muslim children into the fold of Christianity and secularism. We urge you to leave your children with us if you are unable to raise them. We will provide them a good future,' said Khan.

Human trafficking in the quake's aftermath

Taking a leaf out of MMA's book and to curtail child trafficking, the Jamatud Dawa (the defunct Lashkar-e-Tayiba, the largest group of Pakistani militants fighting in Indian Kashmir) has announced that it will take responsibility for abandoned, orphan and unaccompanied children.

'The Jamatud Dawa has a huge complex at Misrial road in Rawalpindi, by the name of Maaz bin Jabal. We will set up colonies in the complex where these children would be put up according to their age. Various ayahs will raise them, ensuring motherly love,' says Professor Zafar Iqbal, head of the Jamatud Dawa's education wing.

8:00 AM: Reading. 8:30 AM: Handwriting. 9:00 AM: Math. 9:30 AM: Bombmaking.

"Terror Suspects Arrests," from SkyNews, :

Three men have been arrested in connection with investigations into international terrorism, Scotland Yard said.

The trio, aged in their early twenties, were detained on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

They are being interviewed at a central London police station by detectives from the Anti-Terrorist Branch.

A police spokesman said: "At approximately 10pm (Friday)... a man was arrested at Chatham in Kent and another in Shepherd's Bush, west London.

"There are ongoing searches at these places and also at a third address in the Paddington area of west London."

Some Canadian Muslims, no doubt enraged by the Israeli occupation of Ottawa, have joined the jihad in Iraq. "Canadians join insurgency," from the Ottawa Sun, with thanks to Cindy:

A number of radicals from Canada -- fewer than 10 -- have slipped across borders to join the fighting in Iraq, CSIS director Jim Judd said during a break at an annual gathering of intelligence experts in Montreal yesterday.

"We know of others who may be planning to," he added. "I don't think there's anything we can do legally to prevent this."

Moderate Jordanians are able to absorb a strong dose of hatred on TV for Ramadan, courtesy a Syrian program that aired first in 2003. "Jordanian TV Airs Antisemitic Ramadan Series," from MEMRI, with thanks to Twostellas:

For Ramadan 2005, the new Jordanian TV channel Al-Mamnou' is airing the Syrian-produced TV series Al-Shatat ( "Diaspora" ). [1] The series, which was first aired on Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV during Ramadan 2003, purports to tell the story of Zionism from 1812 up to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and, like the Egyptian series Knight Without a Horse [2] that was aired during Ramadan 2002, depicts a "global Jewish government" that is described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It also depicts the notorious blood libel - Jews slaughtering a Christian child to use his blood for Passover matzos. Al-Shatat was also aired by two Iranian channels during Ramadan 2004.

Prior to this broadcast, Al-Mamnou' TV board chairman Walid Al-Hadidi told the Jordanian news agency Petra that the channel would be airing the series. He also told the London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat that the channel would be broadcasting from several other Arab countries as well as from Italy. [3]

The following are clips of nine scenes from the series, along with the transcripts:

Amschel Rothschild Divides Europe among His Sons

In the series' opening scene, set in Romania in 1812, the dying Amschel Rothschild divides Europe amongst his five sons. To view this clip, visit http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=887.

The following is the transcript:

Amschel Rothschild: "All the nations that violate the religion of the Jews originated from the seed of a stinking and filthy ass. Rule them in secret and in public, with strength and oppression through deceit and cunning, and do not allow any nation to share your control of the world...

"God has honored us, the Jews, with the mission of ruling the world using money, using science, using politics, using murder, using sex, using any means..."

Yes, projection in the highest degree. Read it all.

"Yes, sir, the speciality of the house is Death-to-the-Zionists-and-Crusaders Paella." From TypicallySpanish.com, with thanks to Twostellas:

Members of the Civil Guard in Tudela, Navarra, are investigating the appearance of videos of Islamic terrorist attacks which have appeared hidden in the false ceiling of a closed restaurant. The premises had been rented in the past by some Muslims. As well as the videos, photocopies of passports and tapes and manuscripts in Arabic have been recovered. One of the terrorists to blow himself up in the Leganés flat explosion as investigators closed in on the Madrid March 11th bombers, is known to have lived for a time in the same town of Tudela.

Internet jihad update: over at the Muslim site Al-Farouq.com (thanks to Cindy), Brother Falluja7 is angry with Internet Haganah for taking down jihad sites:

salamou alaykum wa rahmatullahi wabarakatoe

take this site down it's a jews site who takes jihad site's
down

http://haganah.us/haganah/index.html

how can i destroy a jews site

Aaron is, as you can see, on the case.

More on how Bosnia has become a staging ground for the launching of jihad attacks in Western Europe. "Bosnia: Terror Suspect Was Planning Suicide Attack On A European Embassy, Press Reports," from AKI, with thanks to Nicolei:

Sarajevo, 21 Oct. (AKI) - One of the three terrorists arrested by the Bosnian police for planning terrorist acts, was planning a suicide attack on the embassy of a European country in Sarajevo, daily “Dnevni avaz” reported Friday, citing unnamed sources. The paper said the man involved was an 18-year old and the police were checking whether he was a citizen of Bosnia or Serbia and Montenegro. Earlier, in a statement, the police said that one of the three terror suspects arrested was a Turkish citizen, one Swedish and one Bosnian....

According to some foreign intelligence sources, Bosnia has become a haven for Islamic terrorists, after several hundred of mujahadeen from Islamic countries remained in Bosnia, after fighting on the side of local Muslims in the 1992-1995 civil war. Some of them were operating terrorist training camps in several locations in Bosnia, the reports said.

The arrested youth is presumably a Muslim, either from Bosnia, which has majority Muslim population, or from Serbia-Montenegro, which has a Muslim population of about 300.000. Intelligence reports said that Al-Qaeda has been recruiting white local youths in the Balkans for their operations, because of their non-Arabic appearance, and the Sarajevo arrest might prove to be the first such case.

In a related development, Belgrade daily “Vecernje novosti” said on Friday that up to 1.500 ethnic Albanians in Serbia’s southern Kosovo province may have been recruited by Al-Qaeda. Quoting a secret American intelligence report, the paper said that they were organized in a group called “white devils” and were being trained in secret camps in Kosovo for a “holy war”.

Pray for the safety of the Copts and for peace in Egypt. Two Islamic tolerance updates from the embattled church in Egypt, from the Free Copts blogspot:

Thousands of angry Muslims are currently surrounding St George Coptic Orthodox Church in Muharam Bek, Alexandria, Egypt.

Muslims are protesting what they considered an "offensive" play that took place 2 years ago !!! Church officials denied these allegations and adhered to their position of refusing to provide an apology, as the Muslim radicals demanded.

Muslim mob burned two police vehicles and a fire truck in addition to injuring many police officers by hurling rocks at them in an attempt to raid the church and burn it.

What is happening in Egypt is a form of intellectual terrorism against Copts that radical Muslims are imposing on everyone that dares to criticize their agenda of having Islam dominate the world.

Update on events in Alexandria, Egypt

Egyptian police fire tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Muslim rallies extended to Cairo and Banha in addition to Alexandria.

In Cairo, few thousands demonstrated in Al Azhar mosque protesting what they considered as insults to Islam.

In Alexandria, one person was killed and over 60 injured when they clashed with security forces.

It seems that security forces are unable to contain the situation that's why some Egyptian army forces are being deployed.

And they are all, of course, Southern Baptists. Baltimore tunnel jihad threat update, from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BALTIMORE (AP) - A fifth man has been arrested during an investigation into a possible terrorism threat to a highway tunnel this week, according to court documents.

Maged Hussein, who owns an east Baltimore convenience store that was raided Tuesday by federal authorities, was taken in to custody on a handgun charge, the documents showed.

Four other men were detained Tuesday on immigration charges and will be deported, according to Mark Bastan, acting special agent in charge at Immigration and Customs Enforcement here.

One of them, 30-year-old Mohamed Ahmed Mohamady Ismail, came up in a tip about the purported tunnel plot from a source in custody in the Netherlands, Bastan said. The tipster said several men would drive vehicles filled with explosives through a Baltimore-area tunnel.

The three other men picked up at the same time as Ismail were identified as Mohamed Mohamed-Abdelhamed, 38, Suied Mohamad-Ahamad, 25, and Ahmad Al Momani, 58. Al Momani is from Jordan, and the others are from Egypt, Bastan said.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the tendentious claims that Israel is maintaining an illegal "occupation" of Palestinian land -- claims evidently believed by the President of the United States:

A poster at Jihad Watch recently recommended that readers here acquire “knowledge of the day to day lives of the Palestinians and their experience under occupation."

"Occupation"? What "occupation"? All the territories the Israelis now possess are theirs by legal right -- the right conferred by the League of Nations Mandates Commission, when it carefully defined the territory which would be set aside, from the vast territories in the Middle East that had formerly been in the control of the Ottoman Turks as part of their empire, and which had been won by the Allies. An Arab State, a Kurdish State, and a Jewish state were all promised. The Arabs got their state -- no, in the end, they got far more than their state but rather, in 2005, 22 members of the Arab League, the most richly endowed with natural resources of any states on earth, enjoying the fruits of the greatest transfer of wealth in human history The Kurds did not get their state, because by the time things had settled, Kemal Ataturk was driving a hard bargain and would not permit it. The Jews got the Mandate for Palestine set up for the express purpose of establishing the Jewish National Home, which would inexorably become, all parties realized, in time a Jewish state. It did not seem wrong then, and does not seem wrong now, that the Jews should have a state of their own. They asked only for the right to have no barriers put up to their immigration, and no barriers put in the way of their buying land. That was it. That was the sum total of what they demanded. Until the 1948 war, when five Arab armies attacked, not a single dunam of Arab-owned land (and remember that nearly 90% of the land, in any case, remained the possession of the state or the ruling authority, as in the Mandatory period) was appropriated. No one should dare to write about this subject without having done the research on demography, land ownership, and law.

Muslim rage at the Copts' theatre performance about Muslim mistreatment of Copts continues to grow, leading more Muslims to mistreat Copts. And in this AKI story, the jihadist spokesman has the audacity to refer to the Coptic Church as the "crusaders' church," disregarding the fact that the Coptic Christians were in Egypt centuries before any Muslims even existed.

Note also how the Reuters headline suggests that this was a random incident, leaving out the salient fact about the man's identity and motive. "Man stabs nun in Egyptian church," from Reuters, with thanks to all who sent these stories in:

CAIRO, Oct 19 (Reuters) - A young man stabbed a nun and a man in a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Wednesday, police sources in the city said.

The man shouted "God is great" when he burst into St. George's Coptic church in the city on Egypt's northern coast.

Some 1,000 Muslims last week held a protest outside the church because they said it had put on a play which was offensive to Islam.

At least he's being honest. So many of his colleagues tell gullible reporters and law enforcement officials that all they want is peace. From WND, with thanks to Kemaste:

In case he wasn't clear enough during an exclusive interview this week with WorldNetDaily in which he said his terror group would target the ranch of Israel's prime minister with rockets, the spokesman for a coalition of three Palestinian terror groups warned on an American radio show the same day his "first and foremost goal" is to kill Ariel Sharon.

Listen to ABC Radio's John Batchelor and WND's Jerusalem chief Aaron Klein conduct a live interview with Mohamed Abdel-Al aka Abu Abir, spokesman of the Popular Resistance Committees, a network of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorists.

The Committees has taken responsibility for many of the rockets fired at Israeli towns the past few years and for more than a dozen suicide attacks. It also was blamed for the bombing of a U.S. convoy in Gaza in October 2003, killing three Americans.

"I want to say the first and foremost goal is to kill Sharon. I want to make life hell for him because he made life hellish for Palestinians," Abdel-Al said during the segment, which aired Monday on the nationally syndicated John Batchelor Show.

Secret prayer rooms. Demands accompanied by the threat of repeated strikes. "Islamist influence a growing threat to French business," from the Middle East Times, with thanks to LGF:

PARIS -- The influence of radical Islamist groups is a growing threat to French business, a leading intelligence expert warned on Tuesday, citing the discovery of secret prayer-rooms at the Disneyland theme-park outside Paris.

In a report commissioned by several retail and courier companies, Eric Denece - director of the French Center for Research and Intelligence - said that the Islamists' strategy is to "take control of Muslims within the workforce" and then "challenge the rules in order to impose Islamic values."

"There are numerous instances, even if few businesses are willing to speak openly about them," Denece said in the report, which was based on interviews with police, intelligence officials and company staff.

"For example, around 10 prayer-rooms have been discovered at EuroDisney," he said....

Spokesman Pieter Boterman said: "We are a multicultural and non-discriminatory company with more than 100 nationalities and all the main religions represented. But we do not think the company is the place for people to express private religious convictions."

Denece also quoted the head of a freight company employing 3,000 people at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris who complained to the RG of "the presence of a small group of Muslims bent on imposing their work methods under the threat of repeated strikes".

"The growth in power of radical Islamism is a new menace, which can threaten the integrity of a business," Denece said.

Supermarkets and other large stores are a prime target, according to the 30-page report.

"Hypermarkets have noted that employees who are heavily involved in proselytizing systematically seek out jobs as telephone operators, delivery-men, cashiers and security officers - positions which allow easy exchanges of information, money and goods," the report said.

Muslim women working at supermarket cash registers are also being placed under pressure to wear the headscarf, it said.

According to Denece, the primary threat of Islamism to business is "sectarian", because it can undermine the loyalty of employees and destroy morale. It should therefore be "treated in the same way as the threat from scientology and other sects", he advised.

But he also said that there are increasing instances of patent illegality - including theft, embezzlement and the supply of inside information to criminal gangs.

"These practices have two goals: petty delinquency using Islam as a pretext and local financing of terrorism," the report said....

Last month an RG report to the French government said that Islamic militants are moving away from mosques that they know are now under close surveillance, and are congregating in secret prayer-rooms - often attached to businesses.

A Let-Them-Into-the-EU update from the Armenian National Committee of America, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

ANCA CONDEMNS TURKEY'S DEMOLITION OF ARMENIAN CHURCH IN DIKRANAGERD

Alerts Congressional Offices to Ankara's Ongoing Practice of Destroying Ancient Armenian Religious and Cultural Monuments

WASHINGTON, DC - The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) today forcefully condemned the Turkish government for the demolition of an Armenian Church in the city of Dikranagerd, also known as Diyarbekir.

According to an October 19th report by Bloomberg News, the church, which was under the Turkish government's official protection, was torn down by a construction firm. The article, written by Mark Bentley, added that, "builder Kerem Emre used stones from the demolished church in the province of Diyarbekir to lay the foundations for a mosque" in its place.

"Turkey - which in 1915 committed genocide against the Armenian nation and has since waged an international campaign of threats and intimidation to deny its crime - is, today, in full view of the world, destroying the surviving cultural and religious heritage of its victims, seeking to erase even their memory from the Armenian homeland of four thousand years," said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. "Sadly, our own government's silence - its failure to confront Turkey's denials -effectively enables, emboldens, even encourages Ankara's ongoing pattern of aggressive behavior toward the Armenian people. The time has come for the U.S. government to finally break this destructive pattern. As a nation, we need to speak with moral clarity on the Armenian Genocide - signaling to Turkey in clear and forceful terms that the American people stand on the side of a just resolution of this crime against humanity."

As part of its ongoing efforts to educate policy-makers and elected officials about Armenian American concerns, the ANCA has informed the Administration and Members of Congress about the desecration of this church.

First they got death threats. Now the ambassadors of ten Muslim countries are complaining. From the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The ambassadors of 10 Muslim countries have complained to the Danish prime minister about a major newspaper's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

A letter from the ambassadors said the cartoons published in Jyllands-Posten last month showed the Prophet as a stereotypical fundamentalist.

Pictorial depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam.

A Danish government spokesman said Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was preparing a response.

Why Western countries have every good reason to ban the burqa. "Burqa-clad militant strikes on highway: 2 civilians killed, 10 injured in Pampore," from the Excelsior, with thanks to Cindy:

SRINAGAR, Oct 19: Two civilians got killed and 10 others, including a Sub Inspector of Police sustained injuries when a burqa-clad militant opened fire on a Police party at Kadalbal in Pampore township on Srinagar-Jammu national highway this afternoon.

Informed sources told the Excelsior that a burqa-clad militant took out his AK-56 rifle and fired volleys of fire on a Police party, comprising a Sub Inspector and two constables at Kadalbal Chowk in the saffron-rich Pampore township on the highway at 1505 hours today. SP Awantipore G M Dar’s cavalcade was heading for Pampore and it was about 500 yards short of Kadalbal when the shootout took place. A middle-aged woman, namely Rehti W/o Ghulam Qadir Teli R/o Kadalbal and one Shamsheer Singh S/o Dalip Singh R/o Hafoo, Tral, got killed and 10 persons sustained gunshot wounds.

Being true to these words,

“The state would follow the citizens from birth to death, ensuring their health, education, well-being and leisure. It will guide them as to what to read and write and what “cultural products” to consume so as not to be contaminated by Western ideas.”

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pushes through the Qur'anic vision of a utopian society. From Pakistan's Daily Times:

The Islamic regime has slapped a ban on foreign films deemed to be ‘feminist’, ‘secular’ or pro-American, with hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also pushing his vision of a Quranic society.

A ruling by the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council, a watchdog headed by Ahmadinejad, bans ‘the distribution and screening of foreign films which promote secular, feminist, liberal or nihilist ideas and degrade oriental culture.’

Also forbidden are movies that feature ‘violence, narcotics consumption and propaganda for the world oppression’, a term reserved for arch-enemy the United States, the Shargh newspaper said on Thursday.

The report said the directive has been widely circulated, especially within the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and state television and radio.

“The Iranian people have a mission to create, on this sacred Iranian ground, an ideal society founded on the Quran,” Ahmadinejad was also quoted as telling a local gathering titled ‘Servants of the Quran’.

He promised his government, less than three months into its four-year mandate, would ‘advance with strength to favour the spread of a Quranic culture’.

My book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) has for the week of October 30 once again made the New York Times Bestseller List (paperback nonfiction). It is again number 16, in its tenth week on the list.

And that, my friends, reminds me of a story. I was asked by Middle East Quarterly to review a book: Jihad: From Qur'an to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. I hadn't gotten very far along in the book when I came across this passage:

Enter a bookshop in the United States or the United Kingdom, and examine the shelves on contemporary history or current affairs, and what do you find? The array of titles portraying an inevitable conflict of civilizations, between "the West" and Islam, or depicting Muslim intolerance, fanaticism and violence is truly staggering. Titles such as Islam Unveiled, Preachers of Hate, The Two Faces of Islam, Onward Muslim Soldiers abound. Never have there been so many publications in English on the contemporary Islamic world. To the extent that these books serve to increase public understanding and awareness of the issues at stake between "the West and Islam", and within the Islamic world itself, since 9/11 we should be grateful. But do these books actually achieve this purpose?

Regrettably they do not. Their purpose is to "sell copy". Public alarm in the West at the phenomenon of suicide bombings has created an atmosphere of distrust against both Muslims and the faith of Islam as such. On the whole, the alarmist publications are written by journalists with an eye to a good storyline. They know how to fuel public alarm and succeed in doing so. Their characterization of Muslims and the faith of Islam is cast in apocalyptic terms, because apocalypticism "sells copy". For every radical Islamist "cleric" (the credentials of such individuals to speak for their faith is in any case often open to question) who can be quoted in such books there may be dozens of mainstream Muslims who reject what is claimed on behalf of their faith. But their views do not count. The silent Muslim mainstream is a majority, but it is a majority that is shouted down by the violent Islamists on the one hand and those who do their publicity for them, the apocalyptic journalists of the West.

These journalists may not be Islamophobic themselves; but by using language such as "Islamofascism" they certainly create or perpetuate stereotypes which lend themselves to Islamophobia. These writings would not be quite so dangerous but for their effect on public opinion and because of the apparent credulity of some government advisers who are looking around desperately for a "quick fix" to what is perceived as the problem of the age. (p. 2)

Pardon the long quote, but since I am the dangerous man responsible for two of the books he names, Islam Unveiled and Onward Muslim Soldiers, I thought a reply from me would be appropriate -- not out of some sense of personal score-settling, but because Bonney here articulates several principles that are widely held. There is great confusion today over who is a trustworthy voice on issues concerning Islam and terrorism. Bonney is certainly not the first to claim that I am not to be trusted on such issues; but he is the first to validate the truth of what I have said about Islam while simultaneously denying my veracity when I say it.

For in the same book, you see, Bonney states that "the traditional reading of the Qur'an outlines four 'stages' which arose from the historical development in which the Prophet found himself....The final stage came with the Divine command of Allah enjoining the Prophet and his followers to wage war against the unbelievers unconditionally." (pp. 25-6) Although I distinguish only three stages (which are identical in substance to Bonney's four), I discuss exactly the same traditional reading in Onward Muslim Soldiers. I show it presented by mainstream Qur'anic commentators of past ages, as well as in our own day by a former Saudi Chief Justice, a Pakistani military official, Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb, and others.

So both Bonney and I show that the traditional Islamic understanding is that the Qur'an's last word on jihad is unrestricted warfare against unbelievers. Is it sound scholarship when it comes from him and demagogic apocalypticism when it comes from me?

As for "selling copy," I am quite sure that Richard Bonney is against it. I am convinced, from perusing his tome here, that he takes every precaution to write books in a manner designed to ensure that as few people as possible will actually read them. I am confident that if I approached Richard Bonney with ten quid in my hand and offered to buy his book, he would wave away my money and thrust a complimentary copy in my hands. But I, on the other hand, I confess it: I write books hoping people will read them. People who claim I am doing this just to make money evidently have such cramped imaginations that they cannot fathom any way to earn a living other than that which brings down opprobrium and death threats upon one's head, and quite obviously cannot be writers themselves, or they would know what a non-lucrative profession it is – even when one reaches the lofty ranks of the paperback nonfiction bestseller list. But nevertheless, it’s true: I want as many people as possible to read my books. (My next book will be called Harry Potter and the Purpose-Driven Islam.) That’s why I write them. If they can bring in enough money to keep me from signing up for that job as a hotel clerk that I’ve had my eye on, so much the better. But nobody over here in the Jihad Watch Towers in Secure Undisclosed Locationville is getting rich. Richard Bonney is quite free to sniff with contempt at my book sales, so crassly larger than his own, but he is not free to make fast and loose with the facts — at least without me calling him on it. For one thing, he has included in his list of books that spread “Islamophobia” The Two Faces of Islam by Stephen Schwartz, who is in fact a Muslim. For another, I am not now and have never been a journalist. Nor do I, as a rule, use the word "Islamofascism." Good thing Bonney is here to protect the public from purveyors of inaccuracy like me, eh?

What I say about Islam and terrorism is true. The sooner people realize the truth the better able we will be to deal with it. Richard Bonney has confirmed the truth of what I say, even while consigning me to the Potboilers Purgatorio. The whole episode is an example of a much larger problem, which I have seen confirmed again and again ever since I began doing this publicly: the “experts” to whom government officials (yes, the ones Richard Bonney is afraid are listening to me – no worries there) and the mainstream media are listening are more often than not talking out of their hat, and the people on whom they heap contempt often know more about the subject than they do. The result is that most Americans and Europeans are fat and happy and have no idea what is coming down the pike.

Does he think Abbas doesn't really believe in the jihad imperative? That he really doesn't believe Abbas attributes the Gaza withdrawal to suicide terrorism? Or does he just not care? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

WASHINGTON - President Bush heaped praise Thursday on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and said he was more confident than ever before there would be peace with Israel and establishment of a Palestinian state.

Bush qualified his optimism a bit by saying "it's hard" and "old feuds aren't settled immediately. And it takes a while."

He was unqualified, however, in his praise of Abbas, although he tried to nudge the Palestinian leader toward taking a more assertive approach to extremist groups.

"President Abbas is a man devoted to peace and to his people's aspiration for a state of their own," Bush said after a one-hour meeting with Abbas in the Oval Office. "And today, the Palestinian people are closer to realizing their aspirations."

Here, from Human Events, is my take on the Iraqi Constitutional referendum:

Although the results of Iraq’s constitutional referendum were almost immediately cast into doubt by fraud allegations, Reza Aslan, whose bestselling book No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam predicted a bright future for democracy in the Islamic world, remained optimistic: “Even before Iraq’s constitution was ratified, dire predictions were being made that it would pave the way for the creation of an Islamic theocracy. But whatever problems the new constitution poses for the future of Iraq, the role of Islam in the state is not likely to be one of them.”

Aslan maintained this even while noting that the Iraqi Constitution “establishes Islam as ‘the official religion of the state’ and ‘a basic source of legislation’; no law can be passed that contradicts ‘the fixed principles of Islam.’” Why shouldn’t this be a cause for concern? Because, he explained, “the constitution deliberately leaves those fixed principles to be defined by the natural democratic process in accordance with the changing will of the Iraqi people, and it unequivocally states that no law can be passed that contradicts the basic rights and freedoms outlined by the constitution. Among the first of these is that all individuals have a right to freedom of creed, worship, practice, thought and conscience.”

Sheikh Omar Bakri is still spreading his message of peace. From Ynet News, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Eric Schwappach:

A declaration of war on Britain and the West is continuing to be issued by British Muslims in the United Kingdom, as the pro-jihad message of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, recently banned from Britain, is echoed by his followers who have remained behind.

Bakri, who is now based in Beirut, once headed the al-Muhajiroun group, linked to the 2003 terror attack on the Mike’s Place Bar in Tel Aviv. The suicide bomber behind that attack was a British Muslim.

Using internet sermons, recordings, videos and documents, followers of Bakri, who say they are in touch with the Lebanon-based preacher, call on British Muslims to join al-Qaeda and to carry out acts of terrorism.

Ynetnews has monitored late night chat room sessions on the Paltalk chat network, used by Bakri six months ago to declare war on Britain.

“We’ve always had these two camps,” said the chat room’s administrator, “Mizaan,” in the early hours of Tuesday morning, in a room called “The Muslims in the UK.”

Mizaan, who told listeners “that is my real name,” said: “There is the camp of Islam and the camp of Kuffar (non-Muslim). Today we still have these two camps. And today there is the camp of Islam behind Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, the emir (leader) of jihad today, and we have the camp of kuffar led by George Bush with his cross. So yes we are two distinct groups, and we should never stand with the kuffar.”

“Islam is better than everything and it will rule over the whole world, whether the kuffar likes it or not,” declared Mizaan.

Read it all.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses Iraq's Constitutional referendum:

Democracy in the Western sense requires much more than mere head-counting. It requires the sense of being a citizen of a nation-state, and owing one's primary allegiance to that nation-state. It requires getting used to the idea, and enshrining in the law, the rights of minorities. It requires a belief in the legitimacy of government being derived from the consent of the governed. It requires all sorts of things, all of which are missing in Iraq.

Who are the Shi'a who marched off to vote in favor of the Constitution? Many of them cannot read, most of them have not read, and almost all of those who have read that Constitution have little idea of its full significance or whether or not it has permanent significance. They voted yes because they were told to do so.

The word "democracy" is tossed about by some in the Administration in a display of bland indifference, or deliberate confusion, as to what that word means in the United States, or the United Kingdom, or Australia, as compared to what it means, and must mean, to those within Islam -- unless those within Islam have for a very long time been subject to a regime in which Islam is deliberately constrained and pushed as far as possible out of its traditional political and social role (as in Turkey, where it is Kemalism that is now shaky, and Islam back, as it must be, with a vengeance).

Of course, everyone who knows him is shocked, shocked! He's a terrific guy! The most gentle soul in the world! Why, this must all be trumped up! (All this may be true this time, of course, but it would be much more convincing if we didn't hear it every time someone was arrested on terror charges.) "Local man caught up in al-Qaida case," from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, with thanks to Richard:

To the government, Malkandi is seen as a threat to national security. FBI and immigration officials say he tried to help one of the world's deadliest terrorists, a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, gain entry into the country in 1999.

Malkandi, 46, has been jailed at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac since Aug. 25. He has not been charged with any crime.

He says his troubles came from one brief effort to help a friend of a friend come to the United States for medical treatment. He emphatically denies knowing who the man truly was, or his terrorist intentions.

It turns out the man he attempted to assist was Tawfiq bin Attash -- also known as "Khallad" -- the one-legged al-Qaida operative who helped plan the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, and the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He also served as a bodyguard for bin Laden, and, in lieu of making it into the United States to participate in the 9/11 attacks, he helped plan them, specifically serving as a key contact for the pilot and crew of the airliner that smashed into the Pentagon, according to U.S. authorities....

Malkandi flatly denies he had any idea whom he may have been assisting. He said he didn't know who Osama bin Laden was until after Sept. 11. "I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of al-Qaida," he wrote....

"I would be hard-pressed to say anything negative about Sam at all, and I'm one of the world's worst cynics," said family friend Barbara Minton, a Redmond woman who met the Malkandis when her husband was taking an English-as-a-second-language course with Mali Malkandi at a local community college three years ago.

"We would always tell him he was too trusting. He just doesn't want to hurt anybody," Minton said. "He's always there to do anything for anybody."

Greg Hope, director of the refugee resettlement program for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, agrees. Hope said he's helped Malkandi with a loan for his home, and with another loan that was about to be finalized when Malkandi was arrested. That one would have made it possible for him to buy a sub shop in Kenmore.

Hope said Sam also has gone out of his way to be helpful to him on several occasions, including agreeing to give a keynote address to the Episcopal group's annual dinner a few years back.

"He's just a genial guy, a born networker," Hope said -- "a great guy to have in the country."

From the Jihad Watch Hate Mail Bag:

boy i hate to bump into you you must have no creative spirit in your bones your probly part of the worlds problems your probly a crazy ziot jew or crazy fundmentalist crazy christian...to dis jodie foster great new movie... we are at war from people like you killing in the name of god...

Imagine! Dissing Jodie Foster's great new movie! Clearly that puts me in the ranks of bin Laden and Zawahri!

Anyway, although I am neither a "crazy ziot jew" nor a "crazy fundmentalist crazy christian," I think it is worth noting that this kind of fuzzy thinking and absurd moral equivalence is not restricted only to spell-challenged hate mailers; it is unfortunately common in the public discourse. Maybe one reason why those who traffic in it, both "liberals" and "conservatives," are so reluctant to debate me is that they know their whole edifice will collapse in about three seconds under any serious scrutiny.

Bush again referred to Qur'an 5:32, "which states that killing an innocent human being is like killing all of humanity, and saving the life of one person is like saving all of humanity," indicating that he still hasn’t considered the implications of the fact that jihadists contend that no Americans or Israelis are innocent, and thus the verse doesn’t apply to their actions. Nor did the President apparently read on to Qur’an 5:33, which stipulates that "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" – a mandate for mayhem that jihadists have skillfully deployed the world over, and an indication that Bush’s reading of 5:32 may be a trifle superficial. Bush has not confronted the deep roots that the jihad ideology has within both Islamic tradition and the contemporary Islamic world. This could lead and has led to policy misjudgments.

From the Muslim American Society website, with thanks to Scaramouche:

WASHINGTON, Oct 18 (MASNET & News Agencies) - President George W. Bush told Muslim leaders and diplomats at an Iftar dinner that "all responsible Islamic leaders" must denounce terrorists who claim to act according to Islam.

"I believe the time has come for all responsible Islamic leaders to denounce an ideology that exploits Islam for political ends and defiles your noble faith," he said at the White House, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The remarks came as he hosted diplomats from Islamic nations and leaders of the U.S. Muslim community to dinner to mark Iftaar, the first day of the holy Muslim holiday Ramadan.

"Many Muslim scholars have already publicly condemned terrorism, often citing chapter 5, verse 32 of the Quran, which states that killing an innocent human being is like killing all of humanity, and saving the life of one person is like saving all of humanity," Bush said.

"I appreciate those of you here who have joined these scholars in rejecting violent extremists,” he said....

"We must be very clear about the enemies we face: The killers who take the lives of innocent men, women and children, are followers of a violent ideology, very different from the religion of Islam," said Bush.

"The killers who take the lives of innocent men, women and children are followers of a violent ideology very different from the religion of Islam," he said. “These extremists distort the idea of jihad into the call for terrorist murder against anyone who does not share their radical vision, including Muslims from other traditions who they regard as heretics."

"Their strategy will fail."...

The group interrupted Bush's brief remarks once, when he said a Quran has been added to the White House library for the first time in history, the news agency reports.

Good. I hope he reads the whole thing, and consults the mainstream tafasir (commentaries) to discover how traditional Islam has understood passages such as 9:5 and 9:29, and 8:39, which reads: "And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah." Tafasir-i-Husaini, to take just one example, explains: "Fight them till all strife be at an end," that is, until "no polytheists remain of the pagans or Jews or Christians." (vol. i, p. 239). That is, until the "polytheistic" features of Judaism and Christianity are eradicated, which means, until the Jews and Christians have become Muslims.

Eric Adler in the New York Press reveals a meeting between President Bush and a legal advisor for the PLO:

Diana Buttu has called Israel "the greatest abuser of human rights" in the world, claimed that the Jewish state is worse than South Africa under apartheid and characterized the Oslo peace process as a Zionist ploy to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. She isn't the kind of woman you'd expect to have the ear of President Bush. But you'd be wrong.

In the October 12 number of the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler details "a private 30-minute meeting in the Oval Office with a group of Palestinian officials last week" held at the behest of undersecretary of state Karen Hughes. Buttu, a legal advisor for the PLO, was among those in attendance. The Post reports that Buttu was stunned to have direct access to the president, and found him conciliatory regarding her concerns about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Last year I attended the Fourth National Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM), where Buttu offered the keynote address, in which she claimed the "the corruption issue [in the Palestinian Authority] has been dealt with."

The PSM is a front-group for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization dedicated to sending naïve youngsters to the occupied territories to engage in protests aimed at de-legitimizing the state of Israel. In a PSM workshopI attended, ISM co-founder Huwaida Arraf offered a recruitment session for her group, openly acknowledging that the ISM works with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The impromptu chat was the work of Hughes, who had just recently finished her ridiculous five-day "listening tour" of the Middle East. ("I love all kids," she assured a Turkish audience in a typical speech. "And I understand that is something I have in common with the Turkish people.")

The meeting between Bush and Palestinian delegates such as Buttu makes clear that Hughes' "listening tour" has led to more pernicious results than her mouthing of a few ineffective platitudes in the Middle East. After concluding that many Muslims blame Israel for all the world's sins, Hughes set up a presidential get-together with a perverse fanatic. It's enough to make those concerned about the survival of Israel hope that Karen Hughes no longer plays a role in this administration's foreign policy.

When exported to Muslim lands, various aspects of Western pop culture must be modified in order to accommodate Muslim sensibilities. When Muslims come West, various aspects of Western pop culture must be modified in order to accommodate Muslim sensibilities. Get the picture? "The Simpsons' Exported to Arabs -- Minus Bacon, Beer: Key Aspects of New Middle East Version Get Lost in Translation," from ABCNews.com, with thanks to all who sent this in:

(Oct. 18) -- After 17 seasons of entertaining U.S. audiences, "The Simpsons" can now be seen on Arab television. While U.S. foreign policy is not always a hit overseas, there is a huge audience for American popular culture.

So the Arab satellite network MBC is bringing the cartoon saga of Springfield to the heart of the Arab world. "The Simpsons" has been exported overseas and is now called "Al Shamshoon."

With Omar instead of Homer, and Badr substituting for Bart, MBC hopes to win coveted young viewers. After all, 60 percent of the Arab world is 20 years old or younger....

But with a show that is so disinctly American, Arab media experts say, it's not enough to just translate the language.

"Translating the show linguistically, as well as culturally, as well as socially so that it appeals to the audience that's watching it here, I think there's a lot of details that one has to pay attention to," said Nadia Rahman, a professor at the Zayed University Media Center in the United Arab Emirates. "How does the mother dress? How does the sister dress?"

So MBC is making some changes as the characters go from American to Arab. They will remove references to things forbidden by the Koran, such as bacon, beer, and other references that might be construed as offensive.

From American Beer to Arab Soda

Homer Simpson's ubiquitous Duff beer will now be soda in the Arab version of the show.

Hot dogs will become Egyptian beef sausages, and donuts will become popular Arab cookies called "kahk." Moe's Bar has been completely written out of "Al Shamshoon."

With characters who are Jewish (like Krusty the Clown), Hindu (like Kwik-E-Mart owner Apu) and Christian (like the family's pastor, Rev. Lovejoy), Al Jean — "The Simpsons" executive producer — says those changes mean they aren't "The Simpsons" anymore.

"If he doesn't drink and eat bacon and generally act like a pig — which I guess is also against Islam — then it's not Homer," Jean said.

Some on the Arab street agree. Many bloggers have also expressed discontent.

"It's different," one Arab viewer told ABC News. "We are a totally different culture, so you can't be talking about the same subject and in the same way."

"One asks himself why a certain number of young French people are in Pakistan in religious schools," Sarkozy said. One also asks himself why this training for violence and mayhem always seems to take place in religious schools, and I don't mean the local Methodist Sunday school, and why so few (if any) officials are facing the implications of that fact, either in Pakistan or in the West. "France Says Extremists Are Enlisting Its Citizens: Police Assert Some Trained in Mideast Could Attack Paris," from the Washington Post, with thanks to Kemaste:

PARIS -- French police investigating plans by a group of Islamic extremists to attack targets in Paris discovered last month that the group was recruiting French citizens to train in the Middle East and return home to carry out terrorist attacks, sources familiar with the investigation said.

One French official said the extremists were using a virtual "underground railroad" through Syria to spirit European and Middle Eastern citizens into and out of Iraq. A senior French law enforcement official, who declined to be quoted by name because he was speaking about classified information, said French citizens had undergone terrorist training at camps in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

"There's always been an enormous jihad zone to train people to fight in their country of origin," the official said. "We saw it Afghanistan, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, and now we're seeing it in Iraq."

What's new, he said, is that the French cell under investigation "is linked with networks in Iraq, right now, through an individual based in Syria. Now we're finding camps in Syria and Lebanon, and it's the same pattern, training in explosives and chemical weapons, which is an obsession of the jihadists."

In a recent television interview, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy called the terror risk for Paris "very high," adding, "We know that there are about 10 young Frenchmen in Iraq, ready to become kamikazes."

"One asks himself why a certain number of young French people are in Pakistan in religious schools," Sarkozy said. "It's not normal that an individual who lives in our neighborhoods leaves all of a sudden for four months in Afghanistan, three months in Syria. We want to know who is going where, for how long, and when they come back."

Afghan jihad update: a dangerous school principal has been gunned down by the heroic mujahedin! From The MediaLine, with thanks to Kemaste:

A school principal was shot to death on Wednesday morning, a day after a district chief was gunned down in Afghanistan’s Kandahar region, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.

He said the attackers were armed men from the Taliban, according to Reuters.

The head of the Arghandab district was shot in a mosque on Tuesday.

Shot in a mosque? Wouldn't the Taliban consider that sacrilege? No. If they considered him an enemy, they probably had consigned him to the ranks of the hypocrites or apostates. Thus his presence in the mosque, not their shooting him there, was to them the sacrilege. Their shooting him there was to them a great act of devotion to Allah, since Islamic law mandates death for such people.

It is not so easy for Muslim women in the West to break free of the strictures of Islamic culture and religious law. "Immigrant taxi drivers acting as spies," from DR Nyheder, with thanks to EPG:

The Danish nation-wide organisation of Women's Crisis Centres, LOKK, claims that a number of taxi drivers with immigrant backgrounds are spying on female immigrants who are hiding from their families....

Taxi drivers using mobile phones are photographing females, who are seeking asylum in crisis centres, and their whereabouts are being sent onto their families, the president of LOKK told reporters.

According to the daily B.T. it was a group of Taxi drivers who informed a Pakistani man recently, who was looking for his sister, where she could be found.

The man murdered his sister three weeks ago outside Slagelse train station because she had married a man from Afghanistan against her families orders.

I was recently invited to speak about Islam and terrorism to a group in the Northeast. This afternoon, however, I received a call from a leader of the group; it seems that someone (he wouldn't tell me who) had told the group that I was "anti-Muslim," and therefore should not address his organization. He asked me what I would say if I did speak to the group. I told him that in my work I exposed how jihad terrorists used core Islamic texts to justify their actions and recruit more terrorists, and it was the great challenge for those who identified themselves as peaceful or moderate Muslims to confront the elements of these texts that give rise to violence and repudiate them, not to deny that these elements exist as so many do today. Both Muslims and non-Muslims, I told him, had to confront these elements of Islam and come up with constructive ways to deal with them, or jihad violence will only continue and increase.

I was disinvited to speak to the group.

This got me thinking, however, about the larger question: am I indeed, and is the entire Jihad Watch enterprise, "anti-Muslim"? Of course the jihadists and their allies would say yes: charges like these have become an oft-used tool in the arsenal of American Muslim advocacy groups (such as the one that has never explained the curious lacunae in its anti-terror condemnations, or why so many of its officials have been arrested on terrorist charges), who have fully grasped the principle that the worst thing one can be in American society and public discourse is a bigot. If they can tar their opponents with this brush, they can prevent many people of good will from considering what they have to say. They have used this effective little bit of mudslinging not only against me but against others such as Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson. But that doesn't make it true.

A key problem here is the fuzziness of the term itself. What does it mean, in the first place, to be "anti-Muslim"? Does it mean to hate all Muslims, and wish them ill? Then I am most emphatically not anti-Muslim. But for many in the American public sphere, some of whom I have tangled with publicly but most of whom are content with behind-the-scenes backbiting (I recently received a misdirected email from a somewhat prominent writer consigning me and another author on these topics to the "fringe," and I have heard other dire stories), one can earn the "anti-Muslim" tag simply by daring to speak about the roots of Islam violence in the Qur'an, Sunnah, and Islamic jurisprudence.

But in reality, these are matters of fact. The facts are not really "pro-" or "anti-" anything; they are just the facts. If it is anti-Muslim to speak of them, so be it; but I don't really think it is. If jihadists use the Qur'an, Sunnah, and Islamic law to justify their violence, and I explain how they do it, I do not become anti-Muslim, any more than a scholar of the Hitler period becomes a Nazi if he writes about how the Nazis appealed to ordinary Germans. Contrary to the belief of many analysts today, it does the genuine moderate Muslims whom they profess to support no favors to gloss over or ignore these facts -- the Qur'an's statements on making war on non-Muslims, or Muhammad's words and actions confirming and expanding upon them. Instead, any sincere Muslim reformers must be encouraged to speak openly about those elements of Islam, and to reject them as having any applicability in the modern world. No reform can come when everyone is pretending that no reform is necessary. You cannot fix what you will not admit is broken.

Am I "anti-Muslim"? Some time ago here at Jihad Watch I had an exchange with an English convert to Islam, who signed his name "Yusuf Smith Indigo Jo)." I said: "I would like nothing better than a flowering, a renaissance, in the Muslim world, including full equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies: freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, equal employment opportunities, etc." Is all that "anti-Muslim"? Yusuf Smith thought so. He responded: "So, you would like to see us ditch much of our religion and, thereby, become non-Muslims."

In other words, he saw a call for equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Islamic societies, including freedom of conscience, equality in laws regarding legal testimony, and equal employment opportunities, as a challenge to his religion. To the extent that they are, these facts have to be confronted by both Muslims and non-Muslims. But I make no apologies: it is not "anti-Muslim" to wish freedom of conscience and equality of rights on the Islamic world -- quite the contrary.

In any case, my disinvitation today is evidence of a deeper problem: a laziness of thought in American public discourse, and too much of a willingness to exchange sloganeering and button-pushing for fact. If the things I say cannot be said and must not be heard, so much the worse for all of us if they are in fact true.

A refreshing bit of anti-dhimmitude (and sanity) in the UK, reversing this earlier example of political correctness run amok. From the Express and Star News of West Midlands and Stafford, with thanks to Moon:

Race equality rules are being reviewed at Dudley Council after workers were told to remove toy pigs from desks because they offended a Muslim staff member.

Council leaders say they will not accept "extreme forms of political correctness". Last month the Express & Star revealed how staff in the council's benefits department were told to remove a series of toy pigs sent as a promotion, as well as pig imagery, from their desks.

It came after a complaint from a Muslim worker who said she was offended by the items - the Koran forbids Muslims from eating and touching pork.

Councillor Pat Martin told a full council meeting: "I fully support the actions by management to respond to the concerns from colleagues following established and approved procedures.

"However I'm satisfied these procedures need to be reconsidered to make them compatible with the current law on what's deemed to be offensive in the workplace. Therefore I've ordered an urgent review of the procedures.

"In Dudley we rightly pride ourselves on being fair and reasonable employers but we will not accept extreme forms of political correctness."

After the meeting she said only the benefits department was affected by the request but admitted the policy was "very strict" and that officials would look if they were "too aggressive"....

When the decision was taken, the council's head of finance Mike Williams said it "did not matter why it was considered offensive".

He acknowledged then that some members of the department saw it as "political correctness gone barmy".

Democracy On The March and Tiny Minority of Extremists Updates: "Ex-Governor Elected to Afghan Parliament," from AP, with thanks to Teri:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A former regional governor who oversaw the destruction of two massive 1,500-year-old Buddha statues during the Taliban's reign was elected to the Afghan parliament last month, officials said Tuesday as results from two provinces were finalized....

Mawlawi Mohammed Islam Mohammadi, who was the Taliban's governor of Bamiyan province when the fifth-century Buddha statues were blown up with dynamite and artillery in March 2001, was chosen to represent the neighboring province of Samangan, according to results posted by the U.N.-Afghan election organizers. Election law did not bar former Taliban officials from participating in the Sept. 18 polls.

Many people I respect, and many people I don't, are excited about the new Iraqi Constitution and the relative peace accompanying the referendum. I just hope that in all the excitement the legitimate concerns of religious minorities in Iraq are not ignored. From Zenit, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, OCT. 18, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In the wake of Saturday's referendum on Iraq's draft constitution, Church leaders remain fearful that the country is one step closer to becoming an Islamic state intolerant of non-Muslims.

Early results indicate that a majority of voters supported the draft constitution.

Last month, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad met the president and prime minister of Iraq to spell out the bishops' opposition to key sections of the draft constitution, which they say "opens the door widely" to the possibility of new laws that are unjust toward non-Muslims.

In an interview Monday with the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Andraos Abouna said Iraq's leaders had ignored their concerns and that as a result the bishops were likely to call on Benedict XVI to intervene on their behalf.

"The bishops will probably have a meeting with the Pope and will ask him to call for democracy in Iraq," said Bishop Abouna.

He said a papal intervention would step up the pressure after the Holy Father met Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in August and requested that the draft constitution respect religious rights.

"We are looking for freedom -- the government must listen," said Bishop Abouna, 62. "Otherwise the country will be like a dictatorship."

A new article by Jacob Thomas:

On October 14, the eve of the Referendum regarding the Iraqi Constitution, PBS devoted a segment of Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour, for a discussion of the subject. Four Middle East experts were invited to “debate the referendum's importance to peace and stability in Iraq.”

The experts were: Dr. Najmaldin Karim, president of the Washington Kurdish Institute; Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan; Judith Yaphe, a senior fellow at the National Defense University; and Adeed Dawisha, a professor of political science at Miami University of Ohio. Both Najmaldin Karim and Adeed Dawisha, were born in Iraq, and are now US citizens.

Professor Dawisha dwelt on the importance of the political process. This event, as well as last January elections, involved millions of Iraqis in a process that differed radically from the many “elections” that took place under Saddam.

Professor Yaphe agreed and added, “I think what Iraqis need is the process, which is very important, which leads them to the next election and a more permanent government, then they can work out the differences.”

Dr. Najmaldin was very hopeful about the outcome of the referendum. “I believe that you will see that after this referendum in the election in December that you will see greater participation by the Sunnis, and they will come to realize that federalism is actually a way for them to guarantee that they will have self-rule in their area and that there are safeguards as far as getting a share of the national resources.”

Sharia Alert from Somalia. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ISLAMIC militiamen stormed a video studio in Mogadishu where Bollywood films were being dubbed into Somali, destroying equipment and arresting employees.

The gunmen, loyal to the Union of the Islamic Courts, smashed television monitors and escorted six members of staff from the studios in the Somali capital.

The courts consider watching films, listening to music and dancing un-Islamic.

This story from the Christian Science Monitor hastens to assure us that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And it's a good thing, too: otherwise support for such murders would be even higher among the "secular" Turks. A Let-Them-Into-the-EU update: "Turkish backing for honour crimes," from the BBC, with thanks to Susan:

A survey by a university in Turkey has shown almost 40% support for the practice of "honour killing".

The results come days after a court in Istanbul gave a life sentence for the murder of a girl by her brothers for giving birth to a child out of wedlock.

Turkish law, which used to be lenient on "honour crimes", was heavily revised as part of the country's preparation for EU accession proceedings.

Turkey has started talks with the EU but is not expected to join for years.

The survey was conducted in the conservative south-eastern city of Diyarbakir.

Disfigured

It questioned 430 people, most of them men. When asked the appropriate punishment for a woman who has committed adultery, 37% replied she should be killed.

Twenty-five percent said that she deserved divorce, and 21% that her nose or ears should be cut off.

The survey group was small but the results are a reminder that "honour killing" - a practice where women are murdered for allegedly bringing shame on their family - still has significant support in parts of Turkey.

Islamic tolerance update from AKI, with thanks to Nicolei:

Cairo (AKI) -- The Islamic group 'Egypt's Mujahadeen' - which claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks at Sharm el-Sheikh - has issued threats against the Coptic Christian community in Egypt, posting on the Internet "an urgent message to the followers of the cross living in Egypt". The message made specific reference to the 'crusaders' church' guilty, in its view, of staging a theatre performance offending the Prophet Muhammed. The church in the spotlight, now under state protection, is in the Muharram Bik area, near the town of Alexandria.

After Egyptian newspapers reported Muslim groups protesting against a theatre show, allegedly blasphemous, held in a Christian Coptic church, the Islamic group "immediately thought of destroying the church", says an internet statement. "The mujahadeen prepared themselves but found what they were expecting. The (bloody) police, secret services and internal security forces had surrounded the area of Muharram Bik, protecting the church."

"If those responsible for the offence do not admit their guilt, then every Christian holding a sermon in the incriminated church will become a target of the mujahadeen."

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the strange nationality of Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi:

“Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi…” — from this article

The whole matter of "Palestinian" Jordanians and "Jordanian" Palestinians and why Al-Zarqawi is forever to be known among his pals as a "Palestinian" but the Western media, automatically performing its task of public relations for the "Palestinians," now deliberately chooses to call him "Jordanian-born," can be found in such authorities as the famous 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. In it, "Palestine" is defined as follows:

We may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea from the mouth of the Litany or Kasimiya River (33 22' N.) southward to the mouth of the Wadi Ghuzza; the later joins the sea and runs thence in a south-easterly direction so as to include on its northern side the site of Beersheva....Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins.

So Jordan, in its populated parts (not the Syrian Desert) comprises Eastern Palestine, and Israel Western Palestine.

What does this mean? It means that in Jordan both Eastern Palestinians (Jordanians) and Western Palestinians (from the territory now held by Israel) live. A person born in Jordan to "Western Palestinian" parents would call himself Jordanian. A person born in Jordan to parents who were born in Jordan, to grandparents who were born in Mandatory Palestine, would call himself whatever is most advantageous to him, depending on where he travels, to whom he speaks, and who harbors what suspicions. It is best, in Arab countries, to be a "Jordanian," not a "Palestinian," despite all the support for "Palestinians" as the shock troops of the Jihad against Infidel Israel. On the other hand, at least until recently, one might garner more sympathy from the unwary Westerner by calling oneself a "Palestinian" who lives in Jordan. It is fascinating to see how al-Zarqawi, a name given to him because he was born in a "refugee village" in Zarqa, would ordinarily call himself a "Palestinian," but everyone has been quick to label him as "Jordanian-born" without going into detail. Why? Because Arabs think calling him a "Palestinian" might damage the "Palestinian" (i.e. Arab Muslim) cause, and the Western press, without even considering the matter for a moment, has obligingly gone along.

The jihadist site Jihad Unspun points out that some of Muhammad's most celebrated battles took place during Ramadan, and exhorts Muslims to follow his example:

Combining fasting, the unique act of worship, with Jihad which is the Highest Intuition (Thurwat al-Sanam) of Islam, gave believing men and women of earlier generations an unbeatable combination that characterized Ramadan by battles of glory and victories over the unbelievers.

At least eight major battles took place in Ramadan, some, such as the Battle of the Ditch, the Battle of Tabuk, and the Battle of Hittin, were more significant than others, and one, the Battle of Badr, was a turning point for Islam as a religion.

Read it all.

Clash of civilizations update from the Christian Science Monitor (hmmm. We're going to have to do something about that name) with thanks to Nicolei:

OXFORD, ENGLAND – In the summer of 2004, Manna Begum was in love with Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, a young Iranian studying in the city of Oxford.

Her Bangladeshi parents had arranged for her to be married, but she wanted nothing of it.

Ms. Begum's parents forbade her to see Mr. Ghorbani-Zarin, but she ignored their wishes. Upon discovering in August that she was pregnant, Begum and her boyfriend decided to get married, according to testimony given in an Oxford court last week.

Three months later, Ghorbani-Zarin was killed and Begum's father and brother are now on trial for the murder - apparently the latest in a series of brutal honor killings to take place in Britain.

"The relationship with the girl brought shame and dishonor on the family," prosecuting lawyer Julian Baughan told the court. "That drove the accused, led by the head of the family, to murder Mr. Ghorbani-Zarin to vindicate the family's honor."

The number of such "honor killings" carried out in Britain is unknown. But in late 2004, British police began reexamining 117 murders to see how many were motivated by honor.

The issue has taken on increased sensitivity since the July 7 bombings in London, which heightened attention on ethnic minority communities and their integration into British society.

"People feel that this is defining an important part of who they are," says Humera Khan, who advises An-Nisa, a respected Muslim women's group she helped to found in 1985.

"Making them give it up is a difficult process - especially when campaigns against forced marriage are often led by feminist groups who are also often hostile to religion."

Read it all.

And like similar cases in the past, this one will no doubt be cast as a rights issue instead of a public health issue. But DeVeaux ultimately lost his case, and so there is hope that common sense may prevail: the issue with both the beard and the hijab involves safety; must the safety of all be compromised to accommodate Muslim practice? From Bloomberg, with thanks to Nicolei:

Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Philadelphia police officer Kenneth Wallace, a nine-year veteran of the force, is serving his second month-long suspension for refusing to shave.

Wallace, a 31-year-old Muslim, has asked for an arbitration hearing to challenge the department's 1/4-inch limit on the length of beards. Muslim city workers sued Philadelphia, the fifth-largest U.S. city, beginning in February to challenge grooming and dress codes they claim violate their rights to religious expression....

Muslim emergency workers have challenged grooming policies in cities including New York, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, saying the Koran and other religious teachings require the wearing of untrimmed beards or head coverings.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, who Islamic groups say is the only Muslim running a U.S. police department, softened decades-old rules in August 2003 to allow some beards. He has refused to budge on a requirement that whiskers be no more than a 1/4-inch long and neatly trimmed, said Corporal Jim Pauley, a department spokesman....

Two months earlier, Johnson told the paper that the police department was a ``paramilitary organization'' requiring neatness and uniformity. Johnson declined to be interviewed for this story. Pauley said the department doesn't keep track of the religious beliefs of the 6,400-member force....

Discrimination complaints from Muslim Americans rose 70 percent to 1,019 in 2003, the latest year available, with 234 in the workplace, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said last year. Complaints picked up after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings of four jetliners by 20 Muslim terrorists....

Women on the Philadelphia force are still barred from wearing the scarf known as khimar or hijab, which many Muslims believe is mandated by Allah to show their modesty. Kimberlie Webb, the 43-year-old Philadelphia police officer represented by Thorpe, is suing for the right to wear the khimar.

Webb became a Sunni Muslim two years after joining the Philadelphia force in 1995, according to her federal lawsuit. The department denied her requests to wear the khimar, made in 1998 and again in 2003, and threatened Webb with disciplinary action unless she removed the covering at work, the suit said....

Department officials said the scarf posed a safety risk because it could be grabbed by a suspect. Newspapers and Muslim Web sites reported on Webb's complaints through 2003. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in her favor that November and urged the department to relax its rules....

Philadelphia fire officials, too, cite safety to justify their department's ban on beards. Curtis DeVeaux, a firefighter who was suspended without pay in February for refusing to shave, plans to appeal a Pennsylvania judge's decision last month to uphold the rule....

Fire officials argued that DeVeaux's beard might disrupt the seal on his respirator. DeVeaux, 25, said he converted to Islam in 2000 and shaved to join the department the following year. He sought an exemption from the rule last year after speaking to firefighters in Washington who wore beards and were using the same equipment.

``It's the practice of Muslim men to grow their beards,'' said DeVeaux, who now installs satellite-television dishes for a living. ``I love the job, but I have to adhere to the rules of my beliefs.''

I didn't post anything about the closing of the Baltimore Tunnel yesterday because the press and authorities were, as usual, so tight-lipped about who actually issued the threat. But this AP story points toward jihadists -- again:

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Despite questions about the credibility of a threat to detonate vehicles full of explosives, officials said they had little choice but to close one of the busy tunnels underneath Baltimore's harbor and partially shut down the other for nearly two hours.

One person who may have been connected to the threat was arrested on immigration charges, a law enforcement official said.

The FBI had found no evidence to corroborate the threat by Tuesday evening, said agent Kevin Perkins of the FBI's Baltimore field office....

Shortly before the tunnels were reopened, authorities made about a half-dozen raids in the Baltimore area, said city Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm.

Four people were arrested on immigration charges at businesses with Middle Eastern connections, said a federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

One of them was arrested as a result of information supplied by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was heading the tunnel investigation, the source said. That arrest, made at a pizza shop, may be connected to the threat, the source said.

Middle Eastern connections. And they are unlikely to have been Christian Arabs, or Bahais, or Alawites, or Yazidis, or Mandaeans, or what have you. But AP cannot bring itself to name who they are, and why they might have issued such a threat.

Help us, but only on our terms. Conform to the dhimmi laws forbidding public display of crosses. Your display of what you value and who you are is offensive to us, even as we receive aid from you. From the Washington Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

BAGHDAD -- The president of the Iraqi Red Crescent has urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to stop sending aid marked with red crosses after the internationally protected symbol almost cost four staffers their lives....

"They were seized by a terrorist group who threatened to behead them because they thought the crosses on the water and food containers meant the men were Christian missionaries," said Mr. Hakki, who made his plea during a visit last week to ICRC headquarters in Geneva.

He said the terrorists seemed unmoved by the fact that the two trucks themselves were marked with the red crescent symbol typically used in Muslim countries.

In Geneva, an ICRC spokeswoman said the red cross and red crescent are not religious symbols and that international treaties require that both must be respected everywhere.

"Either symbol should be acceptable in either [a Muslim or Christian] country. ... In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, they use the Red Cross," said Antonella Notari, an ICRC spokeswoman. "People and vehicles bearing these symbols cannot be attacked in any circumstances."

I was an expert witness in this case on its first go-round, so I am following the outcome of the appeal with great interest. Someday I hope to be able to write about this case and its implications. From WND, with thanks to JC:

A case brought by parents and children challenging a California school district for its practice of teaching 12-year-old students to "become Muslims" will be heard in U.S. appeals court today.

As WND reported, the lawsuit was filed by the Thomas More Law Center against the Byron Union School District and various school officials to stop the "Islam simulation" materials and methods used in the Excelsior Elementary School in Byron, Calif.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, widely considered the nation's most liberal, will hear oral arguments in the case.

The Thomas More Law Center says that for three weeks, "impressionable 12-year-old students" were, among other things, placed into Islamic city groups; took Islamic names; wore identification tags that displayed their new Islamic name and the star and crescent moon; handed materials that instructed them to 'Remember Allah always so that you may prosper'; completed the Islamic Five Pillars of Faith, including fasting; and memorized and recited the 'Bismillah' or 'In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,' which students also wrote on banners hung on the classroom walls.

Killing for Allah even in Trinidad. "The 4th Bomb attack on Trinidad in recent months," from Black Britain, with thanks to Susan:

The bombs was described as being of ‘low density’, however it was reported that 7 people were injured due to the explosion outside the popular nightspot, ‘Smokey and Bunty.’ The frequently attended nightspot was literally yards away from the St. James Police station....

Detectives had received information prior to Friday’s events concerning the possible threat to the Port of Spain. Cedric Neptune, President of the Police and Welfare suggested that the police were on high security alert; however he was not at liberty to disclose any further information to the press.

There have now been five arrests in connection with Friday’s bombing, one of whom is affiliated with the local militant Muslim group, otherwise known as Jaamat-al Muslimeen....

There have been a series of bomb attacks on Trinidad. The 11th July on Frederick Street, Port of Spain saw 15 causalities, 10th August on George Street showed no casualties, and 10th September only one person suffered minor injuries.

Bangladesh jihad update from Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

DHAKA (Reuters) - A trial court judge in northeastern Bangladesh was wounded in a bomb attack by a suspected Islamic militant, police said on Wednesday.

The attack on Tuesday came a day after police charged two top Islamist militant leaders for masterminding serial bombings in the country over past two months.

District Judge Biplab Goshwamy was hurt when the homemade bomb exploded as he just got out of a car in front of his house in the city if Sylhet, 300 km (190 miles) from the capital Dhaka.

Police said people chased and caught the bomber and recovered a live bomb from him. "We suspect him to be a militant of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen," Police Superintendent Sardar Rafiqul Islam told reporters.

The Ba'athists employ jihad rhetoric, just as Saddam himself did when he was in power. From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Nicosia - Saddam Hussein's ousted Ba'ath party called on supporters in Iraq to step up attacks on US and Iraqi forces as his trial starts today, according to an Internet statement....

"This illegal trial will turn a new page for the Jihad (holy war) of the Iraqi armed resistance ... organised for the long run by our companion and leader," it said.

Al-Qaeda issues a helpful statement of its intentions for those who do not read Jihad Watch. Of course, Sharia is already part of the Iraqi Constitution, so why do they oppose it? From AKI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Baghdad, 18 Oct. (AKI) - Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the terror group led by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has released a new statement in which it explains the reasons for its terror campaign and states that they are not fighting the US occupation of Iraq, but to create "an Islamic state which is part of the caliphate and the Muslim territory."

The message from the terror group appeared on the Internet on Tuesday, just a few days ahead of a visit to Baghdad by the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. "The secretary of the Arab League has been tasked with going to Iraq to convince the Sunnis to enter the political game so as to stop the Jihad [holy war] in the Sunni areas. With the excuse of national interest, they are trying to save the Americans," the statement says.

The terror group then goes on to reveal its real objectives, saying: "We are not fighting to chase out the occupier or to save national unity and keep the borders outlined by the infidels intact," the statement continues. "We are fighting because it is a religious duty to do it, just as it is a duty to take the Sharia [Islamic law] to the government and create an Islamic state."

Is Britain waging a secret counter-jihad in Iran? From Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it had arrested more than 20 people in connection with deadly weekend bombings in southern Iran which the government has blamed on Britain.

Saturday's blasts outside a shopping mall in the city of Ahvaz killed six people and wounded 100 and have prompted calls from Iran's hardline press for Tehran to sever ties with London....

Britain denies any links to the bombings as well as a series of other attacks and unrest earlier this year in the ethnic-Arab dominated Khuzestan province which borders southern Iraq and contains the bulk of Iran's oil reserves....

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated his view that Britain was linked to the attacks.

``We have no reason to believe that Britain was not involved in the recent incident,'' the ISNA students news agency quoted him as telling journalists on Tuesday.

``We are very well aware of such countries' behavior. Terrorist acts and insecurity are among the methods used by occupying countries like the UK,'' he added.

Sharia Alert from Sudan, from the Sudan Tribune with thanks to Twostellas:

Oct 17, 2005 (KHARTOUM)— The Sudanese government has affirmed that it has reservations on some articles of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), particularly those which contradict Islam.

The minister of justice, Mohamed Ali al-Maradi, said in a press statement following his meeting with the special rapporteur on human rights in Sudan, Ms Sima Samar, that Sudan would not accept any article that contradicts the Islamic religion.

He added that women rights are guaranteed in all legislation and the constitution which enable women to assume public work and posts on equal footing with men.

The recent earthquake in South Asia which has killed thousands and laid waste to the regional infrastructure could end up benefiting the area madrassa system. With so many government schools having been destroyed, localities may need to take the initiative in order to educate their own children. Able and more than willing are the local madrassas, from Rediff.com:

The destruction of the education infrastructure in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and some parts of the North west Frontier Province due to the October 8 earthquake may force parents to enroll their children in madrassas run by jIhadi groups.

The earthquake has flattened all schools in the region. Bagh district, 100 km from Muzaffarabad, had 341 schools including a degree college for a population of 500,000 people. Muzaffarabad had 1,512 schools for a population of 900,000 people.

Thousands of students face an uncertain future and may lose the academic year if their schools are not rebuilt. The Pakistan government has expressed its inability to restore the infrastructure in the immediate future. Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said that reconstruction and rehabilitation of the quake-hit areas would take decades.

"The Bagh Degree College was the best in the region. It took us decades to build it. And now it is going to take us decades to restore it. You know how difficult it is to develop infrastructure in this country," says Sajid Iqbal, a teacher at the college. He is mourning the death of more than 700 students -- still buried in the college's wreckage.

"I have enough food. What I really need is education. I don't want to lose my academic year. I want to be in school as soon as possible," says Shahid, an eighth grade student in Bagh.

"Bagh was already short of schools. The government will take years to reconstruct the destroyed schools. Only Allah knows what will happen to our children," says Aslam Manzoor, whose daughter is in the 10th grade.

Zafarul Haq Kiani, a 46-year-old engineer employed by the public health division in Bagh, plans to migrate to Rawalpindi if the schools are not opened soon.

"If the schools are not reconstructed immediately or no alternative is provided promptly, then the children will lose interest in studies," says Muzaffar Khan, a social worker in Bagh.

And the fear is they might be lured by jihadi groups.

Since, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is a disputed territory, it is the hub of jihadis. Almost all the buildings in the province display a slogan prominently -- 'Kashmir will become Pakistan through jihad!'

More violence has been reported in the town of Nalchik, which is still trying to recover from Thursday’s massive terrorist raid, according to the AP:

NALCHIK, Russia -- Shooting broke out Tuesday morning in the southern Russian city of Nalchik, as police and security forces said they were launching special operations to detain suspected militants.

Alleged Islamic extremists conducted a coordinated series of attacks on police and other government buildings in the city on Thursday, and some 137 people were killed in the fighting, according to official data. Local television urged residents of the city not to leave their homes if possible Tuesday, and the local schools administration advised parents to take their children home from schools and nursery schools.

Shooting was heard in the suburb of Dubki, where the city's main morgue is and where security forces were conducting a sweep for suspected rebels, residents said. Gunfire also broke out in the town's center and its southwestern edge.

The Interfax news agency reported that police killed a man early Tuesday when he allegedly put up resistance during a document check. Two other men who resisted managed to escape, Interfax said.

Also, two excellent recent analyses from Masha Lipman and Paul Quinn-Judge suggest that the Nalchik attack is just the beginning.

The bloodlust continues. "Iraq Al-Qaeda shows execution despite 'Zawahiri letter,'" from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

DUBAI (AFP) - Al-Qaeda in Iraq released a video purporting to show the execution of an Iraqi who worked for US forces, days after Washington said the group had been told such killings cost the movement support.

The video was released by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group after US authorities said they had seized a letter from Al-Qaeda's overall number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, telling him his campaign of executions and attacks on Muslims was damaging popular, mainly Sunni Arab, support for the insurgency.

The letter was swiftly denounced as untrue by Al-Qaeda in Iraq, with an Internet statement calling on "Muslims to ignore such cheap propaganda", adding that the killing of "infidel" Muslims was allowed.

Monday's video on an Islamist website showed a man with his hands tied behind his back being shot twice in the head and dumped in a wasteland.

The undated film, whose authenticity could not be verified, was titled "Application of Divine Judgement on a Contractor Working for the Crusaders," in reference to US-led forces in Iraq.

Taking advantage of the recent earthquake and the chaos which followed, Kashmiri-based jihadists stormed the house of State Education Minister Ghulam Nabi Lone yesterday, murdering him in cold blood. The attack breaks the so-called truce announced last week by the United Jihad Council, an umbrella organization representing various Kashmiri terrorist groups, per Voice of America News:

Indian officials say a group of militants hurled grenades as they launched a daring daylight raid Tuesday on a high security residential complex for state ministers in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar.

After exchanging fire with security guards, the militants broke into the house of State Education Minister Ghulam Nabi Lone, and shot him dead.

Social Welfare Minister Gulam Hassan Khan, who also lives in the compound, described what happened.

Mr. Khan says he heard shooting. His bodyguard told him militants had entered the complex and ordered him to stay inside and lock the door. He says he later heard of the fatal attack on Lone.

The raid is the most brazen attack in Indian Kashmir since the October 8 earthquake killed at least 1200 people in the Indian controlled area and more than 50,000 in the Pakistani controlled sector.

In the Fall 2005 issue of Middle East Quarterly, Professor Guenther Lewy of the University of Massachusetts examines the mass murders of Armenians in Turkey before, during and after World War I and concludes: "The three pillars of the Armenian claim to classify World War I deaths as genocide fail to substantiate the charge that the Young Turk regime intentionally organized the massacres. Other alleged evidence for a premeditated plan of annihilation fares no better."

Dr. Vahakn N. Dadrian, the world's leading authority on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians and author of The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, has drafted this comprehensive reply, and kindly given us the privilege and honor of posting it exclusively here at Jihad Watch:

By its very nature historiography can neither be expected to be complete in every respect, nor be free from any number of other shortcomings. This truism is even more pertinent to the study of such a subject matter as the Armenian genocide the historical reality of which for one reason or another is presently being degraded to the level of dubiousness. The principal vehicles used hereby are the publications of a rather small group of authors purporting to be detached and disinterested investigators. Upon closer scrutiny, however, these very same authors reveal themselves as committed partisans boldly pushing certain denialist agendas that are subtly and skillfully woven into texture of their discourses. Hence the denial is attempted indirectly rather than directly; the historical reality of the World War I Armenian genocide is called into question by casting doubt on the appropriateness of the use of the label “genocide.”

When by recourse to a variety of techniques he is decrying as unwarranted the use of such a label with respect to the Armenian case, Professor Lewy is thereby providing a measure of confirmation in this respect. In the process he also is betraying his very limited familiarity with the subject. His article is replete with factual errors, misinterpretations that are accented by some outright falsehoods. On top of all this, he further betrays lack of an adequate level of knowledge of Turkish, not to speak of extinct Ottoman Turkish, on both of which he is significantly relying as primary source medium. One is prompted to wonder as to the origin and nature of the outside help he may have received.

What follows firstly is -- given exigent space limitations -– some samples only of the type of errors mentioned above:

The Yozgat trial series were not conducted in Yozgat but in Istanbul; Kemal was Kaymakam of Bogazliyan county only but not of Yozgat district of which he subsequently became an interim mutassarif by way of transfer and promotion; Cemal Pasha was not the governor of Aleppo, but the commander-in-chief of Ottoman’s IVth Army deployed in Lebanon and Syria (all these on p. 2); Dr. Liparit Nasariantz was not a German missionary (p. 5) but an Armenian political activist who later became a member of the Armenian National Council, an émigré political outfit. Moreover, Lewy’s claim that “there is no indication that German colonel Stange had any role in the Special Organization” is flatly contradicted by several authentic sources. Foremost among these is Dr. Ernst Kwiatkowski, Austria-Hungaria’s Consul at Trabzon, the port city where the Special Organization had its center for logistics. In one of his several reports to Vienna he revealed that “convicts were also enrolled” in Stange’s detachment which actually was the 8th Regiment of the 10th Army corps of the Ottoman III Army operating in the eastern province of Turkey. [1] Even more compelling is the disclosure of a Turkish officer who not only participated in Stange’s military operations, but kept a record of them in his notebook. According to him “Stange was in charge of the Special Organization Regiment that was named ‘Teshkilati Mahsusa Alayi’ ” and that it encompassed the notorious killer bands of two noted chieftains, Topal Osman and Deli Halit, who played a paramount role in the implementation phases of the Armenian genocide. That regiment consisted of eleven battalions (tabur) and was thereafter called the Lazistan Detachment (Lazistan Mufrezesi). [2] Unable to strictly control the secret and covert operations of these contingents of this Detachment, Stange at the end blasted them in his “secret” report to his German superiors in which he expressed his contempt of these “chettes” by calling them “scums.” [3]

According to professor Lewy, the Armenian claim of genocide is predicated upon the “the pillars,” namely, (1) the Turkish Courts- Martial of 1919-20, (2) the role of the Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa), and (3) the memoirs of Naim Bey (p. 6). This highly inaccurate description again is reflective of his seemingly limited familiarity with the literature involved. [4] Notwithstanding, they call for scrutiny to “set the record straight.”
Of these, the one involving a lengthy discussion, based on his claim that they are “forgeries,” covers the Naim-Andonian documents. That claim is mainly, if not exclusively, based upon a book produced by two Turkish authors who, following an extensive examination, maintained that the documents are forgeries. Even though at the end of his discussion he finds it expedient to hedge somewhat by allowing that these documents are “at best unverifiable and problematic,” the bulk of Lewy’s arguments with emphasis focus, however, on the forgery angle. Yet, as far as it is known, the two non-Turkish scholars cited by him for support of his claim did not themselves conduct any comparable research, including Zürcher who was content to state that the documents “have been shown to be forgeries.” But on the other end of the spectrum, a German author having very recently uncovered a number of authentic Ottoman documents from the Interior Ministry Section of Turkish state archives, established that these documents

confirm to some degree the contents of two other telegrams ascribed to Talaat in Andonian’s book. Thus the dating of telegrams nos. 840 and 860 as January 1916 appears to be correct…[The two Turkish authors] Sinasi Orel and Süreyya Yüce who have agued that Andonian forged his material, did not consider the source under scrutiny here. Thus their thesis is to be put into question and further research [on this matter] is necessary. [5]

An update from the United American Committee on the danger signs of militant Islam, which I helped them compile:

To help facilitate solutions in confronting the Islamic extremist threat, the United American Committee releases the Nine Danger Signs of Militant Islam. A guide to help discern signs of extremism among members of the Islamic faith.

LOS ANGELES - In a move to battle Islamic extremism, the United American Committee today released a list of the Nine Danger Signs of Militant Islam. Written with assistance from members of the Islamic faith, the list, primarily addressed to the Muslim community, gives signs that can be used to discern whether any given Muslim spokesman may be a sympathizer with Islamic militancy. Blatant signs of extremism include "Supporting or refusing to condemn Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas, or other terrorists or terrorist organizations by name." or "Justification of any Islamic Terrorism, Palestinian or otherwise." Other danger signs listed reflect disorderly subversive acts such as a "Refusal to cooperate with or inciting others not to cooperate with authorities or standard security procedures."

Dave Holly, a UAC spokesperson, gives the following rationale for the list: "Peace-loving Muslims everywhere would agree on the need to be alert for any incitement to hate, violence, religious intolerance, or the use of outright lying. Those who do not hold extremist views should have no problem with helping to distribute fliers of the Nine Danger Signs of Militant Islam."

Requests for comment were not immediately returned from the leading American Islamic organization CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. However, all communication with CAIR regarding the signs has indicated their objection to it for unknown reasons. "We don't know why anyone would object to these signs. Each sign is a logical indication of extremist behavior," remarks Jesse Petrilla, Founder & Chairman of the United American Committee, the primary organization responsible for drafting the nine signs. "We've even included input from American Muslims while writing the list of danger signs," says Petrilla.

A large fear of more moderate Muslims is reflected by the danger sign of "Branding progressive Muslims or Muslims of different opinions as apostates." as was suggested by one Muslim-American contributor to the Nine Signs. All Nine Danger Signs of Militant Islam are available on the United American Committee's website at http://www.UnitedAmericanCommittee.org

A Muslim woman is attempting to stand up for her right not to wear a headscarf while teaching at a Muslim school. From Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — A 32-year-old Amsterdam Muslim is challenging the decision by an Islamic school not to employ her because she refuses to wear a headscarf.

Samira Haddad, a teacher of Arabic, has asked the equality commission to rule Islamic College in Amsterdam was wrong to demand she cover her head in order to work there.

The case comes a week after Education Minister Maria van der Hoeven said she is in favour of a ban on wearing the all-covering burka in schools...

The headmaster of the Islamic College in Amsterdam said the school's statutes state explicitly that the rules of the Koran and the Sunna must be adhered to.

Non-Muslim teachers can be granted an exemption. "If Miss Haddad was to declare she is not a Muslim then she could, in principle, could come and work with us," a member of the school board said...

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines the Al-Saud and prescribes some ways the U.S. can and should be dealing with them:

The Al-Saud are, to anyone who looks, the most corrupt of despots. If those "anyone" are Infidels, they leave it at that -- corrupt despots, to be dealt with as one sees fit (and many in the West have seen fit to hold out their hands for Saudi gold, in order to recycle those petrodollars -- and never mind how this particular family arrogated to itself the national wealth). If those "anyone" are Muslims, it is not enough to say that someone is a "despot," because there is nothing wrong with a "despot" in Islam, and nothing wrong with a "despot" who helps himself to a large share of whatever wealth is available. Muhammad himself lay down the law, and he was to receive the largest share -- 20% -- of whatever booty was taken. The more luxurious the life of the caliph, or Mughal emperor, or sheikh, the more fascinating and impressive he was.

Now the Al-Saud take not all, but a great deal, of the national wealth. And so do the "royal" families in Kuwait (the Al-Sabah), Qatar (the Al-Thani), the United Arab Emirates (too complicated to start listing, but Zayed is gone from Abu Dhabi, and I can't recall his successor's name, but it hardly matters). And if you don't like it, and you are a Muslim, the only categories of praise and blame you know are the categories offered by Islam.

Our little friend Samir A. is up to his old tricks again. This is his second arrest on terrorism charges (third overall) in association with the Hofstadgroep. These are the same folks who murdered Theo Van Gogh, then bragged about it, and were planning to blow up the Dutch Parliament. Maybe they can keep him in jail this time around. From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares.

AMSTERDAM — Dutch police arrested seven young Muslims last week after the man considered to be the main suspect made a video to say farewell to his family and friends.

Justice officials claim the video made by Samir A., 19, referred to an act he 'had carried out'.

The eight-minute video tape is in Arabic and it is unclear what "act" Samir was talking about, informed sources told the media. Police suspect he was planning a suicide attack. He is under investigation for plotting attacks on politicians and a government building...

No weapons or bomb-making materials were seized during the raids. Seven suspects were held in Almere, Amsterdam and The Hague. Six are men, aged 18 to 30. The seventh is a 24-year-old woman.

Samir was cleared by a court earlier this year of plotting terrorist attacks on key installations in the Netherlands. He is considered the main suspect in the latest investigation...

Of course, claiming torture is a tactic right out of the Al-Qaeda playbook. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali update from AP, with thanks to DC Watson:

ALEXANDRIA -- An FBI doctor testified Monday that he found no significant scars on the back of a U.S. citizen who claims that Saudi police whipped and tortured him into falsely confessing he joined al-Qaida and plotted to assassinate President Bush....

Prosecutors allege Ahmed Omar Abu Ali joined al-Qaida in 2002 while enrolled in a college in Saudi Arabia. They say he confessed to plotting Bush's assassination along with other terrorist acts, including plans to establish an al-Qaida cell in the United States and to rescue of Muslim prisoners detained at Guantanamo Bay....

His attorneys want the confession thrown out. They argue that the 24-year-old falsely confessed after being tortured and whipped by the Saudis, and they say U.S. authorities were complicit in the torture.

Prosecutors deny Abu Ali, of Falls Church, was mistreated.

So much for the much-vaunted backlash against Muslims in the U.S. since 9/11. Many times on radio and TV shows people have accused me of encouraging crimes against innocent Muslims by speaking about the roots of Islamic violence in the Qur'an and Sunnah, and the failure of American Muslims to excommunicate jihadists. I always respond to this that I abhor attacks on innocent people, that I am simply telling the truth, truths that need to be told so that we can defend ourselves adequately, and that I believe most Americans are decent enough not to victimize innocent people. David Horowitz at his blog (thanks to DC Watson) briefly examines the FBI's latest hate crimes report, before CAIR's spin doctors get to it:

The FBI has released its latest hate crimes report. Jews are five times as likely as Muslims to be the targets of hate crimes. No big surprise when Jew haters hold million man more marches in Washington and C-Span airs the hate speech for hours and hours and hours.

The FBI has released its annual report “2004 Crime in the United States.” The entire report can be read at: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/index.html

Horowitz adds a table of the numbers for anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic hate crimes in 2004, but I can't get it to work here, so here are the numbers themselves:

Anti-Jewish hate crimes: 954 incidents; 1,003 offenses; 1,076 victims; 330 known offenders.

Anti-Muslim hate crimes: 156 incidents; 193 offenses; 201 victims; 124 known offenders.

A-Q continues to demonstrate that it no longer considers binding its agreement to leave Saudi Arabia alone and only wage jihad in other countries. Which does not mitigate one bit Saudi complicity in helping them wage that jihad elsewhere. From UPI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Saudi security forces found in a Riyadh suburb an arms depot and bomb-making facilities believed to belong to the al-Qaida network, reports said Tuesday.

The daily al-Watan reported that security forces had tracked down a militant hideout in a residential neighborhood in the city of Kharg, 70 kilometers (43 miles) from Riyadh.

"The place was used to stock up arms and manufacture explosives," the paper said.

Police seized chemicals and recipes for making explosives as well as communications equipment from the site.

Daniel Pipes ably traces Europe's ongoing descent into Eurabia in FrontPage:

Two recent stories dramatically illustrate Europe’s looming immigration problem.

One concerns a gang estimated to have smuggled 100,000 illegal immigrants, mainly Turkish Kurds, into Great Britain. These economic migrants paid between £3,000 and £5,000 to be transported via an elaborate and dangerous route. The Independent explains: “Their journeys lasted several weeks and involved safe houses, lorries with secret compartments and, in some cases, clandestine flights to airfields in the South-east.”

A senior British police source commented that “It’s a tortuous journey, full of discomfort and danger, but they are determined to get here, given the particular attraction of London’s established Turkish community.”

Jihad Watch News Editor Patrick Devenny exposes CIA training of Palestinian Arab jihad terrorists in FrontPage:

Last month, NBC News correspondent Lisa Myers tracked down one Jihad Jaara, a veteran Palestinian militant who currently resides in Ireland. Jaara’s career as a terrorist has been a remarkably effective one. As a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – a violent militia tied to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party – Jaara supervised and planned dozens of assassinations and bombings against a wide-range of American and Israeli targets. One of the more reprehensible actions authorized by Jaara was the kidnapping of Avi Boaz, a 72-year-old American architect who was abducted by Al-Aqsa terrorists while he waited at a Palestinian police checkpoint. His bullet-riddled body was found a few hours later, dumped just outside of Bethlehem. Upon being questioned by Myers, Jaara swore that he had renounced such terrorism, a claim that was dismissed by former associates, who identified him as an important interlocutor between Hezbollah and various Palestinian terrorist groups.

What distinguishes Jaara from many of his fellow Palestinian terrorist leaders is that he plied his bloody trade while simultaneously serving as an officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, a body assigned with combating militants. His official status gave Jaara the ability to travel freely throughout the territories, enabling him to plan his attacks while enjoying the protection afforded to Palestinian officials by the Israelis. While his position gave him some advantages, Jaara was unhesitant when asked what single factor had most contributed to his transformation into a successful terrorist: small-arms training supervised by officers of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The fact that the CIA trained a man such as Jihad Jaara is hardly surprising. For almost ten years, the American government has been engaged in a series of hopelessly misguided endeavors designed to train and fund the Palestinian security services, an initiative which can be deemed, politely, as a dismal failure. Tens of millions of American taxpayer dollars have simply disappeared into the covert bank accounts of corrupt Palestinian officials, while CIA-trainers recklessly lent their considerable combat expertise to fanatics such as Jaara.

Gee, you don't think anybody would have cheated, do you? Of course not. These are people to whom deception and dishonesty are anathema, right? What's that? Anti-democratic pro-Sharia elements? Large-scale disrepect for the very idea of democracy? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? From AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating "unusually high" numbers of "yes" votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Word of the review came as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily "no" districts, and that some "yes" areas had more votes than registered voters.

The Electoral Commission made no mention of fraud, and an official with knowledge of the election process cautioned that it was too early to say whether the unusual numbers were incorrect or if they would affect the outcome.

But questions about the numbers raised tensions over Saturday's referendum, which has already sharply divided Iraqis. Most of the Shiite majority and the Kurds — the coalition which controls the government — support the charter, while most Sunni Arabs sharply opposed a document they fear will tear Iraq to pieces and leave them weak and out of power.

Same questions I had last week: if Joel Hinrichs was simply an individual who decided to commit suicide in an unusually flamboyant manner, why all the new security measures? Or is there a stadium jihad plan that authorities don't wish to tell us about? I am not saying this is necessarily the case. I am saying that the stonewalling authorities and extra security measures just don't tally as responses to an individual suicide.

From ChannelOklahoma.com, with thanks to FMJ:

NORMAN, Okla. -- OU officials will be handing out more than programs at Saturday's home football game.

University president David Boren said fans will also get an evacuation plan when they walk in the gates to see the Sooners play Baylor. The move is in reaction to the explosion outside the stadium just over two weeks ago.

More Ramadan peace and tolerance as a Pakistani mullah threatens to burn down a refugee camp rather than see earthquake survivors eating during the day during Ramadan. From "Feeding the survivors during Ramadan," from the BBC, with thanks to Tom:

Feeding 1,200 people with no kitchen requires a bit of preparation.

You need to light fires, boil rice and cook meat. It takes several hours. You have to get going in advance.

But one of the local mullahs did not see it that way and he paid Mohammed Mustafa a visit.

"What are you doing?" he shouted. "Don't you know it's Ramadan now? This is just not permitted.

"You can't cook food during the day. It's against Islam. Stop or I'll burn this place down - your tents, your pots, everything."

Are you ready to hear such stories from Paris as well as Tehran? Life under Sharia alert from the Sunday Times, with thanks to Designnut:

TEHRAN - Iranian police have been accused of shooting and killing a motorist after he failed to stop when spotted eating during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, a press report said.

The victim, identified as 22-year-old Seyed Mostafa, was shot dead in Tehran on Saturday.

He was also playing loud music with his car stereo, the government Iran newspaper said.

"Even if the police claim is right, is eating during the fasting month punishable by death?" the victim's brother was quoted as saying.

It isn't according to traditional Islamic law. The Iranians seem to be getting a bit overzealous; maybe they considered his eating and loud music to be ipso facto evidence that he was a heretic or an apostate.

They've really gone too far this time. When Abbas meets with Bush later this week, Bush will probably insist that he take only the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. "Israel Suspends Contacts With Palestinians," from AP, with thanks to Alyssa A. Lappen:

GUSH ETZION, West Bank - Israel suspended negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on issues such as prisoner releases and slapped tough travel restrictions on the West Bank after Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded five in drive-by attacks near Jewish settlements.

Sunday's Palestinian attack near the Gush Etzion block of settlements was the deadliest since July. It followed Israeli intelligence warnings that Palestinian militants, who claim they drove Israel out of Gaza by force, would now shift their focus to the West Bank. Israel pulled out of Gaza in September in a unilateral move.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group with ties to the ruling Fatah party, claimed responsibility. However, security officials said they believed the Islamic militant group Hamas might have been involved.

The attacks renewed international pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to crack down on militants. Abbas, who is to meet later this week with President Bush in Washington, has been reluctant to take harsh measures against the militants.

Now why might that be?

UPDATE: More on this from David Bedein: "Official Palestinian Authority Media: Abbas's Own Fatah Killed 'Settlers'"

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores the implications of Muslim attorney Tom Nelson's assertion that a bellicose version of the Qur'an distributed in Oregon is somehow anomalous:

"This version of the Quran was printed before the Sept. 11 attacks, when jihad did not have the same holy war connotations as today, Nelson said." -- from this article

It was an earlier version, an uncorrected version, of the Qur'an that was distributed in Oregon. Please ignore all previous versions. They are full of typos. Read only the new edition, the one that has on the cover the special "For Americans Only" lettering across the top, and the CAIR Seal-of-approval ("Tells you all you really need to know about Islam") and a scholarly introduction by Professor Michael Sells.

Or, if you wish, you can get the even more thoroughly abridged version, from the same company that, for last-minute and lazy students, offers a version of Anna Karenina in eleven pages and King Lear in three. And that 8-page version of the Qur'an will naturally carry blurbs:

"This is certain to be, for Infidels, the most painless way to learn about the Qur'an. This book should be -- no, this book definitely is -- required reading for today's crop of Infidels. And if its lessons are understood, then the whole family may be ready for the full text. Why make life even more difficult for your children than it would be otherwise? Read this book now. Read it as if your life depends on it." -- Douglas Hooper, Washington, D.C.

"In the breathtaking poetry of its misty vistas, from the highest hill of humanity where nightingales and roses bloom along the verdant slopes of the high uplands of justice which has always been the voice of the oppressed speaking truth to power, even when that power has gone out, but if one knows where to find the light-switch of the human heart, this is the book which can turn that light-switch of that human heart, not to mention the sometimes also necessary lungs, spleen and pancreas, on again, so that not only mere man but Man is made whole, the earth is made whole, the whole universe is made whole, and made whole in the best and only possible way -- holistically. Read it, again and again and again. The purest poetry that like a tree only God could have made, only God, or quite possibly Edward Said, had one of his admirers only been able to have been there for him, when he needed me, to take dictation." -- Hamid Dabashi, New York City

"If we are to avoid a conflict of civilizations, we will need to replace conflict with dialogue, attachment to our old ways of thinking with a willingness to accept entirely new ways, and to give up those silly concepts of 'Us' and 'Them' for a much broader 'They Are We' and 'We Are They.' Since it is 'they' who are now among 'us' and not 'we' who are among 'them,' surely the most sensible and painless solution is for 'us' to give up our shopworn and outworn and useless categories, and to try to do whatever 'they' require of 'us' so as to 'reassure' them.

"And just as they -- Muslims -- need reassurance that we are not out to get them, after the Crusades, after colonialism, after Israel's brutal oppression of unarmed Palestinians, after the cruel way that Saddam Hussein, that brave Arab leader, was removed, after the neo-colonialism and then the post-neocolonialism which has no sell-by date and therefore goes on forever as long as Infidels continue to exist, not only do 'they' (the 'Muslims') need some sign from us (the so-called 'non-Muslims') that 'we' are not out to get 'them,' but just as important, we need to study the Qur'an, and much more than the Qur'an, in order to reassure ourselves. We need to reassure ourselves that we have not lost our moral bearings, not retreated into some cruel dungeon or Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib of our own narrow mindedness, need to make sure that we have not lost our moral bearings, lost all of our own habit of, or habitat for, humanity.

"And there is no better indication of our own willingness to listen to others with compassion and understanding and acceptance as they tell us what they think or what they think we should think they think, and also tell us what to think, saving us the trouble, which given all of our advantages and our privileges and our narrow-minded indifference to all those who are different from us is the least of what we should be prepared to do in this diverse world of diversity that we live in.

"When the oppressed people of this earth, in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates and in so many other places, want so clearly to reach out to us, to affect us, to help us see things as they see them, what better way to engage in that dialogue than to read, study, read again, study again, the book that means so much to them, means -- everything to them. Personally, I've read the Qur'an from cover to cover, and I've come to love it more every time." -- James Earl Carter, Georgia

"If you can only read one book in your life, let this one be it. Sometimes, you come across one book that makes all the difference. This is that book." -- Statement of the Joint Committee on Civilizational Literacy, a cooperative effort of the Modern Language Association, the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Presidents, the American Association of University Professors, and MESA Nostra

"The book our generation needs." -- Britney Spears, Honorary President of the What-Our-Generation-Needs Foundation (a 501 (c)(3) organization)

A press release from the Sudan Campaign:

U.S. Government's Elevation of Sudan's Slavery Status Challenged Sudan Campaign Calls Presidential Determination "Fundamentally Flawed"

WASHINGTON: The leadership of the Sudan Campaign coalition is protesting against President Bush's decision to upgrade Sudan's slavery status from Tier III (the lowest possible ranking) to Tier II, today. (Switzerland, Israel, Chile, Hungary and Greece are among the Tier II states.)

A State Department memorandum justifying the Presidential Determination, dated 21 September, claims that the Government of Sudan has made "significant efforts" to bring itself into compliance with U.S. anti-trafficking legislation. The head of the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking (TIP), Ambassador John Miller, reported on September 27 that Sudan and five other countries had taken "real steps" to combat slavery, including:
Establishing new police anti-trafficking units, arresting and charging traffickers, passing anti-trafficking laws, opening victims shelters, holding bilateral meetings to establish anti-trafficking cooperation, and establishing victims hotlines.

Neither the TIP office, nor the Sudanese government, however, have been able to provide details of such alleged measures.

The State Department's Memorandum of Justification defended the Presidential Determination on the grounds that the Government of Sudan has made unspecified "commitments" to implement anti-trafficking measures during the next twelve months.

But the State Department has not made public the details of the "action plan", which, according to the TIP office, is contained within a recently signed U.S.- Sudanese "bilateral" agreement.

Writing to Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice, the Sudan Campaign leadership observed that the meager evidence provided by the State Department does not point to "significant efforts" to combat slavery on the part of the Government of Sudan. Moreover, the Sudan Campaign leaders noted that the 2005 Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General, documented cases of Sudanese government troops' involvement in "abductions and sexual slavery".

The Sudan Campaign has called on the Secretary of State to immediately reverse the "fundamentally flawed" determination and to cooperate in the establishment of a Task Force to Monitor the Eradication of Sudanese Slavery on the basis of partnership with non-governmental organizations.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses a recent lecture about Christianity and Islam at Stanford, sponsored by the Islamic Society of Stanford University and the Muslim Students Awareness Network:

"Both Muslims and Christians 'believe in Jesus as the Messiah and accept that he was born of a virgin, that he never sinned,' he said. 'There is more in common than there are differences between us.'" — from this article about a lecture last Saturday by Hisham Mahmoud, a doctoral candidate of Islamic Studies at UCLA, on “Jesus in Islam: The Gospel of Jesus According to Prophet Muhammad”

Perhaps Hisham Mahmoud’s assertion that Christians and Muslims have “more in common” than they have differences is not quite enough to allay our fears, our suspicions, and above all, our knowledge. Certainly, as a kind of gloss on Mahmoud’s homily, one would like to hear from all those Christians who have been on the receiving end of Muslim sharing-and-caring: Copts from Egypt, Maronites from Lebanon, and Indonesian and Pakistani Christians, in addition to ex-Muslims in the West who have become Christians, or if they have not, at least can testify as to what attitudes toward Christians (and other Infidels) are encouraged by the texts of Qur’an, hadith, and sira. It would be fascinating to engage Mr. Mahmoud in live debate which would contain both the testimony of such Christians and that of Christians tortured and imprisoned for their belief in Saudi Arabia, a country whose inhabitants apparently do not share Mr. Mahmoud’s belief that Islam and Christianity “more in common than there are differences between us.” But what do those imams all over Arabia know about Islam, when Mr. Mahmoud knows so much more, and is quick to tell us all about it?

While the naïve remain, their numbers are diminishing. Some simply cannot reconcile the evidence of their senses with the taqiyya and tu-quoque offered up by Muslim spokesmen (CAIR may be the most egregious, given the charges made, and proven, against many of its officers, but it is just the tip of the taqiyya iceberg). Of course, it is possible to find, here and there, bits and pieces of Jewish and Christian lore in the Qur’an. That, after all, is what the Qur’an is: an overlay or mixture of passages, usually misunderstood or distorted from their original sources, taken from the Jewish and Christian holy books and mixed with pagan Arab lore from the time of the Jahiliyya – that is, the Ignorance that prevailed before Islam arrived to clear everything up. Of course we all know that Jesus and Moses and a few thousand others were prophets; Islam took over, lock stock and barrel, all sorts of things from the prior monotheisms, appropriated them, and distorted them into an Islamic version. For example, as Mahmoud emphasizes, Jesus was a prophet but not the Son of God, and did not die on the Cross; the perfidious Jews, however, even though they did not kill Jesus, thought they did and boasted about it (see Qur’an 4:157), and besides, they had a different candidate for the Son of God, one “Uzair” or “Ezra” (Qur’an 9:30), although no real Jews have ever made such a claim about Ezra or anyone else.

"Asian," of course, means "Muslim" in the British press. "Asian-friendly houses in Britain," from IANS with thanks to Lost Budgie, who points out that not only has tax money been used to build these houses, but that Muslims will be given preference over others to live in them. L. B. says: "Imagine the outcry if tax dollars were used to build a public housing project designed to the religious specifications of Christians or Jews - who were then given priority because they would most benefit from the 'culturally-sensitive' design?"

Bristol: An Asian housing association in Britain has built a block of flats especially designed not to offend Muslims - the toilets do not face Makkah.

The 16 flats in the St Paul's area here have been built by Bristol-based Aashyana Housing Association, an Asian-led organisation. The toilets in the apartments have been built in such a way that they do not face southeast.

Farooq Siddique, from the Bristol Muslim Cultural Society, said he welcomed developments that took into consideration the cultural diversity of tenants.

He said: "I think it is a good thing that the flats are designed in this way. We do live in a multi-cultural society and rather than just paying lip service to that, it is important that there are policies in place that address it.

"Having toilets facing the right way is an issue that comes up, as Muslims do not like using them if they are facing in that direction."...

Bristol City Council spokeswoman Kate Hartas said:...

"With all our allocations, we apply the normal criteria.

"But where there are two households of equal priority who qualify for an Aashyana home, we would offer to the household who would most benefit from the culturally- sensitive services that Aashyana provides."

Welcome to multicultural Britain, where tolerance equals preference given to Muslim sensibilities.

Nelson has got to be kidding. Jihad didn't have the same connotations before 9/11 as it does today? That's a measure of American ignorance, not of any shift in the actual meaning of jihad. And what's this about the government misinterpreting this appendix? It says to use missiles, planes and ships against the enemies of Allah, but that's supposed to refer to a spiritual struggle? Maybe Muslims are supposed to use missiles, planes, and ships against the devil, the way they throw rocks at the Great Satan in Mecca? Tell me another, Nelson. From the Mail Tribune of Southern Oregon, with thanks to Cindy:

ASHLAND — Pete Seda and his former Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation passed out copies of what the federal government considers to be a radical version of the Quran that includes a call to jihad, or holy war, against those who do not believe in Islam.

The book, called "The Noble Quran," includes a chapter, called "Appendix 3," that tells readers to "race to jihad" and to include weapons such as missiles, planes and ships against the enemies of Allah.

Tom Nelson, the Portland attorney licensed as the Al-Haramain agent here, acknowledged the appendix’s presence Saturday, saying that he believes government misinterprets it and uses it to paint the group as terrorists.

"That’s the one that’s driving people nuts," Nelson said....

This version of the Quran was printed before the Sept. 11 attacks, when jihad did not have the same holy war connotations as today, Nelson said.

"I can see how Americans can be upset about it after 9/11," Nelson said. "I don’t think they would have pre-9/11."

Despite the appendix’s many references to violence and war, Nelson prefers to consider jihad as a "struggle" and that Islam teaches that "death is better than oppression."

That's a quote from the Qur'an (2:191), which brings to mind the fact that while everyone seems to be in a lather about this appendix, there are plenty of things to cause concern in the book itself. But of course, pointing that out will just get you called a lot of names.

"A call to jihad means (something) completely different to a Westerner than an Easterner," said Nelson, who is a practicing Muslim.

"There are all kinds of jihads," he said. "It can be a violent struggle. It can be a non-violent struggle."

Yes, I can see how the struggle to avoid sin would readily call for use of missiles, planes and ships.

Nelson said parts of the appendix are "somebody’s opinion of what the Quran said," though it has become a focal point for making Muslims "appear as disparaging individuals," Nelson said.

"Frankly, I think everybody wishes ‘Appendix 3’ was never written," Nelson said.

All right, Nelson. But do any Muslims in Oregon or elsewhere believe what is written in Appendix 3? Would you yourself have had any problem with it if it hadn't started receiving bad publicity?

The A-Q boys have another job opening. "U.S. nabs al-Qaida Web site producer," from MSNBC, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Web site run by al-Qaida in Iraq was strangely quiet during the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution. There were no threats against voters, no boasts of disrupting the vote.

And now we know one reason why. A top propaganda agent for al-Qaida in Iraq, known as Abu Dijana, was captured shortly before the vote, according to the U.S. military. Abu Dijana was responsible for much of what has appeared on the Web site called "al-Qaida in Iraq," including provocative videos of suicide bombings and crucial communications to al-Qaida fighters.

Here is how the al-Qaida Web site works: On any given day in Baghdad, Baquba, or any of a dozen cities, a suicide car bomb explodes. The target is an American convoy, local Iraqi police or perhaps civilians exiting a mosque. Within minutes, a report is sent out by news services like The Associated Press and MSNBC.com. But, the news also circulates on a fascinating and, some would say, disturbing Web site operated by al-Qaida.

The "al-Qaida in Iraq" Web site immediately takes "credit" for the bombing. In one typical case, just three hours after an attack, the site showed video of a man identified as the suicide bomber Abu Musab al-Iraqi, who says, "I have dreamed about this moment. I am sure if my family is watching this they will be more proud of me."

Musab's words are followed by a video of a car he is said to be driving, blowing up in the midst of an American convoy. The incident is replayed again and again with more of Musab's speech superimposed over the ball of flames and smoke rising above the U.S. convoy. "Thank God this day I went to kill many crusaders." His declaration ends, "Today I will be in heaven."

What's this? Terrorist cells among Muslims in the United States? Never fear: I'm sure that Ibrahim Hooper and his team at CAIR are hard at work on this right now, working hand-in-glove with American authorities to find these extremists and making it clear in no uncertain terms that such behavior is not compatible with Islam.

What's that? They're doing nothing of the kind? They're focused almost exclusively on backlash attacks against Muslims, real and trumped-up? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? From WND, with thanks to Cindy:

JERUSALEM – Hamas has cells inside the United States that are technically capable of attacking the country, terrorism experts and senior security officials told WorldNetDaily.

The officials were responding to a WND exclusive interview last week in which Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Zahar warned President Bush's actions in the Middle East are "placing America in danger."

"We have information Hamas agents have been on U.S. soil the past few years and that the group may currently have up to 100 agents operating inside America," said an FBI counterterrorism agent in New York speaking on condition of anonymity since he is not authorized to talk to the media.

The comments reaffirm testimony to the U.S. Senate this past February in which FBI Director Robert Mueller stated, "Although it would be a major strategic shift for Hamas, its United States network is theoretically capable of facilitating acts of terrorism in the United States."

Jihad leader Shamil Basayev, who has made it clear that he is fighting for his "Faith," has announced that 217 warriors of jihad are responsible for the assault in Nalchik last Thursday: "Shamil Basayev: 'Nalchik attacked by 217 Mujahideen,'" from the jihadist Kavkaz Center site, with thanks to Zalbion:

Bismillahi-Rahmani-Rahim! (In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful!)

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds, Who made us Muslims and blessed us with Jihad on His Straight Path!

Peace and blessings to Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him), His Family, his disciples and all of those who follow him till the Judgement Day!

And then:

Almighty Allah (SWT) in the Holy Koran says: "Among the Believers are men who have been true to their covenant with Allah: of them some have died, and some (still) wait: but they have never changed (their determination) in the least." (The Allies, 23)

Alhamdulillah (Praise to God), by the mercy of Allah, Mujahideen of Kabardino-Balkarian sector of the Caucasian Front have carried out large-scale assault operation against the Russian invaders and their henchmen in the city of Nalchik on 13 October, 2005.

217 Mujahideen participated in the assault operation, who at 9:14 a.m. simultaneously stormed 15 military objects of all power structures of KB in territory of city...

During the assault operation more 300 (about 140 killed and more than 160 wounded) kafirs [unbelievers] and minafiqs [hypocrites] were eliminated and wounded, mainly newly arrived Special Forces members. Three halicopters and a few units of military hardware were destroyed, war booty captured.

Exactly after 2 hours at 11:15 a.m. the main units of Mujahideen left the city.

Our casulties – 41 Shaheeds [marytrs], insha Allah [Allah willing].

He concludes these holy musings with "Victory or Paradise!"

European essayist Wolfgang Bruno discusses the necessity of derailing Europe's path to Eurabia and related matters:

The most important task in the fight against Islamic Jihad is to reunite the West in the defense of its own civilization, which can only happen by derailing Europe's path to Eurabia. Raphael Israeli has suggested an Alliance of Western and Democratic States, at the center of which will be the US, Canada, Israel, Australia and Western Europe. This system may sidetrack the chaotic situation in the UN today, where Islamic countries and dictatorships have too much influence. It would probably also presuppose scrapping the EU in its present form. This alliance should maintain amiable relations with the Russians. Russia under Putin is hardly a model democracy, and its own Great Power ambitions may sometimes make it an unpredictable ally. However, the Russians will probably end up on the right side in the struggle against Islam, in the interest of self-preservation if nothing else. With collapsing non-Muslim birth rates and significant Muslim minorities, the survival of Russian culture is at stake. The alliance should also forge ties with non-Western democracies.

Robert Spencer has called India our partner against Jihad, and suggests that India can and should be working side-by-side with us in this great struggle for freedom and human rights. Democratic India, which has suffered from Jihad for centuries, is in many ways our natural ally. It does, however, also have its problems. Historian N.S. Rajaram has explained how the wounds inflicted by centuries of Islamic rule on a large segment of the Indian intelligentsia and the political class have been so debilitating that they continue to live in a state of constant fear. Muslims in India make up about 150 million people, and their growth rate exceeds those of Hindus and Sikhs. Combined with the populations of Bangladesh and Pakistan, non-Muslims could be a minority on the Indian subcontinent by mid-century. Muslims still consider India to be "unfinished business", which is why the Saudi royal family has cleared plans to construct 4,500 Islamic madrasas in South Asia. This dhimmi-fear of Islamic unrest explains why non-Muslim India was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie's book "the Satanic Verses." It is important that Indians get to know the full scale of Islamic atrocities on their continent, through books such as "Negationism in India - Concealing the record of Islam" by Koenraad Elst and "Indian Muslims - Who Are They" by K.S. Lal.

Thai jihad update: 76-year-old Buddhist monk's throat slit. And the man who did it no doubt thinks he has done a great thing for God. From Reuters, with thanks to Tom:

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim militants killed a Buddhist monk and two teenage boys and set fire to a temple in Thailand's restive south, police said on Sunday, in separatist violence that has claimed more than 900 lives.

The militants who attacked the Buddhist temple in the southern Pattani province late on Saturday had slit the 76-year-old monk's throat, said a police report obtained by Reuters.

The charred bodies of the two teenagers were found in the temple, said the report which did not give details.

A Buddhist farmer was beheaded on Friday, the second decapitation since the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began and 12th in 21 months of unrest in the region.

Why? See Qur'an 47:4.

I get hate messages frequently, and over the months have posted some of the most instructive and entertaining ones here. I recently heard from one of the most persistent and factually challenged attack dogs out there chronicling my misdeeds on the Internet, accusing me of publishing "Maoist polemics" at Jihad Watch. So it was refreshing to get the message below from a Jihad Watch reader named Patrick, who kindly allowed me to reprint his email here. Of course, as Chairman Mao say, when man get too big for britches, only britches remain, but I appreciated Patrick's references here to my reliance on the facts, contrary to the characterizations of my work by unhinged Internet pests and others. Also note the confirmation here of my repeated insistence that the resistance to jihad is not a liberal or conservative issue, but a human rights issue:

Mr. Spencer,

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your work. The book you
edited, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, was a real eye opener for me. I must admit to having previously belonged to the leftist, PC crowd of Islam-supporters, primarily because I didn't know anything about Islam, and because I believed anti-Islam rhetoric was largely the product of Fundamentalist Christians with an agenda.

And yet, when I read The Myth of Islamic Tolerance (and I am currently reading your Islam Unveiled), I found no anti-Islamic rhetoric at all. Despite what your detractors say, you aren't remotely ignorant, racist, or bigoted. One of the things that impresses me the most about your work is that you allow the muftis and imams themselves the opportunity to speak. In The Myth of Islamic Tolerance you and the other essayists quote the Koran, Hadith, and articles from Islamic legal scholars directly. You allow the reader to draw his own conclusions, and believe me, speaking as one of your readers, I have.

I am still a very progressive minded individual, and my views on health care, the environment, and social justice have not changed. Actually, it shouldn’t be surprising that a liberal would be critical of Islam, after all, we would never tolerate in our own countries the appalling human rights abuses that are going on in Sharia states. And yet I have been pigeonholed as a right-wing extremist among some of my liberal acquaintances merely because I suggested that little girls shouldn’t be married off and raped nightly by old men, that non-Muslims in Sharia states shouldn’t be treated as second class citizens, and that a Muslim should have the right to renounce his religion without being executed. I may have mentioned something or other how its wrong for a wife to be abused by her husband, for a gay person to be killed merely for what he is, or for a woman to be stripped naked and whipped because she showed some ankle.

I thank you for your work, for your courage and your candor.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir attempts to circumvent Britain's new anti-terror laws by recruiting in the guise of a group fighting "Islamophobia." This is a clear illustration of the fact that charges of "Islamophobia" are all too often just a cover for jihadists and jihad apologists. "‘Stealth’ Islamists recruit students," from the Times Online, with thanks to Twostellas:

AN ISLAMIC organisation facing a ban under terrorism laws has launched a campaign to recruit university students using an anti-racist front organisation.

An undercover Sunday Times investigation has established that the party, Hizb ut-Tahrir, has been recruiting under the name Stop Islamophobia at University College London (UCL), the School of African and Oriental Studies, Luton University and other institutions.

Hizb ut-Tahrir wants to establish a transnational state governed by Islamic law. It is reported to have thousands of members in Britain. One member said suicide bombers in Israel would go “straight to heaven”.

It was formerly led in Britain by Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical preacher who referred to the September 11 hijackers as the “Magnificent 19”. Bakri left the party in 1996 and went on to set up Al-Muhajiroun, which is also facing proscription.

In August Tony Blair said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, which urged Muslims not to vote in the election, would be outlawed. The party has been proscribed in much of the Middle East and in Germany, where it is appealing against a ban for distributing anti-semitic literature. The party denies being anti-Jewish or supporting violence....

The report said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, which recruited openly on campuses until earlier this year, “has issued a number of anti-semitic statements. Furthermore, it is anti-Hindu (because of the war in Kashmir), anti-Sikh, homophobic, anti-feminist and resentful of the West’s influence on Islam.”...

At UCL the group was not recruiting directly at the freshers’ fair but members of the college’s Muslim Media Forum wore Stop Islamophobia armbands. The reporter struck up a conversation with those manning the forum’s stall, expressing interest in Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Among them was Shazad Ali, a former UCL student. Ali, although not a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, offered to introduce the reporter to the group. He said it did not matter what name the party used to spread its philosophy.

Members had a duty to “spread their message, not their name”. Ali said: “You definitely can’t have (Jews) as close friends.” A few days later, at a human rights demonstration at the Uzbek embassy in London, Ali introduced the reporter to Thaqib Razaq, 18, an A-level pupil and a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Razaq, from Walthamstow, northeast London, described how he had asked a Hizb ut-Tahrir “sheikh”, a senior member, what would happen if he became a suicide bomber. He said the reply was: “I can strap a bomb to myself and kill as many people as I can. I’m going to die shahid (martyr) and go to jannah (heaven).”

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines the situation Israel faces as Mahmoud Abbas prepares to meet with President Bush:

"The Palestinian Authority at the weekend was carefully preparing its list of demands for Israel, optimistic that next week's summit between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and US President George W. Bush will result in renewed diplomatic pressure on the Jewish state." — from today's Jerusalem Newswire

Abbas' good behavior will last just as long as he needs to get the Israelis to retreat from their perfectly justified -- legally, morally, historically -- presence in the West Bank, just as he succeeded in doing in Gaza. Sharon, an obstinate and foolish man, has been made much of as a warrior but has never had the leisure to think clearly about the nature of the opposition to Israel. One wonders if he has even begun, or those who support him have even begun to understand that the deepest wellsprings of Arab hatred for Israel are clear: they come out of Islam, out of the absolute refusal to contemplate a permanent non-Muslim sovereignty within dar al-Islam.

Abbas's feigned sweet reason at this point is utterly transparent -- or should be to those who understand what the Middle East and Arab Muslims are all about. Imagine not Abbas, but someone still more plausible and soothing in manner -- say, Sari Nusseibeh. And imagine a visit by Nusseibeh to Yad Vashem (god, how the supposed "supporters" of Israel in the West, many of them simply too lazy to learn about Islam, would eat that up), and all sorts of cosmetic gestures.

The grim fact remains: Israel is dealing not with a moral question. Morally, historically, legally, Israel has a perfect right to hold onto all of the territories it captured in the 1967 war of defense (including Gaza, which it has now voluntarily relinquished). This is true given the numbers of wars it has had to fight, given the terms of the Palestine Mandate itself, given the mistreatment of Jews who were first exiled, and then maltreated wherever they lived, and not only in Europe, but -- which keeps being overlooked -- throughout the Muslim lands, where they endured lives of humiliation, degradation, and insecurity, despite all the propaganda about the "convivencia" in Spain, and the wonders of Haroun al-Raschid, and the sanitized view of the Ottoman treatment of the dhimmi.

Now that the jihadists have won in Gaza, the West Bank jihad begins to heat up with the courageous drive-by murders of hitchhikers. "3 killed, 5 wounded in back-to-back terror attacks," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to ZK, who sent this in from his home three minutes from the site of one of these attacks. Please pray for his safety and that of his neighbors.

Three Israelis were killed and five were wounded in two back-to-back shooting attacks along Highway 60, a north-south route in the West Bank, on Sunday afternoon.

Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigades – linked to the ruling Fatah Party – claimed responsibility for both attacks in anonymous phones calls. The attacks occured as Israeli security services were on high alert ahead of the week-long Succot holiday, which begins Monday night.

In the first shooting, Palestinians in a passing Subaru sprayed bullets at a group of people waiting for rides at the hitchhiking post near the Gush Etzion Junction in Judea, between Bethlehem and Hebron.

The highway is jointly used by Israelis and Palestinians.

Three victims were fatally shot and another four were wounded, one of them seriously, two moderately, and one lightly. Eyewitnesses described blood-spattered backpacks strewn haphazardly at the busy intersection.

All of the victims of the Gush Etzion shooting were evacuated by ambulance to Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, except for one lightly wounded victim who was transported Shaare Zedek, ZAKA medics reported.

Less than an hour later, passengers in a Hyundai opened fire at two residents of the settlement Eli as they walked on the shoulder of the highway near the Eli Junction in the Benyamin region, north of Jerusalem.

Some veteran anti-Communists in America actually support this Russian jihad; they're still fighting the last war. Meanwhile, even the Russians themselves, with their support for Iran, don't seem to recognize the implications of what is going on. From the Times Online, with thanks to all who sent this in:

THE diehard gang of Muslim extremists responsible for last week’s attack on the southern Russian city of Nalchik consisted mainly of local militants intent on creating a strict Islamic state independent of Moscow, according to security sources in the region.

The disclosure that the gunmen were not sent from the war-torn republic of Chechnya but belonged to a group from Kabardino-Balkaria, the Russian republic of which Nalchik is the capital, will be of great concern to the Kremlin.

It provides alarming evidence that far from dying down — as claimed by President Vladimir Putin — the bloody Chechen conflict is spreading.

“Most of the militants who were killed and those caught alive are local,” said an officer with the Nalchik anti-terrorism police unit. “ The ferocity of the attacks has shocked the city.”

The onslaught, which turned the town of 280,000 into a war zone, was the most daring raid by pro-Chechen Islamic militants since last year’s Beslan school siege in which 330 hostages were killed. It came less than a month before parliamentary elections in Chechnya, hailed by Putin as evidence that the region is becoming stable.

Sharia alert from Gulf News, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Tehran: An Iranian woman has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, local media reported on Saturday.

The woman, named only as Soghra, was found guilty of having an affair with her husband's friend, the Etemad daily reported on Saturday.

She was also given a separate 15-year jail sentence for helping her lover kill her husband.

Death for adultery, 15 years for murder. Got it.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald profiles supreme eurodhimmi Chris Patten, who in an interview several days ago reiterated his determination to bring Turkey into the EU:

Chris Patten is an awful man. His pronouncements on the world, and especially on Islam and the Middle East, need to be displayed, laid out for all to see, and ridiculed for what they reveal about his understanding of men and events.

Despite his self-evident clownishness, he has been made Chancellor of Oxford. This is intolerable. What's next -- giving Cornel West a professorship at Princeton? Giving Jeffery Sachs his own "World Institute"? Letting Clinton parade around with his "Clinton Global Initiative"? Giving the Lannan Prize to a "Palestinian" propagandist in verse named Mahmoud Darwish?

The London Library has been opened to non-readers to lounge, chew gum, play music. Oxford itself permitted a business school, the Said School of Business, to sully the atmosphere. There goes the neighborhood, from the meadows of Magdalen to Holywell Manor.

And now Chris Patten is attempting in his criminally negligent way to force Turkey, and 80 million Muslims, down the throat of Europe.

How do you think they carry out this recruitment? Do you think they appeal to the Qur'an and Sunnah and try to convince young Muslims that they have a religious responsibility to wage war for Islam? And what are the implications of that?

From the TimesOnline, :

THE head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has established a new terror network in Britain which is recruiting young Muslim fanatics to fight coalition troops.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has recently set up the group to recruit and train would-be suicide bombers and gunmen, counter-terrorism officials have said.

The new group, Ansar al-Fath — Partisans of Victory — is an offshoot of Ansar al-Islam, an organisation that is to be banned under new anti-terror rules announced by Charles Clarke, the home secretary, last week.

Ansar al-Fath provides logistical support to foreign fighters in Iraq and uses the internet to find new recruits for Zarqawi.

Government officials say a “steady trickle” of about 70 young Muslim men have travelled to Iraq from Britain in the past two years.

They warn that some newly trained “professional jihadists” have returned here and may be planning attacks.

Michelle Malkin (thanks to JE) discusses, in light of the Hinrichs case in Oklahoma, a phenomenon I have noted here and on many occasions at Jihad Watch:

Now, many of my readers wonder why the MSM won't touch the strange and troubling story of the University of Oklahoma bomber, Joel Henry Hinrichs III. On Oct. 1, Hinrichs died on a park bench outside the school's packed football stadium when a homemade bomb in his possession exploded. The Justice Department has sealed a search warrant in the case. The university's president, David Boren, is pooh-poohing local media and Internet blog reports of possible jihadist influences on Hinrichs. The dead bomber was, we are being told, simply a depressed and troubled young man with "no known ties" to terrorism.

Never mind that, according to local news reporters, the bomb-making material found in Hinrichs' apartment was triacetone triperoxide – the explosive chemical of choice of shoe bomber Richard Reid and the London 7-7 subway bombers.

Never mind the local police department's confirmation that Hinrichs had attempted to buy ammonium nitrate a few days before his death.

Never mind the concerns of Oklahoma University student journalist Rachael Kahne, who told me this week in a call for the media's help:

"I've been working on this story since the night it happened and have been stonewalled at every turn. ... Minutes after the explosion, police busted into a student's apartment and arrested four Muslim students who were there for a small gathering (the president of the Muslim Student Association assures me this was in no way a 'party').

"Among those arrested [and later released] was Fazal Cheema, Joel Henry Hinrichs' Pakistani roommate. I was baffled when I heard this. I didn't know how police would be able to identify who Hinrichs was, where he lived, who his roommate was, and then find where his roommate was in a matter of minutes. Something isn't adding up, and I've been wracking my brain for the past week trying to figure out what happened here. OU isn't saying anything more than the typical PR spin, and the FBI won't talk."

Nothing to see here. Move along. Islam is a peaceful religion. Stop asking so many damned questions.

Such is the attitude of the national media, which seems to believe that 'tis better to live in ignorance and indulge in hindsight later than to offend the gods of political correctness.

A sober assessment from Caroline Glick (thanks to Sue):

On a simplistic level, the strategic environment that has emerged since Israel's withdrawal exposes the lie behind the government's euphemism for the move. There is no such thing as "disengagement" from an enemy that remains at war with you. The question is, now that Israel has lost all deterrent power over Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, and the international border has turned into a terrorist freeway to Israel's heartland, when will the government begin to reckon with the new threats to Israel's security that have emerged?

Read it all.

Islamic peace and tolerance update from Holland, via the TimesOnline, with thanks to RB:

HOLLAND’S Muslims have responded with outrage to government proposals to ban the burqa, and there are fears that Rita Verdonk, the minister behind the move, will be added to a list of “enemies of Islam” targeted for assassination.

The country was on high alert yesterday after talk of a burqa ban coincided with the arrest of a group suspected of planning to murder two politicians....

One of those arrested was Samir Azzouz, a 19-year-old of Moroccan origin, who in April was acquitted of charges of planning to attack Amsterdam airport and blow up a nuclear reactor. A spokeswoman for Verdonk acknowledged concerns that other supporters of Van Gogh’s killer might have added her name to the hit list.

Much as it breaks my heart that Sheikh Tantawi, who has blessed suicide terrorism, has suspended cooperation between Al-Azhar and American institutions, I think in this case American officials should imitate Tantawi. That's right: imitate him. Instead of sending two billion a year to our putative Egyptian ally, make that aid contingent on Egypt's ceasing to teach violent jihad in its schools and mosques, and granting to Coptic Christians full equality of rights. And if they don't, suspend all cooperation.

From IslamOnline, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

CAIRO, October 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, the highest seat of religious learning in the Sunni world, has decided to shun American officials and freeze cooperation with all US institutions after Washington denied one of its senior officials an entry visa.

"Grand Imam Sheikh Mohammad Sayyed Tantawi decided to ban US officials from entering the headquarter of Al Azhar Sheikhdom in Cairo suspended cooperation with official American institutions," well-placed sources told IslamOnline.net on Saturday, October 15.

"He also decided not to send Al-Azhar scholars to the US in the future even if Washington granted them entry," they added.

After weeks of procrastination, the US Embassy in Cairo refused to give Sheikh Abdul Hamid Al-Atrash, the head of Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, an entry visa, giving no reasons.

Sheikh Tantawi had nominated the prominent scholar to give lectures and sermons at a number of American Islamic centers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The United States requested this year 22 imams and preachers to meet the religious needs of the Muslim minority during the dawn-to-dusk month.

Renewed Crisis

Although there was no immediate comment from the American embassy, sources expected American diplomats to apologize for Sheikh Tantawi and eventually give Al-Atrash the visa.

D.C. Watson examines the UN's attempts to take over the Internet:

While the United States houses, and provides much of the funding for the United Nations' annual budget, that just doesn't seem to be enough.

The U.N., with many of its own problems, such as astonishing corruption, is now being touted by the European Union as a candidate to control the Internet.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19846

From the column:

Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.

Well then, why don't these countries go right ahead and build their own and see how they do?

And, you'll never guess who else likes the idea of the U.S. giving up control of the net:

The EU plan was applauded by states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, leading the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt to express misgivings on his weblog: "It seems as if the European position has been hijacked by officials that have been driven by interests that should not be ours."

So let's see if we understand this. The United States created, funded, developed, and marketed the Internet, yet we’re "hijacking" it? Is there no end to the asinine statements these creatures will make? If that's the case, then I guess I hijacked my own lawnmower yesterday. I cut the grass with it and wouldn't let anyone else push it. The safety of the American people comes first. And since some of these bottom feeders have websites they use to recruit Muslim terrorists and possibly do some illegal Internet banking money transfers from Islamic charities, the United States needs to have its hands on the controls. What would these countries do if they had the control?

Bill Petersen at Faith Freedom (thanks to JE) recounts a particularly successful media appearance by my old friend Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR, relating to CAIR's successful intimidation campaign against Boeing:

For anyone that had the misfortune of witnessing the Tucker Carlson “interview” with CAIR mouthpiece Ibrahim Hooper on MSNBC Tuesday night, several things were readily apparent. To the uninformed, naïve middle-American, it should now be obvious not to expect any mercy from the proponents of the “most merciful Allah”. But to those of us burdened with greater insight into the Islamic hate machine, this exposition served as yet another reminder that CAIR’s vision of “American-Islamic Relations” amounts to nothing more than unconditional dhimmitude here in the USA. The CAIR-free days of years past are indeed a distant memory.

Carlson’s brief segment dealt with CAIR’s recent uproar over a recent Boeing print ad featuring their Osprey aircraft “attacking” a fictitious mosque. Pathetically, Boeing has apologized and retracted the ad in response to the deafening Muslim whining. Hooper’s unbridled arrogance in suggesting that Boeing must now investigate and find introspection regarding its motives had Carlson’s (and my) blood well beyond the boiling point. Over and over again, Carlson demanded that Hooper answer one simple question: What is the bigger crime, Boeing’s ad or the fact that Muslim insurgents are using mosques as military strongholds? Yet time after time, Hooper dodged, weaved and denied that any such practice exists, even in the face of hard evidence delivered by the increasingly agitated host. Class, you have just completed a crash course in “Islamic Deceit and Arrogance 101” delivered to your television in a bite-sized 5-minute package.

Read it all.

Rice was unable to convince Putin yesterday not to do this. Do the Russians not know or not care that the Iranians and their Chechen enemies hold to the same ideology? They may find that this neo-Cold War arming of the mujahedin against the West may backfire on them. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Daryl:

Former members of the Russian military have been secretly helping Iran to acquire technology needed to produce missiles capable of striking European capitals.

The Russians are acting as go-betweens with North Korea as part of a multi-million pound deal they negotiated between Teheran and Pyongyang in 2003. It has enabled Teheran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia.

Western intelligence officials believe that the technology will enable Iran to complete development of a missile with a range of 2,200 miles, capable of hitting much of Europe. It is designed to carry a 1.2-ton payload, sufficient for a basic nuclear device.

The revelation raises the stakes in the confrontation between Iran's Islamic regime and the West - led by the United States and European countries including Britain.

He says he was with Al-Qaeda. It now seems that he just has a grandiose streak, and perhaps a tenuous connection to reality. But does he hold to the ideology of Al-Qaeda? And do others in America as well? Would he have eventually acted upon those convictions? Can the U.S. afford to gamble that he wouldn't? "Kenyan faces charges for Arch bomb threat: Told police he was with al-Qaida," from the Belleville News-Democrat, with thanks to Cindy:

A Kenyan immigrant who claimed to be a member of the terrorist group Al Qaida faces federal charges after federal agents say he threatened to bomb the Gateway Arch.

Federal agents later dismissed in court any association between the man and the terrorist group. And the man, Micah A. Akumu, told agents after his arrest that he had made up the story.

Akumu, 18, was arraigned Tuesday in federal court on charges of threatening use of weapons of mass destruction and threatening use of a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. property.

Akumu first came to the attention of police when he was arrested in Collinsville for possession of a stolen vehicle on Sept. 2. He later conveyed the bomb threats to police and told them he was a member of Al Qaida.

Akumu told police he placed two bombs, each the size of a cell phone, at the Adam's Mark Hotel in St. Louis, where he had been staying, and that he was sent here "to bring weapons to people to use in blowing up the Arch," the indictment stated.

Akumu also told agents he delivered four bombs to unidentified persons to blow up the Arch.

A search of Akumu's hotel room uncovered no explosives.

Akumu, who received political asylum when he came to the U.S. in 1999, later told agents he made the whole thing up to speed his deportation to Kenya....

On April 11, Akumu was arrested in San Antonio for retail theft. He told FBI agents that he threatened to bomb La Miranda High School in Anaheim, Calif., because he didn't like the principal.

Akumu further told agents he planned to hijack a Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis to London.

The author of a novel entitled The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris, which may be closer to coming true than most people realize or would like to admit. "Window on Eurasia: Russian Novelist Does 'Not Want to Live in a Moscow Caliphate,'" from the UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, with thanks to Ruth King:

Elena Chudinova, the author of the already notorious dystopian novel "The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris," says that she would rather live in a Russia controlled and garrisoned by the Americans than in a Moscow where the Russian Federation's own Muslims have established a caliphate.

In an interview published in the current issue of "Politicheskiy zhurnal," Chudinova said that if Russia were occupied by the Americans – something which she does not like to contemplate -- she and other Russians "would again compose anecdotes, start up samizdat – and live just as we did under Soviet power" (http://religare.ru&print21594.htm) [Note: link doesn't seem to be working -- RS].

But if the Muslims were to succeed in establishing their own rule in Moscow, she continued, then Russian culture, Russians as a people and Russia itself would cease to exist. And because that danger is not unthinkable, she said, she had written her novel calling for a struggle against what she says is the Islamic threat to the Christian world....

The former children’s book writer insisted that recent events in Europe and elsewhere had proven once and for all that "a dialogue between our civilizations [Christian and Muslim] was impossible," and that all attempts to promote it, however well-intentioned, were doomed to complete and total failure....

Muslims, she insisted, even moderate ones like the Tatars and Bashkirs, increasingly are drawn to radicalism by the Internet, an institution that has undermined traditional Islam and give the radicals the chance to propagate their views and win over those Muslims who had opposed them.

She added that the Russian Empire had been much too tolerant of its Muslim subjects and had allowed them "freedom" of religious belief, a tragic mistake for which the Russian writer said contemporary Russians are now "paying for and one she implied should be corrected by a much harsher policy now against the country's Muslim citizens.

Russians as a cultural community must defend themselves, she insisted, by defending their culture and, together with other Christian nations, fighting off the Islamic challenge that threatens the Russian world and the Christian West.

Doing so will not be easy, Chudinova said, because only a relatively tiny share of Russians are in fact committed Orthodox Christians. But at the same time, she indicated that a committed minority could make all the difference, winning over the country's intellectuals and thus putting Muslims on the defensive.

At the end of her interview, Chudinova ringingly asserted that for her "only one thing is important: I read Dostoyevskiy and listen to Rachmaninov and I want people living fifty years from now [to do the same]. I speak Russian and I want them to speak it too," something she said that could be guaranteed only by struggling against Muslims now.

"I won't worry even if I'm to be executed as I have dedicated myself to bringing about an Islamic revolution across the globe." Across the globe, mind you, not just in Bangladesh. "Bangla radicals plan to carry more serial blasts after Ramadan," from ANI, with thanks to Nicolei:

Jama'atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), the two radical outfits that have been blamed for the serial blasts in Bangladesh are planning to carry out more blasts across the country after the holy month of Ramadan.

Kawser Alam Sumon, a 27-year JMB leader who was caught in Netrakona town round midnight Wednesday, said, that he received calls from JMB chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman to get prepared for carrying on another round of bomb attacks after Ramadan.

"Two or three days ago, our chief Shaikh Abdur Rahman called me on my mobile phone and asked me get prepared for carrying out another round of bomb attacks at the end of Ramadan," a police official quoted Sumon, as saying.

Officials said that Sumon had also confessed of having co-ordinated the August 17 blasts in Netrakona, Kishoreganj and Mymensingh districts on the directives of Abdur Rahman.

They said that the raid on his brother in law's house, from where he was arrested, also led to the seizure of video cassettes containing footage of Afghan and Chechen wars and speeches of Osama bin Laden. Sumon's mobile phone was also recovered during the raid.

Officials said that Sumon's sister Beauty (22) was also held for suspected links to militancy. She has admitted to being a member of JMB, they said.

Sumon, who has now been place on a seven-day remand by a Netrakona Court, said that his younger brother Zakaria Alam Dipon was also a member of the JMB, reports The Daily Star.

"I won't worry even if I'm to be executed as I have dedicated myself to bringing about an Islamic revolution across the globe," an investigator quoted Sumon as saying.

The Gaza-Withdrawal-Has-Brought-Peace-In-Our-Time Update from Ynet News, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

A Qassam rocket which failed to detonate upon landing was found south of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Negev ranch on Saturday morning. The rocket was found 250 meters from the gravesite of the prime minister's wife, Lili. IDF sappers said the rocket was fired three ago at the Western Negev, during the last round of rocket fire at southern Israel from Gaza.

Say Islam is a religion of peace, or we'll kill you. "The protesters have given the church a week to apologise and dismiss its priest." And what will happen if they don't? "Egypt Muslims protest 'offensive' play," from Al-Jazeera, with thanks to Susan:

About 3000 Muslims have protested angrily outside a Coptic Christian church in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, charging that a drama that was presented in the church was offensive to Islam.

City authorities dispatched about 200 police to St Gergis church in the Muharram Bec neighbourhood in Alexandria on Friday to keep the demonstrators from entering and disrupting the play.

The production features a poor Christian university student who converts to Islam when a group of Muslim men promise him much-needed money.

When he becomes disenchanted with his decision, the men threaten him with physical violence to prevent him from returning to his original faith.

DVDs of the performance, entitled I Was Blind But Now I Can See, were being distributed by Coptic Christians, who make up about 10% of Egypt's population of 70 million.

Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, a Muslim in Alexandria, said that he had watched a recording of the play and found it "offending".

The protesters have given the church a week to apologise and dismiss its priest, Aljazeera's correspondent in Egypt said.

Captain James Yee is asking the Pentagon to apologize for treating him so badly. And maybe they should. After all, I noted in December 2003 that the prosecution in his case was asking for more time to determine whether or not the documents he was carrying out of Guantanamo were really classified at all -- after he had been arrested for carrying classified documents. If this was just bungling, the Pentagon should indeed own up to it; they've shown every readiness to acknowledge other missteps.

But when the charges against Yee were dismissed, as noted here in March 2004, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo, said that the government was dropping the charges because there were "national security concerns that would arise from the release of the evidence." Hardly a ringing exoneration of Yee.

I realize that those same national security concerns may prevent any disclosure of any more information about Yee, but here again, as with the case of Tariq Ramadan, the government's silence about why it has acted the way it has only gives a propaganda opportunity to those who oppose resistance to the global jihad in a larger sense.

From IslamOnline, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

WASHINGTON, October 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Captain James Yee is asking the Pentagon to apologize for putting him through what he called a "gross miscarriage of justice", after he was accused of spying and was thrown in solitary confinement for 76 days, only to be cleared of all charges.

Yee, 37, who was sent to Guantanamo on November 5, 2002 to serve as chaplain to Muslim detainees and soldiers, left handcuffed in September 2003, only ten months after arriving, and was held in maximum security until October 24, where he wore hand and leg irons when he left his cell.

"My experience had taught me how little cultural understanding of Islam most military leaders had," Yee, who changed his name to Youssef after reverting to Islam in 1990, wrote in a recently released 240-page book, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I am a soldier, a citizen, and a patriot. But in the eyes of a suspicious, misguided minority who have lost touch with America's national inclusiveness, above all else I am a Muslim.

"There are times when I fear that my ordeal simply stemmed from the fact that I am one of 'them' - a Muslim," he wrote.

His knowledge of Arabic, his praying and his denunciation of mistreatment of the Noble Qur'an by some soldiers fed the suspicions against him and other Muslim soldiers, according to AFP.

With jihadists attacking only five polling sites. Beyond the voting itself, however, the question looms of what kind of society the victors will establish, and whether or not they will be able to sustain their victory in the face of certain and sustained violence from the adherents of Sharia and members of rival groups. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Iraq's deeply divided Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds voted under heavy guard Saturday to decide the fate of a new constitution aimed at establishing democracy after more than two decades of Saddam Hussein's repressive rule.

A day that U.S. and Iraqi leaders feared could turn bloody turned out to be the most peaceful in months.

Insurgents attacked five of Baghdad's 1,200 polling stations with shootings and bombs, wounding seven voters. But the only deaths were those of three Iraqi soldiers in a roadside bomb far from a polling site, and there were no major attacks reported as U.S. and Iraqi forces clamped down with major security measures around balloting sites.

The United States hopes the constitution will be approved so Iraqis can form a permanent, representative government and secure the country so Washington can start withdrawing its 150,000 troops.

In the south, Shiite women in head-to-toe veils and men emerged from the poll stations flashing victory signs with fingers stained with purple ink, apparently responding in mass to the call by their top cleric to support the charter.

But in Sunni areas in Baghdad and several key heavily Sunni provinces, a surprisingly high turnout in some areas seemed to consist largely of Iraqis voting "no" because of fears the new constitution would mean setting in stone the Shiite domination they fear.

"The fights began after Muslim residents objected to the staging of a Hindu religious ceremony in a Muslim-dominated area. That angered many Hindus, who tried to stop the Muslims from using loudspeakers during Friday prayers." From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

Clashes between Hindu and Muslim residents in a northern Indian town have killed at least three people and injured 28 others.

The authorities imposed a curfew on the town of Mau after the clashes erupted on Friday, but violence continued on Saturday in some areas, said Alok Sinha, a senior Home Ministry official in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

The fights began after Muslim residents objected to the staging of a Hindu religious ceremony in a Muslim-dominated area.

That angered many Hindus, who tried to stop the Muslims from using loudspeakers during Friday prayers, and the clashes followed, Sinha said.

Both groups threw stones at each other and used iron rods, knives and other sharp-edged weapons as they fought for nearly two hours, Sinha said.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines the problem at the top:

She's a striver, is Condoleeza Rice, and never had the leisure to study much outside of her academic area, Soviet studies. And as her appearance last summer on Russian television shows, she never even learned very much Russian.

There are others like her, others who were on the right side, the Richard-Pipes-Adam-Ulam right side, of Soviet studies. But apparently you can't teach quite a number of these old dogs new tricks. They just can't be bothered to study Islam. They assume that it really is "just a religion" and that it cannot possibly inculcate what in fact it inculcates -- murderous hostility to all Infidels, and a view of the universe that depends entirely on uncompromising hostility of Believers for Infidels, and the need to spread dar al-Islam until it covers the earth. She simply can't believe that that could be. She has no familiarity with the considerable literature on the subject.

Soviet Communism lasted 70 years, not 1350 years. Soviet Communism could easily be held up to ridicule: its failures were just too obvious. There is not much way, in Islam, to prove to people that the problems of Muslims are the result of Islam itself -- at least not as long as no one even points that out, and as long as Infidels continue to supply a kind of indulgent jizya (foreign aid), and as long as Muslims all over the world can get away with -- murder, as they do.

It is asking too much, apparently, of too many, to suggest that the ways in which Soviet Communism imposed itself on Russians were nowhere near as effective and totalitarian as the ways in which Islam manages to impinge upon the consciousnesses of Muslims, to hold them in thrall. Even when they have their doubts, they learn to keep those doubts silent, or even when they do not keep those doubts silent, many still insist on defending Islam out of filial piety, embarrassment, or loyalty to the idea of Arabdom, or Uruba. The hold is extraordinary.

From Kathy Shaidle at Relapsed Catholic:

"The scholar said since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, one book against Islam is published every day".

Wow! Books! Every day, no less. Is one Muslim being killed every day by Christian or Buddhist terrorists? Are mosques being torched? Nope, but... books are being written!

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explains why government funding of mosques in France and other attempts to "integrate" the Islamic community there are ill-conceived:

Some French localities are funding the building of mosques, hoping to foster “integration.” But "integration" is not the answer. It is merely the last desperate attempt to avoid looking steadily at the tenets of Islam, the teachings of Islam, the history of Islam and of Muslim treatment, through time and space, over 1350 years, from Spain to East Asia, of non-Muslims.

This kind of "integration" (which Sarkozy apparently supports, and shows that despite his merits compared to what rules France now, he has his limits) merely delays the day of recognition. That grim anagnorosis had better not be a Shock of Recognition -- a recognition of what large numbers of Muslims necessarily means for Infidels and the Infidel nation-state -- at a time when it is too late. Projects of integration may sooth things over for a time, but in the end, the few Muslims who were likely to leave Islam will leave it, and meanwhile the French state will merely be spending money that, while it may relegate the more obviously sinister clerics to the sidelines, will never silence them. They will not be silenced because what they say is exactly what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. The texts are on their side.

If this is true, it is a refreshingly different stance from the White House; maybe things really are beginning to change. However, it was quite recently that the Bush White House moved to delay actions against Saudi Arabia for its restrictions on religious freedom, while the revelations here are from two years ago -- so put away your party hats and kazoos. Nevertheless, this may indicate that there is more awareness within the Administration of the real sources of the jihad problem than has been clear from its recent actions.

From the New York Times, with thanks to JE:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 - Two months before the invasion of Iraq, President Bush told Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he "wanted to go beyond Iraq" in dealing with the spread of illicit weapons and mentioned Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on a list of countries posing particular problems, according to notes taken by one of Mr. Blair's advisers cited in a new book.

Mr. Bush's comment, in a private telephone conversation on Jan. 30, 2003, could be significant because it appeared to add Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to a list that previously had included public mentions only of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, which the president had called an "axis of evil."

The comment is reported in an American edition of "Lawless World," by Philippe Sands, a professor at University College, London, and a practicing lawyer. An earlier edition of the book, published in Britain in February, included details from other prewar British government documents, but it did not include the detail from the Jan. 30 conversation. The British government has not questioned the authenticity of the documents described in the book....

The notes taken by Mr. Rycroft do not provide any indication of what Mr. Bush meant by including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan on the list of concern over so-called weapons of mass destruction, a review of the contents shows. The reference is confined to one sentence in a two-page document, which says that Mr. Bush "wanted to go beyond Iraq in dealing with WMD proliferation, mentioning in particular Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Pakistan."...

Saudis make another move to beat the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

The Arab Committee for the Defence of Journalists said Al Jazeera staff have complained that “the Saudi embassy in Doha, Qatar, has been refusing to give them any kind of transit or entry visas, including entry visas for (Muslim) pilgrimage,” in the past two years.

As the Ayatollah Khomeini said, "An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam." Sharia Alert and Future-Of-Europe Update from Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

TEHERAN — Iran’s new police chief has vowed to crack down on illicit alcohol, music CDs and parties where people of the opposite sex mingle, months after promising a policy which would respect people’s privacy.

“The crackdown will be on corruption centres where mixed parties are held and gangs distribute alcohol and CDs,” ISNA student news agency yesterday quoted Ismail Ahmadi-Moqaddam as saying.

“Young Iranians are victims of moral corruption. We will strongly react against it,” he said.

Ahmadi-Moqaddam had promised when he took office in July an ethical and modern police force which would respect people’s privacy, countering fears he may roll back fragile social freedoms in the Islamic state.

He was appointed after hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected, replacing moderate Mohammad Khatami’s eight-year presidency during which enforcement of social restrictions such as Islamic dress codes for women relaxed....