Fitzgerald: A comical-tragical farce

comical, tragical indeed.

Perhaps we should add the 'rebel', the 'insurgent' and the 'militant'- not to forget the utterly ridiculous 'freedom fighters...'

Hugh writes: "Conferences on "terrorism" or even on "Islamic terrorism" miss much of the point about the Jihad, and reinforce the wrong idea that this is a "war on terror" -- which, if such were to be believed, would ignore the behavior of Muslims within Europe which, while not to the level of terrorism, have deeply unsettled, and caused changes to be made, in those European societies."

While I agree that the phrase "war on terror" is unhelpful, I couldn't disagree more with Hugh's reasoning. Hugh implies that the mere presence of Muslims is deeply unsettling, apart from their various roles (as passive enablers, as ideological obfuscators, as ideological proponents, as active perpetrators) in their culture of physically violent geopolitically expansionist jihad. (When the rubber meets the road, Muslims could not take over without physical violence providing crucial leverage and access.)

I would argue that the deeply unsettling behavior of Muslims within Europe is deeply unsettling because of terrorism and the perpetual threat of terrorism which can pop up anywhere, at any time; and apart from terrorism (actual and potential), Muslims would not be deeply unsettling. I would appreciate it if Hugh (or anyone else here who agrees with him) could articulate and clearly adumbrate exactly how Muslims would pose a threat to the West apart from terrorism, actual & potential.

Television,

Though not the learned, and articulate, soul that Hugh is, I can say with certainty that a Muslim demographic majority in my country (America), with the numbers needed to force political change upon the minority (with Sharia the ultimate goal as the law of the land)is certainly "deeply unsettling" do me! And not least because I am female, but it counts.

As I move around my city (New York), I often ask myself "would this disappear if we became an Islamic society?", and the answer is almost invariably, "yes". For instance, I saw Spamalot on Broadway last night; nix that (in fact, nix "Broadway theater" as a concept, I'm sure). A few nights before, I attended an operatic recital, held in a Catholic church; nix that ( & nix the church itself, of course). Oh, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to move about freely on my own, I imagine. You get the picture.

Are you really serious? Are you thinking that an Islamic-majority society would somehow remain as free and as modern as Western countries are right now?

Sorry; I've known since the moment I first saw a picture of a woman in a burkha, many moons ago when I was a young girl, that I would not be able to exist in such a society.

Television, go to an Islamic country, and see if you would want to live there. That's what the west would turn into if we had a muslim majority in our countries.

WHAT WERE THE EUROPEANS THINKING, when they brought these people into their countries.

A land that prides itself on culture and the arts, brought in the barbarian hordes who think that music the theatre and the arts are haram. Not to forget their attitude towards women and gays. As well as dogs, especially black dogs. I could go on.

I wish that Europe had brought in millions of Japanese instead, or millions of people from central and south America.

At least they would have enriched society, rather than terrorise the entire population.

I think that next decade things are going to start heating up. And when the actual fighting starts happening, I'll be in Europe doing my part like a shot. Because like world war 2, this war will really be a war between good and evil.

People have said the Aztecs lost to the Spaniards because the Aztecs couldn't understand the Spaniards and therefore had no way of dealing with them. Worse, their religion suggested the Spaniards might be gods. To the Spaniards, the Aztecs were just another tribal people to be conquered, enslaved, converted, or all three.

We've lost our cultural memory when it comes to Islam, but they know exactly how to deal with us. Many Christians are so apologetic for the Crusades, and so steeped in the culture of victimization, they are helping the conquest along.

Assimilation, the best option possible right now, doesn't change the immutable texts. At any time, even many generations down the road, the jihad can begin anew. Enlightement can take centuries. I don't think we have that much time.

Terrorism is just one small part of conquest. It's not a stretch to say the Roman Empire fell due to uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration. Barbarians who maintained their tribal culture, partially Romanized barbarians, brought the whole thing tumbling down.

Lucky for us, oddly enough, the violent jihad using attacks on civilians is very popular and sure to keep this issue on the front pages for a long time. Combined with gang rapes and street crime, Islam is making its nature all too familiar to the West.

I would appreciate it if Hugh (or anyone else here who agrees with him) could articulate and clearly adumbrate exactly how Muslims would pose a threat to the West apart from terrorism, actual & potential.

To begin, I will use the word "Muslim" in the following statements to mean any person who accepts the Quran, Hadiths (just Bukhari and Mulim is sufficient) and Sira (biography of Muhammad) as immutable canon.

The mere presence of Muslims who fit that description are a threat to Western civilization because they cannot ever adopt the Western worldview that includes sovereignty of the people, freedom of conscience and equality of gender, nor can Muslims accept the principle of equal treatment under the law for people of all creeds.

They cannot therefore be trusted to be faithful to any oath of allegience to any non-Muslim nation and are by definition incapable of fulfilling the obligations of citizenship in any non-Muslim society.

Allegience to any non-Muslim nation that necessarily supercedes the interests of that nation to the interests of the transnational Muslim ummah is a fundamental requirement of non-Muslim national citizenship.

In short, the loyalties of a Muslim do not align themselves with the interests of their non-Muslim neighbors. It must be inferred from this that every Muslim is a potential terrorism supporter or actor if such terrorism is deemed to be necessary to promote the goal of world domination that is a matter of core doctrine for every Muslim.

This line of thinking is true of fascism, Communism, canabilism, and all manner of other -isms that are fundamentally at odds with core non-Muslim values. So Muslims are not alone. I for one do not want to live next door to a "reformed" canibal (e.g., Jeffery Dahmer) anymore than I would want to live next to a Muslim.

Does that make me an Islamophobe? Nope, not any more than it makes me a canibophobe. My decision is based on a large collection of facts that have caused me to make this rational decision. Change the facts and maybe I'll change my mind. But right now the undeniable accumulation of historical and contemporary facts, not opinion nor fantasy, of Islamic inspired violence is sufficient to support my logical decision.

WHY THEY LEFT ISLAM......I finished my enlistment in the Marine Corps, with one year duty in Vietnam. The following years would see hedonism, poverty, prosperity, drunkenness, sobriety, and eventually marriage, adultery, divorce. Never during this time did I consider God, whether doing good or evil. I had broken every Commandment God had written. I was a man with blood on his hands, but the only thing my relatives asked, did I eat pork. The look of relief on their face when I answered "No", almost made me laugh. My answer was true, but how I wished a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich could be the cause of all my problems. Through those years, I would often reflect on my life and where God is.

The reflection on my past revealed a man who gave all glory to himself for the good times and accused God for the bad times. Never seeing my unfairness to God. I became angry at God who created me with no say in nature. How could he judge me without ever knowing what it is to be human? If He were a man, he too would fail. If we are his children then why hasn't he revealed himself? All the questions and accusations I made towards God could fill a book. God must have been fed up with my pseudo reflections that served only my own glory, because they were reaching a terrible, but thankful end.
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Testimonies/index.html

Vee (and others),

You are mixing two issues here. I agree that an Islamic society is bad. My point is, how would Muslims transform a Western country, let alone the entire West, into an Islamic society, apart from physical violence? Think about it: what steps could they take to do that? While we in the West now have millions of idiots who whitewash and even sometimes defend Islam now, most of these idiots are not thinking straight and would not permit Western liberal sociopolitical institutions to adopt laws that directly contravene the American Constitution, and European laws based upon the Western Declaration of Human Rights. Muslims will not be able to transform Western societies into anti-liberal, anti-humane societies, apart from physical violence and threats of physical violence (including the traditional Islamic tactic, going back to the beginnings of Islamic conquest, of terrorism and razzias (ultra-violent raids) as preludes of outright military conquest). I ask you to think about it, and tell me how Muslims would go about doing this successfully, apart from physical violence.

Demographics are everything. Look at how demands are made, constantly, even in a period of relative weakness, and even at a time when one would expect all kinds of bending-over-backwards-not-to offend behavior, of Muslims in this country, that country, to change the laic nature of the French school system, in a campaign that has been going on for more than a decade (the Foulard Question first appeared on the cover of L'Express back in 1994 -- I saved the issue), and that will not end just because of a temporary foiling. The very curriculum imposed by the French ministry of education has been informally rejected by the behavior of Muslim students, who refuse to study, inter alia, the Holocaust, World War II, the French in North Africa (unless those French are depicted as beasts), Napoleon, the French Revolution, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the history of the Kings of France, Joanne of Arc, Voltaire, Racine, the Encyclopedistes, all of French literature that is about, or somehow can be linked to, either a Christian or a Jewish or a freethinking theme. This is not theoretical change -- this has already happened, and been written about, especially in a report by an Inspecteur (not yet released to the public).

A large Muslim population can offer support to politicians who, eager for votes, will likely dampen security measures, or measures designed to limit benefits (in every European country, the Muslim percentage both of those receiving unemployment support, and in the prisons, is anywhere from five to ten times the percentage of Muslims in the population).

Throughout the countries where Islam is the belief-system of most, wherever Muslims have had a chance they have driven out, by governmental fiat or by warfare, or by creating intolerable conditions, large numbers of non-Muslims. How else to explain the drop of the Hindu population of Pakistan from 15% at independence to 1.5% today, or in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from 35% ot 8% of the population? How to explain the steady assaults on Christians in Indonesia over the past decade, and the pressure on the HIndus of Bali? How to take account of Istanbul, in 1914 50% non-Muslim, and today 1% non-Muslim? How to note the same kind of disappearance of non-Muslims from Alexandra and Cairo, save for the Copts, and even they have been leaving for the United States, Canada, Australia? How is it that Lebanon, a state which was fifty years ago half-Christian, is now down to a Christain population of 35%, and dropping, in a land which was always the last redoubt of the Maronites who were there before the Arabs, and Islam, arrived? Even aside from the ending of the French colonial administrations, after 40 years in Tunisia and Morocco, after 132 years in Algeria, does one explain all the other Christians who left, and the constant pressure on churches to close?

In the Balkans, churchues are destroyed all the time. Whole areas have become cleansed of Serbians. It does not take more than having a Muslim population that steadily grows. It doesn't have to be an army. That population will inevitably exhibit attitudes, make demands, cause an atmosphere, that will disturb and threaten the calm, the well-being, the physical security, of Infidels. And those Infidels will, over time, leave -- first one area, and then another.

Look at Malmo, Sweden's third city. Look at Rotterdam, Holland's second city. Look at Marseille, France's second city. Look at Birmingham, look at Bradford, look at Leeds, look at Manchester, look at Lyon, look at even small towns in northern Italy that are suffering.

Why anyone would find some kind of false consolation in the idea that because there is no conquest by some Muslim army wearing uniforms -- for god's sake, in the greatest period of Muslim conquest, the numbers of Arab warriors were, compared to those Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians whose lands they were conquering, were absurdly small -- but they managed to quickly install a regime that made it highly desirable to convert, and over time, steadily, many did.

No massive Muslim military force conquered the East Indies, now the largest Muslim country in the world. Instead, traders from the Hadramaut went to Java, established colonies of Muslims, and managed through missionary work to create larger and larger numbers of local Muslims. A great boost came when local rulers in Java and Sumatra converted to Islam, and in the then-common tradition of cuius regio, eius religio their followers -- followed.

"My point is, how would Muslims transform a Western country, let alone the entire West, into an Islamic society, apart from physical violence? Think about it: what steps could they take to do that?"

Television: read the demographic stats. It's as simple as that: our own democracy would be used against us when the sharia-loving population rises enough.

In addition to that, it doesn't take full terrorism to oppress peaceful people. Just constant high violence levels and threats, such as the rapes in the banlieus and Malmo, muggings, riots... Whether they achieve it by law or violence becomes almost irrelevant when even non-muslim girls are scared to go out of the house and have to dress 'modestly' to protect themselves in some parts of Europs. They've won.

Lili, if you read my posts carefully, I am not limiting Muslim physical violence to "terrorism". Any patterns of physical violence are intimidations outside of the law, and in the context of traditional Islamic expansion, are part of violent Jihad, and cannot succeed apart from violence in its many different forms which it has taken in Islamic history. Muslims have never taken over a country without violence in one form or another (usually a combination of many different forms). It seems highly unlikely that Muslims could take over sociopolitical entities that are more sophisticated than any others in history -- modern Western ones -- apart from various patterns of physical violence being key components in their infiltration.

Hugh responds: "Look at how demands are made, constantly..." Demands can be made, and foolish Western governments may, at one time or another, in one limited context or another, in one limited form or another, yield, but that is still far short of a Muslim takeover. Hugh notes Muslim pressure on the laic nature of the French school system, which has taken the form of rejection: often that rejection occurs in a context of belligerence and threats of physical violence. If teachers or administrators do nothing to enforce the law, it is usually because of fear -- not fear of Persian carpets and falafel stands, but fear of violence. And if not fear, then the motivation might be a multiculturalist fog of mind. I seriously doubt that, for the most part, even our most idiotic multiculturalists would move from tacitly acceding to cultural "enclaves" to submitting (apart from violence) to a full-blown transformation of a Western society into one ruled by Islam.

More and more, post-911, such demands and unruly behavior are occurring in a context of potential terrorism and other forms of violence: one cannot divorce such demands from that violent context. The increasing pressure of demographics can never result in transformation, without the Western polities at some point acceding to radical dismantling of centuries of tradition, and they will never do that apart from an overwhelming military takeover that is preceded by a context of laying the groundwork through a clever and/or felicitous-for-Muslims mixture of actual & potential (i.e., feared) violence.

As for Hugh's citation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Turkey -- these are diametrically opposed to the point he is trying to make, insofar as the problem of Islam's bullying in places like those is directly related to Muslim physical violence in myriad forms (including out-and-out military violence, let alone massive campaigns of slaughter and rapine, for God's sake) not only now, but going back centuries. To try to adduce such examples as supporting a concern about the threat of non-violent Islamic expansion is absurd.

"In the Balkans, churchues are destroyed all the time. Whole areas have become cleansed of Serbians. It does not take more than having a Muslim population that steadily grows."

Destruction of churches and cleansing of Serbians is not non-violent activity. Furthermore, the Balkans, again, is a region saturated with present, and historical Muslim violence. Just how does that support any argument that Islam poses a threat of non-violent expansion?

"It doesn't have to be an army."

Violence in the form of a formal, conquering army is only one form of violence, obviously. And anyway, regions like the Balkans rest upon historical events and periods when formal, conquering Muslim armies were a major factor, laying the ground for the present dynamic there.

Television,

I think you answered your own question. You asked exactly how Muslims would pose a threat to the West apart from terrorism, actual and potential. In the previous paragraph you stated matter of fact that they have various roles in their culture of physically violent geopolitically expansionist jihad.

It cannot be separated Television. Islam, its culture, is violent and everywhere Muslims exists physical violence exists, jihad exists.

Muslims pose a threat to the West exactly because they can’t be parted from terrorism, actual or potential, no more than they can change the Qur’an.

More vile actions by the "perfect" religion: If you ever wonder how you will be treated as a non-Muslim in an Islamic society here is the quote from the Muslim man about what he would do with the Christian boys that were kidnapped:

Khan, he said, told him it would not be a problem if the deadline was missed – he could make more money by selling them [the Christian children] for their organs.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/

GLOBAL JIHAD
Al-Qaida group funded
by Christian-slave trade
Pakistani, American missionaries
film purchase of 20 boys in sting

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 21, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Two Christian men – one an American evangelist and the other a Pakistani missionary – have exposed a senior member of an al-Qaida-linked group behind a trade in Christian children by going undercover and secretly filming their purchase of 20 boys, age six to 12.

Gul Khan, a wealthy militant and senior member of Jamaat-ud Daawa, an Islamic organization declared by the U.S. State Department to be a front for another banned terrorist group banned in Pakistan for joining with al-Qaida in 2003 in an attempted assassination of President Pervez Musharraf, was filmed by a hidden camera accepting $28,500 from a Pakistani missionary posing as a businessman wanting to purchase boys to work for him as street beggars.

The two Christian men hatched their elaborate sting after seeing pictures of the abducted boys, taken from Christian villages in the Punjab, the London Times reported. During the months the two developed their plan, the American evangelist, who runs a small charity called Help Pakistani Children returned to the U.S. to raise funds. He asked to be identified only as "Brother Dave," His Pakistani counterpart took on the identity of a businessman named "Amir."

"We knew if we just purchased the boys, the slavers would just restock. We would be fuelling the slave trade," said Brother David.

Neither man knew when Amir made contacts in the black market to set up a meeting with the boys' abductors, the trail would lead to Khan or the JUD.

"We realized we were out of our depth," Brother David said. But they didn't give up – and they prayed.

Within a week, Amir had purchased three of the boys for $5,000 and paid a $2,500 deposit for the remaining 17. Amir was given two months to raise $28,500 to complete the purchase. Khan, he said, told him it would not be a problem if the deadline was missed – he could make more money by selling them for their organs.

While Brother David was in the U.S. raising the needed funds, Amir continued to socialize with Khan who always had a retinue of Kalashnikov-toting bodyguards. He also began to work with the police in hopes they would arrest Khan, but the authorities insisted that any transaction be secretly recorded for evidence.

Almost two weeks ago, Amir was summoned to meet Khan to complete the deal. Although police, disguised as laborers, were stationed close to the outdoor meeting site, Khan's agents took Amir and his assistant to a second location for the exchange.

To Amir's dismay, Khan took the bag of cash – and the assistant as a hostage – saying he would release the children and the assistant once he determined the currency was real. Khan was filmed driving from the meeting with a bag full of money to the JUD headquarters at Muridke, near Lahore.

In the late '90s, Osama bin Laden funded the building of JUD's headquarters. The group's assets were frozen last month after the U.S. Treasury Department declared the group a terrorist organization.

"I was so praying that your money was good," Amir's assistant told him later.

After several hours, the hostage and 17 boys were freed. They have been returned to their parents, many of whom had given up hope of ever seeing their sons.

The two Christian men are prepared to present their evidence and have demanded the prosecution of Khan and an investigation of JUD, but the police told them the reach of Pakistan's Islamic groups is too long for them to be dealt with directly. They continue to flourish, despite repeated "crackdowns" on extremists by the Pakistan government.

JUD's leader, Hafez Muhamed Sayeed, was accused of inciting riots earlier this year in connection with the cartoons of the prophet Muhammed published by a Danish newspaper.

"The slavers must be stopped and brought to justice," Brother David said. "I pray that a public outcry will arise in Pakistan and around the world that will put an end to their vile business."

More on that story:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0%2C%2C1-524-2189789-524%2C00.html

Rescued – the Pakistan children seized by Islamist slave traders
Marie Colvin, Muridke

Hoax saves boys held for months




THE slave traders came for 10-year-old Akash Aziz as he played cops and robbers in his dusty village in eastern Punjab.

Akash, still in the maroon V-neck sweater and tie that he had worn to school that day, was a “robber”. But as he crouched behind a wall, waiting for the schoolfriend designated as the “cop” to find him, a large man with a turban and a beard grabbed him from behind and clamped a cloth over his nose and mouth before he could cry for help.

He recalls a strange smell and a choking sensation. “Then I fainted,” said Akash, a delicate little child from a loving family that takes pride in his enthusiasm for English lessons at school.

Akash woke up in a dark room with a bare brick floor and no windows. The heat was suffocating. As he languished there over the next month, 19 other panic-stricken boys were thrown into the room with him.

The children, all Christians, had fallen into the hands of Gul Khan, a wealthy Islamic militant and leading member of Jamaat-ud Daawa (JUD), a group linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Khan lives near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, but when in the Punjab he stays at the JUD’s headquarters in Muridke, near Lahore, where young men can be seen practising martial arts with batons on rolling green lawns patrolled by guards with Kalashnikovs. Osama Bin Laden funded the centre in the late 1990s.

The JUD, which claims to help the poor, says that it has created a “pure Islamic environment” at Muridke that is superior to western “depravity”. Khan’s activities explode that myth. He planned to sell his young captives to the highest bidder, whether into domestic servitude or the sex trade. The boys knew only that they were for sale.

This is the story of the misery that Akash and his friends, aged six to 12, endured in captivity; of their rescue by Christian missionaries who bought their freedom and tried to expose the kidnappers; and of the children’s moving reunions with their loved ones who had believed they were dead.

Last week I had the privilege of taking six of the boys home to their families, including Akash. The astonishment of mothers and fathers who had given up hope and the fervent, tearful embraces made these some of the most intensely emotional scenes I have witnessed.

That joy was a long time coming. On the first day after his abduction, Akash was left in no doubt about the brutality of the regime he would endure.

“I drank from a glass of water and one of the kidnappers pushed me so hard I fell on the glass and it broke in my hands,” he said. His slender fingers still bear the scars. No more glass for him, he was told: he was fit to drink only from a tin cup.

The boys were ordered not to talk, pray or play. Five of them were playing a Pakistani equivalent of scissors, paper, stone one day when the guards burst in and beat them savagely on their backs and heads. On another occasion Akash was repeatedly struck by guards yelling “What is in your house?” “I kept telling them, ‘We have nothing’,” he said anxiously. “I was so afraid they would go back and rob my father and mother.” It is painful to imagine blows raining down on the ribs of so slight a figure.

The guards mostly sat outside playing cards, shaded from the 116F heat by a tree. But the boys were allowed out of their room only to use a filthy hole-in-the-ground lavatory. All they could see were high walls around the two-room building that was their prison. The other room was always locked.

The children were fed once a day on chapatis and dhal, but never enough. Akash slept huddled against the others on the floor and woke each morning a little more resigned to his fate.

“We just sat around the walls thinking,” Akash said. “We were remembering our homes and our mothers and fathers and hoping someone would rescue us. But nobody came.”

I first saw Akash in a photograph among those of 20 boys who were being touted for sale in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan on the Afghanistan border renowned as a smugglers’ paradise and home to fugitives of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. He was just another black market commodity along with guns, grenades and hashish.

Unbeknown to Akash, a Pakistani Christian missionary and an American evangelist who runs a tiny charity called Help Pakistani Children had seen the boys’ photographs and taken up their cause. Neither man is willing to be identified today for fear of the consequences.

An elaborate sting was conceived. The Pakistani missionary would pose as a Lahore businessman named Amir seeking boys to use as beggars who would give their cash to him.

The two men would also collect evidence that could be used in any police action against the kidnappers. “We knew if we just purchased the boys, the slavers would just restock. We would be fuelling the slave trade,” said the American evangelist, who asked to be referred to as “Brother David”.

They had no idea how hazardous their enterprise was until Amir used some black market contacts to engineer a meeting with Khan and discovered his links to the JUD. “We realised we were out of our depth,” Brother David said ruefully. But they persevered — and prayed a good deal.

Amir played his part well. Within a week he had bought three of the boys for $5,000 (£2,650) and put down a $2,500 deposit on the 17 others, including Akash.

The first three were handed over on a Quetta street in April and returned to their families. But Khan wanted $28,500 for the lot. He gave Amir two months to come up with the money, saying he did not mind if the deadline was missed: he could earn more if he sold them for their organs, he claimed.

Brother David went home to America to raise funds. Amir travelled again and again to Quetta, taking Khan to lunch as his bodyguards lounged outside in pickup trucks, their Kalashnikovs at the ready. He enlisted police officers who insisted that the eventual transaction be recorded with a secret camera so that the evidence against Khan would be irrefutable.

Twelve days ago Amir received a call from Khan summoning him to a meeting at a crossroads on a dirt road near the JUD’s Muridke camp.

There was no cover here, just newly harvested wheatfields and water buffalo wallowing in a pond. Six policemen dressed as labourers with the intention of alerting colleagues in cars concealed a mile away to arrest Khan once the cash had been exchanged for the children.

Amir and a young assistant waited for an hour at the crossroads before one of Khan’s men walked up and directed him to another location. The police had been wrong-footed.

Amir finally found his quarry under a large, shady tree where he was sitting on a rope bed while an acolyte massaged his shoulders. “You have the money?” Khan asked.

When Amir handed him the $28,500 cash in a black knapsack, he examined it briskly. Then, without explanation, he broke his promise to hand over the boys there and then.

“I will check the dollars are real first,” he said. “If your dollars are good, you will get the children.”

A second blow followed. Khan announced that he was going to take Amir’s assistantas hostage. If the money was real, he said, the children would be delivered in two hours. If it was counterfeit, the hostage would not be seen again.

It was a heart-stopping moment, not least because the young man posing as Amir’s bag carrier had hidden the secret camera under his shirt. Amir motioned him to the back of his car as if to retrieve something from the boot, and ripped the camera from his body.

The hostage was blindfolded and driven to a building where he was held alone in a room. “I was so praying that your money was good,” he later told Amir.

Another anxious wait ensued. The police were off the scene and the two hours passed with no word from the kidnappers. Nor was there any news the next day.

Finally, a call came through from Amir’s assistant in the dead of night. He had just been dropped off by the side of a road 15 minutes’ drive from JUD headquarters with the remaining 17 boys. They were afraid but alive, he declared. They were being taken to a shack nearby. I drove there immediately and found Akash asleep on a plastic mat surrounded by his 16 friends.

Their thin limbs were sprawled and their bodies curled against each other for comfort. One boy gripped the sleeve of another as he slept. They stank of urine.

As the children awoke, the bewilderment showed in their eyes. The first task of the missionaries was to reassure them but few seemed to believe Brother David when he said: “We will protect you. We will take you home to your mothers and fathers. The bad men who took you are gone.” Not one boy smiled. It had been too long since they had dared to hope.

Yet after a cold wash under an outdoor tap and a change into fresh clothes, preparations began for the the first of the long car journeys back to their homes in remote Punjab villages. As the boys gradually warmed to their liberators, they talked a little about their ordeal.

Asif Anjed, 8, one of the smallest, had the biggest personality. But his concept of time was so childish that when I asked him how long it had been since he had seen his parents, he thought hard for a moment and said: “Six or seven years.” It had been five months.

Asif had retained a sense of outrage from the moment of his abduction. “They put me in a bag!” he kept saying indignantly. He picked out a bright orange T-shirt because he liked its bear logo, the symbol of a football team in Chicago.

Like Akash, Asif said he had lost consciousness when a man with a beard and turban put a rag over his mouth. He became indignant again when I asked whether he had tried to escape. “The men told us if we ran out of the door they would cut our throats,” he said.

Asif seemed to have few memories of home. “My friend was Bilal,” he said. He grew quiet when he realised he had forgotten what his mother looked like.

As if exhausted by the effort of trying to remember, he fell asleep across my lap during the 15-hour drive to his home in the desert of southern Punjab on the Indian border. As we drew near, the garrulous Asif looked solemn, perhaps not knowing quite what to expect. At a place where fertile green fields gave way to white desert sands, he pointed to his house at the end of a path across a stretch of wasteland.

His father, Amjed, must have seen him getting out of the car. He came running out of the house, barely able to believe that the boy walking hesitantly towards him in plastic sandals was his son. Then he flung out his arms, scooped up Asif and squeezed him against his chest.

Asif’s mother, Gazzala, came bustling down the path as fast as she could in her flowered salwar kameez, dragging his younger sister, Neha, by the hand.

She collapsed on her knees in front of Asif, her only other child, weeping and clutching him to her, the long months of anguish etched into the lines on her face.

Like any other boy of his age, Asif seemed embarrassed by these extreme displays of emotion, glowering as his mother clung to him for longer than he would have liked.

Both parents remembered every detail of the day their boy had failed to return home from school. Asif’s father manages a small chicken farm and usually collects him on a bicycle for the 3km ride. He still cannot forgive himself for staying home to work that day.

When Asif did not appear his father started a frantic search, stopping strangers on his bicycle to ask, “Have you seen my little boy?” In common with other families, Asif’s did not go to the police. “The police will only take interest if they are paid and we have nothing,” Amjed said.

“We thought someone had killed him,” his mother added, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I couldn’t stop imagining that maybe they had broken his arms and legs.”

As the reality sank in, both parents began to smile. They looked at Asif in shock as he repeated his customary line — “they put me in a bag” — but were soon planning a family feast to celebrate. “It’s a miracle!” Amjed said.

Khan would also be shocked if he knew that his captives had not been sold into slavery. Their rescuers fear retribution and are also worried because the exposure of Khan has implications for the way religious extremist groups are treated in Pakistan. Even the police said the reach of such groups was too long for them to be dealt with in a straightforward way.

Why should it be so difficult to prosecute slave traders who cloak themselves in the garb of pious Muslims? For one thing, the JUD offers free medical care and education and won hearts and minds by providing blankets, tents and food after last year’s Kashmir earthquake. Few Pakistanis care to know how closely it is associated with Lashkar-i-Toiba, a group proscribed by Pakistan and Britain as a terrorist organisation that participated in an Al-Qaeda attempt to assassinate Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, in 2003.

There can be no denying Khan’s connections with the JUD. After he collected his $28,500, he was seen driving directly into its headquarters.

Brother David and Amir are ready to present their dossier of evidence, including the secret tape of Khan taking the money for the boys.

In almost any other country, an investigation into Khan and his work for the JUD would be automatic. It is not so simple in Pakistan. Musharraf has announced numerous crackdowns on the extremist religious militants but the extremists continue to gather strength.

The stories of these boys cry out for action. “The slavers must be stopped and brought to justice,” Brother David said. “I pray that a public outcry will arise in Pakistan and around the world that will put an end to their vile business.”

Akash, the first boy to be returned to his family, constitutes the strongest possible case for an end to child trafficking.

For the first few hours of the journey to his village, Akash sat on the edge of the back seat next to me. He rested his hands on the front seats, gazing out through the windscreen, answering any question with a monosyllable and flexing his fingers over and over again.

He recalled that his best friend was called Rashed — they played cricket together — but he could not remember the name of his school.

He shook as we approached his village. I thought he would collapse. Then came a quiet, uplifting moment that brought tears to my eyes.

The driver stopped by a canal to ask directions. Taking the initiative for the first time, Akash tentatively raised his arm, pointing down a narrow dirt road running with sewage.

He had not even reached the door of his house before his grandmother, wrapped in a colourful shawl, engulfed him in an embrace in the dirt alley outside, her face contorted with delight.

Akash’s mother was so strangely impassive that it made me angry until I realised she was too shocked to take in the fact that the son she had thought was dead was snuggling up to her. Finally, she hugged him, kissing him over and over again on the top of his head. “We were hopeless,” she said. “His father searched and searched. We prayed. But we thought he was gone.”

Akash had another surprise waiting for him at home: a two-month-old brother he had never seen.

Home at last, resting against his mother, he smiled broadly for the first time and, just a few hours after getting into a car for the first time, declared his ambition to become a pilot.

Hugh-

"Pick-up Styx" (!)

Ouch!

(Heironymus Bosch and Ambrose Bierce must both be laughing in the afterlife.)

Touche!

Jihad Lite is present in the United States, from CAIR's puffed and/or invented "hate crimes", to the quivering-chinned offense of local Muslim groups against cartoons, to Muslim females in Dearborn who wish to intimidate others into adopting their own taboos and paranoias on dress. It's also present in "multicultural" and "sophisticated" areas. Two examples:

At the local grocery store, we are seeing more and more "bagged women" accompanied by their scowling, angry male owners. While their females scuttle and cringe behind them, the Muslim men stride along making faces at Western women attempting to shop, occasionally muttering darkly and posturing in a threatening manner.

In a parking lot, I noticed a very little girl take off from her mother as her mother (a bagged woman) was loading groceries into her car. Little kids do this, so without getting too near her, I made sure she stayed out of the way of moving cars. When the girl noticed this, she pointed and began shrieking at me: Kaffir. Kaffir. Her mother heard her and rushed over. The funny thing was, she looked a little sick about it, as if she knew that it was wrong to have the child she taught call someone doing her a favor "dirty." She gave me an embarrassed smile and bundled the little girl away, still shrieking and pointing.

the story from Pakistan about enslaving boys, and perhaps selling their body parts, is indeed horrifying. But I doubt that the pro-Nazi "left" will make any protests about such events.

THE TITLE DEED TO ISRAEL...1 "In those days and at that time,
when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem,
2 I will gather all nations
and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. [a]
There I will enter into judgment against them
concerning my inheritance, my people Israel,
for they scattered my people among the nations
and divided up my land...(its a war of who has title to GODS land...ishmael (islam)..or..ISAAC.(JEWS and CHRISTIANS who believe the JEWS are the Promised People.It doesnt matter if you believe this...For all the world is GODS stage and all the men and women are just players.

Assalamau Laikum all,

I see that you are at it again....muslims again eh...how did I guess that.

The greatest danger to the West is its lost direction and lack of faith.

Your christian faith has been all but destroyed by your "need for logic" and introspection and watering down of the bible and Christianity.

Why would you let your saviour's name (Jesus) be used as a swear word is really beyond me...such lack of respect is truly amazing.

Your anscestors knew the score ....but now you have changed the rules. Multiculturalism...no faith taught in your own schools...eh but must celebrate Diwali, Christmas and Eid.

Know that muslims only celebrate muslim festivals...it is haram to do anything else...we still have the same rules....no one can challenge the will of Allah SWT...all the old adages still apply.

Just to add a bit to the mix though...muslims are modernising....halal banks, coke, dawa ...eventually leading to Islamic law, we cannot/willnot live anyother way..

If you cannot stomach this wonderful adventure ...tough.....however there is little doubt that your future generation will not only stiomach it ...but love to live, breathe & eat Islam. Because you have no faith and Islam is so strong...it is inevitable.

No peoples or parts of the Amrika will be left untouched. The "Gorniaks" and "cosmic avengers" are of this generation & the next...but little more than that.

Islam's relationship with the West is like a star being sucked into a blackhole. Allah portrays this so well in nature...the star and the blackhole have a million year old relationship...while the star tries to get away...it gets smaller...weaker ...bit by bit...slowly ...ever so slowly...at times the star doesn't even know "it is being eaten alive" as the process is so slow.

Then one fine day...a million years later...POOF...star& starlight is gone...leaving only the victorious black hole....WHICH CAN ASSIMILATE ANYTHING.

Islam is like that...it can assimilate anyone....Gorniaks' patroit4s' Televisions' freewomans' Hondos', Eisenhunds', Proud Infedels', Chinubhias'...you get my point.

And like the blackhole...once you enter it....it's a bit difficult to find your way round first....but all settle down...like Egypt, Indonesia.

Why battle with the inevitable....your future is alreay written ...embrace Islam...be part of the blackhole...Allah commands it.

Welcome....

Naseem, you are so correct about the "black hole" of islam. Dark and void of life.

toyko rose Naseem strikes again!

Islam is like that...it can assimilate anyone....Gorniaks' patroit4s' Televisions' freewomans' Hondos', Eisenhunds', Proud Infedels', Chinubhias'...you get my point.

And like the blackhole...once you enter it....it's a bit difficult to find your way round first....but all settle down...like Egypt, Indonesia.

Why battle with the inevitable....your future is alreay written ...embrace Islam...be part of the blackhole...Allah commands it.

Welcome....

Posted by: Naseem at May 21, 2006 07:52 AM

If you read your own words, Naseem, you admit that:

- You (with your Muslim Brothers and sisters) are doomed to the 'blackhole' of Islam.

- You are so brainwashed that you are following your satanic-master's orders of Dawa and Jihad.

- Dar-Al-Islam is incompatible with Dar-Al-Harb.

- Jesus is not a swear word and you know that but making one up, to submit to your satanic master's call for Dawa and Jihad.

- Only Islam abuses Eid/Multiculturalism to serve Dawa and Jihad, per your satanic master's command. Take away Eid and Diwali, Cristmas are all festivals worth respecting and celebrating.

- You have cleverly used the word 'assimilate' instead of 'consume' or 'swallow'. Nice try at Dawa, but then, coming from a Muslim, am not surprised.

Thanks for the invitation into the deep darkness of Islamic 'blackhole'(by your own admission). You are a sharp and a smart person. Give yourself, your famly and future generations a chance to the brightness and light of growth, knowledge, civilization, opportunities, development, persuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.. Jihadwatch will do what it takes. It is quick and easy.... just contact Robert ('CONTACT US' on home page)For additional support, look up: http://www.faithfreedom.org/ It is not herd, really... And Gorniaks' patroit4s' Televisions' freewomans' Hondos', Eisenhunds', Proud Infedels', Chinubhias' will all help you... just have faith, which we all know you have a lot.

butterfly,

If you read my subsequent posts, you will clearly see that I amplified my original question to this: how can Islam be a threat when it is divorced from violence? I expanded my question from asking merely about terrorism, to violence, since some posters here were fixating on the word "terrorism".

The reason I ask this is because Hugh in this thread and others has seemed to be positing such a non-violent threat of Islam to the West. I can understand a non-violent threat of Islam to the West as an adjunct to a strategy necessarily employing violent tactics; what I cannot understand is how Islam could pose a threat when apparently disengaged from any violence at all, as Hugh seems to posit.

I may be wrong, but Hugh seems to be arguing something along the lines of a person who would say that physical violence is not a factor in the influence of a Mafia mob boss on juries in the 1990s, when, in 1979, he had one juror murdered, but has never murdered another juror since that time. Obviously, the precedent of the murdered juror remains as a threat hanging over every subsequent juror, and if any influence over juries is exerted by the Mafia boss decades later, it rests in great part on that legacy of physical violence which remains as a constant potential threat, in addition to any other factors that can be discerned.

Naseem,

"Why battle with the inevitable....your future is alreay written ...embrace Islam...be part of the blackhole...Allah commands it. "

I reject that darkness and embrace the bright sunlight light of the Christian faith and of the Holy Trinity.

I reject that darkness and embrace the bright sunlight light of the Christian faith and of the Holy Trinity.

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at May 21, 2006 04:34 PM

In other words, Naseem, take your Dawa to the illitrate criminals who have all the credentials your dark and doomed cult requires. As for your 'blackhole', shove it up the other blackhole, if you know what I mean.

Television,

You ask “I cannot understand is how Islam could pose a threat when apparently disengaged from any violence at all, as Hugh seems to posit.”

I can only tell you what I feel. Islam poses a threat to me and mine because, in Islam, there is only dar al-Harb and dar al-Islam. Creating dar al-Islam really can be as simple as the demographics Hugh has spoken to many times. If America arrives at dar al-Islam by nonviolent means I will still be a slave, my family will still be slaves, and free will and free speech will be memories. That is a threat worse than death.

Television,

“I cannot understand is how Islam could pose a threat when apparently disengaged from any violence at all, as Hugh seems to posit.”

This is actually a moot point. Islam cannot be "disengaged" from violence. If it were it would not be Islam.

In any event, demographics alone could wipe out western civilization, as many others here have already pointed out.

Xerxes,

"demographics alone could wipe out western civilization, as many others here have already pointed out."

I am amazed at how otherwise intelligent people here can not think this simple thing through. Demographics alone can do no such thing. It will have to be coupled with violence -- overwhelming violence.

"This is actually a moot point. Islam cannot be "disengaged" from violence. If it were it would not be Islam."

Exactly my point, which your other sentence, quoted by me first, apparently contradicts. This specter of non-violent Islamic osmosis is really causing some of you otherwise intelligent people here to stop thinking altogether.

Television,

You say demographics alone can do no such thing. I strongly disagree, but then what do I know, not being intelligent and all.

To Voltaire

Thank you.
I'll see you in the trenches.

Daniel

Naseem, your posts are just the sound of another one of allah's castrated, toothless dogs barking in the night. By your own standards you have comitted haram by using the Mohammedan greeting to greet infidels. Your grandchildren will be pork eating Jewish homosexuals while mine are wiping what is left of your pitiful cult off the soles of their shoes. You have failed to defend your faith on numerous threads here. As soon as someone brings up something you are afraid to answer you move on to another thread. What about Nazanin's plight? Are the Iranians right to condem her to death for defending her virtue? What about the 2 women in Pakistan who are killed daily to save their family's honor? Dream your dreams and fantasize that someday all nations will be third world pieces of feces like Pakistan. The bible tells us the truth that you and the other mindless minions like you will be relegated to the fires of hell. But then the bible has prophecy while your quran has none.

Bigcatgirl13106, at least Naseem is starting to admit that her cult is based in darkness, the abode of Satan, and is afraid of the light of the truth, which is only in Christ Jesus.