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.

In Human Events today I review Andrew Bostom's superb new collection The Legacy of Jihad:

Scarcely a day goes by without someone telling me, “Well, sure, the Qur’an has violent passages, but so does the Bible” or “The history of the Christian West is much bloodier than that of the Islamic world.” Such statements, picked up from the zeitgeist and thoughtlessly repeated, are designed to divert attention from realities that all too many Americans are unwilling to face: that Islamic violence is rooted in core principles of Islam, and sincerely peaceful Muslims must confront those principles in order to initiate any genuine reform within Islam — but so far most Muslim and non-Muslim spokesmen seem content to ignore those principles, and pretend that all religious traditions are equally capable of inspiring violence.

It has become harder then ever for such spokesmen to maintain this façade, however, with the appearance of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus Books), a new compendium of documents relating to the doctrine and history of jihad. Edited by Dr. Andrew Bostom, this massive volume contains a wealth of material from Islamic texts and Muslim jurists, much of which has never before appeared in English, as well as accounts of brutal jihad conquests from all over the globe. The case is now made, irrefutably: unlike all other religions, Islam contains, in its core elements and as part of its constant and unbroken tradition, mandates to make war against unbelievers in order to establish the hegemony of Islamic law. The conquerors from the great Islamic empires of the past were motivated by the same ideology that motivates jihad terrorists today. There is no way that the Islamic apologists and befuddled multiculturalists who populate the mainstream media (both liberal and conservative) can refute the mountain of evidence Bostom presents here. So they will most likely do what they always do with inconvenient material: Ignore it.

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.

Phyllis Chesler at FrontPage highlights the cultural conflict that is a growing aspect of the global jihad, and to which few have given any attention:

Are we winning the war against terror or more precisely, against the death-cult ideology of extreme hate that employs terror as one of its weapons? America, Britain and Israel have all committed significant sums of money to fight back militarily and to ensure civilian safety. However, we must fight another very hot war, one which will ultimately decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies. This is a war we are not winning and some argue that it is a war we have not yet even begun to fight.

I am talking about The Culture War, the war that must be fought to oppose the campaign of lies and propaganda that Islamists and western Stalinists launched against the West, beginning with Israel, arguably anywhere from forty to seventy years ago.

The Culture War is a very hot war: no prisoners are taken, no mercy is shown. And there are now penalties for trying to tell the truth about the danger of jihad or about the barbaric and pathological nature of militant Islam today. Indeed, if you try to discuss the Islamic religious and gender apartheid and its dangerous proliferation into Europe and North America (i.e. there have been honor killings in Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Jersey City, Toronto, as well as all over Europe and in the Muslim world), this is what will happen to you:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

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.

The impeccable Diana West takes on the peculiar unreality that prevails at the White House:

So what if Article 2 in the Iraqi constitution states, "no law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established." If people participate in an election for anything -- including sharia, including Hamas -- it's the Spirit of '76 all over again, or so our leaders say. Never mind that worried Iraqi Christians, concerned for religious freedom, say they're likely to ask Pope Benedict XVI to intervene. Meanwhile, according to the Bush Happy Face Doctrine, if any religious book goes onto the White House shelf, including one that's uniquely venomous toward "infidel" non-believers, it's a Hallelujah moment....

After September 11, Mr. Bush declared "Islam is peace." Now, he insists that "extremists" "distort the idea of jihad" into a rationale for terrorism. Maybe Mr. Bush will read his new Koran and discover that the idea of jihad is itself extreme. Better still, maybe Mr. Bush will go so far as to add another book to the White House collection: "The Legacy of Jihad" by Andrew G. Bostom. This extraordinary compendium of primary and secondary source material, much of it translated into English for the first time, elucidates the theory and practice of jihad over 1,400 years. With its chronological span across the centuries, "The Legacy of Jihad" goes a long way toward bridging the void in Western understanding of the institutional role of jihad within Islam.

The White House may have its own Koran now, but the president's reckoning with the legacy of jihad is still overdue.

Read it all.

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 ad