March 2006 Archives

He was driving a cab, and had a significant amount of money on him. He had secured refugee status in Canada even after being arrested on terror charges in 1997 in the U.S. "Fleeing terror suspect arrested," from Sun Media, with thanks to AS:

TORONTO - An alleged terrorist -- with links to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden -- has been arrested in the GTA while trying to flee the country, Sun Media immigration sources say.

In one of the most significant terrorism arrests in Canada since 9/11, a man believed to be a captain of the Pakistani extremist organization Mujahedin-E-Lashkar-E-Tayyba, or LET, which is funded by Osama bin Laden and has direct ties to al-Qaida, was arrested March 16 by Canadian border service officers in Newmarket....

Ontario immigration sources say 40-year-old Raja Ghulam Mustafa, a Pakistani national who went by the last name Murtaza, was arrested outside his home with a packed suitcase and a significant amount of cash on him....

In 1997, Mustafa was arrested in the U.S. but was released on a peace bond after he filed a claim for refugee status.

PHONY NAME

During that time, officials said he fled to Canada under a phony name. He was eventually able to secure refugee status here.

Mustafa moved to Newmarket to live with his brother-in-law Syed Maqsood Aly, a fugitive wanted in the U.S. for drug trafficking and fraud, according to sources.

Eurabia Alert from the Middle East Times, with thanks to Kaiser:

PARIS -- A gang of young Muslims wielding iron rods has forced a Paris cafe to censor an exhibition of cartoons ridiculing religion, the owners of the establishment said on Friday.

Some 50 drawings by well-known French cartoonists were installed in the Mer a Boire cafe in the working-class Belleville neighborhood of northeast Paris, as part of an avowedly atheist show entitled, "Neither god nor god".

The collection targeted all religions - including Islam - but there were no representations of the Prophet Mohammed such as sparked the recent crisis between the West and the Islamic world, according to Marianne who is one of the cafe's three owners.

"We used to give glasses of water to a group of local boys aged between 10 and 12 who played football across the street. On Tuesday a few came in, flung the water on the ground and accused us of being racists," said Marianne, who did not wish to give her family name. "Later more of them came back with sticks and iron rods and tried to smash the pictures. They managed it with a few of them. With the customers we chased them away, but they kept coming back," she said.

Later the cafe-owners were approached by a group of older youths. "They said they did not approve of what the youngsters had done. But what we were doing was unacceptable, too. They warned us that if we didn't take down the cartoons they would call in the Muslim Brothers who would burn the cafe down," said Marianne. "They kept saying: 'This is our home. You cannot act like this here'," she said.

Refusing to dismantle the exhibition, the owners have placed white sheets of paper inscribed with the word 'censored' over the cartoons that were targeted by the gang.

"To take down the cartoons would have been a surrender. But on the other hand we cannot expose ourselves to this kind of violence. This way you can still see the pictures if you lift the paper," said Marianne.

One of the cartoons that aroused the wrath of the youths was a bar scene, in which the barman offers a drink to an obviously inebriated man who says "God is great". The caption is: "The sixth pillar of Islam. The bar pillar." In France a "bar pillar" is a barfly or drunk.

The aim of the exhibition was to poke fun at all religions, according to cartoonists who took part.

"Putting on this type of show in this place was not in the least a provocation. Unless you think that freedom of expression in itself is a provocation," the cartoonist Charb told Le Parisien newspaper.

The David Project website has just posted an explosive series of documents relating to the highly questionable favorable deal given to the Islamic Society of Boston to build their new mosque there: "*New* Recently disclosed Boston Redevelopment Authority ("BRA") documents." All of these are clickable and viewable at the David Project site. Note especially the first two, and also number six. Number six shows the use of Boston Redevelopment Authority stationery by Islamic Society of Boston officials with no position at the BRA. It conveys $10,000 in Islamic Society funds to the Roxbury Community College to the President of the Roxbury Community College, and asks that the contribution be kept "anonymous."

The following recently disclosed Boston Redevelopment Authority ("BRA") documents were the subject of the March 4, 2006 Boston Globe article entitled "Aide's role in mosque deal eyed":

1. March 29, 2000 document signed by Muhammed Ali Salaam, Deputy Director for Planning at the BRA, stating that the estimated fair market value of the public land to be transferred to the Islamic Society of Boston was $2,010,966.

2. August 2000 Agreement between the BRA and the Islamic Society stipulating that the fair market value of the land would be treated as $401,000, and that the land would be transferred to the Islamic Society for $175,000, as well as the Islamic Society's agreement to fundraise for the Roxbury Community College Foundation and establish a lecture series and library on Islamic issues.

3. December, 1999 Request by the Islamic Society that Mr. Ali Salaam, a BRA official with responsibility for overseeing the Islamic Society's proposal to the BRA to obtain public land, travel to the Middle East for 10 days as a "governmental representative" in order to assist the Islamic Society with its fundraising effort. The Islamic Society agrees to pay for Mr. Ali Salaam's trip to the Middle East to assist in this effort.

4. January, 2000 Approval by the BRA retroactively approving Mr. Ali Salaam's trip to the Middle East to assist in the fundraising effort in the United Arab Emirates, and reflects that his airfare will be paid by the Islamic Society. The documents do not reflect who if anyone paid for Mr. Ali Salaam's lodging, travel, food and entertainment during the approximately 10 days that he was in the Middle East assisting in the fundraising effort.

5. February 2000 Islamic Society newsletter highlighting the Islamic Society's "Overseas Fundraising Efforts", and stating that Mr. Ali Salaam "worked hard during Ramadan to solicit funds from overseas", and that he was one of the Islamic Society's representatives who "took on" fundraising in certain Middle Eastern countries.

6. December 9, 2000 letter written on official BRA stationery, signed by Mr. Ali Salaam and signed as well by two Islamic Society officials with no position at the BRA, conveying $10,000 in Islamic Society funds to the Roxbury Community College to the President of the Roxbury Community College, and asking that the contribution be kept "anonymous".

7. February 26, 1999 Confidential Memorandum from Mr. Ali Salaam to the Board of Directors of the Islamic Society, counseling the Board on ways of obtaining favorable review of the Islamic Society proposal to the BRA; "as long as the City feels we [are] working cooperatively and making measured progress, then they will continue to work with us."

8. May 5, 1999 letter written by Mr. Ali Salaam on BRA stationery to a potential contractor for the Islamic Society of Boston, referred to by Mr. Ali Salaam as "the Client", and, on behalf of the Islamic Society, instructing the contractor to revise its bid to do work for the Islamic Society and to submit the revised bid to Mr. Ali Salaam.

Three Methodists charged in Australia. From Australia's ABC News Online, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Three Melbourne men have been charged with terrorist offences in relation to an ongoing counter-terrorism operation in the city.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP), ASIO and Victorian police have all been involved in the arrests.

A 21-year-old, a 25-year-old and a 26-year-old from the city's northern suburbs were questioned at the AFP's headquarters in Melbourne.

They have been charged with intentional membership of a terrorist organisation and intentionally making funds available to a terrorist organisation.

The two older men have also been charged with supporting a terrorist organisation.

Joe Kaufman sheds some light on CAIR's banquet in Florida, set for tomorrow. CAIR, you'll recall, is an “organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy using our own Constitution as protection.” From FrontPage (news links in the original):

Once every year, CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations gathers its followers in various ‘hot spots’ around the nation to raise money and flaunt its homemade status as a “civil liberties group,” in an attempt to convince the world that they are something which they are not. This year’s annual banquet in Florida will fall fittingly on April 1st or April Fools. The title of the event is ‘Partners for Peace & Justice.’

The keynote speaker for this weekend’s event will be David Cole. Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, a board member of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Legal Affairs Correspondent for the publication, The Nation. As an attorney, he has been involved in a number of high profile cases. This includes United States v. Eichman, which established that the First Amendment allows for the burning of the American flag.

Cole also played the role of lead counsel for terror operative, Mazen Al-Najjar. Following a 1997 deportation order for overstaying his student visa, Al-Najjar was jailed as a potential threat to the United States public. In July, 2001, after a hard fought court battle, Cole and his legal team lost a federal appeal, thereby denying Al-Najjar asylum. In August of 2002, he was deported to Lebanon. [Al-Najjar would later be named as a co-defendant in the trial against his brother-in-law, Sami Al-Arian.]

Well, of course it did. It's only a pity that it didn't meddle enough. From Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan clerics blamed meddling foreigners on Friday for the release of a Christian convert who they said should be executed for abandoning Islam.

The convert, Abdur Rahman, was spirited out of Afghanistan to asylum in Italy on Wednesday, a day after he was released from jail following a storm of protest in the United States and other Western countries over his treatment.

``Why does the international community interfere in our internal affairs? Why do they interfere in our judicial affairs?'' cleric Mohammad Sediq asked his congregation at Friday prayers in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

``It undermines Islam and our constitution,'' he said.

Five years of prison da'wa and then it's back to the jihad. Jihad Jack Thomas Update from SA, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Melbourne - An former Australian taxi driver known as "Jihad Jack" was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for receiving money and an air ticket from al-Qaeda.

Joseph Thomas, a Muslim convert, was the first Australian jailed under new anti-terrorism funding laws.

Thomas had faced a maximum 25 years in jail for accepting 3 500 US dollars in cash and the air ticket home from a senior al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan.

But supreme court Justice Philip Cummins sentenced the 32-year-old to a far lower term of five years' jail, with a non-parole period of two years, saying he had cooperated with authorities and had good prospects for rehabilitation....

Prosecutors alleged Thomas trained at al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan before the group launched its September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and then stayed in safe houses frequented by al-Qaeda operatives after moving to Pakistan in 2002.

In February a jury acquitted Thomas of the most serious charges of providing resources to a terrorist group.

But he was convicted of receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and of falsifying his passport to disguise how long he had been in Pakistan....

In handing down the sentence, Cummins said Thomas had committed a serious offense by linking up with Al-Qaeda and rejected suggestions the Australian had been "foolish or naive".

"Your conduct shows you were well capable of being manipulative," he said.

But the judge also said Thomas had excellent prospects for rehabilitation, and that his cooperation with police has been valuable.

Excellent prospects for rehabilitation? Really? Has he repudiated the jihad ideology? Or is he perhaps again showing that he is well capable of being manipulative?

Never mind that they murdered her interpreter. Jill Carroll seems to have a full-blown case of Stockholm Syndrome, and/or advanced dhimmitude. Sandmonkey presents the whole sorry transcript of her defenses of the murderous jihadists who held her captive, and comments: "This makes me want to shoot myself for ever supporting her release!"

UPDATE: Carroll spoke under duress, as we noted here on April 1.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald exposes the fallacies of Deux-Rivisme:

"…still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean." -- from this article, describing Josep Borrell, president of the European Parliament

Perhaps Josep Borrell can begin to understand the complexities of the Mediterranean starting with the following:

In France successive governments over the past 35 years thought that France, and through France Europe, could be strengthened, could become a counterweight to mighty America, if there were some kind of alliance with the newly-rich and therefore newly-powerful (so it was felt) Arabs. They believed in the policy of "Deux-Rivisme," in which both banks (rives) of the Mediterranean would be seen to have much in common, with the only thing dividing them of importance being the Mediterranean itself. In other words, a feature of geography, and not much more, divided France from, say, Algeria.

Serge Trifkovic, author of the superb Sword of the Prophet, has published a new and equally essential book, Defeating Jihad. This morning he discusses it with Jamie Glazov at FrontPage:

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Serge Trifkovic, a former BBC commentator and US NEWS and World Report reporter. His last book was The Sword of the Prophet. The sequel, Defeating Jihad, will be published by Regina Orthodox Press in April. Read his commentaries on ChroniclesMagazine.org.

Glazov: Mr. Trifkovic, welcome to Frontpage Magazine.

Trifkovic: Thank you.

Glazov: Before we get to your book, let's talk about the Abdul Rahman case for a moment. He has just been released and is now in Italy. What do you think the key significance of this case is?

Trifkovic: This became a cause célèbre only because of the presence of American troops in Afghanistan: having Rahman killed for apostasy under their noses would have made too explicit a debacle of the already farcical neocon phantasy known as "democratizing the greater Middle East."

No, when Christians are routinely mistreated and killed by our other trusted friends and allies of the United States in the region - notably Pakistan, Egypt, and even the "secular" Turkey - you don't hear about it, there are no vigils, no protests, no offers of asylum. In Pakistan, murders, endemic discrimination, and constant harassment of Christians - who are mainly poor and account for a mere one percent of the population - is persistent. Any dispute with a Muslim - most commonly over land - can become a religious issue. Christians are routinely accused of "blasphemy against Islam," an offense that carries the death penalty as Pakistan has some of the strictest blasphemy laws in the Muslim world. Charges of blasphemy can be made on the flimsiest of evidence - even one man's word against another - and since it is invariably a Muslim's word against that of a Christian, the outcome is preordained.

D. C. Watson discusses the recent dhimmitude displayed by America's beloved bookstore chain.

Should Muslim organizations such as the Council on American Islamic Relations be proud? Or should they be ashamed?

Borders and Waldenbooks have made headlines for choosing not to carry the April-May issue of "Free Inquiry" magazine because this particular issue contains cartoons of Islam's prophet, Muhammad.

CAIR had no trouble posting this Associated Press article on their website, either.

It's buried at the end of this report, "Church to Open a Rights Center," from The Moscow Times, with thanks to Daryl:

Also, Kirill criticized a recent U.S. State Department report that criticized religious tolerance in Russia while praising Afghanistan for its religious freedom.

I hereby nominate Abdul Rahman to man State's Afghanistan desk.

Hamas defends the attack, Abbas opposes it -- although a Fatah group, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has claimed credit for it. What an elaborate charade: Abbas says he can overrule the group, but what does that mean? Stop them from carrying out suicide bombings? He couldn't do that before Hamas was in power. What makes him think he can now? From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas defended on Friday a suicide bombing that killed four Israelis as "resistance" against Israeli "crimes," putting it at odds with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who condemned the attack.

Hours after the bombing, Israeli warplanes and artillery struck the Gaza Strip, though no casualties were reported.

A car explosion in Gaza later killed a top leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a group that frequently fires rockets into Israel. The army, which often targets Palestinian militants in airstrikes, denied involvement in the blast.

The conflicting statements of Hamas and Abbas on the West Bank suicide bombing were the first since the president swore in the Palestinian Authority's first Hamas government on Wednesday.

Abbas has said he could overrule the group, which is pledged to Israel's destruction, if it continues to block peacemaking.

The suicide bombing, claimed by al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, occurred days after Israeli leader Ehud Olmert's Kadima party won elections on a platform of setting Israel's borders in the occupied West Bank unilaterally in the absence of peace talks.

More detail on this major victory for the good guys from Anti-CAIR:

A $1.35 million libel suit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR (ACAIR), who called CAIR a “terrorist front organization,” that was “founded by Hamas supporters,” and was working to “make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States,” has been dismissed with prejudice. According to ACAIR’s Mr. Whitehead, who posts at www.anti-cair-net.org, “I am pleased to report the CAIR lawsuit has been dismissed after the parties reached a mutually agreeable settlement.”

Terms of the settlement are confidential. However, no apology was issued, no retraction or corrections made, and the statements that triggered CAIR’s suit remain on the ACAIR website.

CAIR’s suit was filed on March 31, 2004 after Mr. Whitehead posted the following statements:

“Let there be no doubt that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists, and that CAIR wishes nothing more than the implementation of Sharia law in America.”

CAIR is an “organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy using our own Constitution as protection.”

“ACAIR reminds our readers that CAIR was started by Hamas members and is supported by terrorist supporting individuals, groups and countries.”

“Why oppose CAIR? CAIR has proven links to, and was founded by, Islamic terrorists. CAIR is not in the United States to promote the civil rights of Muslims. CAIR is here to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the United States and convert our country into an Islamic theocracy along the lines of Iran. In addition, CAIR has managed, through the adroit manipulation of the popular media, to present itself as the ‘moderate' face of Islam in the United States. CAIR succeeded to the point that the majority of its members are not aware that CAIR actively supports terrorists and terrorist supporting groups and nations. In addition, CAIR receives direct funding from Islamic terrorists supporting countries.”

“CAIR is a fundamentalist organization dedicated to the overthrow of the United States Constitution and the installation of an Islamic theocracy in America.”

CAIR claimed these statements were false, that Mr. Whitehead made them “with knowledge of their falsity,” and that the statements were actionable because “they impute the commission of a criminal offense.” CAIR claimed injury to its “standing and reputation throughout the United States and elsewhere,” and sought $1 million in compensatory damages, $350,000 in punitive damages, plus legal fees and interest.

On June 20, 2005, and following submission of discovery requests by Mr. Whitehead’s counsel, Reed D. Rubinstein of Greenberg Traurig LLP’s Washington, D.C. office, seeking information regarding CAIR’s finances, its relationship to Hamas, and its ties to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic radicals, CAIR dropped nearly all of its original claims. The revised complaint alleged only the following statements to be false and defamatory:

“Let their (sic) be no doubt that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization….”

“[CAIR] seeks to overthrow constitutional government in the United States….”

Subsequently, Mr. Whitehead’s counsel filed papers demonstrating the extensive links between, and actions taken by, CAIR and its principal leaders with and on behalf of Hamas terrorists, foreign Islamic radicals, and domestic Islamic extremists. Among other things, the pleadings showed how CAIR had used its website to exploit the 9/11 atrocities, funneling money to the notorious Hamas front group the “Holy Land Foundation” (HLF). HLF, organized and operated by a CAIR-Austin, Texas board member who was a close and long-time associate of CAIR’s executive officers, financed Hamas, and was shut down by the United States government in December, 2001. HLF was also shown to have provided funds to CAIR.

Shortly after Mr. Whitehead’s counsel filed these papers, and shortly before a court hearing on Mr. Whitehead’s request for access to CAIR’s financial data and relationship with Hamas and Islamic radicals was to be held, the case was settled and dismissed with prejudice.

Dismissed with prejudice: if I understand correctly, that means that CAIR can never again sue Andrew Whitehead or Anti-CAIR over the items for which they initially sued (which are enumerated above).

So now Hamas is in power and Fatah is taking care of the suicide bombing. From Haaretz, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

At least four people were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber exploded after nightfall Thursday at the entrance to the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, located west of Nablus.

Initial reports indicate the suicide bomber and three Israeli youths were killed in the attack. Israel Defense Forces officers on the scene told Haaretz was no positive confirmation as to the identities of the casualties.

The vehicle blew up around 9:45 P.M. next to the Kedumim gas station. Security forces sealed roads in the area immediately in the wake of the attack.

A new offshoot of the Fatah from the Balata refugee camp in nearby Nablus claimed responsibility. The group called itself Kateb al-Shahid Chamuda and identified the bomber as Mahmoud Masharka, 24, from the West Bank city of Hebron.

Eurabia Alert from the EU Observer, with thanks to Fjordman, who remarks: "Those who still think Eurabia is 'just a conspiracy theory' should read the news more closely. Notice how they only refer to the Arab world as 'the Mediterranean.'"

EUOBSERVER/ BRUSSELS- MEPs and national MPs from the EU and Mediterranean countries have approved a resolution which "condemned the offence" caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed as well "as the violence which their publication provoked."

The two-day plenary session of the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, held in Brussels, also urged governments to "ensure respect for religious beliefs and to encourage the values of tolerance, freedom and multiculturalism."

Speaking during the parliamentary assembly, Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit.

Jordanian MP Hashem al-Qaisi also condemned the cartoons while remarking that it is not sufficient to deplore the cartoons as these things might occur again in another country.

But Danish parliamentarian MP Troels Poulsen, reacting to extensive criticism on Danish society over the issue, insisted that Danish society is based on both freedom of expression and religious tolerance.

He added that the government can not influence the media.

The Danish MP also said the violent reaction to the cartoons was disproportionate....

Addressing the assembly, European Parliament president Josep Borrell referred to the Mediterranean as "a concentrate of all the problems facing humanity."

He said that after one year presiding over the assembly he "still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean."

Yes, it's especially tough when you ignore the implications of the evidence that is staring you in the face.

Another provocative essay from Wolfgang Bruno (news links in the original):

A remarkable testimony to the power of the modern mass media revolution was noted in the complaints of an Egyptian cleric in 2005:

Leading Egypt Cleric Wants Fewer Frivolous Edicts

The chief Muslim cleric in Egypt wants tighter controls on who may issue religious edicts, or fatwas. Egypt's Grand Mufti says more fatwas have been issued in the past 10 years than in the previous 1400 years. Modern technology has made it easier than ever to issue or receive a fatwa, one of the religious edicts that guide Muslims' interpretations of Islamic law. Someone with a specific question about what Islam allows can get a personalized fatwa on the matter over the Internet, through television or via cellphone. The number of religious edicts keeps growing, and because Islam has no central authority there is no set system for governing who is allowed to issue them.

This explosion of unorthodox religious activity can only be compared to that of Christian Europe in the early 16th century. Just as Gutenberg’s invention marked the first mass media revolution in the West, the Internet and satellite TV are now doing the same thing in the Islamic world. However, the outcome may be very different, and the parallels between the Protestant Reformation and what is happening in the Islamic world now shouldn’t be pushed too far. The introduction of the printing press was delayed by several centuries in the Islamic world because of religious resistance and never had the same effect there as it did in the Christian West, which should strongly indicate that although technology is important, it isn’t everything. Culture matters. Islam does not have quite the same centralized hierarchy as the Catholic Church had in Europe, which means that the change cannot be linked to a specific date as it did with Martin Luther’s 95 theses. Although it did ultimately have consequences far beyond the borders of Europe, and although it did happen at a time of Ottoman Muslim expansion in the Mediterranean, the Reformation was primarily an internal, Christian and European affair. The turmoil in he Islamic world now affects more or less the entire world, and many of the critics are based in rival civilizations. And last, but not least: The religions are entirely different. Christianity was reformable, whereas Islam probably isn’t.

An anti-dhimmitude initiative from the European author Wolfgang Bruno (news links in the original):

Fatima Houda-Pepin, raised a Muslim and active in the struggle against the use of sharia in Canada, warns that the public should make an effort to get to know those in the Muslim community who are lobbying for application of Shari‘a: “One of the strengths of Islamists is that they know you very well. They know our history, they know our culture, they know our justice system.” The reason why so many Westerners reacted with defeatism and despair over the Muhammad cartoons affair is because we are mentally on the defensive. We are reacting more than acting, waiting passively for the next Islamic move. We haven’t even named the enemy yet. The attacks of 9/11, the London and Madrid bombings were reduced to the work of “evildoers who had hijacked a great religion,” not Islam itself. Muslims have been carefully studying our weak points for decades, to find ways to exploit them. Meanwhile, we have largely been ignoring them, first because we didn’t take them seriously, and later because we would not want to get involved in a global clash with the Islamic world. Get real: This is a world war, at least a cold one. War has already been declared upon us, and it is irrelevant whether Westerners and infidels like this or not. We need to recognize this and start fighting back, before we lose this fight without ever having admitted that we were in it.

It’s time to turn the tables. We’re the most powerful civilization in human history. We’ve split the atom and sent men to the moon. We can deal with a cult from 7th century Arabia, if we put our minds to it. Yes, they have a head start, but they have weak points, too. Many of them, and sometimes huge ones. Find a pressure point and squeeze. As philosopher Eric Hoffer has said, you can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. If we had some basic understanding of our enemy and watched him closely, we would see that he made at least two major mistakes during these recent cartoon events that we could exploit. First, he showed us his hand and his true intentions, thereby waking up millions of infidels just a little bit too early. Second: He also clearly demonstrated some of his weak points, both the extreme arrogance and the ridiculous hypersensitivity to even the slightest criticism. During the Muhammad cartoon affair, the Islamic world might as well have worn a gigantic neon sign saying: “We fear freedom of speech above all else. Give us bombs, just don’t send us rational criticism or mockery.” They scream “We love death,” yet cringe like shivering Christmas puddings in front of a few cartoons. If this is what they fear most, then this is where we should push harder.

Good thing we're easing up on those border controls, eh? From JTA, with thanks to Olivia:

The FBI broke up a ring that tried to smuggle Hezbollah operatives into the United States.

In testimony Tuesday to Congress on the FBI’s budget request, director Robert Mueller said most recent reports on terrorist smuggling do not pan out.

However, he identified one that did: “This was an occasion in which Hezbollah operatives were assisting others with some association with Hezbollah in coming to the United States,” Mueller said. “That was an organization that we dismantled and identified those persons who had been smuggled in. And they have been addressed as well.”

Mueller did not elaborate further, except to say that the ring had attempted to smuggle the operatives into the United States from Mexico.

Sure, Rummy, count me in. Now where exactly do I find those moderate Muslims who are advocating peaceful change, freedom and tolerance? Ibrahim Hooper? Well, no, as it seems that CAIR no longer contests the assertion that it is an “organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States and replace it with an Islamist theocracy using our own Constitution as protection.” Hamid Karzai? Uh, no, there's that little matter of the death penalty for apostasy that is still allowed for by the Sharia provision of the Afghan Constitution, despite the freeing of Abdul Rahman. Ayatollah Sistani? Well, despite Rich Lowry's cheerleading, he still considers unbelievers to be unclean on par with urine and feces.

Rummy, can you give me a hint as to where I might find some real moderates?

Here, I'll help you by defining the term. A moderate Muslim, as far as I'm concerned, would be one who rejects jihad violence against non-Muslims; rejects the idea that Sharia law should be instituted in the Muslim and non-Muslim world; and teaches the idea that non-Muslims and Muslims should live together indefinitely as equals. A moderate Muslim would also teach that women should enjoy full equality of rights with men. An honest and forthright Muslim reformer will acknowledge that the Islamic mainstream has historically held just the opposite of these principles, and will reject the elements of the Qur'an and Sunnah that give rise to these imperatives to violence and subjugation.

Send me the names of these moderates at director@jihadwatch.org.

"Rumsfeld: Terrorists Our Most Brutal Enemy," from AP, with thanks to Ray:

...``The enemy we face may be the most brutal in our history,'' Rumsfeld said. ``They currently lack only the means - not the desire - to kill, murder millions of innocent people with weapons vastly more powerful than boarding passes and box cutters,'' he added, referring to the terrorists who hijacked the airliners on Sept. 11....

Rumsfeld said progress is being made in the global war on terror, particularly in making it more difficult for the terrorist groups to recruit, train, raise money, establish sanctuaries and acquire weapons. But he stressed that more needs to be done.

``The strategy must do a great deal more to reduce the lure of the extremist ideology by standing with those moderate Muslims advocating peaceful change, freedom and tolerance,'' he said.

An update on the victimization of the courageous Ezra Levant, one of the few Canadian media figures to stand up for free speech. From the Western Standard blog (with thanks to all who sent this in):

Earlier this month, the Western Standard was sued in human rights court for publishing the Danish cartoons. It's been ten years since I've graduated from law school, and I've never seen a more frivolous, vexatious, infantile suit than this.

But that's the point -- this complaint is not about beating us in the law. Freedom of speech is still in our constitution; we'll win in the end. It's a nuisance suit, designed to grind us down, cost us money, and serve as a warning to other, more timid media.

The hand-written scrawl and the spelling errors were what first disgusted me with the suit; but the arguments were what really got me. The complainant, Imam Syed Soharwardy, a former professor at an anti-Semitic university in Saudi Arabia, doesn't just argue that we shouldn't have published the cartoons. He argues that we shouldn't be able to defend our right to publish the cartoons. The bulk of his complaint was that we dared to try to justify it.

He argues that advocating a free press should be a thought crime.

Here is a letter I sent out to our e-mail list, explaining our legal situation.

Here is the formal response I shall file with the human rights commission tomorrow.

And here is where you can chip in to our legal defence fund if you want to support us. Our lawyers tell me we'll likely win, but it could cost us up to $75,000 to do so -- and the case against us is being prosecuted by government employees using tax dollars.

We're a small, independent magazine and we don't have deep pockets to fight off nuisance suits, so please chip in if you can.

Little Green Footballs has published a letter from a Borders employee showing that the corporate dhimmitude there extends to far more than their refusal to stock a magazine that has reprinted the Muhammad cartoons. They also make sure that their Qur'ans appear only on the top shelf in all their bookstores:

I work for Borders Books and after reading the article you posted on Wed. 3/29 about our company not carrying the magazine due to it showing the dreaded cartoons of blasphemy, I thought I should write with another tidbit of information I learned about my company the other week.

I was shifting rows of books in our religion section and it happened to be that all of our Koran books (a section on its own) ended up on the bottom shelf. The next day I was informed by my General Manager that it is Borders policy as a whole (not my particular store) that due to complaints in the past from Muslim customers, we are not allowed to put our copies of the Koran on any shelf other than the top.

When I heard of this I became so infuriated that the company I work for (and I do love working for it) has caved in to Islamic pressure and is still continuing to do so. I love my job and my company but it does deeply disturb me to see what is happening to it.

Imagine, as Charles Johnson points out, if a Christian group demanded that Bibles be placed only on the top shelf. I expect that the mainstream media might even find that newsworthy enough to engage in a bit of ridicule and scare-mongering. But when it comes to Muslims demanding special treatment for the Qur'an, and Borders readily caving, that's just business as usual.

Oh the stunning complexity of Islam! Even those who teach it and have devoted their lives to mastering its doctrines misunderstand its peaceful teachings!

Memo to Ibrahim Hooper: why doesn't CAIR start a Teach the Imams program for poor fellows like the Imam Waliullah, who don't seem to grasp what you loudly proclaim is self-evident, that Islam is a religion of peace? After all, Waliullah is by no means the first Islamic cleric or teacher to be implicated in violent actions. There were also these teachers. And these clerics. And these teachers. And these prayer leaders. And so on. I'm sure your classes would be filled.

"Allahabad Imam held for Varanasi blasts," from the Pioneer News Service, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

The Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh probing the 3/7 Varanasi serial blasts has picked up Imam Waliullah, the Pesh Imam of Phulpur in Allahabad for his alleged involvement in the terror attack. In the past, this imam has been accused of associating with anti-national elements and was arrested and jailed in 2001.

Imam Waliullah, who was under surveillance for some time, was picked up by a STF team on Wednesday. The STF sleuths in plain clothes accosted the imam and before he could raise an alarm, huddled him into a waiting SUV and took him to an undisclosed destination for interrogation....

According to STF sources, the sleuths were despatched from Lucknow only after collecting adequate evidence against the Pesh Imam. The source said that Imam Waliullah was a scholar at Deoband and it was during his stay at the seminary as a research scholar that he came in contact with some terrorists and their leaders active in Jammu & Kashmir.

The STF official confided that soon after the blasts rocked the holy temple town on the eve of Holi, sleuths noticed that certain individuals would frequently visit the Imam in Phulpur. Those visits suddenly stopped. The STF, meanwhile, analysed the links of Imam Waliullah with some specific Islamist terrorists, and after being convinced of his alleged links with them and their leaders, nabbed the Pesh Imam.

Earlier in 2001, Waliullah had been nabbed alongwith his brothers, Wasiullah and Ubaidullah, for their alleged involvement in anti-national activities. The police had to face stiff local resistance but somehow managed to send them to jail....

Samir Khalil Samir, SJ is one Catholic priest who isn't afraid to speak the truth about Islamic oppression of non-Muslims and denial of the freedom of conscience. From AsiaNews, with thanks to Uncle Jeff:

The ordeal of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan is shared by many converts from Islam and poses the problem of Islam’s systematic violation of human rights. If Sharia kills a man who changes religion, it is to be condemned and cannot be the principle inspiring law, in that it destroys any ideal of coexistence and contradicts the UN declaration on human rights, approved in 1948 by almost all Muslim countries.

Rome (AsiaNews) – Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity, was released from prison with a juridical ploy: deemed to be mentally unfit and thus incapable of undergoing trial, he was able to avoid the death penalty foreseen by sharia in the case of apostasy. But his ordeal is just one case in tens of thousands each year. In Egypt alone there are at least 10,000 Muslims who convert to Christianity each year. At the same time, there are at least 12,000 Christians who become Muslim.

This phenomenon of conversions from Christianity to Islam is rampant throughout the Middle East and in the world. Fundamentalist violence that currently characterizes the Muslim world brings many to ask themselves: can such a violent religion truly come from God? But what is the lot of former Muslims? That of having to flee, hide, emigrate.

A friend of mine who wanted to be baptized was forced to flee from his university friends because one day they found a pocket-sized Gospel in his room. They began to threaten him with death and he fled, abandoning his university studies.

The solution found in Afghanistan is the best one, but is a compromise. It must serve to lead us to a radical question: what takes precedence in Islam? Internationally recognized human rights or Islamic sharia? And if sharia runs counters to human rights, is it not time that the international community condemns it? And if sharia is inscribed – as fundamentalists maintain – in the Koran, there are two things to consider: either the Koran denies human rights, or it must be reread to purge it of false and violent incrustations.

Read it all.

From AFP, with thanks to Diana West, who comments: "'Master said because the group were Muslims, it would be impossible to prevent them from entering the mosque.' This is a perfect metaphor for the general Muslim inability to draw the line against anything bad in Islam, from suicide bombings to Sharia penalties for apostasy to (in this case) closing the mosque Rice was to have visited to disrupting protestors."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart Jack Straw have cancelled plans to visit a mosque in England, officials said, amid opposition from anti-war protesters.

The mosque in Straw's constituency in Blackburn, withdrew its invitation for security reasons after opponents of Friday's planned visit threatened to "invade" the building, mosque official Ibrahim Master said.

"The visit wasn't cancelled because we don't like Condoleezza Rice," said Master, a member of the mosque's governing committee. "What these people had threatened to do was invade the mosque during dawn prayers."

He said the Masjide Al Hidayah mosque's governing committee met Wednesday night with a group of Muslims which included members of the "Stop the War Coalition," which is sharply opposed to the US-led war in Iraq.

He said the group threatened to protest inside the mosque when the two top diplomats were inside.

"It would have compromised the safety of the visiting dignitaries," he said.

Master said because the group were Muslims, it would be impossible to prevent them from entering the mosque.

Islamic Tolerance Alert from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

SHKODER, Albania (Reuters) - Muslims in Albania's northern city of Shkoder are opposing plans to erect a statue to Mother Teresa, the ethnic Albanian Catholic nun in line for elevation to sainthood by the Vatican.

The dispute is unusual for Albania, where religion was banned for 27 years under the regime of dictator Enver Hoxha and where religious harmony and mixed marriages are the norm.

Seventy percent of the population are liberal Muslims, the rest are Christian Orthodox and Catholic.

But Muslim groups in Shkoder rejected the local council plan for a Teresa statue, saying it "would offend the feelings of Muslims."

"We do not want this statue to be erected in a public place because we see her as a religious figure," said Bashkim Bajraktari, Shkoder's mufti or Muslim religious leader.

"If there must be a statue, let it be in a Catholic space."

They wasted no time. From AP:

BERLIN (AP) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned Iran on Thursday the "international community is united" in the dispute over its nuclear program, but a Tehran envoy defiantly rejected a U.N. call to reimpose a freeze on uranium enrichment.

Rice spoke after a meeting in Berlin among diplomats from the five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany over ways to press Iran to stop enriching uranium, which can be used for weapons. Iran says its program is peaceful.

The meeting follows agreement Wednesday by the 15-member Security Council to ask the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report back in 30 days on Iran's compliance with demands to stop enriching uranium.

In Vienna, Iran's chief representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told The Associated Press that "it is impossible to go back to suspension."

"This enrichment matter is not reversible," Soltanieh said.

Rice said the Berlin meeting sends "a very strong signal to Iran that the international community is united."

We'll see about that.

"Grenade explosion damages auto-rickshaw in Kathankudy," from TamilNet, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

An auto-rickshaw belonging to a muslim civilian in Kathankudy in Batticaloa was damaged when unknown assailants exploded a grenade under the vehicle at 4.45 a.m., Thursday, sources from Batticaloa said....

There have been reports of internal violence in Muslim community in the east in the recent months. The existence of two Muslim armed groups, Jihad and Jama'ath e Islami, in the East has been exposed in recent reports.

4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, and in not one of them can a non-Muslim be buried. "Confusion as mourners are turned away," from the Times Online, with thanks to Douglas Murray:

A COUNCIL was accused last night of responding to the local government strike by barring burials at its cemetery for anyone who was not Muslim. Funeral directors who attempted to arrange Christian interments at the council-run cemetery in Blackburn, Lancashire, were told that it would be closed throughout yesterday due to the industrial action.

Families were forced to re-arrange funeral plans and other mourners were told that they would not be allowed to visit the cemetery to read its book of remembrance.

Undertakers were subsequently outraged to discover that the closure would apply only to Christian burials.

The local authority had ruled that an emergency service would be provided for Muslims, who — by religious tradition — must be buried as soon as possible after their death.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the advantages of supporting an independent Kurdistan:

Kurdistan, as a place and not as an idea, could, by its mere existence, if given a little boost (a boost, not boots on the ground -- they are different things), do a good deal of damage to the interests of both Syria and Iran.

Syria is a hideous place with a hideous regime. One wishes to preserve the Alawite regime, under different and much more chastened management, only because the alternative is a regime of "real" Sunni Muslims. Everyone in Syria, though apparently few in the Infidel world, knows what that would mean for the Christians of Syria, and of Lebanon. Only the Alawites, out of their own self-interest and terror at what would happen if they lost control, can keep a lid on the real Muslims, the non-Miriam-worshipping Muslims who, if they could, would massacre as many people as they could in the Alawite villages, and among the Christians the Alawites protect. Syria is a country where the government shuts down -- the government! -- on Christmas Day.

Why would an independent Kurdistan help to weaken Syria? Because there are many Kurds in Syria who do not like the way they have been treated, and would be encouraged by the mere existence of an independent Kurdistan. And they would be even more encouraged if the American government wished to funnel military aid to Kurdistan, and through Kurdistan to Kurds in Syria and Iran, and at the same time to remove any threat of Syrian bombing by removing, in one fell swoop, Syria's air force. The Israelis, when they last encountered Syrian planes, destroyed 82 at one go, with no loss of any Israeli plane. One suspects that the Americans will be able to perform at a similar level of competence.

I heard enough stories of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) being hidden away in dark corners at Borders not to be surprised by this latest bit of dhimmitude.

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

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

In other words, we are afraid, and we are caving in to violent intimidation.

And "death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration." Such lovely fellows. Clearly they are ready for some serious, good-faith negotiations with Israel. "Palestinian MPs Shout 'Jihad Is Our Path' as Hamas Government Wins Confidence Vote," from MEMRITV, with thanks to a tea-loving snail:

Following are excerpts from the PA Legislative Council meeting granting Hamas a vote of confidence, aired on Al-Jazeera TV on March 28, 2006:

Parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik: The tenth Palestinian government, headed by the Palestinian prime minister, brother Ismai'l Haniya, has gained the absolute majority of the votes of the Legislative Council members.

[...]

Hamas MP: Allah Akbar, Allah be praised.

Other MPs: Allah Akbar, Allah be praised.

MP: Allah is our goal.

Other MPs: Allah is our goal.

MP: The Koran is our constitution.

Other MPs: The Koran is our constitution.

MP: The Prophet Muhammad is our model.

Other MPs: The Prophet Muhammad is our model.

MP: Jihad is our path.

Other MPs: Jihad is our path.

MP: Death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.

Other MPs: Death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration.

MP: Allah Akbar, Allah be praised.

Other MPs: Allah Akbar, Allah be praised.

A welcome bit of anti-dhimmitude from Washington. Let's hope it lasts. From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

THE United States has ordered its diplomats and contractors to cut off contacts with Palestinian ministries after a Hamas-led government was sworn in, the State Department said today.

A directive, distributed to diplomats and other officials in the region by email, instructed them with immediate effect not to have contacts with Hamas-appointed government ministers or those who work for them, whether they are members of the Islamic militant group or not, officials said.

Hamas is formally committed to the destruction of Israel and is classed by the US government as a terrorist organisation. It won a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections in January.

"We will not have contact with members of Hamas, no matter what title they may have," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Our friend and ally continues to play its double game, and to ensure that there will be plenty of people ready to heed calls like this. From the Indo-Asian News Service, with thanks to all who sent this in:

While aiming to provide quality education, the new education policy to be implemented in Pakistan next year will retain the subject of jihad in the school curriculum, a senior minister has said.

The government was using all available resources to promote quality education and had started working on the education reforms, Education Minister Javed Ashraf Qazi told reporters.

He said the subject of human rights would be included in the syllabus and the government had no plan to omit the subject of jihad from the Islamiat (moral studies).

"We will teach Islamiat from class one to twelve," Pakistan Today quoted Qazi as saying.

They're calling for jihad now? As poster Shinolite noted here not long ago, What have we been having up to now? The Ice Capades?

Note the openly totalitarian and coercive nature of the statement.

From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

KANDAHAR: The fundamentalist Taliban on Thursday condemned the release of an Afghan who had faced execution for converting to Christianity, calling for jihad against the "enemies of Islam"....

"Apostate Abdul Rahman's release makes it clear that Afghanistan's judiciary is not independent and its decisions are in the hands of foreigners," Taliban spokesman Mohammed Hanif told AFP, reading a statement by the hardliners.

"There are no longer judges or mullahs in Kabul -- they are all sell-outs who cheat the nation under the name of the Islamic judiciary. They should have resigned," the statement said....

The Taliban, notorious for its harsh implementation of Sharia that included stoning adulterers to death, said the case was created by foreign nations to undermine the authority of Islam.

It was engineered to "assure other recalcitrants that they are no longer in danger and no one in Islam can punish them."

"The Afghan nation will not be deceived with such schemes and inshallah (God willing) such plots will be neutralised," the statement said.

"We condemn this crime of the puppet administration. We ask our Muslim brothers to take their position against this offence by the enemies of Islam and to act, based on their responsibility to their religion and God, and to start jihad against Karzai's administration," it said.

Prediction: a month from now, absolutely nothing will have changed in Iran. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council gave Iran 30 days to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and key members turned their focus on what to do if Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and allow more intrusive inspections.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Berlin on Thursday for discussions between the five permanent council members — the United States, Russia, China Britain and France — plus Germany, on how much and what kind of pressure to exert on Iran if it refuses to comply.

After three weeks of intense negotiations, the 15-member Security Council approved a statement Wednesday asking the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report back in 30 days on Iran's compliance with demands to stop enriching uranium.

Defamatory? Certainly not. Some of them showed a connection between Islam and violence, which Muslims around the world have daily been bearing out -- not least by means of cartoon rage itself. Injurious? Yes, they were, but only indirectly. They did grave damage to the image of Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance, by giving rise to an orchestrated campaign of violent intimidation and an ongoing assault on the principle of freedom of speech. The eyes of many have been opened.

From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

COPENHAGEN, Denmark - A group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations have filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper that first published the caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, their lawyer said Thursday.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday, two weeks after Denmark’s top prosecutor declined to press criminal charges, saying the drawings that sparked a firestorm in the Muslim world did not violate laws against racism or blasphemy.

Michael Christiani Havemann, a lawyer representing the Muslim groups, said lawsuit sought $16,100 in damages from Jyllands-Posten Editor in Chief Carsten Juste and Culture Editor Flemming Rose, who supervised the cartoon project.

“We’re seeking judgment for both the text and the drawings which were gratuitously defamatory and injurious,” Havemann said.

Now let me get this straight. For years Hamas has been shunning negotiations and pursuing a violent course. Now they are threatening more violence if the Israelis don't negotiate. Hey, nice way to show your new moderate colors, Haniyeh!

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Hamas sources warned on Thursday that if Israel did not begin its negotiations with the Palestinians, they would return to their armed struggle.

Furthermore, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh announced in his inauguration on Wednesday that all members of his government were "potential shahids (martyrs)."

That will be quite a spectacle: cabinet members blowing themselves up on buses.

More Methodists arrested in Britain. From AFP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

LONDON (AFP) - Four men have been arrested at a hospital in central England under Britain's anti-terrorism laws, police said.

Police, including specialist firearms officers, arrested the men Wednesday evening at Stafford District General Hospital under the Terrorism Act 2000 as "a result of information received," a police spokeswoman said.

Volunteers get three choices: they can sign up for attacks against Americans in Iraq, against Israel, or against...Salman Rushdie. 1938 Alert from Iran Focus, with thanks to JE:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 29 – Radical Islamists in Iran’s western province of Lorestan were invited during a ceremony on Wednesday to enlist in garrisons to carry out suicide attacks against the United States.

The People’s Headquarters in Continuation of the Path of the Martyrs in Lorestan, a newly-founded government-backed group, began enlisting “martyrdom-seeking volunteers” to “confront possible threats by America and the West” against Iran.

The government-run news agency Mehr reported that the organisation comprised of “religious delegations” and “martyrdom-seeking garrisons”....

Another state-organised group, which avowedly trains suicide bombers against “Western infidels and Zionists”, recently announced that it had enlisted 53,900 people to carry out “martyrdom-seeking operations”.

The Headquarters to Commemorate Martyrs of the Global Islamic Movement, an organisation set up by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in 2004, offers volunteers three choices: To carry out suicide attacks against “the infidels occupying Iraq”, against Israel, or against controversial British author Salman Rushdie.

Because gee, Islam is really swell. And of course, I'm all for European governments learning more about Islam. In fact, I think they should devote an enormous amount of attention to learning about Islam. They just shouldn't trust Jack Straw's favorite authorities to tell them anything useful about it.

I hereby volunteer my services to any European government that wants to learn more about Islam. I will travel to your country at my own expense for meetings with government officials. I will take you step-by-step through the Qur'an and Sunnah, and introduce you to Sharia and fiqh. I will work strictly from Islamic sources, so that you can see for yourself whether or not what I am saying is accurate. Give me a week or two, and you will be quite familiar with the essentials of Islamic teaching and practice. Contact me at director@jihadwatch.org.

Straw, by the way, also comes out here against freedom of expression.

From the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has asked European governments to learn more about Islam and “protect the rights of every citizen irrespective of their faith and creed.”

Addressing an award ceremony organised by the Muslim News in the capital, Straw said European governments have to provide a space in which the rights and diversity of people of all faiths are protected....

“My point is this: the story of Europe is not a simple, linear one of secular values steadily pushing out and eroding religious ones. Rather the European experience is one of an accommodation between faith and modernity. And it is the future of Europe too.”

Straw said the reason for singling out of Islam as a target of attack might be due to its reputation as a new European religion.

“There have been Muslim communities in Europe for centuries,” said Straw. “But it is true that in recent decades those communities have grown in size and that Islam is now the fastest growing religion here. Another reason might be the feeling that many people seem to have that Muslims are in some way more religious than followers of other faiths. Again, I think it is probably undeniable that for most of the Muslims whom I know their faith is more obviously apparent in their daily actions and rituals than it is in the daily lives of the majority of people in Britain.”

Straw also condemned the decision of some European newspapers to reprint the controversial Danish cartoons by claiming the right to freedom of expression.

“I said at the time that the cartoons were reprinted in Europe — though not here in the United Kingdom — that doing so was needlessly insensitive and disrespectful,” said Straw. “The right to freedom of expression is a broad one and something which this country has long held dear. It was the focus of our human rights work during our recent Presidency of the European Union. But the existence of such a right does not mean that it is right — morally right, politically right, socially right — to exercise that freedom without regard to the feelings of others."

“A large number of Muslims in this country were upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomised the learned, peaceful religion of Islam. In doing so they were not being 'unreasonable' or 'un-European'. They were not threatening anyone's values.”

Of course, Arla had nothing to do with the cartoons in the first place, and should not have been victimized. But now that they have kowtowed and apologized, Qaradawi is magnanimous in victory. "Qaradawi lifts curbs on Arla products," from The Peninsula of Qatar, with thanks to Interested:

DOHA: Islamic scholar Dr Yousuf Al Qaradawi has stated that curbs imposed on Danish firm Arla will be withdrawn. The firm had been blacklisted by retailers in Qatar following the uproar over the publication of offensive cartoons against the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) in a Danish newspaper.

Qaradawi made the announcement at an international Islamic conference being held in Bahrain. He praised Arla’s stand for stating that there was no need to publish such cartoons unnecessarily. Because of this stand, he said that curbs should be withdrawn and the company’s position would enable the opening of the avenues of dialogue for further such initiatives.

The company had announced its position in a 52-page insert in an Arabic-language magazine. Further, representatives of the firm also interacted with the Bahrain conference attendees and made their opposition to publication of such cartoons clear....

Qaradawi had been at the forefront of protests against Danish products followingthe publication of the cartoons. Addressing a congregation in Doha on February 3, during Friday prayers, he urged people to boycott Danish goods. “Today is the day of anger, a day to express our fury on behalf of Allah and His Prophet (PBUH),” Qaradawi had said.

Don't investigate how we bribe them! They may get angry! From the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON — The attorney-general, Lord Goldsmith, has been asked to block a criminal investigation into allegations that Britain's biggest defence company ran a £60 million slush fund to support the extravagant lifestyle of Saudi businessmen and members of the Saudi royal family.

Goldsmith has been asked by government officials to examine whether the inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into the slush fund allegedly run by BAE Company is “in the public interest.”

They fear it could provoke Saudi Arabia into pulling out of Britain's biggest export contract.

Well placed legal sources say that the Saudis are becoming increasingly alarmed about the inquiry, which is examining how the fund was used to provide Saudi princes and princesses with luxury holidays, Rolls-Royces, rented apartments and other perks. The government decision was taken after the Saudi government had expressed dissatisfaction over the investigation.

It looks as if many in Afghanistan believe that the local Christians have violated their dhimma. From Compass Direct, with thanks to all who sent this in:

March 22 (Compass) – An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country....

During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld.

This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.

“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings,” one of his friends said.

Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.

There is much more. Read it all.

In "Abdul Rahman's Family Values," Time Magazine (thanks to all who sent this in) reveals "an official police report on the Christian convert in Afghanistan" which "alleges a tawdry domestic life."

It never seems to occur to Time that anyone in Afghanistan might have any interest in blackening Abdul Rahman's name, and they retail these stories from supposedly disinterested officials and family members (that's right, the family that turned him in for apostasy) without critical comment.

Most importantly, these stories are a gigantic red herring, of interest only to the most befogged dhimmis. It doesn't matter if Abdul Rahman is a deadbeat dad, a father stabber, a mother raper, or the second coming of Adolf Hitler. If he is any of those things, of course he should be prosecuted in a sane society by a sane court system. But ultimately whether he is or is not those things is irrelevant to the question of whether or not he is free, or should be free, to leave the Islamic religion in Afghanistan.

He said he was a Christian, you see, so Time Magazine has to portray him in a negative light. Time's enemy, after all, is Christianity, not the global Islamic jihad.

By attempting to divert attention away from that central question, Time Magazine deserves the opprobrium of all free people everywhere.

Western leaders breathed a sigh of relief yesterday at the release of Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert who had faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic law for renouncing his Muslim faith. Rahman, 40, has become the poster boy for the Christian right and for religious freedom. Closer up, however, the picture painted by the local police who arrested him shows a candidate not quite ready for family values. Rather, a portrait emerges of a deadbeat dad with psychological problems who couldn't hold down a job, abused his daughters and parents and didn't pay child support.

Colonel Mohammed Saber Monseffi, the chief crime officer at the 15th district police station in Kabul, brought Abdul Rahman in for questioning after a domestic dispute turned violent late last month. Says Monseffi, "He told me, 'I'm a Christian,' and I said that is not of any interest to me. I asked him why did you beat your father, why did you beat your daughters?" The fact that Rahman was Christian was secondary to his family's desire to get him out of the house, said Monseffi, who adds that his own wife is a Russian Christian.

Witness statements by his teenage daughters Mariam and Maria, aged 13 and 14, on the night of his arrest appear to detail his failures as a parent. "He behaves badly with us and we were threatened and disgraced by him. He has no job and has never given me a stitch of clothing or a crust of bread. Just his name as a father," said his 13-year-old daughter Mariam in a statement signed with her inky fingerprint.

Both his daughters mentioned that he had converted to Christianity and abandoned the religion of Islam but also described him as "jobless, lazy and cruel." His 14-year-old daughter Maria said that when her father returned to Afghanistan three years ago after spending many years in Germany and Pakistan he was a stranger to her. "He said he was my father but he hasn't behaved like a father since he came back to Afghanistan. He threatens us and we are all afraid of him and he doesn't believe in the religion of Islam," her statement said.

Abdul Rahman's parents did not appear to help his cause. A statement by his mother Ghul Begum reads: "We brought up his children and for eight years he didn't come home. Because he has converted from Islam to another religion we don't want him in our house." His father Abdul Manan's statement says, "(Abdul Rahman) wanted to change the ethics of my children and family. He is not going in the right direction. I have thrown him out of my house." Abdul Rahman's own statement does not dispute his financial straits. "Since I am jobless my family is with my children. I had economic problems with my familiy and my father has many complaints about me. He has warned me if I don't become a Muslim, I will be driven away from the house."

Now, both his daughters and the rest of his family are in hiding in Kabul, fearful that they could be targeted by a now liberated Rahman or by Islamic extremists. On Monday several hundred clerics, students and other protestors gathered on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif calling for his execution and shouting "death to Christians." Afghanistan's deputy attorney general Mohammed Eshaq Aloko said Rahman would be allowed overseas for medical treatment but that the case could be reopened "when he is healthy."

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali Update. Will he be able to conduct da'wa activities unhindered in prison? "US man in Bush murder plot gets 30 years in jail," from Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a U.S. man convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush and conspiring with al Qaeda to 30 years in prison.

In November, Abu Ali was found guilty of all charges in a nine-count indictment, including conspiracy to assassinate Bush, conspiring to support al Qaeda and conspiracy to hijack aircraft.

From Paul Belien at the Brussels Journal, with thanks to all who sent this in:

One of the rare Belgian churches that is packed every weekend is the church of Saint Anthony of Padova in Montignies-sur-Sambre, one of the poorest suburbs of Charleroi, a derelict rust belt area to the south of Brussels. Holy Mass in Montignies is conducted in Latin and lasts up to four hours. Yesterday over 2,000 people attended the service by Father Samuel (Père Samuel). The priest’s sermon dealt with his persecution. The Belgian authorities are bringing the popular priest to court on charges of racism.

Father Samuel has been prosecuted for “incitement to racist hatred” by the Belgian government’s inquisition agency, the so-called Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR), because of a remark he made in a 2002 television interview when he said:

“Every thoroughly islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority.”

Read it all.

The Is-Ought Problem blog brings news of Mariwan Halabjayee, who has been forced to flee Iraqi Kurdistan in fear of his life after writing a book about how Islam oppresses women:

As first reported by the Kurdish language weekly Hawlati (translation by Hiwakan) on March 27, 2006, and later reported by the Peyamner News Agency and The Hewler Globe on March 28, Mariwan (sp. Marywan) Halabjayee (sp. Halabjaee, Halabjaye, Halabjayi), "the Salman Rushdie of Iraqi-Kurdistan," has been forced to flee to Sweden.

Halabjayee departed from Suleimaniya International Airport. Mala Bakhtiar, a political bureau member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was responsible for facilitating Halabjayee’s escape. The PUK effectively controls the Eastern half of Iraqi-Kurdistan, including Suleimaniya.

Halabjayee is in possession of a warrant for his arrest issued by the Suleimaniya police department. Halabjayee reportedly intends to use the warrant in an attempt to secure political asylum in Sweden.

Halabjayee is the author of the book Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam. The book is about how Islam is allegedly used to oppress women. "I wanted to prove how oppressed women are in Islam and that they have no rights," said Halabjayee.

The Islamic League of Kurdistan has issued a "conditional" fatwa to kill Halabjayee if he does not repent and apologize for writing his book. The "conditional" nature of the fatal fatwa is uncertain. Halabjayee reported that "a couple of weeks ago in Halabja, the mullahs and scholars said if I go to them and apologize they will give me 80 lashes and then refer me to the fatwa committee to decide if I am to be beheaded. They might forgive me, they might not." As a result, Halabjaye went into hiding with his pregnant wife and three children.

Anti-dhimmitude from an unlikely place. Let's hope other Western nations swiftly follow suit. From AP, with thanks to Shinolite:

TORONTO - Canada said Wednesday it was suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority because the new Hamas-led government refuses to renounce violence and recognize Israel. Hamas responded that Ottawa's decision was hasty and unfair.

It was the first government besides Israel to cut off financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas won the legislative elections in January, and other nations were expected to follow suit.

Hamas formally took power Wednesday, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swearing in its 24-member Cabinet.

Hamas and new Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh insist they won't soften the militant group's violent ideology or formally recognize its longtime nemesis.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement that Canada had no choice but to suspend assistance and decline any contact with the new Hamas Cabinet.

"The stated platform of this government has not addressed the concerns raised by Canada and others concerning nonviolence, the recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, including the roadmap for peace," MacKay said. "As a result, Canada will have no contact with the members of the Hamas Cabinet and is suspending assistance to the Palestinian Authority."...

But some money will still flow:

Ottawa has said, however, the Palestinian people should not be penalized over the actions of the group and currently provides $22 million in annual humanitarian aid through various United Nations and non-governmental agencies....

"Working with our partners and through the United Nations, its agencies and other organizations, Canada will continue to support and respond to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people," Verner said. "Canada will also continue to work with the voices of moderation within Palestinian society."

Also at Bruce Bawer's site today is this harrowing confirmation of everything he warns us about in While Europe Slept, which if you have not read, you should obtain and read immediately:

Norway's asylum policy claimed another victim today. This time it was somebody I knew. Stein Sjaastad (58) was a good friend of, and the primary-care physician for, several of my best friends in Oslo. I met him several times. He was always gentle and soft-spoken, and always had a warm, slightly wry smile and a genial twinkle in his eye. He was by all accounts a wonderful, caring doctor, and when one of my best friends in Oslo was going through the worst crisis of his life, Stein was extraordinarily understanding, considerate, and helpful, going out of his way to help him through it. He was what every doctor should be.

Today an Algerian national who has been living in Norway for about a year, and whose asylum application was apparently denied (but who, as is the usual practice, simply remained here anyway), walked into Stein's office and stabbed him several times in the chest and neck with a knife that he had brought along. Apparently he had been a patient of Stein's. This afternoon, when his name surfaced in connection with the murder, several Oslo doctors told police that they had experienced this man's aggressiveness firsthand. But of course nothing had been done. Nothing is ever done. After all, lots of asylum seekers are aggressive.

One was reminded at once of August 3, 2004, when another aggressive asylum seeker -- this one from Somalia -- murdered 23-year-old Terje Mjåland on a downtown Oslo tram, the same tram my partner takes to work every day. That murderer, as it happens, was released by the authorities only two weeks ago, on March 15, on his own recognizance. He can't be held responsible for the crime, they say, because he was insane at the time. Now, apparently, he's OK.

This evening, on Tabloid, Norway's premier news-discussion program, Mullah Krekar was interviewed. He offered his views on Islam and the West, the main point being that the former will eventually conquer the latter. No mention of Stein's murder.

Stein leaves two sons and a partner, Egil.

At his blog, Bruce Bawer, author of the stunning and essential book While Europe Slept, responds to a typically irresponsible and silly review of his book in the Washington Post, aka the Bandar Beacon. A sampling (first the review, then Bawer's comments):

The presence of imperfectly integrated communities of highly traditional Middle Eastern and North African Muslims in Europe, as well as the chasm that separates many European Muslims from the cultural norms of their adopted countries, were familiar well before Bawer arrived,

"Familiar" to whom? Not to most Americans, certainly. It was all but impossible to find mention of the situation in the European or American media.

even if Christian Europeans had no idea how to cope with them.

Indeed, Bawer's complaint was vividly and conspicuously personified by
the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. A proud homosexual, he was
assassinated by an animal-rights activist in 2002.

An "animal-rights activist," that is, who was infuriated by Fortuyn's stance on Islam, and who killed him after having been brainwashed by Dutch media and politicians into viewing Fortuyn as a dangerous, racist extremist.

His right-wing, anti-immigration stance rested on the insistence that
Islam was too socially retrograde to be integrated into liberal Dutch
culture.

For the millionth time, Fortuyn was not "right-wing." His concern about the influx of Muslims into the Netherlands was based on the fact that many of them were incorrigibly right-wing -- and not just right-wing, but reactionary to a degree beyond the imagination of most Westerners.

So there's not much new here,

"Preaching to the converted," "not much new here" -- move along, folks. Don't worry. Be happy.

No, not much new. Funny, then, how I keep getting emails -- from extremely intelligent people who read newspapers like the Washington Post every day and consider themselves well-informed -- and yet have been stunned by what they've learned from this book.

Read it all.

Anti-dhimmitude from the Italian Prime Minister. From AP, with thanks to Marisol Seibold, who comments: "There's a fair amount that's not being said in this article with respect to who would like to set up camp in Italy (i.e., waging jihad by migration to infidel lands), and what dangers that would entail -- including the establishment of a home base for terrorism within that country, and all the crime and legal wrangling that has afflicted other European countries in recent years. Near the end of the article, it is mentioned in passing that significant numbers of immigrants from North Africa land in Italy on a regular basis. But that mention comes long after what is apparently the central point, that Berlusconi is against both the enshrined notion of multiculturalism and a "multiethnic" demographic shift. Then surely he hates rainbows and puppies, too."

ROME - Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he does not want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country, drawing plaudits from a right-wing ally and criticism from center-left opponents....

"We don't want Italy to become a multiethnic, multicultural country. We are proud of our traditions," Berlusconi said Monday on state-run radio.

Berlusconi's government has put in place a tough immigration policy, including legislation cracking down on illegal immigration. The 2002 law allows only immigrants with job contracts to obtain residency permit.

"We want to open (our borders) to foreigners who flee countries where their lives or liberties are at risk," said Berlusconi, adding those who come to Italy to work also are welcome. "We don't want to welcome all those who come here to bring about damage and danger to Italian citizens."

Thousands of illegal immigrants come to Italy every year, mostly crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa on rickety boats. The latest group of more than 200 landed Monday on Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily.

Most immigrants, if they elude police, move on to other European countries.

The Northern League, a right-wing anti-immigrant party, welcomed Berlusconi's remarks.

"Here's the Berlusconi we want," said Roberto Calderoli, a Northern League leader who was forced to quit as reforms minister last month after he wore a T-shirt on state TV decorated with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. "Our values, our identity, our history, our traditions" must be defended against immigration, the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying....

Irfan Khawaja gives some Islamic apologists and dhimmi fellow travelers a well-deserved skewering in this HNN piece (thanks to Andrew Bostom). News links in the original:

I suppose by now we've all heard of the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert to Christianity now on trial for what Afghan law regards as the capital offense of apostasy. The case evokes the same response from me as does every case of its kind: a sense of indignation at the injustice involved, and hope for the victim's eventual exoneration. (As of this writing, Abdul Rahman's mental fitness to stand trial has been challenged by the government—no less a rights-violation than its having put him on trial for apostasy.)

In a recent post at Liberty & Power, David Beito suggests that the Abdul Rahman case is somehow a problem for those of us who backed the war on Afghanistan. I disagree, and will deal with that claim in a subsequent post. But it seems to me that the case is much more obviously a problem for people in Near East and Islamic Studies who have been trying for so long to split the difference between liberalism and Islam. Political Islam, they keep telling us, is a more benign thing than we secularists are willing to admit. Well, let's consider.

The basic lesson to be learned from the Abdul Rahman case is eloquently expressed in a pair of sentences in this March 24 article in The New York Times by Abdul Waheed Wafa and David Rohde:

The case illustrates a central contradiction of the compromise Constitution that Afghanistan adopted in 2004, which has been cited as an example for other Islamic countries. One passage declares Islam Afghanistan's supreme law, while another states that the country grants its citizens religious freedom.

Fleshed out a bit, I think, we can draw five further lessons from the passage in the Times story.

Abdul Rahman has arrived in Rome. Let's hope that he will be safe there. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

ROME — The Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity received asylum in Italy Wednesday, despite requests by lawmakers in Afghanistan that he be barred from fleeing the conservative Muslim country.

Abdul Rahman arrived in Rome days after he was freed from a high-security prison on the outskirts of Kabul after a court dropped charges of apostasy against him for lack of evidence and suspected mental illness....

Rahman was in the care of Italy's Interior Ministry, Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday evening. "He is already in Italy," he said. "I think he arrived overnight."

The premier declined to release more details. The Interior Ministry said Rahman was "under protection."

Here's a gem from our It's-All-About-the-Wahhabis Department: from Iran Focus, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 25 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that the reach of the Islamic Republic’s ideology had spread from North Africa all the way through to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. His comments, which were made while on a visit to the south-western province of Khuzestan, were aired on state television.

“The depth of our nation’s strategy and revolution has reached Islamic countries of the region, Palestine, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent”, Khamenei said to chants of “Death to America”.

“Today, 1.5 billion Muslims across the world are looking to the flag of Islam which has been kept aloft in this country”, he said.

Not long ago I was contacted by a representative of the Ayn Rand Institute and invited to be part of a panel discussion, "Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons," which was to be held at NYU. Unfortunately I was unable to take part, but the panel will include Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad. And it looks as if they will have a lot to talk about, because NYU is not letting them display the cartoons as they discuss them.

"NYU Surrenders to the Heckler’s Veto in Mohammed Cartoon Dispute," a press release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:

NEW YORK, March 29, 2006—In violation of its own policies, New York University (NYU) is refusing to allow a student group to show the Danish cartoons of Mohammed at a public event tonight. Even though the purpose of the event is to show and discuss the cartoons, an administrator has suddenly ordered the students either not to display them or to exclude 150 off-campus guests from attending. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is urging NYU’s president to reverse course and stand up for freedom of speech.

“NYU’s actions are inexcusable,” declared FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, who is slated to speak at the event. “The very purpose of this event is to discuss the cartoons that are at the center of a global controversy. To say that students cannot show them if they wish to engage anyone outside the NYU community is both chilling and absurd. The fact that expression might provoke a strong reaction is a reason to protect it, not an excuse to punish it.”

Earlier this month, the NYU Objectivist Club decided to hold a panel discussion entitled “Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons,” at which the cartoons will be displayed. Similar events, sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), have taken place on several other campuses. Like previous NYU Objectivist Club events, the discussion was to be open to the public.

However, on Monday afternoon, NYU Director of Student Activities Robert Butler sent an e-mail requesting a meeting with the leaders of the Objectivist Club the next day. He also informed them that NYU would now “require that this event be open only to members of the NYU community.” Butler cited “the campus climate and controversy surrounding the cartoons,” ordering the students to inform the “non-NYU people” who had already registered that they “should not plan on attending.” He concluded, “This is not negotiable.”

Following the meeting, Butler sent another e-mail clarifying that the students have two choices: they must either not display the cartoons, or not allow anyone from off campus to attend the event. Approximately 150 off-campus guests are currently registered to attend.

“This is a classic case of the heckler’s veto,” noted FIRE’s Lukianoff. “NYU is shamelessly clamping down on an event purely out of fear that people who disagree with the viewpoints expressed may disrupt it. These immoral, last-minute restrictions must be lifted.”

FIRE was informed of NYU’s actions just yesterday. Hours later, Lukianoff called NYU President John Sexton to remind him that NYU’s own policies recognize student groups’ right to open events to the public and proclaim that “the use of physical force or other disruptive means to obstruct and restrain speakers” is “destructive of the pursuit of inquiry and learning in a free and democratic society.” FIRE has not yet received a response.

NYU’s actions notwithstanding, Lukianoff still plans to speak at the event, which will take place at 7 p.m. tonight in the Eisner and Lubin Auditorium of NYU’s Kimmel Center.

FIRE is a nonprofit educational foundation that unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals from across the political and ideological spectrum on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression, academic freedom, and rights of conscience at our nation’s colleges and universities. FIRE’s efforts to preserve freedom of expression on college campuses across the country during the cartoon controversy can be viewed at thefire.org/cartoons.

CONTACT:
Greg Lukianoff, President, FIRE: 215-717-3473; greg_lukianoff@thefire.org
Yaron Brook, President, ARI: 408-206-7756; ybrook@aynrand.org
John Sexton, President, NYU: 212-998-2345; john.sexton@nyu.edu
Robert Butler, Director of Student Activities, NYU: 212-998-4718; bob.butler@nyu.edu

We will be seeing much more of this. From AKI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Riyadh, 29 March (AKI) - Saudi security forces have thwarted a terrorist attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery Abqaiq, the second in two months, according to media reports. The Kuwaiti news agency KUNA and the Iraqi Radio Nawa report that police discovered two car bombs in the area. Local daily al-Riyadh reports that Saudi police on Tuesday carried out house searches in the al-Mantar area of Abqaib, where some employees of Saudi oil giant Aramco live, arms and explosive were discovered in one of the homes and one man was arrested. Reports say that the vehicles to be used in the attack bore the company logo.

On 24 February Saudi Arabian security forces opened fire on at least two cars apparently commandeered by would-be suicide bombers, thwarting an attack on the Abqaiq oil processing plant in the east of the country. The cars exploded near gates leading to the facility, Saudi officials said.

The oil output at the plant, the largest of its kind in the world, was not affected by the incident, Saudi state television reported.

The attack is the first directed at crude oil facilities since al-Qaeda militants launched a suicide bombing campaign against the Kingdom's pro-Western leaders in May 2003. Abqaiq handles about two-thirds of Saudi's petroleum output.

The attack came a year after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged supporters to hit oil targets in the Gulf.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the significance of the fact that so much jihad violence is inspired, according to its perpetrators, by the Qur'an -- and what can be done about it:

When one looks around the world, one is not struck by the numbers of Muslims rushing to denounce Bin Laden, nor Ayman al-Zawihiri, nor Al Qaeda, nor Hamas (landslide victor among the "Palestinian people"), nor the Muslim Brotherhood (quintupling its representation in Egypt's Parliament, and certainly, in a free and fair election, the likely victor in Egypt), nor the F.I.S. in Algeria (well, they won the last time they were allowed to run), nor Lashkar Jihad, nor Jaish-e-Mohammed, nor -- well, here you can fill in the name of any group you wish, a half-dozen in Pakistan, another half-dozen in Indonesia, a few al-Sayyaf groups in the Philippines, and so on around the world. One looks at how Hindus are treated in Bangladesh, at how Christians are treated in Indonesia and Pakistan and the Sudan and in the new, improved, and freer, and therefore more Islamic Iraq, and is impressed -- impressed with how closely the behavior of Muslims, feeling their new power, both real and imagined, mimics that historically of Muslims toward all non-Muslims subjugated by them, over 1350 years.

And one asks oneself: what prompts this behavior? What prompts Muslims all over to think it right and proper for them to engage in boycotts, in recall of ambassadors, in death threats to all Danes everywhere, to violent demonstrations thousands of miles from Denmark to protest the exercise of the Western right of free speech, as exercised by Westerners in their Western land, by Muslims who presume to impose their own notion of what can and cannot be expressed? What prompts Muslims all over the world either to approve, or to remain silent, or to attempt to mislead Infidels about the real source of the death sentence that the convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman faced in Afghanistan, and that only Western pressure managed to force the government to prevent (at least so far) by coming up with an obvious face-saving technicality as an excuse?

An update on this story from AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ROME - Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that Italy would be happy to give asylum to the "courageous" Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity.

"I say that we are very glad to be able to welcome someone who has been so courageous," Berlusconi said, when asked by Associated Press Television News about the possibility of asylum for the man. The premier spoke ahead of a Cabinet meeting in which the government was widely expected to grant asylum.

Hello, uh, Mr. Ahmadinejad?...Yes, this is Kofi...Fine, fine, thank you...Yes, that's right, alhamdulillah...Oh, Kojo is just fine as well, thank you very much...Alhamdulillah, yes...Alhamdulillah indeed...Look, Mr. Ahmadinejad, I just want to give you an update...In the Security Council we've managed to weaken the language condemning your nuclear program...Yes, yes, alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah...But Mahmoud -- may I call you Mahmoud?...Thank you...Mahmoud, the resolution still calls upon you to abandon uranium enrichment activities...What's that? The Great Satan? No, not exactly...It was Britain and France...Mahmoud, calm down...Mahmoud? Mahmoud?

From the New York Times, with thanks to JE:

UNITED NATIONS, March 28 — European and American diplomats circulated a new draft statement to the Security Council on Tuesday evening that weakens language condemning Iran's nuclear program but still calls on Tehran to abandon uranium enrichment activities, which the West believes are intended to make weapons.

The new draft, written by Britain and France and supported by the United States, eliminates or softens elements in earlier drafts that had raised objections from China and Russia.

The three Western nations hope the new version can be adopted Wednesday, a day before the foreign ministers of the five permanent Council members and Germany meet in Berlin to discuss strategy on Iran.

This only highlights the fact that the release of Abdul Rahman has done nothing to solve the larger problem of Sharia in the Afghan Constitution. From Reuters, with thanks to JE:

Members of the Afghan parliament condemned the release of a man who denied Islam, insisting on Wednesday he should not be allowed to leave the country, as Italy appeared ready to offer him asylum.

Abdur Rahman, 41, was jailed this month for converting to Christianity, and could have faced trial under Islamic sharia law stipulating death as punishment for apostasy or departure from original religion.

He was freed from prison on Monday after pressure from Western countries whose troops helped bring the Afghan government to power.

"The release of Abdur Rahman was contrary to the existing laws of Afghanistan," Yunus Qanuni, president of the lower house of parliament, told the assembly during an unscheduled debate on the case.

"Abdur Rahman should not flee and should not be allowed to leave Afghanistan ... he should be kept under supervision," he said.

In FrontPage this morning I discuss Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar's stated motives for attempting to kill UNC students, and the implications of those motives (news links in the original):

Before he drove a rented SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina and tried to run down and kill as many people as he could on March 3, Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar left a letter of explanation in his apartment. It is chillingly detached, almost clinical: “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate. To whom it may concern: I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah.”

In the letter, Taheri-azar identifies himself simply as “a servant of Allah.” He declares that “in the Qur’an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women.…After extensive contemplation and reflection, I have made the decision to exercise the right of violent retaliation that Allah has given me to the fullest extent to which I am capable at present.” And further, “Allah’s commandments are never to be questioned and all of Allah’s commandments must be obeyed. Those who violate Allah’s commandments and purposefully follow human fabrication and falsehood as their religion will burn in fire for eternity in accordance with Allah’s will.”

Nineteen Muslim teachers, and nary a one of them apparently understands the Religion of Peace correctly. What astounding complexity! What glorious obscurity! How can a mere man hope ever to plumb its depths?

From Reuters, with thanks to Twostellas:

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Nineteen teachers at an Islamic school founded by a top fugitive insurgent in the Thai south have been held on suspicion of involvement in two years of bloody separatist violence, officials said on Tuesday.

The arrests would fuel more resentment among ethnic Malays in the mainly Muslim region, where more than 1,100 people have been killed in the violence, Muslim leaders and lawyers said.

Security officials in Bangkok said the 19 men were arrested under a controversial emergency decree which allows detention of suspects without charge for 30 days.

The teachers at Thamma Wittaya School in the city of Yala were arrested last week after they came back from a curriculum preparatory meeting on an island off nearby Satun province, said a Bangkok-based Muslim lawyer who is working on the case....

Security officials told Reuters the 19 teachers were arrested because other suspects had implicated them during police interrogations and some of these teachers were educated in Muslim countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.

"They claimed to have a meeting about the school curriculum, but why did they have to have it on a remote unknown island hardly ever visited by tourists," a Satun security official said....

The government has tried many ways to end the violence and win the hearts and minds of the 1.8 million people in the region bordering Malaysia, from brute force to bombing the region with millions of paper "peace" birds by Air Force warplanes. But the violence persists.

Yes, those "peace birds" were definitely a highlight of the global anti-jihad resistance.

Eurabia Alert from AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - A Muslim woman who refuses to shake men's hands for religious reasons cannot be barred from a Dutch teacher-training program.

The Dutch Equal Treatment Commission found Monday that the Regional Education Center in the city of Utrecht illegally ''discriminated, indirectly, on the basis of religion,'' when it rejected Fatima Amghar for its program.

Amghar, 20, said her religious beliefs forbid her from having physical contact with men over the age of 12.

The school rejected her application, arguing that shaking hands was routine for a teaching assistant in Dutch society.

But ''there are other conceivable manners of greeting that can be considered proper and respectful,'' the commission ruled.

It warned that Dutch schools risk excluding Muslim women from society unless they find a way to accommodate their beliefs.

And that accommodation, of course, is all one way.

Sharia Alert: "Divorce Granted for Muslim Couple," from AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

Islamic leaders in India have ordered a Muslim couple to divorce.

The wife told friends that her husband had uttered the word "talaq" three times in his sleep.

"Talaq" means divorce.

When the story reached religious leaders, they said his words constituted a divorce under an Islamic procedure known had "triple talaq" and they ordered the split.

They had been married eleven years. Now according to Islamic law they cannot remarry until the wife marries another man, consummates the marriage, and is again divorced.

Buried deep in the story "A Terrorist's Grand Delusion" in the Washington Post is this:

He said Islam allows lying in three instances: in jihad, to bring reconciliation between Muslims, and in marriage, "if a wife asks her husband, `Am I beautiful?' and she is 60 years old."

Brinkema, 61, smiled.

Now we are told that Osama bin Laden and his ilk don't actually know anything about Islam. Very well. But then there is this hadith:

Humaid b. 'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Auf reported that his mother Umm Kulthum daughter of 'Uqba b. Abu Mu'ait, and she was one amongst the first emigrants who pledged allegiance to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him), as saying that she heard Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: A liar is not one who tries to bring reconciliation amongst people and speaks good (in order to avert dispute), or he conveys good. Ibn Shihab said he did not hear that exemption was granted in anything what the people speak as lie but in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them). (Sahih Muslim book 32, no. 6303)

Let's see. Lying is permissible in battle and to reconcile husband and wife. Moussaoui accurately recounted this hadith. It is easy for Islamic apologists in the West to convince non-Muslims that men like him know nothing of Islam; it will be harder for them to convince their fellow Muslims of this.

And that renders all their learned analyses hollow.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines the words of the sister of Tarheel jihadist Mohammed Taheri-azar:

"Please let us echo in your ears that my brother was and always has been a kind, gentle and pure soul,” she read from a statement. “His current actions and words are as much a source of shock and distress to us as they are to you.”
-- from this AP article, from the sister of the kind and gentle soul who plowed an SUV into a crowd of college students.

No doubt, for a Muslim, much of it true -- he is a "kind, gentle and pure soul" in many ways. But not toward Infidels. There the adjectives begin to jostle one another. The purer his Islam, the less kind and gentle he would be toward Infidels -- as the Qur'an tells him (48:29), as the Hadith makes clear in its most authoritative recensions, as the example of Muhammad instructs.

And when an Infidel experiences mental desarroi or depression, he can blame his parents, his children, his siblings, his karma, The System, Amerika, the stars, fate, his cholesterol level, his serotonin level, or even --- himself. When a Muslim falls into any kind of distress, with that mental vademecum and pocket prism through which to view the universe, Islam, he can blame the Infidel. (And this assumes, which may not be true, that Taheri-azar did not quite take the tenets and attitudes of Islam as much to heart before, when he was merely that "kind, gentle and pure soul.") As Taheri-azar did.

Another one from the Hate Mail Bag:

Dear Mr. Spencer,

I find it quite amusing that you share the same literalist, parochial and narrow-minded reading of the Qur'an as the so-called Afghan scholars.

You quote verses from the Qur'an completely out of their textual and historical context, with a utter disregard for the actual circumstances behind a particular ayat (verse). You follow in the footsteps of Osama bin laden and read the Ayat's partially, and not wholistically.

Then, you simply mislead readers by not giving the full information, how typical.

Now, you call REAL Islamic jurists like Khaled Abou El Fadl (unlike the two-bit Afghanis), who has spent over 20 years immersed in volumes and volumes of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) in his Islamic legal training, studied the legal maxims of Islamic law, knows the complexities of the Arabic language etc., as an "Islamic apologist"?

Where do you get off with such outrageous and ridiculous assertions?

Your shallow and faulty analysis of the Qur'anic verses, coupled with your amateurish approach and knowledge of Islamic law and jurisprudence, reveals your efforts to be laughable.

Most people can recognizes this right away from your website and comments, which I'm sure helps to invogorate [sic] the bigots who post often on the site.

Go and join the Salafi/literalist so-called Islamic scholars in Afganistan, Saudi Arabia etc. They could use inept individuals like you. But they might not approve of your bland MA degree in Religious Studies.

But they might lend you some books of your favourite medieval literalist/Salafist jurist Ibn Taymiyya!

Cordially,

Aleemuddin Ahmed

My reply:

Sir,

It is not my job to interpret the Qur'an. I only report on how it is interpreted.

If Khaled Abou El Fadl's explanations were not so transparently apologetic, I would not call him an apologist. But invoking 2:256 ["There is no compulsion in religion"] against the death penalty for apostasy is something that only someone who thinks his hearers do not know the contents of the Qur'an and Sunnah would try to get away with. Does Abou El Fadl think that the clerics who invoke Muhammad's words "Baddala deenahu, faqtuluhu " [If anyone changes his religion, kill him] have never heard of 2:256? [Egyptian jihad theorist Sayyid] Qutb explains 2:256 in a way that is perfectly harmonious with violent jihad and the death penalty for apostasy. Please refute him.

Please also specify where I have written anything false about the asbab an-nazool [circumstances of revelation] of any ayat [verse], or anything false about the rulings of any of the madhahib [schools of Islamic jurisprudence] about apostasy.

If I "follow in the footsteps of Osama bin laden," calling me names won't do the job. People are listening to him all over the Muslim world. It's up to Islamic experts like you to refute him. Go ahead. I'll publish your refutation on my website. Send me examples of Islamic religious scholars rejecting, on Islamic grounds, jihad violence against non-Muslims; rejecting the idea that Sharia law should be instituted in the Muslim and non-Muslim world; and teaching the idea that non-Muslims and Muslims should live together indefinitely as equals. Send me rejections of the ideas that women should not enjoy full equality of rights with men. Send me information that shows that those who write such rejections are not lone voices crying in the wilderness, with the wolves of Islamic orthodoxy ready to pounce upon them, but that they represent broad traditions within Islam and have large followings.

I'll be right here, at director@jihadwatch.org.

Cordially
Robert Spencer

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald, noting the soothing appearance of Islamic apologist Khaled Abou El Fadl to reassure Westerners that Islam doesn't really have a death penalty for apostasy, revisits the phenomenon of the moderate Muslim:

The phrase "moderate Muslim" should not be used unless it is clearly defined. I suggest that any Muslim who misleads non-Muslims about the central tenets of Islam -- whether or not he agrees with them -- is objectively furthering the Jihad by rendering non-Muslims unwary and keeping them in a state of naive trustingness that can only cause them harm. So that even if one does not oneself subscribe fully to orthodox Islam, if a "moderate Muslim" does not tell the truth about Islam, he furthers the Jihad. And in any case, his mere presence in the dar al-Harb swells the perceived political power of Muslims and increases security needs (which cost taxpayers mightily).

Also, there is always the possibility that a "moderate Muslim" who has not become an open enemy of traditional Islam -- in the manner, say, of Ibn Warraq -- will have children who, for whatever reason, may revert to Islam in its traditional, mainstream, highly dangerous-to-Infidels form. We have no way of detecting those who are the true believers in Islam, from those who are not. As such, we have no duty to continue to foster the growth of Muslim populations in the Infidel lands -- if, that is, we care about our own safety, and that of our own civilization. We are under no obligation to commit civilizational or other kinds of suicide.

There are many in Western Europe today who are now realizing that they have been misled by their own elites into permitting the large-scale entry of Muslims who are bearers of an ideology that requires them to be implacably hostile to the un-Believers, to regard the lands of dar al-Harb as Muslim by right, and to work, through the seemingly unopposed instruments of Da'wa and demography, to turn dar al-Harb into dar al-Islam.

Nobody seems to have grasped the absurdity of an apology in Old Kampala for cartoons printed in a free and independent newspaper in Denmark -- not by representatives of the paper, of course. From the Monitor Online, with thanks to Twostellas:

THE Danish Ambassador, Mr Stig Barlyng, yesterday met Muslim leaders and apologised for the publication of cartoons ridiculing Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

The meeting took place at the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council headquarters in Old Kampala.

Barlyng’s visit to the council was in response to a threat by Ugandan Muslims to stop buying Danish products until Denmark apologises for the publication.

A superb set of questions from Investors Business Daily (thanks to Michelle Malkin). Ibrahim Hooper, I await your answers. (Note: to find all these references, check several verses around the specified verse number. English Qur'ans differ in their numbering of verses.)

Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:

Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?

Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?

Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?

Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?

And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?

Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?

Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?

Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?

There are other questions, but these should do for a start. If the answers are "yes," then at least Americans will know there's no such thing as moderate Islam, even as they trust that there are moderate Muslims who do not act out on its violent commands.

Former federal prosecuter Andy McCarthy has a must read piece at NRO:

Here’s a riddle: What begins with words “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” a formal Islamic salutation also commonly used by militants in their warnings, fatwas, and claims of responsibility regarding terrorist acts?

What extols the virtues of “rightful jehad” (also known as jihad) in its very first sentence?

What in its first article declares its sovereignty to be an “Islamic Republic,” and in its second installs Islam as the official “religion of the state”?

What, in its third article announces to the world that, within the territory it governs, “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam”?...

The answer, which will come as no surprise to followers of the Abdul Rahman apostasy trial in Kabul, is the Afghan constitution. This is the celebrated foundational law which came into force on January 4, 2004, to the ringing praises of Zalmay Khalilzad, then the American ambassador under whose kneading the drafting process was completed....

Read it all.

The message of Islamic apologists such as Khaled Abou El Fadl, who maintain that Islam does not actually prescribe the execution of apostates, has not gotten through to the mobs in Afghanistan still howling for Abdul Rahman's blood. Now why is that? I'd like to see Khaled Abou El Fadl answer that question.

From AP, with thanks to JE:

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished Tuesday after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death....

On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.

"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."

Bridge for Sale Alert. Hamas, evidently believing that it really could lose some funding from Western dhimmis, is now singing a moderate tune. All that in the Hamas Charter about destroying Israel? Empty talk! Killing Israeli civilians, which killings Hamas celebrated at its website up until a few years ago? Deplorable!

Only the most foolish and eager to be fooled will fall for this -- which probably includes the State Department and Downing Street.

From the Sydney Morning Herald, with thanks to JE:

Aziz Dweik, the Hamas-nominated Speaker of the council, sits in his office juggling mobile phones, all with a different piece of stirring music as the call sign. He has the air about him of a politician enjoying his victory.

Dr Dweik, by way of introduction - warm, smiling, welcoming - wants to make it clear that the Hamas cabinet consists mainly of people like him, professionals and academics, some of whom, like him, have studied abroad.

The idea, he says, that Palestinians are all ignorant terrorists is a lie cooked up by the Israelis and the Bush Administration.

Dr Dweik, a longtime Hamas member and leader, studied for his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and has fond memories of his time there. He professes great affection for many Americans and says some are still his close friends....

He goes on to say that he does not want to throw the Israelis into the sea, not at all. He values human life and Hamas has stuck by its declared truce and will continue to stick by it.

If Israel came up with a deal that offered Palestinians a true state, that too would be considered.

"In the meantime, we have work to do, laying down the ground for real democracy and transparency and getting rid of corruption. That is our first priority. We want to repair our economy. Then we must give our people some measure of social justice. And we want to promote international peace. We want international support.

"OK, yes, it happened, we did suicide attacks but now there is a truce. We deplore any action where civilians are killed, yes, including Israeli civilians. We are a moderate Islamic movement. We are not terrorists. We are freedom seekers. Please, tell your readers, please help us secure this goal."

The New York Times covers the demolition of the last synagogue in Tajikistan, which we noted here several weeks ago.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Even during Sabbath services on a Saturday in early March, as Rabbi Mikhail Abdurakhimov read Hebrew prayers and the faithful followed along using Russian transliterations, the rumble of construction was distracting.

This is a synagogue in its last moments of existence. While the congregants prayed, a bright orange bulldozer growled outside, continuing its work at the synagogue's edge.

"They could do this anytime," whispered David Kiselkov, 56. "But of course they choose to do it now."

The synagogue is the last in Tajikistan, and will soon fall victim to redevelopment and the declining Jewish population in this remote post-Soviet state....

And, evidently, to the shifting of Tajikistan back to a more overtly Islamic identity:

Dushanbe, a quiet, verdant capital with a single central boulevard, is slowly changing, struggling to emerge from isolation, state Socialism and civil war.

Lenin's statue was recently replaced by a towering golden monument to Ismail Samani, a 9th-century Persian shah reborn as a Tajik hero. A sparkling green bank stands next to an imposing Stalinist government building, freshly painted peach.

Keystone Kops Alert from the New York Times, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

WASHINGTON, March 27 — Undercover Congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the United States enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says.

The test, conducted in December by the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated the mixed progress by the Department of Homeland Security, among other federal agencies, in trying to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material into the United States.

The old Tu Quoque diversionary tactic from the model human rights regime of the Thug-In-Chief. From Iran Focus, with thanks to JE:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 28 – Iran’s Foreign Minister has expressed “concern” over “human rights abuses” in the United States and called on the United Nations to investigate the matter.

Mottaki censured “widespread human rights violations in the U.S.”, highlighting the treatment of black people and Muslims.

He called for the United Nations to appoint a new Special Rapporteur to investigate and report on “cases of human rights violations by America”.

Common sense. "'We're on the eve of World War III': Ex-Mossad chief urges West to unite, warns of Muslims imposing ideology," from WND, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

JERUSALEM – Global civilization is on the verge of "World War III," a massive conflict in which the Islamic world will attempt to impose its ideology on Western nations, according to Meir Amit, a former director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

Amit, one of the most esteemed figures in the international defense establishment, warned Islamic nations and global Islamist groups will continue launching "all kinds of attacks" against Western states. He urged the international community to immediately unite and coordinate a strategy to fight against the "Islamic war."

"We are on the eve of war with the Islamic world, which will wage a war and all kinds of actions and attacks against the Western world. We already noticed the terrorists in the world hit Spain, England, France. I call it World War III. You must look at it from this angle and treat it wider, not as a problem of terrorism here and there," said Amit...

Moral Equivalence Alert: this kind of thing happens in the Vatican every day. "Pakistan faction clash 'kills 25,'" from the BBC, with thanks to JE:

At least 25 people have been killed in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in clashes between supporters of rival Muslim clerics, officials say.

The factions fought pitched gun battles with automatic weapons in the town of Bara town in Khyber agency, tribal areas spokesman Shah Zaman Khan said.

Fighting began late on Monday after a house was demolished and continued until early Tuesday, Mr Khan said....

Hundreds of supporters of Mufti Munir Shakir attacked the stronghold of a rival Afghan preacher, Pir Saifur Rehman, on Monday killing at least 16 people, officials say....

Both clerics have been operating illegal FM stations to broadcast their religious beliefs and label the rival group heretics.

The two groups have also accused each one another of taking women and children hostage.

Even though he says "Finley Park Mosque" for "Finsbury Park Mosque," Dennis Prager still largely has it right in this column (thanks to Olivia):

Only four types of individuals can deny the threat to civilization posed by the violence-supporting segment of Islam: the willfully naive, America-haters, Jew-haters and those afraid to confront evil.

Anyone else sees the contemporary reality -- the genocidal Islamic regime in Sudan; the widespread Muslim theological and emotional support for the killing of a Muslim who converts to another religion; the absence of freedom in Muslim-majority countries; the widespread support for Palestinians who randomly murder Israelis; the primitive state in which women are kept in many Muslim countries; the celebration of death; the "honor killings" of daughters; and so much else that is terrible in significant parts of the Muslim world -- knows that civilized humanity has a new evil to fight.

Just as previous generations had to fight Nazism, communism and fascism, our generation has to confront militant Islam.

Read it all.

Bravo, Italy. Now how about ending the harassment of Fallaci?

From AP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ROME - Italy's foreign minister will ask the government to grant asylum to an Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity....

Abdul Rahman, 41, was released from prison late Monday, a day after the court dismissed the case under pressure from the Bush administration.

He quickly dropped out of sight, as Muslim clerics in his country continued to call for his death.

This just in from the Hate Mail Bag:

i think u guys are pathetic and soon , very soon we'll get you muhammad muhammad

Dear Mr. Muhammad,

Maybe you will. But there are getting to be too many of us for you to get all of us. Every day more people awaken to the severity of the threat that the global jihad poses to our basic rights and freedoms. No matter how many of us you "get," you face a long, hard struggle ahead.

This is, you may recall, the character who won 15 minutes of fame shortly after 9/11 for announcing that he was on the other side after his mother narrowly escaped death in the Twin Towers. From Reuters, with thanks to Shinolite:

LONDON (Reuters) - A U.S. informant, said by prosecutors to be an accomplice of seven Britons accused of planning bomb attacks, told a London court on Monday he had stockpiled weaponry and ingredients for the deadly poison ricin.

Mohammed Babar, 31, a Pakistan-born American who has admitted terrorism-related offences in the United States, said he had kept bomb-making material and detonators at his home in Lahore, Pakistan, which he intended to smuggle into Britain....

Babar has admitted in closed U.S. hearings trying to acquire the ingredients for what American authorities call "the British bomb plot," the court was told....

Babar told the court on Monday the detonators were brought to his apartment in June 2003 to be taken to "Europe or the UK" and were stored in a closet with a fan used to keep them from exploding.

Asked what else was kept in the closet Babar replied: "Ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, ricin, the propane stove, urea -- instead of using ammonium nitrate you can use urea to make a bomb too."

He said the "ricin beans" had been brought from Islamabad. The chemical weapon ricin is made from castor beans.

"There were times when something came about like poisoning water supplies and stuff like that or poisoning people," he said.

From our Feeding the Hand That Bites You Department, via The Local, with thanks to Fjordman:

The Islamic Centre in Malmö is to receive three million kronor in government funding for rebuilding and repairing damage caused in the latest attack on the mosque.

The government said that the donation was based on the fact that the Islamic Centre is important and contributes to creating the image of Islam in Sweden.

"The Islamic Centre is a significant player in integration work and its work, religious, social and cultural, reaches many people in southern Sweden," said Lena Hallengren, minister with responsibility for religious issues.

Sharia Alert from Enlightened Secular Turkey. "Once Gabriel promised the Prophet (that he would visit him, but Gabriel did not come) and later on he said, 'We, angels, do not enter a house which contains a picture or a dog.'" (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 54, no. 450)

But killing them? Sure. "Ibn Mughaffal reported: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) ordered killing of the dogs, and then said: What about them, i. e. about other dogs? and then granted concession (to keep) the dog for hunting and the dog for (the security) of the herd, and said: When the dog licks the utensil, wash it seven times, and rub it with earth the eighth time." (Sahih Muslim, bk. 2, no. 551)

"Muslims are accused of killing 'unclean' dogs," from the Telegraph, with thanks to Twostellas:

Pro-islamic municipalities in Turkey are killing stray dogs, animal rights groups claim.

Municipal workers are hunting, torturing and killing the animals by the hundreds, the campaigners say....

Animal rights campaigners who accompanied Miss Isikalp last week said that at least two of the dogs had been sexually abused.

The mayor of Mamak, Gazi Sahin, of the ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party, has denied responsibility.

I don't know that I would put much stock in what Moussaoui says. But this is what he is saying, anyway. "Moussaoui Says He Was to Hijack 5th Plane," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom. His account was in stark contrast to his previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.

On Dec. 22, 2001, Reid was subdued by passengers when he attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe aboard American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami. There were 197 people on board. The plane was diverted to Boston, where it landed safely.

Moussaoui told the court he knew the World Trade Center attack was coming and that he lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted it to happen.

"You lied because you wanted to conceal that you were a member of al- Qaida?" prosecutor Rob Spencer asked.

"That's correct," Moussaoui said.

Spencer: "You lied so the plan could go forward?"

Moussaoui: "That's correct."

I am not, of course, the Rob Spencer referred to here.

Will the U.S. have the guts to take him? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan man who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity has appealed for asylum in another country, the United Nations said Monday.

U.N. spokesman Adrian Edwards said the world body was working with the Afghan government to meet the request by Abdul Rahman, 41.

"Mr. Rahman has asked for asylum outside Afghanistan," Edwards said. "We expect this will be provided by one of the countries interested in a peaceful solution to this case."

Afghans rally during a demonstration in the northern city of Mazar-i-Shariff, Afghanistan March 27, 2006. In the first protest over the case of Afghan man, Abdur Rahman who converted from Islam to Christianity, several hundred people led by clerics demonstrated in Mazar-i-Shariff, demanding Rahman be tried under Islamic law. REUTERS/Tahir Qadiry

A Reuters photo, with thanks to all who sent this in.

John V. Fleming, a professor of English at Princeton and columnist for the Daily Princetonian, speaks truth to power and kindly mentions an essay collection I published last year in the process:

Earlier this month, following widespread reporting of crowds howling in the street as embassies burned and corpses littered the ground, two guest columnists published an essay here complaining of a media-perpetrated anti-Muslim "stereotype" of unreason and violence. "Islam is a religion with a long tradition of tolerance and coexistence with other religions," they concluded, "and the Muslim community asks only for basic tolerance and respect."

That we should tolerate the tolerable and respect the respectable seems an unexceptionable if modest aspiration of civil society. The Myth of Islamic Tolerance itself, however, is unlikely long to survive the perusal of a recent book of that title (Prometheus, 2005, 593 pages) or, for that matter, the wider familiarity with the Koran and Hadith among non-Muslims. These columnists complain, with regard to the Danish cartoons, of "the double standard by which slurs against Islam are permitted in the West while attacks on other faiths are not."

Read it all.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald adduces some examples illustrative of the current crisis in American higher education:

A miscellany of indictments of the current state of American education:

1) The alacrity with which Princeton University hired Cornel West as a university professor, and the delight expressed by the Provost and others in the Princeton administration at this great catch.

2) The elevation of Maria Rosa Menocal, author of a book that purports to study the wonders of the "convivencia" in Islamic Spain, to the supreme authority on this subject.

Menocal’s book itself is sentimental nonsense, not only in form but content. It is a perfect compendium of all the twaddle that has been passed off as history about Andalucia. Her bibliography, incidentally, fails to mention any of the authoritative sources on the history of Muslim Spain -- in particular, it does not even list (much less give any sign of her having actually read) Evariste Levi-Provencal. Nor does it show any sign that she has read Dufourcq.

Instead, her notions of Spain are right out of the works of romantic fiction -- Irving's Tales of the Alhambra (tales indeed) and Chateaubriand's Le Dernier des Abencerages. What is fine for Chateaubriand is not fine for what is supposed to be an historical study. I mean, for god's sake, some of his best passages in the Memoires d'Outre-tombe are entirely fictional: see his sonorous sentences about his visit to "les champs de Lexington," where he never was. And that’s not all: there is also much more fantasy about il sospiro del Moro, the nobility of those Muslims, the wonderful way Maimonides was treated (why, then, did he flee Moorish Spain?), on and on.

Query for Brian Whitaker: where are the hundreds protesting Abdul Rahman's imprisonment and apostasy charge?

More evidence that the fundamental assumptions of dhimmitude are still alive and well in Afghanistan. From CNN, with thanks to all who sent this in:

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Hundreds of people protested in a northern Afghan city following reports that a man who faced a possible death penalty for converting to Christianity would be released, officials said.

About 700 Muslim clerics and others chanted "Death to Bush" and other anti-Western slogans in Mazar-e-Sharif on Monday, officials told The Associated Press.

Clerics have called for protests across Afghanistan against both the government and the West, which had pressured President Hamid Karzai's administration to drop the case against Abdul Rahman.

On Sunday, a Western diplomat and Afghan officials close to Karzai told CNN that Rahman would be released soon.

Other sources in the Afghan judiciary said the case against Rahman had been thrown out on technical grounds and sent back to prosecutors to gather more evidence.

Those same sources said Rahman may not be released.

Karzai has been under growing international pressure to find a way to free Rahman without angering Muslim clerics who have called for him to be killed.

The Afghan Cabinet discussed the case Saturday, but results of that meeting were unknown. A government source familiar with his case said on Friday he would be released in the coming days....

"The court dismissed today the case against Abdul Rahman for a lack of information and a lot of legal gaps in the case," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. AP said the official has been closely involved with the matter.

"The decision about his release will be taken possibly tomorrow," AP quoted the official as saying. "They don't have to keep him in jail while the attorney general is looking into the case."

Abdul Wakil Omeri, a spokesman for the Supreme Court, confirmed to AP that the case had been dismissed because of "problems with the prosecutors' evidence."

He said several family members of Rahman have testified that he has mental problems.

"It is the job of the attorney general's office to decide if he is mentally fit to stand trial," he told AP.

A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said questions were now being raised as to whether Rahman would stay in Afghanistan or go into foreign exile, AP reported....

Earlier Sunday, AP quoted prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari as saying that doctors would examine Rahman on Monday to determine whether he was mentally fit to stand trial.

"It has been said that he has mental problems," the prosecutor said. "Doctors will examine him tomorrow and will then report to us."...

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she could not confirm that an Afghan court had dismissed the case and stressed the U.S. needs to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan, which she called a "young democracy."

"Unlike the Taliban, it actually has a constitution to which one can appeal," she told CNN's "Late Edition." "We as Americans know in democracy, as it evolves, there are difficult issues about state and church -- or, in this case, state and mosque.

"We expect that, given our own history, that we would know Afghans have to go through this evolution."...

Yes, I remember the bad old days when converting to another religion was a federal crime. We've come a long way!

Rahman, 41, faces trial on charges of converting to Christianity -- a death-penalty offense under Afghanistan's constitution, which is based on Islamic law....

"We've been very clear with the Afghan government that it has to understand the vital importance of religious freedom to democracy," Rice said....

Also on Sunday, AP quoted officials as saying Rahman had been moved to a notorious maximum-security prison outside Kabul that is also home to hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

Rahman was moved to Policharki Prison last week after detainees threatened his life at an overcrowded police holding facility in central Kabul, a court official said on condition of anonymity, AP reported.

Guardian writer Brian Whitaker, whose dhimmitude we have noted before, has gone out of his way to mischaracterize and caricature the positions of Jihad Watch in a Guardian column extolling Prince Charles as an Islamic reformer: "Prince Charles, the Islamic dissident":

This, without doubt, is the nub of the problem within Islam today. Whether the issue is ill-treatment of women, the persecution of minorities, barbaric punishments or just general intolerance, it all stems from a belief that there are fixed rules, laid down centuries ago, which must never be questioned or adapted to changing circumstances.

Reactionary Islamic scholars are not the only ones who support that idea. It is also promoted by anti-Muslim activists, such as Jihad Watch, who argue that Islam is intrinsically bad and unreformable, and would like to press ahead with the great "clash of civilisations" as quickly as possible in order to wipe it out.

In his speech, therefore, Prince Charles was seeking to defend Islam from anti-Muslim prejudice in the west and at the same time supporting Islamic reform against clerics whose mentality is frozen in backwardness.

All right. Let's take this from the beginning. Whether the issue is ill-treatment of women, the persecution of minorities, barbaric punishments or just general intolerance, there are Islamic clerics around the world who insist that all that must be maintained and defended, since it all stems from fixed rules, laid down centuries ago, which must never be questioned or adapted to changing circumstances.

When they say things like this, I duly report that they are saying them. And because I report on their words and deeds, in Brian Whitaker's mind I must support them. And because of their numbers and prominence, as compared to the small and isolated voices calling for reform, I have noted that prospects for Islamic reform are dim. If Brian Whitaker thinks my assessment here is incorrect, he would be well advised to adduce in favor of his position an authority more respected in the Islamic world than Prince Charles, who is not -- officially, anyway -- even a Muslim.

As for the rest of Whitaker's statement about Jihad Watch, it is false on virtually every level.

It is also promoted by anti-Muslim activists, such as Jihad Watch...

We are not "anti-Muslim activists." In the FAQ here I say: "Any Muslim who renounces violent jihad and dhimmitude is welcome to join in our anti-jihadist efforts." Jihadists worldwide are fighting to impose Sharia; we oppose the infringement of equality of rights for religious minorities and women that Sharia represents.

...who argue that Islam is intrinsically bad and unreformable...

I would ask Brian Whitaker to quote any statement to this effect from any of my books, articles, or web postings. But he can't, because I have never said anything to this effect. "Islam is intrinsically bad"? Islam is many, many things. Are aspects of it "intrinsically bad"? Of course. Or would Brian Whitaker rush to the defense of the death penalty for apostates (Qur'an 4:89), the beating of disobedient wives (Qur'an 4:34), warfare to convert or subjugate Jews and Christians (Qur'an 9:29) and all the rest?

"Unreformable"? Let's put it this way: show me, Mr. Whitaker, a large-scale Muslim movement anywhere in the world today that calls for indefinite peaceful relations as equals with non-Muslims, renounces and rejects for all time the jihad ideology of conquest and subjugation, and accords women full equality of rights. Take your time, sir.

...and would like to press ahead with the great 'clash of civilisations' as quickly as possible in order to wipe it out.

This is simply defamatory. Mr. Whitaker, I challenge you again to substantiate that statement with even a single quotation from my books, articles, or web posts. You will not, because you cannot. Unmoderated comments from posters here do not apply. You appear not to know, or not to want your readers to know, that I have told posters here that genocidal comments are unwelcome on many, many, many occasions. I believe that the antidote to bad speech is more speech, and I will not close comments here; however, I will not be held responsible for any comments, especially since people of all perspectives, including supporters of Islamic jihad, comment here regularly.

If you believe I support a position, prove it from my own writings. If you cannot, you are simply a liar.

Mr. Whitaker, I look forward to your retraction and apology.

Gentlemen, start your violins. "Family: Alleged UNC campus crasher a 'kind, gentle soul,'" from AP, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. (AP) - The man accused of trying to kill nine people by driving through a pedestrian plaza at the University of North Carolina is “a kind, gentle and pure soul” whose action was completely out of character, his family said in a statement Friday.

Yet, Mohammed Taheri-azar, 22, appeared to laugh during a hearing earlier in the day as witnesses described the attack on the university's flagship campus.

He faces nine charges of attempted murder and nine of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury. If convicted on all counts, he could be sentenced to about 150 years in prison....

Laila Taheri-Azar, Mohammed's older sister, said outside Friday's hearing that her brother was an average person - a NASCAR fan who enjoyed fishing and camping with his friends.

“Please let us echo in your ears that my brother was and always has been a kind, gentle and pure soul,” she read from a statement. “His current actions and words are as much a source of shock and distress to us as they are to you.”

Taheri-azar, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, appeared to be reading the Quran during much of the hearing and seemed to laugh at times during testimony.

Freshman Alex Slater said he had just finished lunch and was walking to class when he noticed a Jeep in the area.

“He rolled up right next to us and I looked inside the car and there is the driver, and he just stepped on the gas and turned the wheel,” Slater said. “He just floored it right through The Pit.”

It should also be emphasized that The Pit is not an area in which one usually drives through. At the center of The Pit area is just that: a pit, a large open area accessible by steps down. I don't think he could have been driving in that. But even if he was driving around it, his SUV was already far away from anyplace where anyone normally drives -- unless the configuration of the UNC campus has changed drastically since I was there.

Memo to Ibrahim Hooper: why don't all you self-proclaimed moderate Muslim leaders develop a comprehensive program to instruct converts to Islam in the ways of the Religion of Peace? Then even if they're besotted by love as Courtney allegedly was, they won't be so easily led astray -- and we won't keep having to read stories like this one of converts joining in violent jihad.

No, I don't really expect Hooper or CAIR to develop such a program. But the fact that they don't have one, and don't evidently see any need for one, is telling.

"Sydney bomb plot link to race riots, murderer," from AFP, with thanks to Timbo:

A woman charged at the weekend with plotting to bomb Sydney was a convert to Islam who planned the attack at the behest of a jailed murderer angered over anti-Muslim race riots here late last year.

Jill Courtney, 26, was arrested at her suburban Sydney home on Friday in a swoop by Federal and local police operating under anti-terrorism laws.

She was charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosives to be placed in or near a public place....

Police were not required to detail the allegations against Courtney during a brief court hearing yesterday, but Sunday newspapers quoted police sources saying they believed she was acting out of love for a jailed murderer, Hassan Kalache.

Kalache, 28, is serving a 22-year sentence for killing a rival drug dealer in 2002 and allegedly told Courtney he was angry over race riots in Sydney last December and that he would marry her if she carried out a retaliatory bombing.

A police detective said Courtney converted to Islam after becoming "besotted" with Kalache. "It's a pretty sad case, she's a bit of a candle in the wind," he was quoted as saying.

This story seems to have been written before the charges were dropped, but it adds yet another justification to the growing list. Now apparently we are to believe that the Afghans have decided to forget about killing Abdul Rahman because of lack of evidence, because he is insane, and because he may not be Afghan at all. They might end up with too much evidence if they don't just start keeping quiet about this matter.

Abdul-Rahman-Must-Be-Crazy Update: "Rahman’s case to be reviewed," from the Mumbai Mirror:

Prosecutors are to re-examine the case of an Afghan jailed for converting to Christianity, in what could be a major step towards securing his freedom.

The judge heading Abdur Rahman’s trial said it was prompted by doubts over his mental state and nationality.

Doubts about his nationality now? What is he, Danish?

Rahman’s family say he is disturbed and has admitted hearing voices....

The AP story Rebecca put up earlier says that Rahman's case was dropped for "lack of evidence." However, this RTE News story, "Rahman to be freed in Afghan case review," says otherwise:

An Afghan man who has been charged with converting from Islam to Christianity is to be freed while his case is reviewed.

Earlier today, a judge in Kabul dismissed the prosecution because of doubts over his mental state.

As I noted here, the idea that Abdul Rahman is insane is a more or less clever attempt to please both the irresistable force of Afghanistan's allegiance to Sharia and the immoveable object of American presence and pressure.

Officials say the man, Abdul Rahman, will be released from custody soon.

Who will protect him from raging Sharia-minded mobs when he is freed?

Jihad is jihad. Attacks on innocent civilians are attacks on innocent civilians. He should go farther than just saying that killing innocent people is always wrong; he should specifically say that killing Israeli civilians is always wrong. If he cannot say that, he shouldn't be a candidate for anything. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

TRENTON, N.J. New Jersey Democrats have dumped an Arab-American candidate over comments he made in 2002 about suicide bombers.

Lebanese-born Sami Merhi was a candidate for freeholder in Passaic County before he was removed from the ticket. Freeholders are county lawmakers.

The comment in question was made at a Democratic fundraiser in September 2002.

Merhi condemned the September eleventh attacks as "cold-blooded murders" committed by "crazy fanatics." But when asked whether he would say the same thing about Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israelis, Merhi said there was no comparison.

At a meeting yesterday about his candidacy, Merhi said he told party leaders that he opposes all forms of terrorism and that killing innocent people is always wrong.

Fox Guarding the Henhouse Alert: Saudi Arabia has absolutely nothing to say about tolerance until churches and synagogues flourish there. From Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- The Ministry of Islamic Affairs and the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue will organize short courses for imams throughout Saudi Arabia in order to spread a culture of dialogue and forgiveness, sources told Asharq al Awsat.

The courses will include lectures by senior ulema in Saudi Arabia, including the Saudi mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al Sheikh and members of the Senior Ulema Commission, aimed at advising imams to spread a culture of dialogue and accept divergent opinions, while shunning extremism.

This breakthrough step will involve a large numbers of imams and khateebs (those who lead the prayers at mosques) in different regions of the Kingdom.

These sessions are part of a wider campaign by King Abdulaziz Center to spread a culture of dialogue, building on the recommendations of the first national dialogue in 2003, which stressed that Islam is a moderate religion that does not accept extremism and distinguishes between extremist attitudes and religious piousness, in addition to understanding that difference and intellectual diversity and sectarian pluralism are a fact of life and natural occurrences that ought to be exploited/ used to construct a strategy to deal with others using dialogue and advice.

Dr. Andrew Bostom takes a definitive look at the issue of apostasy in Islam in reference to the Abdul Rahman case in The American Thinker:

Abdul Rahman faces death at the hands of our Afghan allies for the “crime” of converting to Christianity. This fate is no fluke, not a brutal Afghan variant on the practice of “tolerant” Islam. Death for apostacy is part and parcel of Islamic scripture and tradition. When Afghanistan’s leading clerics endorse his death, they are on solid ground.

John Ralph Willis, Princeton University Professor of Near Eastern Studies, has described the “apparent paradox” that jihad wars and razzias (p.343) —rationalized as struggles to liberate men from unbelief—became, through the mass enslavement intrinsic to these campaigns, “a device to deprive men of freedom.” And freedom, in the Muslim conception, “being perfect slavery” to Allah, the sole (distant) hope of earthly freedom from the bondage and humiliation of slavery for the subjugated infidel—whose dignity and very legal essence were annihilated by jihad—was to “..incarcerate his spirit in Islam,” and await manumission at the discretion of his Muslim overlord.

Another respected Princeton scholar of Islam, Patricia Crone, has stated bluntly (or one might argue, self-evidently) regarding such jihad enslavement —a major historical modality for Islamization—

".. it would be absurd to deny that force played a major role in their [the vanquished infidels] conversion [to Islam]"

A strikingly similar “paradox” of Islam is the contention epitomized by Koran 2:256, “There is no compulsion in religion.” The poignant ongoing travails of Afghan Muslim convert to Christianity Abdul Rahman illustrate another uniquely Islamic fusion of absurdity and denial: in light of Koran 2:256 and repeated claims that Islam is characterized by freedom of belief and creed, devoid of compulsion, why has apostasy from Islam always been punished so harshly, for thirteen centuries, into the present era?

Ibn Warraq’s seminal 2003 study of apostasy, Leaving Islam (p.31) , distinguishes transient doubt—edified by discovering the “truth” of Islam—from apostasy:

"Doubt is a very good passageway, but a very bad place to stop in. However, apostasy is a matter of treason and ideological treachery, which originates from hostility and hypocrisy. The destiny of a person who has an inborn handicap is different from the destiny of one whose hand should be cut off due to the development of a dangerous and infectious disease. The apostasy of a Muslim individual whose parents have also been Muslim is a very infectious, dangerous and incurable disease that appears in the body of an ummah (people) and threatens peoples lives, and that is why this rotten limb should be severed."...

Read it all. News links in the original.

Here is an interesting piece in the Sunday Australian revealing the split within the infidel ranks over Christian pacifism.

Freed British hostage Norman Kember arrived home at the weekend, and tried to defuse a row over his response to the SAS mission that rescued him.

Speaking at Heathrow airport after being reunited with his wife Pat, the retired professor of medical physics issued a statement to address criticism that he had failed to thank his rescuers.

"I do not believe a lasting peace is achieved by armed force, but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue," he said.

Mr Kember was responding to remarks by General Mike Jackson, chief of the British general staff, who suggested he had failed to thank the SAS and other troops for rescuing him and two other hostages after four months in captivity.

Before his capture, Mr Kember had said that if he were kidnapped he did not want to be rescued by the military. Thanking the people of many faiths who had prayed for his release, Mr Kember said the world should focus on the plight of the ordinary suffering Iraqis...

Sources close to the SAS said the peace activists who sponsored Mr Kember's visit to Iraq repeatedly failed to co-operate with special forces trying to locate and rescue him. They said that after he was kidnapped last November, the religious group declined to provide information that could have helped find him.

Well-placed sources said members of the Canadian group in Baghdad failed to provide the SAS with the number of the mobile phone Mr Kember was using on the day he was kidnapped, which could have helped trace his last movements.

Doug Pritchard, co-director of the CPT worldwide, said the group had refused to meet any of the military rescue team, preferring to deal with diplomats.

"We said from the outset we didn't want a military raid and we wouldn't work with the military," he said. Relations with the British embassy became tense after members of the group told officials it was reluctant to enter the green zone, and declined to allow diplomats with military escorts to visit their offices outside the zone...

Dismissing this particular case on a technicality isn't nearly good enough for the other prisoners of conscience in Muslim lands, but it is difficult to envision the Afghans expunging Sharia from their Constitution at this stage of the game. From AP:

KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan court on Sunday dismissed a case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity because of a lack of evidence and he will be released soon, officials said.

The announcement came as U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai faced mounting foreign pressure to free Abdul Rahman, a move that risked angering Muslim clerics here who have called for him to be killed.

An official closely involved with the case told The Associated Press that it had been returned to the prosecutors for more investigation, but that in the meantime, Rahman would be released...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she could not confirm that an Afghan court had dismissed the case and stressed the U.S. needs to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan, which she called a "young democracy."

We have our history of conflicts that had to be worked out after a new constitution. And so the Afghans are working on it. But America has stood solidly for religious freedom as a bedrock, the bedrock, of democracy, and we'll see." Rice said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Asked if American Christian missionaries should be encouraged to go to Afghanistan, Rice said: "I think that Afghans are pleased to get the help that they can get" but added "we need to be respectful of Afghan sovereignty."...

The New Duranty Times reports on the escalating Sunni-Shia violence in Baghdad:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.

In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.

Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"

Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 corpses, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks...

What frightens Iraqis most about these gangland-style killings is the impunity. According to reports filed by family members and more than a dozen interviews, many men were taken in daylight, in public, with witnesses all around. Few cases, if any, have been investigated.

Part of the reason may be that most victims are Sunnis, and there is growing suspicion that they were killed by Shiite death squads backed by government forces in a cycle of sectarian revenge. This allegation has been circulating in Baghdad for months, and as more Sunnis turn up dead, more people are inclined to believe it...

Now we're talking turkey, even if Howard did "stop short." Why hasn't George W. Bush even gone this far? From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

MELBOURNE - Australian Prime Minister John Howard expressed “disgust” on Sunday at the possible execution by Afghan authorities of a convert to Christianity and linked the man’s fate to Australia’s troop presence in Afghanistan.

“I am filled with disgust about the possibility that somebody could be executed because of their religion -- it breaks every rule of tolerance,” Howard told reporters in Melbourne.

Howard has already written to Afghan President Hamid Karzai asking him to intervene and save the life of Abdul Rahman, condemned to death for converting from Islam to Christianity, and he said Sunday that his government would continue pressuring Kabul over the issue.

“I will not drop off this issue, I will not just be content to write a letter and leave it at that,” he said. “I will continue to press very, very strongly.”

Howard went on to link the case of Rahman, 41, to the deployment of Australian troops who have been fighting Afghanistan’s ousted Taleban regime, a fundamentalist Islamic militia which introduced harsh Sharia law to Afghanistan before being toppled by US-led forces in late 2001.

“I do feel very deeply about this, particularly because there are Australian soldiers risking their lives to fight the Taleban and we’re not fighting the Taleban to allow something like this to happen,” Howard said.

Howard stopped short of explicitly threatening to withdraw the troops if Rahman is executed, but a government source told AFP his comments linking the two were meant to highlight the depth of Australia’s concern over the issue.

1938 Alert from Iran Focus, with thanks to JE:

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 25 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Saturday that the Islamic Republic will obtain nuclear capabilities by the end of the new Persian year (ending: March 21, 2007), the official state news agency reported.

“Our enemies want to prevent us from making progress through widespread propaganda but, God willing, this year will be the year that the Islamic Republic of Iran will obtain complete nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”.

Sure. Peaceful purposes such as bringing peace to the Middle East by annihilating Israel.

And no doubt misunderstood every word he read of the book of peace. "Pit driver reads Quran to self in latest appearance," from the Daily Tar Heel, with thanks to JS:

Probable cause was found to pursue 18 felony charges against Mohammad Reza Taheri-Azar, the UNC alumnus who drove an SUV through the Pit on March 3, at a hearing in District Court in Hillsborough on Friday.

Judge Joe Buckner found probable cause for nine counts of attempted first degree murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury and four counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

Taheri-Azar, the Tehran, Iran native who hit nine people with a rented Jeep in the incident, silently read the Quran throughout the hearing.

"In the Qur'an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women." I trust Ibrahim Hooper and others are readying refutations of this as we speak.

As for the "19" miracle, Taheri-azar is referring to an extrapolation of Qur'an 74:30, which says cryptically, and with no relation to the surrounding verses: "Above it are nineteen." This has given rise to a great deal of speculation in Islamic tradition, culminating in Rashad Khalifa's elaborate exposition of the alleged miracle, which you can find here (thanks to JS). Yes, that is the same Rashad Khalifa who was murdered in Arizona in 1990 by jihadists angered by his Islamic heterodoxy.

Since Taheri-azar has demonstrated that this Qur'anic number-game can turn deadly, here is an excellent refutation of the supposed 19 "miracle."

From The Herald-Sun, with thanks to Charles Johnson:

In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.

To whom it may concern:

I am writing this letter to inform you of my reasons for premeditating and attempting to murder citizens and residents of the United States of America on Friday, March 3, 2006 in the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina by running them over with my automobile and stabbing them with a knife if the opportunities are presented to me by Allah.

I did intend to use a handgun to murder the citizens and residents of Chapel Hill, North Carolina but the process of receiving a permit for a handgun in this city is highly restricted and out of my reach at the present, most likely due to my foreign nationality.

I am a servant of Allah. I am 22 years of age and I was born in Tehran, Iran. My father, mother and older sister immigrated to the United States in 1985 when I was two years of age and I've lived in the United States ever since.

I attended elementary, middle and high school in North Carolina and I was accepted into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I began my college career in August 2001 and graduated in December 2005 with a bachelor's degree in psychology and philosophy with Allah's help.

I do not wish to pursue my career as a student any further because I have no desire to amass the impermanent and temporary fame and material wealth this world has to offer. However I made the decision to continue my studies and to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill so that the world will know that Allah's servants are very intelligent.

Due to the killing of believing men and women under the direction of the United States government, I have decided to take advantage of my presence on United States soil on Friday, March 3, 2006 to take the lives of as many Americans and American sympathizers as I can in order to punish the United States for their immoral actions around the world.

In the Qur'an, Allah states that the believing men and women have permission to murder anyone responsible for the killing of other believing men and women. I know that the Qur'an is a legitimate and authoritative holy scripture since it is completely validated by modern science and also mathematically encoded with the number 19 beyond human ability. After extensive contemplation and reflection, I have made the decision to exercise the right of violent retaliation that Allah has given me to the fullest extent to which I am capable at present.

I have chosen the particular location on the University campus as my target since I know there is a high likelihood that I will kill several people before being killed myself or jailed and sent to prison if Allah wills. Allah's commandments are never to be questioned and all of Allah's commandments must be obeyed. Those who violate Allah's commandments and purposefully follow human fabrication and falsehood as their religion will burn in fire for eternity in accordance with Allah's will.

Sincerely yours,

Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar

Charles Moore skewers the dhimmi Jack Straw, whose misadventures have often shown up on this site, at the Telegraph (thanks to DFS):

When the row about the Danish cartoons of Mohammed broke, no one was quicker out of the traps than our Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He roundly condemned what he saw as the irresponsibility of their publication.

It was not clear why Mr Straw felt the need to speak up. Britain has no responsibility for independent, democratic Denmark, nor for the European countries in which the cartoons were republished.

We do, however, bear considerable responsibility for Afghanistan. We helped invade it in 2001 to overthrow the Islamist Taliban government, and ever since then we have helped rebuild government and society there, including the framing of a new constitution. The other day, we sent yet more troops to help keep the uneasy peace. We boast, with some justice, that we have set Afghanistan free.

So the news that a Muslim is threatened with death by an Afghan court simply because he converted to Christianity should surely alarm Mr Straw. So far - and the case has been in the press for more than a week - we have heard nothing audible from him. President Bush has said he is "deeply troubled" by the case. Condoleezza Rice and many European governments have put strong pressure on the Afghan authorities to release the man, Abdul Rahman, citing Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which includes, in its definition of freedom of conscience, the right to change one's faith.

But Britain's mighty response has been left to one of Mr Straw's juniors at the Foreign Office, Kim Howells. Mr Howells has sought "urgent clarification" from Kabul.

It may provide Mr Howells with some of the clarification that he needs to point out that Mr Rahman's case was predictable. Islamic law (sharia) is enshrined in the new Afghan constitution. All the four schools of law in the majority Sunni Islam agree that the penalty for "apostasy" - abandoning one's Muslim faith - must be death. One states: "When a person who has reached puberty and is sane voluntarily apostasises from Islam, he deserves to be killed" and recommends that, when he is killed, he should be "neither given a bath, nor any funeral prayer". Much the same applies in Shia Islam.

Read it all.

Never grant concessions to the mujahedin. They will only see them as a sign of weakness. "Rebel militants kill five," from AFP, with thanks to DFS:

ALGERIAN militants killed five civilians, including a mayor, stepping up attacks days after the start of an amnesty for rebels aimed at ending more than a decade of strife, residents and newspapers said overnight.

Suspected members of al Qaeda-linked group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) shot dead mayor Brahim Jellab outside his house on Friday night in Boumerdes province, 50 km east of the capital Algiers, residents said....

Algeria began an amnesty this month as part of efforts to end violence that broke out when the authorities cancelled elections in 1992 that a now-banned Islamic party was poised to win. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed since then.

The peace drive includes the mass release of jailed Islamic militants as well as compensation for victims, including the families of about 8,000 missing people.

The amnesty gave those rebels still fighting six months to surrender, provided they were not involved in massacres, rapes or bombings of public places.

Here is Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald's uproarious take on Condoleeza Rice's phone conversation with Hamid Karzai:

Robert's imagined conversation between Condoleeza Rice and Hamid Karzai puts one in mind of a certain famous movie conversation. I have changed only a few words, and added words of my own, but much of the original remains present.

"Hello?... Ah... I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes.. Fine, I can hear you now, Hamid... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha...

"Now then, Hamid, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with that Sharia of yours... The Sharia, Hamid...... The Islamic Sharia... Well now, what happened is... ah... well, you know, our people, Hamid, they're just a little funny on the subject..just a little funny in the head, and they don't always understand...just a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah.. they've gone and done a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what they've done, Hamid. They want us to stop supporting your government....Yes, Hamid, your government. They don't like you....No, Hamid, I don't think it is fair. I know you're trying....You don't like them, either, Hamid? I understand. I completely understand....

And he may have to, since the West appears to lack the will to compel the Afghans to forsake Sharia in favor of a recognition of the dignity of the human person that is taken for granted outside the Islamic world. From Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

ROME (Reuters) - An Afghan man who faces a possible death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity has told an Italian newspaper he is ready to die for his new faith.

``I don't want to die. But if God decides, I am ready to confront my choices, all the way,'' Abdur Rahman was quoted as saying in Sunday's La Repubblica.

The Italian newspaper conducted the interview by sending Rahman written questions via a human rights worker who visited him in jail outside Kabul.

Rahman, 40, could be hanged if found guilty of apostasy, which is punishable by death under Sharia (Islamic) law). His trial is due to start in a few days.

Rahman said he would defend himself in court as no lawyer would want to. He also said he did not want to leave Afghanistan, a possible option if he is allowed to go free.

When asked if he would go abroad, he said: ``Perhaps, but if I flee again that would mean my country hasn't changed. It would mean that they have won, our enemies. Without human rights, without respect for all religions, the Taliban have won.''...

Rahman said he converted to Christianity after leaving Afghanistan 16 years ago. In Pakistan he worked for a humanitarian organization where Catholics told him of their faith. ``I read the Bible and it opened my heart and mind,'' he said.

When Rahman returned to Afghanistan after working in Germany, the wife and two daughters he had left behind 16 years earlier reported him to the authorities, saying he forced them to read the Bible and recite Christian prayers, something he denies.

``It's not true. When I returned, I explained the choice I had made,'' he said. ``It wasn't a provocation. They saw I wasn't praying with them and that I was reading the Bible. They asked me and I told the truth. I had become a Christian.

``I have done nothing to repent, I respect Afghan law as I respect Islam. But I chose to become a Christian, for myself, for my soul. It is not an offence.''

Click on the "returned to Afghanistan" link above. Was Abdul Rahman actually deported by the Germans? (Thanks to CaNN).

Why aren't we hearing a huge number of similar calls from the Vast Majority of Moderate Muslim Clerics around the world? From the BBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Pope Benedict XVI has asked the Afghan president to show clemency towards a man facing possible execution for converting to Christianity. Abdul Rahman has been charged with apostasy, a religious offence.

The Vatican said the pontiff had appealed to President Hamid Karzai to respect human rights guarantees enshrined in the Afghan constitution....

The appeal was sent in a letter in Pope Benedict XVI's name by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

The note, excerpts of which were released by the Vatican, said the pope's appeal was inspired by "profound human compassion" and by a "firm belief in the dignity of human life and by respect for every person's freedom of conscience and religion".

Releasing Mr Rahman would "contribute in a most significant way to our common mission to foster mutual understanding and respect among the world's different religions and cultures", it added.

Jews for Jesus Update: from "Pressure Grows to Free Afghan Convert, from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Another cleric, Ayatullah Asife Muhseni, told a gathering of preachers and intellectuals at a Kabul hotel that the Afghan president had no right to overturn the punishment of an apostate.

He also demanded that clerics be able to question Rahman in jail to discover why he had converted to Christianity. He suggested it could have been the result of a conspiracy by Western nations or Jews.

Note that he also says that Karzai has no right to intervene in the case. And of course, from the standpoint of the Afghan Constitution, he doesn't: how can the President overturn Islamic Sharia? The Constitution never should have been written that way in the first place, and now that it has, it must be definitively repudiated -- or the Americans should leave Afghanistan and send it not a penny more.

And it looks as if the courageous Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR has not had to back down one inch. His site says: "The policies and procedures of Anti-CAIR (ACAIR) have not changed in any way as a result of the CAIR lawsuit settlement."

From the New York Sun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

An Islamic group has settled a $1.35 million libel suit against one of its critics, who operates a Web site charging that the organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has links to terrorism.

The terms of the settlement between the Muslim group and Andrew Whitehead of Virginia Beach, Va., are confidential, but the Web site, www.anti-cair-net.org, still includes the statements Cair contended were libelous.

"Nothing has changed in that regard. It's as if this lawsuit had never existed," said Mr. Whitehead, 48, a former Navy sailor.

An attorney for Mr. Whitehead, Reed Rubenstein, described the outcome as a victory for his client. "This is the first time somebody has stood up and stopped these folks," the lawyer said.

A spokesman for Cair, Ibrahim Hooper, confirmed that the libel case was dismissed earlier this month on the request of both parties. "It was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount," he said.

Asked if he was suggesting that Mr. Whitehead paid the organization to drop the case, Mr. Hooper said, "We filed the suit." Asked again, the spokesman simply repeated the statement.

An attorney for Cair, Jeremiah Denton III, declined to comment.

The group's lawsuit, filed in a Virginia state court in March 2004, accused Mr. Whitehead of libeling Cair by calling it "a terrorist supporting front organization that is partially funded by terrorists." The suit also charged that Mr. Whitehead falsely claimed Cair was founded by supporters of a Palestinian Arab terrorist group, Hamas, and that the organization favored the "overthrow of the United States Constitution" and the imposition of Islamic law, known as Shariah.

In June, Cair amended its suit against Mr. Whitehead, dropping its challenge to several of the statements, including the claim that the group was started by Hamas members and has received funds from terrorists.

Mr. Hooper said that despite the withdrawal of the suit, his organization, which describes itself as "a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group," still contends that Mr. Whitehead's assertions are false. "We've always denied them. We continue to deny them," the spokesman said.

Mr. Rubenstein said Cair's interest in settling the suit intensified late last year just as a judge was considering whether the group should be forced to disclose additional details about its inner workings, including its financing and its alleged ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.

"It would have opened up Cair's finances and their relationships and their principles, their ideological motivations in a way they did not want to be made public," said Mr. Rubenstein, who represented Mr. Whitehead without charge.

So says Said Mirhossain Nasri, senior cleric at Hossainia Mosque, one of the largest Shiite mosques in Kabul, in this AP story (thanks to Ray), which also contains many of the clerics' reactions we posted here.

In the first place, this illustrates the Berlin Wall aspect of all this: they know there is no escape, and don't want there to be an escape, because they know that in that case people will be streaming out.

It also shows what the Bush Administration should be doing. Instead of saying that all this is up to the Afghans, we should set an example -- and say that we will not tolerate anything but full juridical freedom of conscience, and that if that means the Afghan Constitution must be revised to delete the Sharia provision, so be it. But we are not going to waste our arms and blood to prop up a state that institutionalizes the oppression of religious minorities and extinguishes the freedom of conscience.

For those who don't speak the Queen's English, a "supergrass" is an informer. The Old Bailey is the renowned criminal court in London. "Bomb plot suspect sold poisoned burgers, says supergrass," from the Times Online, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

AN ISLAMIST terrorist sold poisoned burgers from a street-corner van and planned to contaminate beer at a football stadium, the Old Bailey was told yesterday. The alleged extremist, one of seven on trial for plotting to blow up British targets, was also said to have suggested poisoning takeaway food and sabotaging BT.

The claim was made by an American supergrass said to have links to al-Qaeda, testifying against his alleged former accomplices. He said another defendant attended a talk given by Abu Hamza al-Masri, the jailed cleric, where “video wills” made by the September 11 attackers were praised.

In his second day of evidence, Mohammed Babar described his first meetings in Pakistan with three of the men, accused of conspiring to cause an explosion in Britain.

He said his initial contact with Waheed Mahmood, 34, from Crawley, was via the internet. Babar’s e-mail address was pleasureofallah. yahoo.com.

Babar, the key prosecution witness, then met Mr Mahmood at the latter’s house in Pakistan, with other British men including Salahuddin Amin, 31, of Luton, and Anthony Garcia, 24, of Ilford, East London, who are also on trial.

Fired up for jihad (holy war), the men were said to be keen to fight in Afghanistan but were told by Mr Mahmood that this was not possible — the country was closed to foreigners.

Mr Mahmood, who worked for Transco National Grid, then allegedly gave examples of possible British targets to his accomplices. Some were intended to cause maximum financial damage by hitting utilities or telecommunication plants.

The court was told that other suggestions included taking a job as a beer-seller at a football stadium, smuggling in poison in a syringe. Babar said Mr Mahmood claimed that he had already sold toxic burgers from a mobile van.

Another plan was to distribute leaflets for a fictional take-away restaurant, then deliver poisoned food to houses.

Islamic Tolerance Alert from AKI, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

Rome, 22 March (AKI) - Abdul Rahman, the man condemned to death for having abandoned Islam, is just one of many Afghanis who decide to convert to Christianity, but most are forced to do so secretly, argues Arab Christian author Camille Eid. In an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) Eid, author of "The Christians who come from Islam", said during a recent trip to Afghanistan he met many similar cases. "They are Christians who have sprung out of nowhere and it's unclear how they have decided by themselves to convert" he added. The US, Italy, Germany and Canada have all expressed concern over the fate of Rahman who converted to Christianity 16 years ago.

"I also spoke to a priest who had passed through Kabul and he said he was amazed that women sitting on the ground at the local market saw he was a foreigner and a Christian, by the cross he was wearing, and attracted his attention to them by making a sign of the cross with their fingers. He was convinced that they were trying to send him a coded message" said Eid, a Lebanese Maronite who lives in Italy.

According to the author, Abdul Rahman is not the first Afghan citizen to have been sentenced to death for apostasy since the fall of the Taliban regime.

"The Islamic Taliban militias who still control entire areas of the country issued a statement in June 2004 in which they referred to a death sentence handed down to an Afghan converted to Christianity, Moulawi Asad Allah."

It's funny how symbols of the secularization of Christian holidays -- Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny -- that some Christians have regarded with a certain distaste for many years, are now regarded as patently and overtly Christian in a way that simply cannot accord with modern sensibilities.

From AP, with thanks to Hutchrun:

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A small Easter display was removed from the City Hall lobby on Wednesday out of concern that it would offend non-Christians.

That means You Know Who.

The display - a cloth Easter bunny, pastel-colored eggs and a sign with the words "Happy Easter'' - was put up by a City Council secretary. They were not purchased with city money.

Tyrone Terrill, the city's human rights director, asked that the decorations be removed. Terrill said no citizen had complained to him.

Council Member Dave Thune called it a shame.

"This has just gone too far,'' he said. "We can't celebrate spring with bunnies and fake grass?''

Allan Wall at NewsMax.com skewers the Administration's weak response to the Abdul Rahman case:

"Before September 11th, 2001, Afghanistan was ruled by a cruel regime that oppressed its people ... The Afghan people are building a vibrant young democracy ... America will stand with the Afghan people as they build a free society ..." - President George W. Bush

Afghanistan now holds as prisoner its citizen Abdul Rahman, who faces the death penalty. Rahman's crime? He converted from Islam to Christianity, a capital offense in "free" Afghanistan.

So what did President Bush have to say about that?

"I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about. I look forward to working with the government of that country to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship."

Excuse me, but that sounds rather tepid to me. Halfhearted. Lukewarm.

We know Bush can speak passionately on subjects he's really interested in, like defending illegal immigration, for example. But defending a Christian in the Middle East? Apparently, that's not a big priority.

The State Department's responses were even worse. Questioned by a reporter, spokesman Sean McCormack refused to say that Rahman shouldn't be executed, instead babbling on about how the judicial process should be "transparent."

So it's ok to kill a Christian as long as the "process" is "transparent?"

Read it all.

From the Muslim Weekly, with thanks to RB who advises it might be best to "have a lie down before you read this."

The Prime Minister during his speech "Not a clash between civilisations, but a clash about civilisation" spoke forcefully about the problems of terrorism.

The talk given to the Foreign Policy Centre and Reuters also included his praise of the Holy Qur’an.

"The most remarkable thing about reading the Koran – in so far as it can be truly translated from the original Arabic - is to understand how progressive it is.

"I speak with great diffidence and humility as a member of another faith. I am not qualified to make any judgements. But as an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, rather as reformers attempted with the Christian Church centuries later. It is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and way ahead of its time in attitudes to marriage, women and governance," he said.

He added that under the guidance of the Qur’an, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands was "breathtaking".

"Over centuries it founded an Empire, leading the world in discovery, art and culture. We look back to the early Middle Ages, the standard bearers of tolerance at that time were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian," he declared.

Kabul Bloodlust Update: "Mood hardens against Afghan convert," from BBC News, with thanks to Null:

...Under the interpretation of Islamic Sharia law on which Afghanistan's constitution is based, Mr Rahman faces the death penalty unless he reconverts to Islam.

Please, BBC, give us another interpretation. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree on this issue.

"The Prophet Muhammad has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back," says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the trial judge.

"Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did, then we will forgive him," he told the BBC News website....

And Islam is so peaceful, tolerant, and kind that we will murder him very sweetly if he doesn't.

Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert:

But the bigger problem confronting the president is that an overwhelming number of ordinary Afghans appear to believe Mr Rahman has erred and deserves to be executed.

If the death penalty for apostasy were not mainstream Islamic law, would this be the case?

At Friday prayers in mosques across the Afghan capital, the case of Abdul Rahman and the consequent international outcry is the hot topic of discussion and the centrepiece of sermons.

"We will not let anyone interfere with our religious practices," declared cleric Inayatullah at Kabul's Pulakasthy mosque, one of the city's largest.

"What Rahman has done is wrong and he must be punished."...

"What is wrong with Islam that he should want to convert?" asks an agitated Abdul Zahid Payman.

Well, Abdul, for starters, the fact that people like you will want to kill someone who does convert.

"The courts should punish him and he should be put to death."

Few were willing to listen to the growing condemnation in the West.

"According to Islamic law he should be sentenced to death because God has clearly stated that Christianity is forbidden in our land," says Mohammed Qadir, another worshipper.

US President George Bush says he is "deeply troubled" by the case.

That cuts no ice with Mr Qadir.

"Who is America to tell us what to do? If Karzai listens to them there will be jihad (holy war)."

Clash of civilizations update from Kabul: "Afghanistan faced growing international pressure to resolve the case of a man who could face the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but many Afghans said he should be put on trial and punished."

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

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan faced growing international pressure to resolve the case of a man who could face the death penalty for converting to Christianity, but many Afghans said he should be put on trial and punished.

The controversy over the man who gave up Islam threatens to drive a wedge between Afghanistan and Western countries that are ensuring its security and bankrolling its development....

Death is the punishment stipulated by sharia, or Islamic law, for apostasy. The Afghan legal system is based on a mix of civil and sharia law.

The case has sparked an outcry in North America and Europe but the clamor appeared to be only hardening the position of some Afghans.

Several clerics raised the issue during weekly sermons on Friday, and there was little sympathy for Rahman.

"We respect all religions but we don't go into the British embassy or the American embassy to see what religion they are following," said cleric Enayatullah Baligh at Kabul's main mosque.

"We won't let anyone interfere with our religion and he should be punished," he said....

Several other countries with troops in Afghanistan, including Canada, Italy, Germany and Australia, have voiced their concern. Some foreign critics have urged that their troops be withdrawn.

The Canadian government, which has also been in contact with the Afghan president, said on Thursday Karzai had pledged that Rahman would not be executed. A presidential spokesman in Kabul declined to comment.

Analysts say they doubt the man will be executed and his case could hinge on interpretations of the country's new constitution, which says "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam and the values of the constitution".

It also says Afghanistan will abide by international agreements, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines freedom of religion, and thus the freedom to change one's religion....

Actually it doesn't say that. It says Afghanistan respects the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That is not the same thing as abiding by it.

But the case is sensitive for Karzai who is seen as a modernizer but who cannot ignore the views of conservative proponents of Islamic law or appear to bow too readily to outside pressure or interfere with the judiciary....

Some Afghans believe Rahman is part of a Christian plot.

"He has been sent by Christian priests to convert others," said Ramatullah, a trader in the southern city of Kandahar. "He has sold out his religion and should be punished."

A cleric and member of parliament from Badakhshan province in the north said Rahman should be executed. "It would be better to get no aid or military help from the West for 100 years than accept this affront," said Sadullah Abu Aman.

Sadullah, you got yourself a deal.

Only the foreign ones. What about the native Pakistani "militants"? "President tells terrorists to leave," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Rebecca Bynum:

President Musharraf of Pakistan, speaking in Lahore at a rally of about 80,000 people to mark the 100th anniversary of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, ordered all foreign militants to leave the country. Tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan is mounting over allegations that President Musharraf is not doing enough to prevent Taleban and alQaeda forces from launching cross-border attacks from within Pakistan. “All foreign militants should leave Pakistan, otherwise they would be crushed,” the President said. “I will not tolerate the presence of these terrorists.”

...whereupon most of his government got up and walked out.

Far from inspiring contrition and a readiness to show themselves to be the worthy owners of a brand new free society, the Abdul Rahman apostasy case seems to have inspired in Afghans only a desire to crack down on the uppity dhimmis.

"More Christians Arrested In Wake Of ‘Apostasy,’" from Compass Direct, with thanks to AJ:

March 22 (Compass) – An avalanche of media coverage of an Afghan man facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity has apparently sparked the arrest and deepening harassment of other Afghan Christians in the ultra-conservative Muslim country.

Authorities arrested Abdul Rahman, 41, last month for apostasy, a capital offense under strict Islamic laws still in place in Afghanistan, which four years ago was wrested from the Taliban regime’s hard-line Islamist control.

During the past few days, Compass has confirmed the arrest of two other Afghan Christians elsewhere in the country. Because of the sensitive situation, local sources requested that the location of the jailed converts be withheld.

This past weekend, one young Afghan convert to Christianity was beaten severely outside his home by a group of six men, who finally knocked him unconscious with a hard blow to his temple. He woke up in the hospital two hours later but was discharged before morning.

“Our brother remains steadfast, despite the ostracism and beatings,” one of his friends said.

Several other Afghan Christians have been subjected to police raids on their homes and places of work in the past month, as well as to telephone threats.

"Hello, Hamid? Condi...Fine, thanks, and you?...A double eagle on a par-5 hole! Wow, that's terrific...Yes...Look, Hamid, about this Abdul Rahman character, you guys are making it harder for me to keep on saying how peaceful and tolerant Islam is. Can you cut me some slack here, please?...

"Oh, no, I'm certainly not saying you should stop the trial...Release him? Oh, no, I'm not saying that...You guys are a sovereign government...A sovereign country...But...you're really making us come out of this war on terror thing with egg on our face, Hamid...After all, we fought for freedom, right? And that includes freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, right? I mean, Hamid, doesn't your own Constitution say -- What's that? 'Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law'? And what are those limits, Hamid? 'In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.'...I see...I see...And Islam actually forbids conversion to another religion?...Wow, Hamid, I had no idea....

"But Hamid, can't you release him just as a favor to us?...What's that? People actually believe in laws like this? You'll have open revolt?...Well, yes, we did sign off on your Constitution, it's true. But we didn't realize that anybody actually took seriously -- well, of course Hamid. I see the tough position you're in...No, I don't think you should be made out to be an American stooge...No, of course we don't want to see your government fall...All right, Hamid...Calm down...It's all right...We won't cut off any aid...No, not even if Abdul Rahman is executed...Of course we know we've come this far with you, we can't abandon you now...Yes, certainly, Hamid...We'll go to Bullfeather's next time you're in Washington...All right, Hamid...You have a lovely evening too...Thank you...Good night."

From FoxNews, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

WASHINGTON — Concerned about the fate of a Christian convert in Afghanistan on trial for his life, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday seeking a "favorable resolution" of the case.

"This is a very deeply concerning development in Afghanistan and we have raised it at the highest levels,” Rice said during a press conference with the Greek minister of foreign affairs. “We look forward, hopefully, to a resolution to this in the very near future."...

“We have raised it in the strongest possible terms to make clear that it is our great hope and desire that Afghanistan will reaffirm what is already in its constitution, that the universal declaration on human rights will be respected, and that this will be resolved in a way that is consistent with those principles," Rice said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reported that Rice underlined to Karzai the "fact that the United States stands forthrightly for principles of freedom of worship, freedom of expression, and that these are bedrock principles of democracy around the world, these are principles that are enshrined in the Afghan constitution and they're principles that are enshrined in the U.N. Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

"We're looking for a favorable resolution at the earliest possible time," McCormack added.

On Wednesday, President Bush said he was troubled by the possible decapitation of Rahman.

"I'm troubled when I hear, deeply troubled when I hear, the fact that a person who converted away from Islam may be held to account. That's not the universal application of the values that I talked about. I look forward to working with the government of that country to make sure that people are protected in their capacity to worship," Bush said.

At the White House on Thursday, spokesman Scott McClellan said he was aware of Rice's call, but had not gotten a readout yet of the content. He said the administration will continue to stay in close contact with the Afghan government "and work with them to make sure that people's religious freedoms are protected."

In deference to the country's sovereignty, Rice evidently did not demand specifically that the trial be halted and the defendant released.

"This is clearly an Afghan decision to take. They are a sovereign government. It's a sovereign country. But as I pointed out, we believe that it is important that as the issue is resolved, that those fundamental principles of freedom of religion, freedom of expression are affirmed in the resolution of this case," McCormack said....

In Afghanistan, Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada told Reuters that "Afghanistan is an Islamic country and its judiciary will act independently and neutrally. ... No other policy will be accepted apart from Islamic orders and what our constitution says."

I have received a few emails asking me to publicize an upcoming March for Free Expression to be held soon in the UK, and I have not yet done so only because a particularly heavy crush of work lately has prevented me from posting everything here that I would like to. But in this case, I'm glad I didn't. Today the March's website (thanks to FS) carries the following headline:

Muslims are Welcome: No Danish cartoons, please

Muslims are welcome? Great. But "no Danish cartoons, please"? Consider that request in light of the March's own "Statement of Principle":

The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time. The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock. We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same. We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.

Why then no cartoons at the March? Here's an excerpt from the explanation:

In practice, Muslims who wholeheartedly endorse our statement of principle, as quoted below by Peter Tatchell in his superb essay, who abhor the threats made against Danish cartoonists and believe people should have the right to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent would be UNABLE to come to our rally on Saturday, because to be surrounded by these cartoons, now, in the present context when the BNP are using them as a rallying point, would be intolerable.

So I now appeal to people not to bring the cartoons on T-shirts or placards.

So Muslims who accept in principle that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent should not in practice have to accept that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent.

Wouldn't it be a much stronger statement if Muslims who believe that people should be able to publish things they themselves find offensive or abhorrent actually appeared together with people carrying those things they found offensive and abhorrent, so as to emphasize that they accept, and believe others should accept, that in a free society we may offend each other all the time but we nevertheless do not resort to violence or intimidation in response?

How disappointing.

The imam Ahmed Akkari, not content with stirring up international cartoon rage, has now issued death threats against a Muslim politician in Denmark whom he does not deem sufficiently Islamic. From Reuters, with thanks to all who sent this in:

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish police will launch an investigation into allegations that an imam at the centre of the Prophet Mohammad cartoon row issued death threats against a moderate Muslim politician, a spokesman said on Thursday.

At least 50 people have been killed in protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East after Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons about the Prophet last year.

A French TV documentary crew secretly filmed Imam Ahmed Akkari threatening to have Naser Khader -- a founder of Denmark's Democratic Muslims network, which opposes violent protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad -- bombed.

No doubt they filmed him out of context.

I haven't worn my kid gloves for, I don't know -- weeks. From WND, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Take off the kid gloves and wage all-out war against radical Islam at home and abroad. That's the message organizers of a symposium on terrorism plan to give the U.S. and its leaders through an all-star roster of speakers.

"It's time for all concerned Americans to wake-up, roll up their sleeves and take a stand – talking and disseminating e-mails is not enough," said Jeff Epstein, president of America's Truth Forum and organizer of the one-day event.

Scheduled for April 29 in Arlington, Va., the symposium will feature globally recognized journalists, academicians and counter-terrorism experts "to inform the public of the reality of the threat of radical Islam to every man, woman and child within the United States."

"This evil must be crushed decisively in all of its manifestations throughout the world, including mosques and Islamic centers within the United States," the promoters say.

I am scheduled to appear on the Mike Reagan Show tonight at 6:30 PM EST. The guest host is Congressman Tom Tancredo, so it should be a quite interesting evening.

I just received this beautiful letter from a Jihad Watch reader, who has kindly allowed me to post it. Be sure not to miss the exchange between the teacher and student:

Good evening, Mr. Spencer.

I wanted to share a personal note with you and Hugh and Rebecca. I only know how to get in touch with you, however, so please feel free to pass it along if you feel it appropriate.

I have been quietly watching Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch since a new friend introduced me to it several months ago. Only very rarely do I muster up the nerve to comment, as I feel that many of the participants are far more knowledgeable than I (and I’m fearful of looking ignorant or ridiculous – or perhaps both!). I’ve been studying Islam and the Middle East since shortly after the events of 9-11. I’m a paramedic and I knew many of the firefighters killed in the World Trade Center attacks. Once a few weeks went by, I felt an overwhelming need to understand why the whole thing happened. Sadly, like most Americans, I was ignorant about anything that had to do with Islam, terrorism, or the Middle East. I turned to the mainstream media and knew almost instantly that no real answers would be found from within the walls of the “newsrooms.” And so, my quiet, independent studies began.

At the time, my son was nine years old, and after much deliberation on my part, I decided to include him in my studies. The more I learned about Islam and the more I learned about the effects – both real and potential – that it was having on our society and on societies across the globe, the more I was determined to educate my son on the subject the same way I choose to help educate him with math, science, and other necessities of the world. Together, we have read nearly all of your books and many, many works that you have recommended (we’re currently working our way through all of the books we’re not supposed to read that were mentioned in PIG). We have recently finished reading the Qur’an for the third time – it’s difficult to comprehend it all the first time, and it’s still hard to believe that it says what it says the second time, so we found we needed three times to full grasp the content.

Of course, it has been clear that Europe is a target since the Madrid and London bombings. "Germany: Islamist terror threatens Europe, Israel," from Reuters, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

"In spite of numerous successful hunts for terrorists, the terrorist threat situation has eased only superficially. The bomb attacks in Madrid and London are clear evidence that Europe is no longer just a recruitment and financing area but has become a target of Islamic terrorism," Ernst Uhrlau, head of Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency told a conference on Islamic extremism organised by the American Jewish Congress.

Thai Jihad Update from Reuters, with thanks to Nooz:

BANGKOK: A mentally-ill Muslim smashed a landmark Hindu statue in central Bangkok, worshipped by people of many religions, and was then beaten to death, police said on Tuesday.

Thanakorn Pakdeepol broke into the shrine housing the four-faced statue of Brahma, venerated by Hindus as the creator and to whom people prayed for anything from a child to winning the lottery, in the early hours of the morning, they said.

He then used a hammer to smash the statue, which has drawn tourists from around Asia to the shrine beside the five star Erawan hotel.

"After a scream from a street vendor shouting our father was destroyed, I saw three or four men arresting that man and beating him up," taxi driver Somyos Srikamsuk told Channel 3 television. "He was unconscious, but still alive when police got there." Two cleaners of the shrine were arrested and charged with murder, Police Colonel Supisan Pakdeenarunart told the television station.

Thanakorn, 27, had been in and out of mental hospitals over the past 10 years, said his father, Sayan.

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald examines Algeria's renewed Christianophobia:

Algeria is, like Egypt, a stratokleptocracy, a word that first appeared at Jihad Watch. It was invented to describe those regimes, in countries such as Algeria, where a thieving (kleptos) military (stratos) ruling class runs things for its own benefit. The FLN still runs Algeria; the tutelary spirits are Boumedienne and Ben Bella.

But in Algeria, along with the Arabs, a very large number of Berbers also live. And Berbers live in France as well. And those Berbers are keenly aware that before the Arabs arrived, this was Berber territory. And Islam encourages looking constantly backwards, for one is stuck in a rut, and that rut is what was said and done, or thought to be said and done, round about 620 and 630, and then 650 and 660 A.D., and then a century or two or three for Islam's shakedown cruise, until everything was just as it should be in the eyes of the Qur'anic commentators, and the gates of ijtihad were shut, and the cry was "all thoughts aboard that are getting aboard." No more thoughts were to be allowed on beyond the original. Those original thoughts were now codified, making for as rigid a creed as possible. E la nave va -- the ship of Islam set sail, or rather, because there was no water, it simply sat there, stranded in a desert of its own choice, the desert it carried with it, a desert both inherited and of its own making.

Muslims, just like Japanese businessmen, or faddists at American business schools, look to Best Practices. And what are Best Practices in Islam? They are the practices, the acts, the words, the silences, of Muhammad himelf, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil. If he did it, if he said it, if he permitted others to do or say it by remaining silent and not condemning or contradicting, why then it was right for All Time, for All Mankind. That is what Believers in Islam mean when they talk about Best Practices. They abhor the new -- bida, or innovation -- but not in the trivial sense of new gewgaws, the products of others, which of course may and should be exploited for the wellbeing of Islam, the furtherance of Islam.

At FrontPage this morning is my article on the Abdul Rahman case (news links in the original):

Not long after Abdul Rahman was arrested in Afghanistan, President Bush declared: “Before September the 11th, 2001, Afghanistan was ruled by a cruel regime that oppressed its people, brutalized women, and gave safe haven to the terrorists who attacked America. Today, the terror camps have been shut down; women are working; boys and girls are back in school; and 25 million people have now tasted freedom. The Afghan people are building a vibrant young democracy that is an ally in the war on terror. And America is proud to have such a determined partner in the cause of freedom.”

Of course, when Bush spoke those words Abdul Rahman’s case had not yet been reported in the West. But now that it has become international news that Abdul Rahman was arrested last month for the crime of leaving Islam and becoming a Christian, it is all too clear that the taste of freedom the Afghans are enjoying under the Karzai regime is not quite what many Westerners might have expected.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack tried to find a silver lining: “Under the Taliban, anybody considered an apostate was subject to torture and death. Right now, you have a legal proceeding that is under way in Afghanistan.” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns held out confidence in the outcome: “Our government is a great supporter of freedom of religion. As the Afghan constitution affords freedom of religion to all Afghan citizens, we hope very much that those rights, the right of freedom of religion, will be upheld in an Afghan court.”

I trust Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR is on the phone to these clerics right now, explaining to them how they are misunderstanding the peaceful and tolerant religion of Islam.

In any case, it looks as if Zamari's attempt to placate both sides, as ingenious as it was, may not work.

From AP, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Rebecca Bynum:

Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity should be killed regardless of whether a court decides to free him....

But four senior clerics interviewed by The Associated Press in their mosques in Kabul said Rahman deserved to be killed for his conversion.

"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque.

"The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."

"He is not mad. The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled," said Abdul Raoulf, cleric at Herati Mosque. "This is humiliating for Islam. ... Cut off his head."

Raoulf is considered a moderate cleric in Afghanistan. He was jailed three times for criticizing the Taliban's policies before the hard-line regime was ousted by US-led forces in 2001.

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that jihadist sentiments are on the rise in a country where the madrasas have been dubbed "universities of jihad," and where sympathizers of bin Laden can be found at the highest levels of government.

"Islamist voices rise on Pakistani campuses," from the Christian Science Monitor, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

...Islamist student unions are battling for the hearts and minds of young Muslims - receiving a boost from a growing student conservatism as well as IJT's ability to fill in gaps left by the poor funding of education here.

Some 23,000 students attend Punjab University, a place that the government hopes will foster the values of "enlightened moderation." The leafy grounds echo campuses around the world: young men and women stroll together down shaded lanes; a young woman poses giddily for a picture.

But some faculty members say that their tolerant and liberal viewpoints are facing an increasingly tough challenge. And students say they've seen IJT activists beat others whose public behavior they deem unacceptable. In one example highlighted by the local press, IJT activists allegedly beat a newly married couple whom they mistakenly thought were flirting in public.

IJT activists deny such charges. "This is false propaganda. There is not one incident in which IJT workers beat students," says Nasurallah Khan Goraya, president of IJT, which is linked to the Jamaat Islami, a popular Islamist party with seats in the National Assembly.

Members of IJT, who number some 3,000 nationally, say they promote Islamic values not only by policing student behavior but by helping needy students. Pakistan spends less than $600 per student per year on higher education, proportionally less than comparable South Asian countries, according to comparative studies. Its spending on overall public education, the lowest in the region, declined to 1.8 percent of GDP in 2002-03 from 2.6 percent of GDP in 1990.

The US has proposed $87 million in aid for higher education in Pakistan between 2002 and 2007.

IJT leaders say they do not receive any money directly from Jamaat Islami. The bulk of their funding, they say, comes from private donations from former members both in Pakistan and abroad and supports campaignssuch as aiding schools in earthquake-affected areas and holding book fairs. "We have only an ideological link with Jamaat Islami," Mr. Goraya says. "We do not depend on them."

Cartoon Madness Update: "Säpo reveals Swedish embassy threats," from The Local, with thanks to Fjordman:

Sweden's security police, Säpo, has revealed that serious threats were directed at Swedish embassies abroad after the far right group Sweden Democrats published one of the pictures of the prophet Muhammad on its web site.

According to a letter from Säpo, signed by the organisation's boss Klas Bergenstrand, sent to the Chancellor of Justice, a competition run on the Sweden Democrats' site to draw another Muhammad picture was widely reported in the mainstream Middle East media.

The first response to the drawing came in January via the embassy of a Muslim country. On January 31st Sweden's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a meeting with ambassadors from Muslim countries, and just a few days later the Sweden Democrats published the drawing on its web site, reported Göteborgs-Posten.

The reaction was such that Säpo considered there to be a risk that Swedish embassies, agency representatives and other institutions could be exposed to serious criminal attacks. In its letter to the Chancellor of Justice, the security police also stated that Swedes abroad could be in danger....

I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to hear that Mubarak has not actually done anything substantive to ease the plight of the Copts. His relatively secular regime exists in uneasy counterpoise with the Muslim Brotherhood, whose adherents he has to keep happy or else face their wrath. From MEMRI, with thanks to Fjordman:

In early December, 2005, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak issued a presidential decree easing the severe restrictions on repairing and rebuilding churches in Egypt. [1] In an editorial in the Coptic Internet weekly Watani, editor Youssef Sidhom stated that the decree would deliberately be implemented in a way that would render it meaningless, and cited a letter by an Egyptian governor substantiating this claim.

The following are excerpts from the editorial, which was posted in English on Watani: [2]

"Previous Presidential Decrees Which Eased Restrictions on Church Building Have Frequently Been Implemented in a Manner That Emptied Them of Their Content"

"[After the issuing of Decree 291,] the media rushed to praise [Mubarak's] move, asking Copts of their opinion and pushing them to express their gratitude. Some even went to the length of deluding the public into believing that the decree put an end to all the problems of building churches. They claimed the Himayouni Edict - which pre-requires a presidential decree for the building of any new church - was abolished once and for all, and that complete equality among Egyptians as regards building and restoring places of worship has been attained.

"While some Copts adopted a pessimistic stance and argued that the decree offered nothing new, Watani was keen to objectively analyse the move. We wrote that the decree was a good step forward on the road towards a unified law for places of worship and, if properly implemented, could alleviate many of the hardships of church building. We argued that the presidential authority over licensing new churches - as opposed to mosques, the building of which was subject to no restrictions whatsoever - violated equality among Egyptians. We wrote that the new decree should be taken with caution, since previous presidential decrees which eased restrictions on church building had been frequently implemented in a manner that emptied them of their content. Security authorities, Watani wrote, should not be allowed to interfere in the process, because they have been notorious in their restrictive domination of church building."...

Read it all.

And why? Because political correctness and ignorance prevent American authorities from asking people like this doctor the right questions about what they believe about Islam and jihad. They further prevent those authorities from coming to grips with the fact that there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a Muslim who is inclined to violence: the doctrines of jihad supremacism and violence are deeply rooted within Islamic tradition, and there is no mainstream Muslim group that has ever renounced them.

"Insurgent doctor killed dozens of wounded soldiers," from the Independent, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.

In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.

"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."

Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.

John Fund updates us on Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former Taliban spokesman now Yale undergrad, in the Opinion Journal:

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last month Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard; today Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will speak by video to a conference at Columbia University that his regime is cosponsoring. (Columbia won't answer questions about how much funding it got from Libya or what implied strings were attached.) Then there's Yale, which for three weeks has refused to make any comment or defense beyond a vague 144-word statement about its decision to admit Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi--a former ambassador-at-large of the murderous Afghan Taliban--as a special student.

The three backers of the foundation that, along with Yale, is subsidizing Mr. Hashemi's tuition have told the Yale Daily News that they are withdrawing their support. But the university remains mute and paralyzed. "The intelligentsia haven't told Yalies what to think yet, because even they haven't made up their minds," says Yale professor David Gelernter. He clearly has: He calls the Taliban "an evil and macabre terrorist group. . . . The fact that Hashemi didn't do actual killing does not absolve him. Goebbels didn't shoot anyone either."...

Given his record as a Taliban apologist, Mr. Hashemi has told friends he is stunned Yale didn't look more closely into his curriculum vitae. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay," he told the New York Times. So how did he end up in the Ivy League? Questions start at the State Department's door. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's border security panel, has asked the State Department and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to explain exactly how Mr. Hashemi got an F-1 student visa. Yale's decision tree is clearer. Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions until he took the same post at Stanford last year, told the New York Times that Yale had another foreigner of Mr. Hashemi's caliber apply but "we lost him to Harvard" and "I didn't want that to happen again." Mr. Shaw won't return phone calls now, but emails he's exchanged with others offer insights into his thinking...

Read it all.

I could write what I just wrote all over again, or you could read it here. "Canadian had detonators at home," from the National Post, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

LONDON - When Mounties raided the Ottawa residence of Momin Khawaja two years ago, they found homemade electronic equipment to detonate bombs in London and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, possibly including Europe's largest shopping centre, a British prosecutor revealed in court yesterday.

They also discovered unspecified "documents" about Islamic jihad, or holy war, and Mr. Khawaja's "radical views in that direction," Crown attorney David Waters told the Old Bailey trial of seven young Britons charged with plotting a terror campaign against Britain for its support of the U.S. war against Islamic extremists. The men deny the charges....

We have reported on this statement by Taheri-azar before, but this report goes into more detail. It seems that the Tarheel mujahid "read the Quran's 114 chapters 15 times and found that the Muslim holy book justified the attack." And he did not try to murder UNC students "out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead."

Now, I know where in the Qur'an he could have gotten this idea. If you have read any of my books or have been reading this site for awhile, you know where in the Qur'an he could have gotten this idea. But still we have the President of the United States and the Secretary of State blandly insisting that Islam is a religion of peace. We have the leading American Muslim spokesmen insisting that, in effect, Taheri-azar was completely misreading what is a book of peace and benevolence and tolerance.

There are just too many misunderstanders of Islam, as I have referred to them many times here, all over the world for this position to be maintained. Yet three and a half years after Muhammad Atta and his crew flew a plane into the World Trade Center out of love for Allah, we still don't see any sustained or concerted effort by Muslims here or anywhere else to disabuse their coreligionists of the jihad ideology.

Also, analysts keep focusing on the question of whether or not Taheri-azar was a "terrorist." I don't care if you call him a canteloupe. The real problem here is that anyone anywhere at any time can read the Qur'an and come to the same conclusion that he did. If American officials were really serious about preventing a future attack, they would address that. If American Muslim advocacy groups were really serious about being loyal, patriotic Americans, they would address that.

Am I saying that the Qur'an should be outlawed, as was attempted long ago in Calcutta and about which there have been some rumblings recently in Germany?

No, I would prefer to deal more in the realm of what is realistically possible. I'd like to see an honest public discussion of the elements of the Qur'an and Sunnah that give impetus to violence and fanaticism. I'd like to see American Muslim spokesmen explain how they will specifically address these elements, and teach Muslims to reject them in favor of the principles of the equality of dignity and rights of all people, women as well as men, non-Muslims as well as Muslims. And I'd like to see them follow through on these explanations with real action.

Only then might we be getting somewhere against this phenomenon. I am not holding my breath.

From AP, with thanks to JE:

RALEIGH, N.C. -- The man who hit nine people with a sport utility vehicle on the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus wrote a letter to a television reporter saying he read the Quran's 114 chapters 15 times and found that the Muslim holy book justified the attack.

''I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead,'' Mohammed Taheri-azar, 22, wrote in a letter to Amber Rupinta dated March 10 posted on WTVD's Web site....

Taheri-azar wrote that he began his readings of the Quran in June 2003. He called the book ''a scientific and mathematical miracle, so there can be no doubt that it is from a supernatural source.''

Oh, he was probably just checking on the weather in Damascus. "Calls key in terror case," from the Times Union, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

ALBANY -- The spiritual leader of an Albany mosque repeatedly called a phone number in Syria that an FBI report indicates had been used to gather terrorist intelligence for Osama bin Laden, according to classified documents unsealed late Tuesday in U.S. District Court. The FBI report, which was based on information from a confidential informant, was among several once-secret documents that federal authorities say raise questions about Yassin Aref's connections to terrorist organizations across the Middle East.

Aref, 35, a Kurdish refugee who moved to Albany with his family in 1999, is in jail without bond while awaiting trial on charges related to an FBI counterterrorism sting. He has denied any connections to terrorism.

But federal authorities paint him as an intelligent religious scholar with strong ties to some of the world's most notorious terrorists, including Mullah Krekar, the founder of a violent Iraqi terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaida.

The FBI report on bin Laden is undated and heavily redacted. It states that an informant told the FBI that during October 2001 he was approached by someone soliciting intelligence about "flight training schools, access to airports in (redacted)" and information about "how close the individual could get to an aircraft."

The informant said he was instructed that any information could be distributed to "brothers" through two phone numbers in Damascus, Syria. One of the numbers was called repeatedly by Aref from his Albany home, according to federal authorities.

Bridge for sale! A follow-up to this story from Xinhuanet, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

GAZA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- A senior leader of the Islamic Jihad(Holy War) on Wednesday denied reports of his movement receiving 1.8 million U.S. dollars to carry out bombing attacks in Israel.

Zeyad al-Nakhala said in a press release that the alleged reports, which were uttered by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, were a preliminary move for an expanded offensive against the movement and its leaders before an upcoming Israeli elections scheduled on March 28.

He denied what Mofaz had claimed that the Islamic Jihad had received 1.8 million dollars aid to carry out bombing operations, asserting that his movement does not get orders from anyone and its decisions come from its leaders inside the Palestinian territories.

George, Condi, this sounds like a regime right up your alley. Why not shoot them a few billion? From ArabicNews, with thanks to Fjordman:

The Algerian parliament has approved a law banning the call to embrace other religions than Islam.

This law states to jail anyone "trying to call on a Muslim to embrace another religion," in remarks to the Christianizing (evangelize) campaigns taking place in the country.

The Algerian Ummah council (Senate) approved this decision on Monday. This decision which was approved by the national people's council ( parliament) on March 15th is an attempt to withstand the Christianizing campaign which had witnessed a notable activity recently especially in al-Qabayel area east of the country.

The ratified law stated to sentence imprisonment for two to five years and a fee between 5 to 10 thousands EURO against "anyone urging or forcing or tempting, to convert a Muslim to another religion."

The same penalty applies to every person, manufacturer, store or circulate publications or audo-visual or other means aiming at destabilizing attachment to Islam.

The law also bans practicing any religion "except Islam" "outside buildings allocated for that, and links specialized buildings aimed at practice of religion by a prior licensing."

[UPDATE: CAIR CALLS FOR RELEASE OF AFGHAN CHRISTIAN. Bravo, Ibrahim. I applaud your rejection of Muhammad's words baddala deenahu faqtuhu -- "If anyone changes his religion, kill him" (cf. Bukhari vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57). I await your explicit and definitive renunciation of this dictum for all times and places, and similar renunciations of the principle violent jihad and the goal of of Sharia supremacy even if advanced by peaceful means. You can send them to me here as always, to director@jihadwatch.org.]

Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American Islamic Relations, that great warrior for civil rights, has so far been mum about Abdul Rahman, the man who faces death in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity.

Come on, Ibrahim. How hard can it be to issue a statement condemning the traditional Sharia provision of death for apostasy as an infringement of the freedom of conscience, which I am sure you must accept as part of your overall moderation and acceptance of Western pluralism, no? Ibrahim? Ibrahim?

And why, by the way, did Rice and Hughes not ask him to address this issue?

"Islamic Advocacy Group Silent on Afghan Apostasy Trial," from CNSNews, with thanks to Olivia:

(CNSNews.com) - What does the Council on American-Islamic Relations have to say about the trial of an Afghan Muslim who may get the death penalty for converting to Christianity? Nothing so far, noted a conservative, pro-family group.

"Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations so far has been silent," the Family Research Council said in an email message on Tuesday.

"Hooper is usually quick to decry any anti-Muslim slight. By not speaking out against this outrageous action, CAIR is dealing with the issue," said FRC President Tony Perkins.

CAIR, in an email message of its own on Tuesday, did not mention the case of Abdul Rahman, who converted to Christianity 16 years ago. The judge hearing Rahman's case was quoted as saying that Rahman could face the death penalty if he refused to return to Islam.

Some of CAIR's leaders, along with other Muslims, met on Tuesday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes and top officials of the National Security Council. But the meetings focused on outreach efforts to the Muslim world and "how to address growing levels of Islamophobia in the West," CAIR said....

"The judge in Rahman's case soothingly assures us that all will be forgiven if he renounces his Christianity because 'Islam is a religion of tolerance.' Really?" asked Perkins.

Perkins is particularly upset with comments made by White House spokesman Sean McCormack, who said on Tuesday, "Freedom of worship is an important element of any democracy and these are issues as Afghan democracy matures that they are going to have to deal with increasingly."

Said Perkins, "Religious freedom is not just 'an important element' of democracy; it is its cornerstone. Religious persecution leads inevitably to political tyranny. Five hundred years of history confirm this."

Perkins has said that President Bush should send Vice President Cheney or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Afghanistan to read the Afghan government the riot act.

"Americans will not give their blood and treasure to prop up new Islamic fundamentalist regimes," he said earlier this week.

Oh yes we will, unless there are some drastic changes.