August 2007 Archives

An, er, explosive revelation about Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed: "Indicted USF Student has Terror Past in Egypt," from the Investigative Project on Terrorism :

Two Egyptian students enrolled at the University of South Florida have been indicted for carrying explosive materials across states lines. One of the defendants also is charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

According to officials familiar with the case, Mohamed has been arrested previously in Egypt on terrorism-related charges. He is said to have produced an Internet video showing how to build a remote-controlled car bomb.

Mohamed and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, also an engineering student, were stopped for speeding Aug. 4 in Goose Creek, S.C., where they have been held on state charges. Police found pipe bombs in their car near a Navy base in South Carolina where enemy combatants have been held. They have been held in a South Carolina jail while the FBI continued to investigate whether there was a terrorism link.

Read it all.

It's a time-honored technique, hallowed by successful use by Hizballah and others. Honest Ibe Hooper should give these folks a stern talking-to.

"Muslims Battle Buddhists in Thailand's Troubled South," by Jürgen Kremb in SpiegelOnline (thanks to all who sent this in):

Tuwnedaniya Tuwaemaengae, 24, insists that he has nothing to do with the rebels. Although he is a chemistry student in Bangkok, he says that the Islamic revolution is currently more important to him than his studies. He organized a demonstration a few weeks ago which brought the provincial capital Pattani to a standstill. Now he is taking journalists on a tour of a village where soldiers allegedly committed atrocities against Muslims.

The villagers line up along the road to greet their visitors. The region in Narathiwat province is part of the "red zone" where the rebels collect taxes from the villagers to fund their insurgency. In the house of the local imam, villagers tell the story of an army raid and the murder of two young Muslim men. They point to two fresh grave mounds as evidence. But there is not a single bullet hole in the mosque, which villagers claim came under Thai army fire for several minutes.

CAIR will have a statement as soon as Ahmed Bedier finds out what he's allowed to say. Goose Creek Jihad Update: "Fla. students face explosives indictment," by Lara Jakes Jordan for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON - Two Egyptian students at the University of South Florida were indicted Friday for carrying explosive materials across states lines and one of them was charged with teaching the other how to use them for violent reasons.

Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, 24, an engineering graduate student and teaching assistant at the Tampa-based university, faces terrorism charges for teaching and demonstrating how to use the explosives.

He and Youssef Samir Megahed, 21, an engineering student, were stopped for speeding in Goose Creek, S.C., on Aug. 4, where they have been held on state charges.

In the wake of the jihad attacks that killed 30 people in Hyderabad, Muslims are irked once again -- but not by Muslims perpetrating such attacks. No, what has really upset them are police visits to madrassas. "Hyderabad cops visit madrassas, kick off a row," from IBNLive (thanks to all who sent this in):

New Delhi/ Hyderabad: The Hyderabad police have ruffled feathers by visiting madrassas while investigating the August 25 twin bomb blasts in the city.

Sources tell CNN-IBN the police are searching for a man called named Mujibur Rahman but authorities refused to comment if he is a suspect in their investigation.

The police have asked madrassas to supply information on their students and teachers and their source of funding. Police teams, since August 25, have visited at least 10 madrassas including the Jamia Islamia Darul Uloom in Shivrampalli and Jami Anwar Ul Huda in Kishanbagh.

The police investigation has upset the Deeni Madrasa Board, the top organ of all madrassas in Andhra Pradesh. The board has objected to the police visits, and is meeting Chief Minister Y S Rajashekhar Reddy in the evening to register its protest.

“Madrassas is an educational institution; it is open to all. Raiding a madrassas in the dead of night will send wrong signals and create communal frenzy,” Moulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, general secretary of the Deeni Madarsa Board, told the Deccan Chronicle newspaper.

Wrong signal? Where should they look for clues to the bombing, then? In Hindu temples? And what about this "communal frenzy"? Is that a threat?

Yes, but relax. "This had nothing to do with terrorism," said Deputy Federal Public Defender Guy Iversen. Maghloubi's attorney said that in his own nutty, marvelous, winsome way, his client was trying "to actually try and help a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran" by helping a foe of the Thug-In-Chief. But is any opponent of the pint-sized Mad Mahdist a friend of the United States? That, unfortunately, is not so clear.

"Man pleads guilty to plot to sell weapons to Iran," by Greg Krikorian for the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Mackie):

A West Hills man has pleaded guilty to an audacious plan to buy as many as 100,000 Uzis in the United States and sell them to officials in Iran's government.

Under a plea agreement reached this week, Seyed Mostafa Maghloubi, 49, acknowledged that he tried to obtain submachine guns and night vision goggles and ship them to Iran, in violation of U.S. laws prohibiting such transactions.

According to the plea agreement, Maghloubi's plan dated to at least October 2005 when he approached an unidentified individual and said he was interested in buying the weapons and goggles.

The individual, who was identified only as a cooperating witness for the government, brokered a meeting between Maghloubi and an undercover Los Angeles police detective who Maghloubi believed was an arms dealer.

[...]

The discussions eventually led to Maghloubi taking delivery of three fully automatic Uzis and one pair of night vision goggles.

At all times, the plea agreement says, Maghloubi -- who was born in Iran and is a naturalized U.S. citizen -- sought to deliver the military equipment to a faction within Iran's government that is aligned with a former president who is a political foe of the country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In that light, Maghloubi's attorney said, his client was trying "to actually try and help a rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran."

"This had nothing to do with terrorism," Deputy Federal Public Defender Guy Iversen said.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office had no comment on the plea agreement.

Anti-dhimmitude in Congress. "Republicans slam Islamic Society convention," by Audrey Hudson for the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

Republican lawmakers are urging the Justice Department not to participate in a convention held by the Islamic Society of North America — a group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing terrorism-financing case.

In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Reps. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sue Myrick of North Carolina called the Justice Department's involvement a "grave mistake."

"In light of the threat that our nation ... is currently facing from radical jihadists, and because of the president's commitment to fighting the war on terror on all fronts, we believe it is a grave mistake to provide legitimacy to an organization with extremist origins, leadership and a radical agenda," the lawmakers said.

Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he agrees that Justice officials should not attend the conference.

"It is absolute insanity for the federal government, especially the Department of Justice, to be giving any credibility at all to a group like the ISNA, which has such strong links to Islamic extremism," Mr. King said.

Yes.

And to hell with free speech. A New Order is coming to Europe, and the Swedes are on board.

"Sweden 'regrets' Prophet cartoon," from the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

Sweden's embassy in Pakistan has expressed regret over the publication of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a Swedish newspaper.

Pakistan had complained about the cartoon, which depicted the head of the Prophet on the body of a dog.

Sweden's government said it regretted any hurt but could not apologise as it was not responsible for the drawing and could not prevent its publication....

The new drawing depicting the Prophet's head on the body of a dog was published in the Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda on Sunday.

The cartoon's creator, Lars Vilks, told the Associated Press news agency the drawing was art.

"I'm not against Islam. Everybody knows that," he is quoted as saying.

The publication prompted the Iranian government to complain to Swedish diplomats earlier this week....

A Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman said the government had "expressed regret that the publication of the cartoons had hurt the feelings of Muslims".

"We can't apologise for the cartoons because we did not publish them," spokeswoman Sofia Karlberg told the BBC News website.

Ms Karlberg said the government could not influence the publication of such cartoons because of rules concerning media freedom in the country....

The Pakistani foreign ministry expressed sorrow at what it described as a growing tendency "among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide".

"Such acts deeply undermine the efforts of those who seek to promote respect and understanding among religions and civilisations," a foreign ministry statement said.

According to the Pakistani statement, the Swedish diplomat had said his government "fully shared the views of the Muslim community and termed the publication as unfortunate"....

A Swedish Islamic centre has planned a demonstration outside the paper's offices in the town of Orebro, the AP news agency says.

An umbrella body representing 57 Muslim nations, the Organisation of Islamic Conference, condemned the latest cartoon and urged the Swedish government to punish those responsible.

The chairman of the body also urged Muslims to remain calm and exercise restraint.

Good luck with that.

Here is yet another example of the heavily Islamic character of jihadist appeals. Note the emphasis on the ideological aspect of the jihad, and the denial that the movement has any dependence upon charismatic personalities or even upon Al-Qaeda itself: the authors are confident that Muslims can become jihadists simply by studying the Qur'an and Sunnah.

Yet we are told again and again that the people who write things like this actually misunderstand Islam. It would be refreshing if someone who believed that supplied some evidence for this view -- not evidence that would convince gullible Westerners that Islam is peaceful, but evidence which would blunt the force of appeals like this within the Islamic world.

"On Islamist Websites: How to Join Al-Qaeda, Form a Jihad Cell, and Select a Western Target – '[Is] Assassinating the American Ambassador... Difficult For Someone Who Has Already Crushed America in His Home?,'" from MEMRI:

On August 26, Islamist websites posted an item titled "How to Join Al-Qaeda." It is not clear when the item was written; it was produced by the website Al-Thabitoun 'Ala Al-'Ahd, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Egypt and is currently inactive.

[...]

"You feel that you want to carry a weapon, fight, and kill the occupiers, and that it is our duty to call for jihad as much as to call for prayer... All that is required is a firm personal decision to fulfill this obligation, and participation in jihad and the resistance...

"Do you really have to meet Osama bin Laden in person in order to become a jihad fighter? Do you have to be recognized by Al-Qaeda as one of its members to become a jihad fighter? If Al-Qaeda commanders should be killed, would the jihad be eliminated? What would you do if Al-Qaeda did not exist today? How is Osama bin Laden different from you? - [yet] he managed to establish the world jihad organization. Who provided training to Osama bin Laden and Abdallah 'Azzam when they went to Afghanistan to become the first Arab jihad fighters?

"The answers to these questions are the following: I don't have to meet Osama bin Laden to become a jihad fighter. Moreover, there is no need to meet even one jihad fighter to become one. Neither do I need recognition from Al-Qaeda...

"As the first step, imagine that Al-Qaeda does not exist and that you are interested [in waging] jihad - what would you do in this case?... If you know any young people - whether one, two, or more - in your area, mosque, or university who are as dedicated and enthusiastic about jihad as you are, come to an understanding with them, and together form a cell whose objective is to help Islam and only Islam...

"At first, your cell should have no more than five members, all absolutely trustworthy... The cell must have a commander and a shura council... The commander must clearly realize that he is Osama bin Laden to the cell members...

"Each cell should have a source of funding... When you have several members, you will [surely] find the funds for your cell... Then you should buy weapons, make plans, brainstorm, plot your plans, monitor your enemy's important objectives, and study its moves. Set a goal; for example, assassinating the American ambassador - is it so difficult? Is it [indeed] difficult for someone who has already crushed America in her home?

"What is the difference between you and the hero of the New York attack, Muhammad Atta, who planned an action which even today shakes the world every time it is mentioned? Assassinating the ambassador takes no more than a gun and a bullet. One could disguise oneself as a peddler in order to tail [the target], which shouldn't cost a lot of money...

"The cells must maintain contact among themselves, but by no means in a direct or conventional way. The contact must be spiritual: What will unite you is the love of Islam and the motto "There is no God but Allah." Even if the contact between [your] cell and the rest is indirect, it will be close... You must meet once a month... You must not meet in the same place twice... Personal meetings with a small number of people [must take place] once a week...

Surprise, surprise. From WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON – United Nations forces moved into Kosovo in 1999 to "stop genocide."

But, according to a blistering new report from the American Council for Kosovo, U.N. troops have aided and abetted the deliberate, systematic and nearly complete ethnic cleansing of the mostly Christian Serb population by mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians.

"Every facet of the way of life of the Serbs of Kosovo is threatened by the new reality established since June 1999 under KFOR (the NATO Kosovo Force) and the U.N. and therefore the very existence of the Serbs there is threatened," says the report "Hiding Genocide in Kosovo."

"All kinds of persecution using all types of methods have been adopted," the report says. "Throughout the territory of Kosovo, the Serbs have been persecuted, a persecution that is happening on their own territory, in their own country. They are denied basic human rights and are not equal to their Muslim counterparts under the law. Even though the Serbs were the main targets, they were not the only ones. Consider the situation of the Croats who now number less than 500, or the Roma who have been banished to the edges of the Serb enclaves by persistent terrorization, or the Gorani, Slavic Muslims, who reside in the south west tip of Kosovo in the mountains and whose numbers dwindle every year."

Read it all.

Of course. Who else? From The Local (thanks to Davida):

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that "Zionists" were behind a cartoon in Swedish newspaper Nerikes Allehanda, which depicted the head of the Prophet Mohammed on a dog's body. The drawing sparked an official protest by Tehran to Stockholm.

"They do not want the Swedish government to be a friend of other nations. I strongly believe they are behind it (the cartoon). They thrive on conflict and war," he said.

Not like Mahmoud.

"Zionists are people without any religion," Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly predicted that Israel is doomed to disappear, told a news conference in Tehran.

"They are lying about being Jewish because religion means brotherhood, friendship and respecting other divine religions," he said.

"They are an organised minority who have infiltrated the world. They are not even a 10,000-strong organisation," he said.

"Anywhere they are found there is war. Anywhere where there is war they are behind it," Ahmadinejad added.

Which will, of course, only encourage more hostage-taking. "Taliban was paid $2.46m for hostages," from AAP (thanks to JE):

SOUTH Korea paid $A2.46 million to Taliban extremists in Afghanistan to secure the release of 19 hostages.

Citing unidentified sources in Afghanistan, a Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun said Afghan mediators persuaded South Korea's ambassador in Kabul that there was no other way to end the six-week kidnap ordeal.

"Two million dollars were paid to release all 19 people," an Afghan mediator was quoted as telling the influential Japanese daily.

The Asahi Shimbun said both a South Korean official and a Taliban spokesman contacted by the newspaper denied any payment.

The Taliban, who earlier killed two of the hostages, freed the 19 Christian aid workers this week after South Korea promised to withdraw its military from Afghanistan as planned and ban missionary groups from the Islamic country.

South Korean officials have not commented on whether a payment was made to any party to help secure the release.

Question: When is a professor not a teacher but a propagandist?

Answer: When he forces your intellectual hand, constraining you by means subtle or open to accept his point of view on a given issue. A genuine academic does not think for his students, but trains and equips them to do so. He is not afraid of, nor does he discourage, open disagreement with his points of view, for he is not trying to compel his students to reach certain predetermined conclusions, but rather to give them the means to evaluate competing ideas on their own, and to be able to sift truth from falsehood.

Your professor, Carl Ernst, William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, I am sorry to say, is not a teacher. He is a propagandist. He is not trying to train you to think, but to enlist you as a member of his ideological cadre. Yes, this is a harsh statement, but unlike Dr. Ernst, I support assertions I make with evidence. Here is the evidence.

1. In the syllabus for his course, "Introduction to Islamic Civilization," Religious Studies 180, he recommends that you visit this site, Jihad Watch, as well as the site of the Chick Tract comic books.

The effect for which this is designed should be obvious -- as obvious as if I had, in a course I was teaching, assigned various academic works and then said, "For next week, read Carl Ernst's Following Muhammad and/or watch the Bugs Bunny feature 'Hassan Chop.'" Jihad Watch is a news and commentary site about global jihad activity. Every assertion we make here is from news sources (usually from wire services) or verifiable from Islamic texts. Chick Tracts are comic books reflecting a paranoid, conspiracy-minded view of the world and purveying numerous falsehoods, such as the idea that the Vatican cooked up Islam as part of its fiendish scheme to control the world. By equating Jihad Watch and Chick Tracts, Dr. Ernst is manipulating you into thinking they're two species of the same thing.

Now, probably Dr. Ernst does think that: that we are paranoid conspiracy mongers here, or something near to that. But note that he doesn't offer you any evidence for this view at all. He just puts the two sites in proximity, and lets the juxtaposition do the work.

This is manipulation, not education.

2. Dr. Ernst offers, as evidence that I am not to be trusted as a source on Islam, this page, "Notes on the Ideological Patrons of an Islamophobe, Robert Spencer." Note, in the first place, the characterization "Islamophobe." No evidence is offered for it. Nothing from my books, nothing from this website, nothing at all. His use of this word is, again, manipulative and without substance, designed to propagandize rather than convince, much less to equip one to make his own judgment.

In reality, in my books and articles, and at this site, I explore the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify their violent acts and make recruits among peaceful Muslims. This is not "Islamophobia," this is the only reliable path to Islamic reform, since you can't reform what you won't admit needs reforming. Terror attacks in the name of Islam, justified by Islamic texts, take place on a virtually daily basis around the globe -- and each one shows anew how desperately needed is this exploration and rethinking of the Islamic texts. But Dr. Ernst is not engaged in that effort, and he is not bothering to explain what he thinks is wrong with the way I'm going about it. He's just throwing smear-words.

Note also that in the document, he doesn't offer a single example of anything I say that is inaccurate. Instead, he expects you to dismiss me because he doesn't like my publishers. This is an example of the logical fallacy of appealing to authority: he is suggesting that his own publishers (such as Shambhala) are more prestigious than those of his critics, and that therefore he is to be believed over them. Argumentum ad verecundiam and ad hominem attacks are two sides of the same worthless coin.

I have invited Dr. Ernst to debate, pointing out that he could thereby show me up as wrong and end my influence -- which he obviously regards as baneful, and which extends to a great many people, as I have written two bestselling books and several others that did quite well. But he has declined, despite the obvious ease with which he no doubt thinks he could dispatch me in a debate about Muhammad and the influence of early (and Qur'anic) Islam on today's jihad violence. Instead, he persists in using me as a slide, as Exhibit A of "Islamophobia" in his classes, while declining to substantiate a single one of his assertions. Well, this time the Exhibit is talking back from the slide.

This is no professor. This is a propagandist, and a shallow one at that.

UPDATE: I posted this as an example of the dishonest propaganda that passes for education far too often in universities these days. Carl Ernst, however, is no worse and no better than a host of others. I ask that you please not write to him, or to the President of the University of North Carolina. It will do no good, and -- if your letter is intemperate -- only confirm their prejudices. There is no point in writing to either one, as this situation goes far beyond these two men, and will not change without a major transformation within American universities in general.

UPDATE 9/2: Carl Ernst demonstrates anew his commitment to genuine academic inquiry

UPDATE 9/4: Hugh Fitzgerald offers Carl Ernst's students a recommended reading list.

The HLF trial, in which CAIR is heavily implicated, continues with some eye-opening revelations. "Prosecutors say Muslim charity in Texas got appeal to help fund holy war," from The Associated Press (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

DALLAS: An unknown Islamist militant appealed to a Texas-based Muslim charity for money to help fund a jihad, or holy war, against Israel, according to a letter that surfaced in the terrorist-financing trial of the charity's leaders.

Other letters appeared to thank the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development for helping the children of martyrs — suicide bombers, prosecutors implied.

The letters were among thousands of pages of documents that prosecutors claim show financial dealings between Holy Land, which was shut down in December 2001, and groups controlled by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

Five former leaders of Holy Land are on trial in federal district court on charges of raising more than $12 million for Hamas, conspiracy and money laundering. They could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted.

Defense lawyers, who will begin making their case on Tuesday, have said the men gave humanitarian aid to schools, orphanages and hospitals in Palestinian areas of Israel but denied helping Hamas....

The most inflammatory document introduced by prosecutors was an unsigned, handwritten letter in Arabic from the Islamic Relief Committee, which the U.S. government contends is part of Hamas' network of social organization in Gaza and the West Bank. The unknown author told leaders of Holy Land that Palestinians were happy to see fighters carrying out attacks on Jews.

"Jihad in Palestine is different from any other Jihad; the meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any Jihad on earth," the author wrote.

The letter implored supporters to "provide us with what helps Weapons, weapons, our brothers."

FBI agent Lara Burns testified that the letter was seized in a 2004 raid at the Virginia home of Ismail Elbarrasse, who served with some of the Holy Land officials on a group of U.S. supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Another letter, from 2000, was a thank-you note from the Islamic Society in Palestine, a group the U.S. government alleges is controlled by Hamas. A group official, Sheikh Ahmad Mohamed Bahr, thanked Holy Land for helping "the children of the martyrs, the wounded, the injured, and the needy."

Other documents appeared to indicate that Holy Land gave money to Hamas officials and fighters whom Israel deported to Lebanon in the early 1990s....

Unconstitutional. "School to provide Muslim students with foot baths," by Andrea Billups for the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

DEARBORN, Mich. — Plans to construct two foot-washing stations continue at the University of Michigan at Dearborn amid concerns that such action would constitute an establishment of religion by the public university.

The 8,700-student school near Detroit, which begins fall classes Tuesday, came under criticism in June when it announced that it would spend about $25,000 on the two foot-washing areas that were requested as an accommodation by a Muslim Student Association's task force. The foot baths come while the state is in a budget crisis and tuition and fees have risen at all of the state's public universities, up 7.9 percent at the Dearborn campus alone.

Data from a study of entering freshmen suggest that about 10 percent of students at the university are Muslim, and many have in the past used bathroom sinks for the foot washing, called an ablution, which Islam requires as a purity ritual before its five-times-daily prayers.

The cleansing practice prompted concerns from other students and administrators that it was not only unsanitary but also created a safety hazard by making the lavatory floors wet. The new foot-washing stations, built at ground level, are part of a renovation project at two locations on campus and will be paid for with money from the school's general fund.

The foot baths, while benefiting Muslim students, are open for use by all students and will be located in two new unisex bathrooms that will be renovated on campus.

The university, in a statement posted on its Web site, said the foot baths reflect a "strong commitment to a pluralistic society" and "a reflection of our values of respect, tolerance and safe accommodation of student needs."

Tom Burnett Sr. is publicly backing Alec Rawls’s claim that the planned Flight 93 Memorial is riddled with Islamic and terrorist memorializing elements. Mr. Burnett is refusing to allow Tom Jr.’s name to be used in the memorial, and is calling for a Congressional investigation.

Alec’s latest post shows how easy it is to verify the factual accuracy of his claims: the Mecca-orientation of the giant crescent, the 44 glass blocks on the flight path (matching the number of passengers, crew, and terrorists), the placement of the 9/11 date in the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and Star flag, and more.

Yes, why bother? After all, Islam is a religion of peace!

"Plan for Terror Screening of Aid Groups Cut Drastically," by Walter Pincus for the Washington Post:

The Bush administration has decided to sharply scale back its plan to screen U.S. foreign aid contractors around the globe for potential terrorism connections, deciding instead to begin with a pilot program involving aid recipients in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip before expanding it worldwide.

The decision, announced Tuesday at a meeting of U.S. officials and representatives of nonprofit groups, was made after lawmakers and several large aid organizations said that the global screening requirements were onerous and unwarranted. An official of the U.S. Agency for International Development had earlier promised to defer the program, which initially was to have taken effect Monday.

The global screening program, initially described in a July 17 Federal Register notice, would have required that all nongovernmental organizations seeking funds from the agency provide detailed information about key personnel, including phone numbers, birth dates and e-mail addresses.

That information was to have been reviewed by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to ensure that there were no connections with individuals or groups associated with terrorism or threats to national security. It would have affected thousands of individuals in nonprofit groups, charities, religious organizations, colleges, universities and private corporations.

At the presentation Tuesday, USAID officials said they would initially carry out a "pilot vetting program" with recipients of grants and contracts in the West Bank and Gaza, according to materials presented at the meeting and made available to The Post by a contractor organization on the condition that it not be identified.

LAHORE: 9/11 has brought Americans closer to Islam, since the Americans started studying Islam after the bloody attacks and realised that Islam was a peaceful religion, said Walter Russell Mead on Saturday. -- Pakistan Daily Times

It is common for Muslim reporters, and Muslim newspapers, to misreport what a visiting semi-dignitary said, in order to make it conform even more closely to what Muslims would have him say. Walter Russell Mead may have said this -- he has said foolish things before, and also unfoolish things -- but one has, from this short report, no way of knowing exactly what he said, what modifying phrases he may have added. There are no quotes, and we do not have the transcript. Or do we?

A greater problem, however, is not that of the farrago of nonsense that is reported in the Muslim press on this and many other occasions. It is, rather, the way in which visiting firemen in Muslim countries, out of an insensate desire to ingratiate themselves, may modify their views to win over their audience, and still worse, start to believe what they had felt compelled to say. This is due to three things.

I found this at a website supposedly devoted to sport: www.pakpassion.net. The list is an inspiring blend of mass-murderers and mass-media sports stars. The arithmetic needs work.

top 5 famous muslims of all time

1) Mohamed Ali- the greatest boxer of all time [float like a butterfly sting like a bee]

2) Osama Bin Laden - not none for the best of reasons but is suposed to be a terrorist mastermind. Fights for Al-Quaida

3) Zinedine Zidane- one of the greatest footballers ever comes from an algerian backgroung great footballer

4) Tupac Shakur- best rapper of all time not sure if he is muslim or not but it did say he is on a website

4) Sadam Hussain- Once again not known for the best of reasons but use to be presindent i think of iraq.

5) Imran khan- great cricketing allrounder great captain lead pakistan to world cup glory

i no there are other famous muslims who invented thing but these are mine
what do you guys think it will be good to see your top 5!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"We are fortunate that radicalization seems to have less appeal in the U.S. than in other parts of the world," he said, "but we do not believe that America is immune to homegrown terrorism."-- from this article

This statement, variants of which are made so often with such self-assurance, needs to be examined. We are often told that "Muslims in America are different" or "the situation in America is different from that in Western Europe." (At least this concedes that there is a "problem" with Muslims in Western Europe.) Why? Oh, because Muslims in America are so very "different" because they are so well-off: so many engineers, so many computer programmers, that sort of thing. In other words, something about the American Dream, defined entirely in terms of economic wellbeing, but having nothing to do with the legal and political institutions of the United States that help to explain not only that economic wellbeing, but all the other things, far more important than mere bank accounts, that make America America.

Implicit in this view -- "radicalization has less appeal in America " -- is the by-now thoroughly discredited notion, which keeps coming in by the rhetorical back door, that "poverty" causes what is demurely called "radicalization." But that is not so. "Mike" Hawash was an Intel engineer, with an American wife, and Little-League playing children, and a salary of $360,000 a year. Yet he was prepared, having rediscovered and deepened his faith in Islam, to go off -- after 9/11 -- to Afghanistan to kill Americans.

There is a controversy surrounding the work of the philologist of Syriac (that is, the Aramaic used in and around Edessa), Christoph Luxenberg. He suggests that the best way to clear up the approximately 20% of the Qur'an that does not make sense, or that contains a meaning that is only guessed at, is to posit an Ur-text, in Aramaic, or rather in Syriac, a text that begins as a Christian lectionary.

Muslims have done what they can to ignore the book and to try to get it ignored by others. But among those Western students of the early Qur'an -- and there are not many qualified to review Luxenberg's book, for they would need to have a native or near-native command of Arabic as well as his command of Aramaic -- some have been greatly impressed. Others have been less impressed at first but have begun to come round, others less impressed and refusing to come round. When it comes to such matters, fear plays a part -- that is, outright physical fear, but also, and from the most surprising sources, simply a fear of antagonizing one's Muslim colleagues. It is an absurd situation.

"The memo's writer, Mohamed Akram, wrote that members of the Brotherhood 'must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.'" -- from this article

Cut-and-paste. Print as many copies as you wish. Email others.

Home: Refrigerator (that magnet again). Wallet. Glove compartment.

Outside: Distribute to friends, family, colleagues at work, that person in the check-out line at the supermarket or the dry-cleaners or the Post Office with whom you deliberately strike up a conversation about Islam.

Keep it up. Don't stop.

And there is more to do with this. Much more. Don't merely put that up on your refrigerator door or bulletin-board. Don't merely have it at hand when you are engaging others in conversation, or to give out to acquaintances and colleagues, always as evidentiary accompaniment to, and not in lieu of, coherent argument.

A Jihad Watch reader recently wrote: “You don't want them in the UK. And they don't want you in Iraq, Afghanistan. They don't want your diplomatic double standards over Palestine, Somalia, Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc...If you want to be left alone, leave others alone.”

Yes, one can partly agree with this. The West should remove itself from Iraq and from Afghanistan, and never try to engage in such a baseless "bringing freedom to ordinary moms and dads" bit of nonsense again. And it should cease the transfer, from Infidels to Believers, of all that wealth, including more than $60 billion to Egypt from the United States alone, and $27.5 billion, if one includes debt relief, to Pakistan by the United States since 2001 alone. The disguised Jizyah of foreign aid to Muslim states that do not have oil does not change the attitudes and atmospherics of Muslim states, attitudes and atmospherics that flow naturally from the tenets, that are derived naturally from the immutable canonical texts of Islam -- Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. The fiasco of Tarbaby Iraq, which has cost the United States $880 billion, more than the total cost of all the wars, save World War II, ever fought by the United States, should be clear.

And it should be clear that the large-scale presence of Muslims in the Bilad al-Kufr, the Lands of the Infidels, has created a situation which, both for the indigenous Infidels, and for non-Muslim immigrants as well, is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that large-scale presence. Once that is clearly understood, sensible measures -- beginning with a halt to Muslim migration, and intelligent ways to reverse current trends, can be undertaken. One has only to look around -- for Americans, say, to see what has happened in England or France, or the British to see what has happened in the Netherlands, or the Italians to look at Malmo or Rotterdam, or the Americans, who have the advantage of seeing what has happened and is happening in Western Europe -- to understand this problem.

Joining Iran, which is already in an uproar. From The Local (thanks to Fjordman):

Pakistan has added its voice to that of Iran in condemning the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in newspaper Nerikes Allehanda.

The Swedish Chargé d'Affaires in Islamabad was called to the Pakistani Foreign Office on Thursday for a dressing down by a government official. The move comes several days after a Swedish diplomat in Teheran was summoned by the government there to face a similar protest.

In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Pakistan condemned the publication "in the strongest terms."

"Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise," the statement said.

Insults are part of free expression, pal. If anything that anyone takes as an insult is ruled out of public discourse, hardly anything will be left. (For I myself find your remarks insulting.) And if the freedom to ridicule Islam goes out the window, so does free inquiry into the elements of Islam that jihadists are using to encourage people to wage war against non-Muslims, for doubtless you will find that equally offensive and insulting. Muslims will then become a privileged, protected class, immune from all questioning. And that's what you want, isn't it?

They want DNA and hair samples, which may indicate suspicion that Mohamed and Megahed were involved in other cases beyond this one.

An update on the Goose Creek Jihad story. "Jury Wants DNA, Hair Samples In USF Case," by Elaine Silvestrini for the Tampa Tribune (thanks to Michelle Malkin):

TAMPA - A federal grand jury in Tampa is asking for DNA and hair samples from a University of South Florida student jailed four weeks ago in South Carolina on explosives charges, his attorney said.

Andrew Savage said in a phone interview Wednesday night that he had no indication why the samples were being sought from his client, Youssef Megahed.

The news came as the grand jury heard testimony Wednesday from people who have connections to Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed, another USF student arrested at the same time.

Accompanied by attorneys, at least three people entered the grand jury area of the U.S. District courthouse on North Florida Avenue in downtown Tampa. They were the owner of a home where Mohamed planned to rent a room, the landlord's son and a Muslim community spokesman. All three later declined to comment to a reporter.

Megahed and Mohamed, were pulled over for speeding in South Carolina on Aug. 4 about seven miles from the Goose Creek Naval Weapons Station, which houses a military prison for enemy combatants.

The men were charged with possession of an incendiary or explosive device, based in part on items found in the trunk of their car, authorities said. Mohamed said they were carrying fireworks.

One week later, on Aug. 11, the FBI searched a home at 12402 Pampas Place in Tampa that is owned by Noor and Ana Salhab. Authorities said the search was related to the case involving the students.

[...]

Federal court records show that Salhab leased the house in the early 1990s to World and Islam Studies Enterprise, a think tank run by Sami Al-Arian, the former USF professor accused of funding Palestinian terrorist organizations....

Not just accused. He pled guilty.

Also appearing before the grand jury Wednesday was Ahmed Bedier, who has been a spokesman for the Megahed family. Bedier is executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations and a frequent media spokesman for Muslims and Islamic causes.

He was accompanied by attorney Lyann Goudie and appeared to be in the grand jury area for about an hour.

Bedier declined to answer questions about his testimony, saying he wanted to check with the national headquarters of CAIR about what he was allowed to say.

Yes, Ahmed, check with them to see if you're allowed to tell the truth today, or if that isn't done on Thursdays.

"An example of unethical journalism that benefits extremist Muslims..."

By Kevin Mooney for CNSNews.com:

(CNSNews.com) - A conflict of interest involving the radical Nation of Islam and the Washington, D.C., affiliate of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) is an example of unethical journalism that benefits extremist Muslims, according to a national security expert and a Hollywood filmmaker.

Martyn Burke, director of documentary films at ABG Films, and Frank Gaffney, president of the conservative Center for Security Policy, produced a documentary for a PBS series - "America at a Crossroads" - that focused on Muslims in America, Europe, and Canada who speak out against Islamist extremists.

Their documentary, "Islam versus Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center," was, after a protracted battle, rejected in April by WETA, the PBS affiliate in Washington, D.C.

The film is going to air on an Oregon PBS affiliate this month, and some other affiliates may run it as well. However, it is now known that PBS had an unedited version of the film reviewed by the radical Nation of Islam prior to PBS's decision to cancel the documentary.

The Nation of Islam (NOI) and its long-time leader Rev. Louis Farrakhan have a history of espousing racism and anti-Semitism. Farrakhan stepped down as NOI's leader in 2006 for health reasons.

PBS's decision to pass the film to NOI for review was a serious "breach of journalistic ethics," said Burke.

"Is there anyone who understands that no functioning journalist - or network, or publication can ever allow this kind of outrageous action?" Burke wrote in an e-mail to PBS officials.

"This utterly undermines any journalistic independence. ... It virtually hands the story to the subject and allows them to become an active party in shaping it. That is advertising, not journalism. Is that not obvious?" he added.

Yes, it is obvious.

No, I am not saying that the Musharraf government supports jihad activity against Christians. But certainly many minor officials and police do, and that is why this appeal for help is unlikely to translate into any genuine action.

"Pakistan: Christian group asks govt. for protection," from AKI (thanks to Twostellas):

Quetta, 30 August (AKI/DAWN) - The Christian Action Committee, in the restive south-western Pakistani province of Baluchistan, has asked the government to provide security at churches.

They have also demanded the arrest of all the people who attacked a church in the provincial capital Quetta on 26 August.

The members of the committee held a demonstration outside the Quetta Press Club on Tuesday.

They condemned the attack and alleged that those involved had used abusive language and insulted the women in the church.

The committee’s chairman Asif John said that on 26 August about 30 people came to the church in the city and injured the worshippers.

He said the police was informed and some people were arrested. However, a majority of them escaped. He urged the government to deploy police near the churches.

Ibrahim Hooper, call your office: clearly Surayud Chulanont is a racist Islamophobe.

"Thai PM says peace talks fruitless in Muslim south," from AP (thanks to Twostellas):

BANGKOK (AFP) - Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont said Wednesday that separatists fighting in Muslim-majority provinces have refused to take up his offer to launch peace talks.

"As of now, there has been no progress on starting negotiations, because that would require the agreement of both sides. So there are no talks for now," he told reporters.

"My government is still adhering a policy of non-violence, but cooperation from the people is crucial," he said.

Since Surayud took office following a military coup last year, he has made a series of peace gestures to the militants fighting along the southern border with Malaysia.

But the violence has only escalated since the coup, and the government has deployed thousands more troops and paramilitary forces to the region.

Of course, about the Islamization of Europe itself, Thielemans has nothing to say, because he doesn't recognize its implications, because he has swallowed the PC nonsense about Islam being a religion of peace with no particular political character.

"Brussels court upholds ban on anti-Islam protest planned for Sept. 11," from The Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

BRUSSELS, Belgium: An appeals court has upheld the ban of an anti-Islam protest planned for Sept. 11 in Belgium's capital, six years after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

The organizers — an alliance of Europeans opposed to the "Islamization" of Europe — failed to prove the ban causes them "irreparable damage," the Council of State, an administrative appeals court, ruled late Wednesday.

Brussels Mayor Freddy Thielemans banned the demonstration Aug. 9 fearing it would disturb public order and calling the Stop Islamization of Europe alliance an inflammatory group.

In a secular democracy "it cannot be that women and men are ... suspected of having committed the worst crimes" simply because they are Muslims, said Thielemans.

Since 2001, Thielemans has approved more than 3,500 demonstrations in the Belgian capital and banned six, including the one of SIOE which calls itself "an alliance of people across Europe with the single aim of preventing Islam becoming a dominant political force in Europe."

The Left won't dare touch this issue; to do so would burn their multiculturalist fingertips. And of course, there are many, many fearless conservative anti-PC types -- and most of the leading ones -- who quail in fear when they see me coming, and don't have the necessities, as Al Campanis might have said, or the intestinal fortitude, to discuss the issues relating to the global jihad and how to defeat it as I set them out, perhaps for fear of appearing to be less than 100% multicultural, or of arousing the ire of some unindicted co-conspirator or other, resulting in their even more fearful and spineless bosses canning their shows.

However, there are also many, many radio talk show hosts who are not so cowardly. I have discussed issues relating to my book Religion of Peace? and above all, why this book is a necessary contribution to the defense against Islamic supremacism, on dozens of shows since the book first came out, and here are three more.

All times PDT:

8:20 AM The Right Balance

8:30 AM Muscle Head Revolution WMCA

11:00 AM Schiffer Report WHK and Righttalk.com

News of escalating jihad violence in Ingushetia, though sandwiched between anecdotes and political speculation that tend to de-emphasize the jihadist aspect of the story. "Violence escalates in turbulent Russian region," from Reuters:

ALI-YURT, Russia (Reuters) - Petimat Tatriyeva was woken up [sic] one morning late last month by shouts and banging coming from the courtyard of her home.

She said it was a raid by Russian security forces. "About 15 men ... burst into the yard. One of them put a machine gun to my forehead. They said: 'Where are the men? We'll count to ten, then throw a grenade into the house'," she told Reuters.

"When my 15-year-old son woke up, they threw themselves at him and beat him up," she said. "They beat my husband on the kidneys and pressed their fingers into his eyes."

Tatriyeva and her family live in Ingushetia, a mainly Muslim republic where for more than a decade Moscow's forces have been fighting a low-level military campaign against armed Islamist militants linked to separatists in neighboring Chechnya.

But things are getting worse. In response to an escalation in attacks by insurgents, Moscow in late July sent in an additional 2,500 interior ministry troops, almost tripling the number of special forces in Ingushetia.

The escalation in violence shows that seven years after President Vladimir Putin came to power on a pledge to "wipe out" the insurgency in Russia's North Caucasus region that includes Chechnya and Ingushetia, the rebels are not beaten.

In Chechnya, attacks have grown rare, but the problems appear to have shifted next door.

Some people in Ingushetia draw parallels with Chechnya eight years ago. Then, after a lull in the fighting that had already dragged on for six years, troops were sent back in to respond to a wave of rebel attacks. That unleashed a new war.

Now in Ingushetia, reports emerge almost daily of gun battles or ambushes on police vehicles.

This summer the insurgents have killed an aide to Murat Zyazikov, the region's pro-Moscow president, and launched an audacious attack on an army base. Last week a Russian soldier was killed in an attack on a column of troops.

In July, the rebels murdered an ethnic Russia schoolteacher, Lyudmila Terekhina, and two of her children. A bomb went off in the cemetery as she was being buried, wounding several mourners.

In Ingushetia's capital, Nazran, armored personnel carriers drive through the streets. Roadblocks check the documents of everyone entering the city.

[...]

Nazran resident Idris Khamkhoyev said heavy-handed police operations were causing bitterness among the local population.

"They (Russian security forces) are rampant and answer to no one," he said. "They are exacerbating the situation and we now fear a repetition of the Chechen problem."

Sounds like the jihadists aren't helping, either.

In Moscow, some observers see other parallels with Chechnya. The start of the second Chechen war helped the then little-known Putin show off his credentials as a tough politician. It was a factor in his victory in the 2000 presidential election.

[...]

"In theory, the new deterioration of the situation in the Caucasus could be used to raise the profile of the successor, or as a pretext for calling off the election completely," said New Times, a Russian-language news magazine.

Joanna Chandler reports at FrontPage on the notorious Al-Durah hoax:

Introduction

On September 12, 2007, Philippe Karsenty of Paris will present his appeal of a judgment for defamation rendered in favor of Charles Enderlin, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for France 2, the television station responsible for airing the Mohamed Al Durah hoax which was adopted, at birth, as official informatiom in nearly every corner of the world. Karsenty, editor of Media-Ratings, www.m-r.fr, an internet service that monitors the French media, questioned Enderlin’s veracity and challenged him to explain obvious defects and inconsistencies in the Al Durah story. Initially, the Israeli government had taken responsibility for the boy’s death, but later concluded that it had reliable evidence that the case was a fraud. Daniel Seaman, Director of Israel’s Government Press Office, openly calls the alleged “murder” of Al Durah a hoax. France 2 is holding 27 minutes of raw footage of the incident, which could resolve the controversy once and for all. But it refuses to release the tapes. The trial court, finding in favor of Enderlin, disregarded the evidence Karsenty presented. Instead, the judge relied on a two-year old letter from former French President, Jacques Chirac, that did not refer to the Al Durah incident at all, but simply complimented Enderlin as a journalist. Politics aside, the evidence stands on its own. Reminiscent of the Dreyfus Affair that occurred more than 100 years earlier, few have stepped forward to assist Karsenty in rebutting this lie—a lie with sufficient currency to defame every Jew alive in the world today. It is not really Karsenty, the individual, who is on trial, but the State of Israel and the Jewish people—for a staged “murder” that the world chose to accept as true. Seven years after the supposed “crime,” the lie persists as if it had a life of its own. But, the real crime, the crime that did, in fact, occur and for which no one has been charged, nor punished, is the crime of defaming Israel and the Jews—a crime that has unleashed murder and terrorism in its wake and that has compromised the integrity of every journalist and public servant who has ever chosen to report the hoax as true. Some did so, deliberately, and without shame. Some disobeyed their conscience and chose convenience over honor. Still others went along with the hoax out of slothfulness, simply failing to exercise the diligence required of their profession. None can be excused for acting in good faith because the evidence was, and is, clear and unambiguous—impossible to ignore. Moreover, the evidence is substantive and overwhelming. The fact that the Al Dura story is a hoax is apparent to anyone who cares to cast a critical eye on the unedited, raw footage of the incident that has so far become available.

This is the world we live in today: the jihadists have created a climate of fear and suspicion. They have successfully "struck terror into the hearts of the enemies" (Qur'an 8:60) and don't have to do a thing to perpetuate that feeling of terror all over. If these Arabic-speaking passengers had been ordered off the plane, a lawsuit would no doubt ensue that would make the Flying Imams look like Zionist Crusaders; as it is, if the identity of the "traveler with a child" who "elected to get off the plane" comes to be known, watch for him or her to be excoriated as a racist.

Meanwhile, what can be done about this? For one thing, if Muslim advocacy groups in America became much more energetic in genuine anti-terror efforts, instead of spending their time complaining about anti-terror efforts and supporting initiatives such as the Flying Imams lawsuit, with its chilling effect on passengers reporting suspicious behavior, the fears of many would be assuaged.

"Passenger dispute delays American Airlines flight overnight," by Debbi Farr Baker for the San Diego Union-Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – A conflict between passengers at Lindbergh Field Tuesday night caused the overnight delay of an American Airlines flight headed to Chicago.

Flight 590 was scheduled to depart at 11 p.m. for Chicago O'Hare International Airport but was rescheduled for Wednesday at 10:15 a.m. after some kind of dispute among customers started at the gate and continued onto the plane, said American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner.

While Wagner said it is the airlines policy not to disclose any information about their passengers, televised reports claimed that the incident involved a group of six to seven Iraqi Americans and another passenger who was apparently uncomfortable that the men were speaking in Arabic.

The jet left the gate at 11:14 p.m. but did not take off and instead returned at 11:26 p.m. after a traveler with a child elected to get off the plane, Wagner said.

The airport's 11:30 p.m. curfew then prevented the plane from taking off, Wagner said.

Chutzpah. "Hezbollah to file lawsuits against Israel for damage caused in war," by Yoav Stern for Haaretz :

Hezbollah is planning to file a host of lawsuits against Israel over the damages it caused during the Second Lebanon War. Lebanese individuals with dual citizenship will file the suits in the countries where they hold citizenship.

Attorney Ibrahim Awada, who heads Hezbollah's legal department, revealed the plan last week on a Syrian television program devoted to "Zionist crimes against Lebanon." He said that each plaintiff will hire a lawyer in the country where he files suit, and Hezbollah will pay the lawyers' fees.

The Lebanese government began mulling lawsuits against Israel immediately after the war ended last summer, but was stymied by the fact that United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war, blamed Hezbollah, rather than Israel, for its outbreak. The government therefore set up a legal committee to explore more limited options, such as suits specifically over Israel's use of cluster bombs and destruction of infrastructure.

However, Hezbollah was furious that the government has so far done nothing, and therefore decided to launch its own lawsuit blitz, using private individuals.

Feel the love.

"London editor prays for nuclear attack on Israel," by Jonny Paul for the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Jcom):

The editor of an Arabic daily newspaper published in London said in an interview on Lebanese television that he would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iranian missiles hit Israel.

Talking about Iran's nuclear capability on ANB Lebanese television on June 27, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, said, "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."

In the interview, Bari Atwan was asked if he thought there is a process of détente [vis-à-vis Iran] and an American-Iranian inclination to reach a deal on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"If there is a deal, it will be at the expense of the Arabs and if there is a war, it will also be at the expense of the Arabs," he responded. "I'm sad to say that we have no backbone now. If Iran reaches a deal with the Americans, what will be the bottom line? That Iran will have a nuclear program, and even if it does not manufacture nuclear weapons in the next 5-10 years, it will do so later."

Yep.

Oakland's Marriott employs security personnel from an outfit with ties to Your Black Muslim Bakery. Feel safer?

"Your Black Muslim Hotel: Marriott still employs security firm with Black Muslim Bakery ties," by Robert Gammon in East Bay Express (thanks to WriterMom):

Over the past decade, more than a hundred thousand visitors have strolled into the Oakland Marriott Hotel and convention center, where among the first faces they encountered were those of well-dressed young men sporting bow ties. These men are the hotel's private security officers, who also happen to be members of the Black Muslim clan believed responsible for the assassination of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.

Even after Bailey's brazen murder just a few blocks from the hotel on August 2, the Black Muslims remained at the Marriott, roaming its giant lobby and each of its 21 floors. Marriott spokesman Chris Daly said that in addition to providing security for hotel guests and the city's main convention center, the men "even perform bellhop duty if need be."

When asked why an international company with $12.2 billion in sales last year would continue to employ kin of the late Yusuf Bey, disgraced patriarch and founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery, Daly argued that the security firm is entirely separate from the bakery. Nineteen-year-old bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard has been charged with Bailey's murder, and Broussard's attorney has indicated that bakery CEO Yusuf Bey IV was the likely mastermind.

THE Austrian right-wing firebrand Joerg Haider said yesterday he plans to change building laws to prevent mosques and minarets being erected in his home province of Carinthia. -- from this article

Jorg Haider is akin to, but worse than Le Pen. He is one of those Austrians who drove the late Thomas Bernhard to maddened distraction, the kind who claim that Austrians were the "first victims" of Hitler (forgetting those cheering crowds, that delight at Anschluss). He exhibits every sign of antisemitism except, perhaps, that exhibited by the BBC World Service and The Guardian and Robert Fisk -- that is, not quite so systematically vicious when it comes to the state of Israel.

Haider, by the way, owes his considerable wealth to a fluke. In 1938, someone fleeing Austria had to give up his castle in Carinthia (it's the title of an old book: "A Castle in Carinthia"), selling it , out of desperation, for a song to Jorg Haider's uncle, who then left that bit of booty, when he died, to his nice heel-clicking nephew. Many fortunes in Europe were made that way. Why, the book and antiques trade in Austria and Germany has been living off such goods -- see the sale of Kafka's library, which he left to his sisters who were murdered in Nazi death camps, and ask just how that library came into the possession or this or that antikvariat or auction house, and multiply that by tens of thousands of examples. Oh, there was money to be made, and there still is.

Apparently Al-Sadr is feeling the heat for the mosque attacks in Karbala. "Iraqi Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr Suspends Mahdi Army Activities," from AP (thanks to Mackie):

BAGHDAD — Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has ordered a six-month suspension of activities by his Mahdi Army militia in order to reorganize the force, an aide said Wednesday.

The aide, Sheik Hazim al-Araji, said on Iraqi state television that the goal was to "rehabilitate" the organization, which has reportedly broken into factions, some of which the U.S. maintains are trained and supplied by Iran.

"We declare the freezing of the Mahdi Army without exception in order to rehabilitate it in a way that will safeguard its ideological image within a maximum period of six months starting from the day this statement is issued," al-Araji said, reading from a statement by al-Sadr.

The order was issued after two days of bloody clashes in the Shiite holy city of Karbala that claimed at least 52 lives. Iraqi security officials blamed Mahdi militiamen for attacking mosque guards, some of whom are linked to the rival Badr Brigade militia.

A spokesman for al-Sadr, Ahmed al-Shaibani, denied the Mahdi Army was involved in the Karbala fighting. Al-Sadr called for an independent inquiry into the clashes and urged his supporters to cooperate with the authorities "to calm the situation down," al-Shaibani said.

"Islamophobia" is a trumped-up term. "Islamophobia" would not exist at all were there not Muslims all over the world committing acts of violence and justifying them by reference to Islamic teaching. That is the cause of "Islamophobia," 100%. If Muslims want to cure "Islamophobia," they should work to end that violence and reform the elements of Islamic teaching that incite it. Instead, as we see here, they prefer to indulge in finger-pointing.

"Muslim awards coming," by Mark Dunn in the Herald Sun (thanks to Knitted Eyebrows):

A VICTORIAN mosque plans to bestow awards on Australians they believe are Islamophobes -- politicians, community leaders or media identities they categorise as hostile to Muslims.

The Brunswick-based Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah Association has unveiled what it calls its annual "Islamophobia Award for the worst Islamophobes in Australia".

Likely to be near the top on the group's list of nominees is Pauline Hanson, who has come under fire from the mosque and other Muslims for her recent call for a "moratorium on any more Muslims coming into Australia".

Mosque leader Sheik Mohammed Omran, who teaches a fundamentalist minority form of Islam, has previously been questioned about his views on international jihad but he has condemned terrorism in Australia.

The Australian award follows a similar initiative in Britain where the Islamic Human Rights Commission imposed its Annual Islamophobia Awards on politicians including Australian Prime Minister John Howard, then British PM Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush.

Are they rioting over the Hyderabad jihad attacks? Outraged at this hijacking of their peaceful religion? No, they are rioting over the apparently accidental deaths of four Muslims. "Taj Mahal closed to tourists after India riots," from Reuters (thanks to Twostellas):

Police closed the Taj Mahal and placed parts of Agra city under curfew after Indian Muslims burned trucks and battled police to protest the deaths of four community members hit by a lorry.

The accident occurred around dawn in Agra when the men were returning after marking "Shab-e-Barat", or the "night of forgiveness or atonement", when Muslims pray for the dead.

Angry crowds set fire to 11 trucks, including the one involved in the accident, said state police officer Brij Lal.

"With curfew imposed in six police circles of Agra, the area in and around Taj Mahal is also completely shut to public as a precautionary measure," Lal said.

Television footage showed smoke billowing over one neighbourhood, young Muslims clashing with police and a line of trucks burning fiercely.

"They are hurling bricks at police sent to stop the violence in one area but the situation is coming under control as our people are on the job," Lal added.

Have I left a comment at your website? Almost certainly not. I barely have time to leave comments at this one. I did comment at a site a few weeks ago, at the invitation of a friend, and can't remember the time before that that I commented on any site besides this one.

However, someone is using my name and linking to this site, leaving comments purporting to be by me at other sites. These comments are, as you may imagine, abusive and absurd, designed to bring me and this site into disrepute.

Note here again: the opponents of Jihad Watch cannot, and do not, bring forth even one single example of anything I have written that is false. Instead, they resort to lies and smears -- just look at the comments fields of the Derbyshire/Spencer exchanges at Pajamas Media, and the recently published CAIR farrago.

Their desperation is showing.

But the bottom line is this: if you see "Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch" commenting at some weblog, it almost certainly isn't I. If you have any doubt, ask me.

"We are working for a Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and from Khazakhstan to Saudi Arabia." Hmmm. On my map Denmark doesn't fall between Morocco and Indonesia or between Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia. Unless you go the other way, I suppose.

"Islamic group incites war on West," from The Copenhagen Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

Controversial Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir celebrated its annual congress in Copenhagen on Sunday with words of anger against Jews and the West, reported daily free newspaper Nyhedsavisen.

Nearly 600 Muslims attended the meeting at KB Hallen in the city’s enclave of Frederiksberg, where religious leaders spoke of the rise of an new Islamic Caliphate and the fall of Western powers.

‘The Caliphate can arrive in an hour, two months or two years from now,’ said Fadi Abdullatif, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s president, who owns a previous conviction for publicly urging his members to kill Jews. ‘We are working for a Caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia and from Khazakhstan to Saudi Arabia.’

The union of nations under a common Islamic law could be created by force if necessary, according to another of Hizb ut Tahrir’s leaders, Atta bin Khalil. Khalil also told those in attendance to ‘continue their state of war against the Jewish nation’.

A third speaker at the congress, Emir Shamil, said that ‘heads may roll’ in the recreation of the Caliphate.

Jamie Glazov interviews the dreaded Jihad Watch Director at FrontPage:

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace?.

FP: Robert Spencer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Spencer: Thanks, Jamie. I am a great admirer of your work and it is always good to talk with you.

FP: Likewise sir.

What inspired you to write this book?

Spencer: For six years now, almost invariably when I would talk about the elements of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, people would respond by referring to violence in the Bible and the sins of Christianity. Over time I came to see that the all-pervasive sense of guilt and self-hatred that blankets the West in this age of the dominance of multiculturalism is the single greatest obstacle keeping us from meeting the ideological challenge that the jihadists present. Insofar as Westerners are ashamed of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so many are, they will not defend it.

This is not a matter of faith. Whether or not one is Jewish or Christian, Judeo-Christian civilization has given the world numerous ideas of human rights that the jihadists directly challenge: freedom of conscience, the equality of dignity of men and women, equality of rights before the law for all, and more. Islamic Sharia offers a radically different model of society. We in the West need to recognize this and stand up for our own civilization, culture, and heritage. If we are too paralyzed by guilt and consumed with self-hatred to defend our own civilization, we certainly won't keep it.

FP: Ok, so let's build on these themes. Can you talk a bit about why the lib-Left wages war on Christianity and keeps quiet about Islam? This is a pathology in the context of Islamic jihadists being the real threat to free societies.

I'll be on Mike Gallagher's nationally syndicated radio show this morning at 7:34 AM PDT to discuss my new book War and Peace -- oh, no wait, scratch that. My new book is Religion of Peace?.

Of course, he has said this before. Many learned statesmen in Washington and Western Europe will no doubt strenuously disagree, but I'm just not altogether sure this fellow is trustworthy.

"Ahmadinejad says his country now a 'nuclear Iran,'" from AP (thanks to Looney Tunes):

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated Tuesday that Teheran has achieved full proficiency in the nuclear fuel cycle and warned the West that dialogue and friendship - not threats - were the right way to deal with Iran.

Right. HE makes the threats. WE respond with calls for dialogue. Didn't you read the script?

"Today, Iran is a nuclear Iran," Ahmadinejad told a press conference in Teheran. "That means, it fully possesses the whole nuclear fuel cycle."

Ahmadinejad, however, said his country was committed to a "peaceful path" in pursuing its controversial nuclear program.

More Shi'ite-Shi'ite Jihad -- and undoubtedly still more to come. By Robert H. Reid for the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - Fighting erupted Tuesday between rival Shiite militias in Karbala during a religious festival, claiming 51 lives and forcing officials to abort the celebrations and order up to 1 million Shiite pilgrims to leave the southern city.

Security officials said Mahdi Army gunmen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al- Sadr fired on guards around two shrines protected by the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

Residents of Karbala contacted by telephone said snipers were firing on Iraqi security forces from rooftops. Explosions and the rattle of automatic weapons fire could be heard during telephone calls to reporters in the city 50 miles south of Baghdad.

In addition to the deaths, security officials said at least 247 people were wounded, including women and children.

The clashes appeared to be part of a power struggle among Shiite groups in the sect's southern Iraqi heartland, which includes the bulk of the country's vast oil wealth.

It's naturally a little hard to achieve stable self-government -- which requires restraint and compromise -- when everyone professes a divine mandate to take everything by force.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said entrances and exits to Karbala "have been secured and more forces are on the way from other provinces." Officials said buses were sent to evacuate pilgrims from the city, which includes some of the world's most sacred Shiite shrines.

Gunfights also broke out Tuesday between Mahdi militiamen and followers of the Supreme Council in at least two Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad, police said. And extra police took up positions in the center of another Shiite city, Diwaniyah, after gunmen fired on a mosque associated with the Supreme Council, police said.

The trouble started in Karbala late Monday as tens of thousands of Shiites were streaming into the city for the Shabaniyah festival marking the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century. Devout Shiites believe he will return to Earth to restore peace and harmony.

Scuffles broke out between police and pilgrims as the crowd tried to push through the security checkpoints near the Imam al-Hussein mosque, the focal point of the celebrations. At least five people were killed, police said.

Early Tuesday, crowds of angry pilgrims chanting religious slogans surged through the streets, attacking police and mosque guards, witnesses said. Two ambulances were set ablaze, sending a huge column of black smoke over the city.

Islam respects women. Islam prevents women from being made into mere sex objects. Islam provides for the "portable seclusion" of the burqah. In Islam there is no decadence, no exploitation, as there is in the cruel and intolerable West. If anything at all is ever to be found inhumane in the treatment or status of women in Muslim societies, even if those societies are suffused with Islam and its attitudes, that has nothing to do with Islam. See Shirin Ebadi. See Fatima Mernissi. See Leila Ahmad. See Leila Abu-Lughod. No, whatever bad things happen to women within Muslim societies has nothing to do with Islam but only with "cultural practices" that -- let us all repeat again -- have n-o-t-h-i-n-g to do with Islam.

Got that?

The main immigration of Lebanese, entirely Christian, arrived here between roughly 1880 and 1940. They came because Western pressure on the Ottoman government, while it led theoretically to a formal improvement in the legal treatment of non-Muslims in the Ottoman domains, in fact caused great unease among Muslims. The massacre of the Maronites in Damascus in 1860 was one such manifestation. Those Lebanese who arrived, whose papers might describe them as "Syrians" or even as "Turcos," were in fact refugees from Islam and the encroachments of Islam, even if they did not talk of it that way, but were simply seen as economic migrants from the Ottoman Empire.

And in recent decades other Christians have arrived from Lebanon, both Maronites (most keenly aware that they are Arabic-using but not Arabs) and the slightly different case of Greek Orthodox Christians. Some of them are more willing to assume that the imposed use of the Arabic language means that they must -- as Muslim Arabs insist -- think of themselves as "Arabs" and, as "Arabs," naturally identify with the chief gift and identifying characteristic of the Arabs, Islam, even if they are not Believers themselves. They must adopt the views and promote the agenda of Muslim Arabs in order to fit in or to be tolerated.

The coinage of the term "Islamophobia" is an exercise in blaming the victim. If Muslims want to end "Islamophobia" instantaneously, here's how:

1. Focus your indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.
3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Do those five things, and voila! "Islamophobia" will vanish. No UN program needed.

"Muslim Nations Want 'Islamophobia' on Anti-Racism Meeting's Agenda," by Patrick Goodenough for the CNSNews.com (thanks to WriterMom):

(CNSNews.com) - "Islamophobia" and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday.

The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.

"The world since 2001 has not remained static and witnessed new forms of racism and racial discrimination," Pakistan's representative to the U.N., Masood Khan, said at a meeting of the planning body, or "prepcom bureau," according to prepared remarks.

Speaking on behalf of the OIC, Khan told the meeting that "there has been a stark rise in hate crimes, discrimination, racial profiling and intolerance against Muslims in many countries."

A little while ago I received this email from a jihadist crowing about the impending collapse of secularism in Turkey:

another great day for Islam, once again you lose Spencer how bad must you now feel? you kept dreaming that Islam would no longe exist in turkey but the turks have shown they want Islam and love Islam contrary to what you claimed and thought....

face it robert, your losing this battle and war, unlike christians Muslims love their faith and will never turn on it like you christians turn on christianity and become secular atheists.

oh well another victory for Islam, and another loss for its enemies........ :)

In fact I am shedding no tears, and in reality never "claimed and thought" anything other than that there was widespread support for Sharia in Turkey. The demise of Turkish secularism, which in any case was only marginally less monstrous than Sharia in its treatment of non-Muslims, was inevitable, given the nature of political Islam. Were policymakers and analysts not besotted with D'Souzaite fantasies, they wouldn't be surprised either.

But in any case, I wouldn't give up even if there were no one left at all. No matter what, I am not going to submit.

Here is Derbyshire's response to my response to his review of my book Religion of Peace?.

And here, also from Pajamas, is my final response. Hearty thanks to John Derbyshire for this exchange, which I have enjoyed immensely. I hope he has also.

John Derbyshire wishes I had read his review of my book Religion of Peace? “more carefully,” since he now contends that he did not say – as I had characterized him as saying — that “Christianity and Islam are ‘equally likely to incite violence.’”

I ask Mr. Derbyshire’s indulgence if I mistook his statement in his review that “God’s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ” as meaning that God’s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ. It was on that that I based my own summary of what I took to be his view: that Christianity and Islam are “equally likely to incite violence.” Looking at his words again, I still think it’s reasonable to conclude that that’s what they mean.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero reviews my book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't at Human Events:

Robert Spencer has done it again. Religion of Peace? is the fifth in a series of meticulously researched and analyzed books he has written regarding the major issue of our day -- the dangerous challenge of Islam to the West. He is absolutely correct in underscoring the religious impulse behind Islam’s latest push to sublimate the West. But a secularized West seems to its own peril unwilling to acknowledge this religious component as the engine behind the hard and soft jihad coming our way.

This is a swift read written in a fluid manner reflective of a thinker who has long thought about the points he makes. The book is not weighed down by ponderous sentences, though Spencer’s ideas are deeply reasoned.

"Now say 'How high?,' Nouri, come on, 'How high?' When I tell you to jump, that's what I want to hear, capisce?"

Little did Noah Feldman and his ilk realize that when they so fervently propounded blue-thumbed Iraqi democracy, that the apparent Shi'ite enthusiasm for Jeffersonianism would come to this. "President Ahmadinejad Says Iran Ready to Fill Power Vacuum in Iraq," from AP (thanks to all who sent this in):

TEHRAN, Iran — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Tuesday that a power vacuum is imminent in Iraq and said that Iran was ready to help fill the gap.

"The political power of the occupiers is collapsing rapidly," Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran, referring to U.S. troops in Iraq. "Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region. Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

Yes, watch for him to get very chummy with the Saudis.

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders are upset that the FBI didn't consult them — as it has done in other instances — before releasing the photos on the Internet and to news organizations. […] "We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were," said Rita Zawaideh, head of the Arab-American Community Coalition. -- from this article

"As it [the FBI] has done in other instances"!

Why has the FBI ever consulted, for one minute, with "Muslim and Arab-American groups" on its standard procedures? Releasing pictures of those who are sought for past or likely future criminal activity is routine, and is a most successful method, proven to work. Just look at how many of those publicized by John Walsh on "America's Most Wanted" have been subsequently seen by viewers and reported to the police. It is idiotic for police methods to change.

The sole purpose of the Flying Imams’ lawsuit is to intimidate the pilots and crews of planes. And it would have included passengers, but the effect on an angry public, quite capable of identifying with those passengers, was deemed to be too dangerous for the "image" of Islam. That image is sinking fast in any case, with each new outrage, and this lawsuit is one of those outrages.

But here there is a question of money. Who should pay the costs of defending such a lawsuit? Should it be U.S. Airways alone? If what the pilots and crew did was in the interests of all passengers on all flights -- and clearly it was -- and if those Muslims who are attempting to intimidate them are also attempting to intimidate the pilots and the crews (and the passengers, even if the "John Doe" part of the lawsuit was prudently dropped at the last minute), then it is all pilots, and all crews, and all passengers, in the United States who should be paying for the defense of those particular pilots, that particular crew.

I have posed the questions so many times before.

But here they are again:

1) Should a "victory" in Iraq be defined as anything other than an outcome which will definitely leave the Camp of Islamic Jihad weakened?

2) If the answer to #1 is, as I hope it will be, "No," then why is it better to prevent the sectarian fissures within Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'a? These fissures are not limited to Iraq. They can be observed in a half-dozen countries, and what's more, they have the ability to set Sunni regimes against the Shi'a who stand to inherit The Land of the Two Rivers, that is, Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia, of course, was the center for 500 years of the Abbasid Caliphate. For the first hundred it was centered in Samarra, and for the remaining four hundred in Baghdad, madinat al-salaam, the fabled city of Haroun al-Rashid. It will also set those Sunni regimes against the Shi'a in their midst, or, to put it another way, they will not be willing to allow the "Persian" Shi'a, those "Rafidite dogs," to inherit that part of the Arab land that is considered to be the place where its (much exaggerated) "glorious history" was made, and where its capital city, "glorious" Baghdad, was the center of that history.

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi on Tuesday stunned both the treasury and opposition senators when he roundly criticised the foreign policy, describing it as one of appeasement at the cost of national interests, sovereignty and honour….

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s Prof Khurshid Ahmed immediately stood up to endorse most of the views expressed by the minister, and welcomed the “change of heart,” describing it as part of the change that had taken place in the wake of the July 20 landmark Supreme Court judgment....

Dr Niazi said in his speech that the key role Pakistan played in bringing about the downfall of the former Soviet Union was a blunder. It resulted in the emergence of a unipolar world and gave the US a licence to attack any country it wished, he said.

He said that American presidential candidates’ statements threatening Pakistan’s internal security were a reflection of the jaundiced thinking of US leaders who had forgotten lessons of history and the glorious past of Muslims.

Lashing out at the recent US law attaching strings to financial assistance to Pakistan, Dr Niazi described it as insulting and demanded that “we must return and refuse to accept such assistance”.

He said the country should learn to stand on its own feet by rejecting all foreign assistance as a proud Muslim nation....

The minister said that events which followed the 9/11 incident proved that it was the brainchild of Jews. He said that according to holy Quran, Jews and Christians could never be friends of Muslims.... -– from this article

The Pakistani minister, and many other Muslims, who simultaneously accuse "the Jews" or "the American Crusaders" of staging the 9.11.2001 attacks, and also express great delight at those very attacks, demonstrate how, all over the Dar al-Islam, the capacity for reason and logic is impaired.

The credulous acceptance of a Total System, with its Complete Regulation of Life and Explanation of the Universe (at no extra cost), the belief that one should never question Allah, and that one should never dare to recognize the contradictions in the Qur'an itself (but be satisfied with "naskh" or "abrogation"), and that one should never notice the 20% of the text that makes no real sense (see Christoph Luxenberg on that 20% that makes no sense), the ability to believe one thing and its opposite at the same time, or to find behind every failure of Muslim states and societies not the real reason for that failure, but the machinations of Infidels, the alacrity with which every crazy charge against those Infidels becomes deeply and truly believed, the incapacity for any degree of skepticism or lonely critical thought, the willingness to subject oneself to, or enroll oneself in, some collectivist enterprise, as if fearful of remaining an individual and eager for instruction and direction at every turn so as to be relieved of the need for thought or independent moral judgment -- all this characterizes Islam.

And one example of the sheer craziness that Islam encourages is that of the Pakistani minister above. But it is really no different with any of those who refuse to think for themselves and smilingly, brightly, like the young Muslim woman on the Islam segment of Christiane Amanpour's dreadfully misleading CNN thing, tell us how happy they are to return to the full faith. By the full faith, of course, they mean those Rules To Live By which make it all so very simple, don't they, if we all wish to be simpletons in our existence, and to take a seventh-century Arab-language Guide, fabricated out of many strands -- the pagan Arab lore, the bits and pieces of characters and stories lifted and distorted from Judaism and Christianity -- as the lodestar of our lives. It then becomes, supposedly, applicable for all time, despite the fact that it is merely a Guide to Seventh-Century Arabian Life. Its relevance and application are held to be eternal.

Those who are still capable of thought will be the most offended, to the precise degree that they are capable of that thought. About others, though, I'm not so sure. Some may like the idea of being zombies, directed in what they dress and eat and think and do, every single step of the way. Some may find it positively comforting.

LAHORE: The US State Department is launching what it says will be the first comprehensive public diplomacy effort targeting children, hoping to shape the views of Muslim youths ages 8 to 14 with a series of summer camps and enrichment programs designed to counter negative images of the US, The Boston Globe reported on Monday.

The report said the new initiative was the brainchild of Karen Hughes, a confidante of President Bush who has become the most powerful public-diplomacy czar in decades. Hughes has argued forcefully that the US government must reach out to children younger than age 14, a population the State Department has largely neglected because they are too young for traditional exchange programmes….

As a test of her idea, Hughes asked embassies in 14 Islamic countries this summer to come up with pilot programmes for that age bracket, and spent nearly $1 million on projects that involved about 6,000 youths and hundreds of local partnering organisations. Participants included more than 2,000 girls in Turkey who attended a basketball camp and 80 children from rural schools in Malaysia who learned about Thomas Jefferson and other US heroes on an American-style camping trip with embassy staff and families.

But the programmes also carry risks in nations with virulent anti-American sentiments, which are where most of the programmes are aimed. For example, 41 Iraqi students learned about baseball and the English language for three days this summer in Baghdad. A photo of the group meeting with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker hangs on the door of Hughes’s office at the State Department -- but it cannot be publicly released for fear that the children may be harmed by terrorists. -- from this article

How will 6,000 children, playing basketball and doing crafts, or 60,000 children, or 600,000 children, or 6 million, doing the same, all paid for by the long-suffering American taxpayer in a program that is called the "brainchild" -- presumably adopted -- of Karen Hughes, overcome what they or other children will constantly be fed from the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira?

What will be accomplished by giving Muslim children memories of nice camps paid for by nice Americans, with pictures of July Fourth picnics, and cowboys in Wyoming, and lobstermen in Maine -- you know, the kind of thing that the karen-hughses of this world think might be just the ticket to make Muslims "like us -- because they are just like us." (I made it up, it's not her idiotic slogan, but it just as well might be)?

Mission accomplished...for the hostage takers.

"Taleban 'agree to free hostages,'" from the BBC (thanks to Davida):

Taleban fighters have agreed to release 19 South Korean hostages held for more than five weeks in Afghanistan, the South Korean president's office says.

Spokesman Cheon Ho-seon said the agreement was reached on condition that Seoul withdrew its troops as scheduled from Afghanistan by the year's end.

The Taleban kidnapped 23 South Korean Christian charity workers from Ghazni province on 19 July.

They subsequently killed two male hostages, and released two women.

[...]

Mr Cheon also said South Korea had agreed to a ban on its nationals' Christian missionary work in the country.

And if they're living in sin, don't even get him started about you.

But note well: this is the appeal jihadists make to their fellow Muslims all over the world, and it has proven to be quite effective. Secular Muslims have never mounted an effective comeback.

"Indonesians live in sin: Bashir," from Agence France-Presse (thanks to Davida):

INDONESIAN Muslims are living in sin as long as they fail to implement Islamic law across the world's fourth largest nation, hardline cleric Abu Bakar Bashir said today.

"As long as we live in a secular state, Indonesian Muslims continue living in sin," the Muslim leader told some 200 participants attending a seminar on Islam and democracy.

Bashir heads the Indonesian Council of Mujahedin, an umbrella organisation advocating the implementation of Islamic or sharia law across Indonesia.

The Government permitted Aceh province to begin implementing Islamic law, and that was to pacify demands for independence. Some districts have also passed strict Islamic bylaws.

Bashir said that sharia was a non-negotiable matter and "we cannot act in a soft way in order to implement Islamic law".

"The Muslim community has an obligation to struggle to make a drastic change in support of Islamic law implementation," he said, without specifying how they should do this.

As long as the country did not adopt sharia, Muslims had to follow it in their personal lives, as well as in their groups, he added....

AFP tells us:

More than 90 per cent of Indonesia's 232 million people are Muslims, but most follow a more moderate version of Islam.

Whew! Glad to hear that. How long will it last?

"Amanpour's Apologia" from Investor's Business Daily is an excellent analysis of Christiane Amanpour's recent CNN travesty. This is just the kind of moral equivalence I take on in my book Religion of Peace?.

Global Jihad: CNN's chief apologist for Islam, Christiane Amanpour, has gone too far this time. Not content to just whitewash jihad, she says Jews and Christians are terrorists, too.

According to her new three-part series, "God's Warriors," militant Islamists are really no different than right-wing Christians or Jews. So who are we in the West to judge?

Of course, it's cultural relativism — and journalism — at its worst. What's stunning is the lack of evidence Amanpour provides to support her case.

That CNN would give her six prime-time hours to peddle such tendentious trash to a public still under real threat from Islamic terror speaks volumes about the network's agenda.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America slammed the series as "one of the most grossly distorted programs" ever aired on mainstream American TV.

CAMERA was being kind. Amanpour's premise that Christianity and Judaism have spawned just as many terrorists as Islam is absurd on its face.

To be sure, not all Muslims are terrorists. But the vast majority of terrorists are Muslim, or at least claim to be Muslim. Almost all international terror is carried out, falsely or not, in the name of Islam. The data are simply overwhelming.

In contrast, history has produced only a handful of fanatics who commit violence in the name of Christianity or Judaism. Those who do are summarily arrested and punished.

They aren't held up as martyrs. There are no U.S. posters celebrating abortion clinic bombers, or Israeli history books canonizing Jewish settlers who attack Palestinians.

But Amanpour, an Iranian immigrant whose father is a Muslim, wants to change that reality.

She and her Islamic apologist pal Karen Armstrong — a "scholar" she returns to throughout her "documentary" — sugar-coat jihad as inner struggle against sin and not warfare. If you want militancy, they argue, look no further than fundamentalist Christians.

Read it all, and see also "Christiane vs. Christians and Jews" by the estimable Dr. Phyllis Chesler.

Still more fantasy-based analysis. (Thanks to Paul.)

Is Gul really a former Islamist?

We shall see, and soon.

It would be interesting to know how exactly this Al-Qaeda Qur'an has been "revised." After all, the original contains enough exhortations to violence as it is.

"Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them" is, of course, sura 9:5. What can you possibly add to that to intensify it? Before breaking out that old wheeze that I am "taking it out of context," please consult my Qur'an blog for plenty of evidence that this verse is by no means alone.

Maybe Al-Qaeda is distributing Saudi Qur'ans that have commentary embedded within the translated text, in parentheses. Much was made of these a few years ago, because one of the glosses added in "like the Jews and Christians" into sura 1, the Fatiha, where it asks Allah not to allow the one praying to be among those who have earned his anger or gone astray. But this was comforting only to those who wanted to believe that the book's overall message was peaceful, and that Al-Qaeda and the Saudis were adding in the material that was inciting Islamic jihad violence. Alas, that is not the case. Even without these glosses in the Fatiha, in the Qur'an the Jews have earned Allah’s anger by rejecting Muhammad (2:87-90), and the Christians have gone astray by holding to the divinity of Christ (5:72).

"Al Qaida clerics distributing revised editions of Koran," from the World Tribune (thanks to Jcom):

ABU DHABI — Qatar has banned the import and distribution of unauthorized Korans.

Officials said the Islamic Affairs Ministry has ordered mosques and clerics to use only Korans and other Islamic text approved by the government, Middle East Newsline reported. They said Al Qaida-aligned clerics have employed Korans revised to promote the doctrine of Islamic war against the West.

"This is one of several measures by the ministry to ensure that no copies of the Koran that contains mistakes would be circulated in the country," Mohammed Bin Hamad Ajlan Al Kuwari, director of inspections at the ministry, said.

But the only evidence we get in this piece of how these Qur'ans have been altered is that some parts have been not added, as the Book of Peace crowd might expect, but removed:

Officials acknowledged that Korans revised by Al Qaida-aligned clerics have been distributed in Qatar. They said some of chapters in the Islamic text were removed....

An American Expat in Southeast Asia (thanks to LHM) says that the Indonesian translation of Barak Obama's book changes the title from The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming The American Dream, which has a perfectly straightforward translation, to Assault Hope: From Jakarta to the White House. American Expat says this has connotations, for Indonesians, of jihad.

I have no way of knowing how accurate this is. If anyone knows Bahasa Indonesia, please weigh in with your thoughts. And of course, if it is true, it reflects not on Barak Obama but on Indonesian attitudes -- indicating that they may be hoping, as I speculated here, that he will become America's first Muslim President (as Clinton was famously America's first black President).

What do you think?

The Guirard/Waller school would have us believe that if we pretend Jihad is not Jihad, but rather, as the Saudis keep pushing them to believe and disseminate, "hiraba," that all manner of things shall be well.

For, the Al-Saud whisper to us, we have had remarkable success in re-educating our own local Al-Qaada members. Why, just as soon as we manage to convince them that what Al Qaeda does here is called properly not "Jihad" but "hiraba," why, they are ready to see the error of their past ways.

But the Army is warning that it will not allow secularism to die quietly. "Gul set for Turkish president," from AFP (thanks to JE):

Abdullah Gul is set to become Turkey's first Islamist head of state as he is expected to become the president of the secular republic today.

Foreign Minister Gul, 56, is all but certain to secure victory in Tuesday's third round of voting in which the winner needs a simple majority of 276 votes in the 550-member parliament.

The ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) is expected to easily overcome that barrier with its 340 seats, after falling short of the two-thirds majority required to elect the president in the first two rounds of voting last week.

Mr Gul's election will be a major victory for the Islamist-rooted AKP and is expected top end months of political tension with secularist forces, which blocked the minister's first bid for the presidency in April on grounds of his Islamist roots.

Opponents charge that the AKP, the moderate off-shoot of a banned Islamist party, has a secret agenda to replace Turkey's secular order with an Iranian-style regime and will have a free hand to implement its plan with Mr Gul at the presidency.

Hardline secularists are also irritated by the fact that Mr Gul's wife wears the Islamic headscarf, which they see as a symbol of defiance of the secular system.

'Threat to secular structure'

The head of the Turkish army, which played a major role in blocking Mr Gul's first run for the presidency, on Monday warned of "centres of evil" seeking to undermine the country's constitutional regime.

"Our nation has been watching the behaviour... centres of evil who are trying to systematically erode the country's secular structure," Yasar Buyukanit said in a written message Monday, which made no mention of Tuesday's parliamentary vote.

The army will not "be deterred by such attacks," he said.

"The Turkish Armed Forces will not make any concessions ... in its duty of guarding the Turkish Republic, a secular and social state based on the rule of law," Mr Buyukanit added.

The pediatrician Dr. Mohammad Rasool didn't get the memo. Doesn't he know that poverty causes terrorism?

"Dr arrested for suspected links with Al-Qaeda movement," from Online News (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater):

CHAKANDRA: Security agencies in a raid at the residence of the house of prominent doctor here have recovered 6 suicide jackets and explosive materials.

Security agencies early Monday morning raided the house of child specialist Dr Mohammad Rasool and arrested him along with his wife and son and recovered 6 suicide jackets and explosive materials from his house.

The security agencies had received information that Al-Qaeda leader Mohammad Yousaf was residing at the Doctor’s house. However he fled prior to the raid.

The stated goals for "victory in Iraq" make no sense. Should the goal of Americans and other Infidels be to create a functioning state (with cigars passed around for the final birth of a happy, healthy, baby boy, after such a difficult pregnancy)? In any case this is impossible, with Allawi or Jaafari or Maliki or anyone at all, given that Islam itself is what prevents compromises and encourages continued aggression between Sunni and Shi'a. Both have taken from Islam the lesson that there can only be, after any conflict, only two possible conditions: that of Victor and that of Vanquished.

"Victory in Iraq" properly defined means a situation that justifies the expenditure of some $880 billion dollars (including in that figure the lifetime cost of care for the wounded veterans, and other expenses not yet factored in even by those, such as General MacCaffrey, who are critics of the war but inattentive to the real cost). That is more than the cost of all the wars, save World War II, that the United States has ever fought, in 2007 dollars. It must also justify the deaths of 3,700 soldiers and the severe wounding of 25,000. Bush's notion that the outcome of a unified Iraq is a better one for the United States than one in which Sunnis and Shi'a, at one level or another, continue to fight, is unfounded. Who knows? Who can predict exactly how they will or will not handle one another once the Americans leave? What's more, who can say what will happen when co-religionists on both sides line up behind their fellows in Iraq? That means primarily Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Sunnis cheerfully waved off by the Alawite rulers of Syria, on the Sunni side, and on the Shi'a side, the grim Islamic Republic of Iran, with its Al Quds Revolutionary Guards, and of course its handmaidens in Hizballah, whom all kinds of sensible people in Lebanon would love to see stream off as volunteers, screaming their devotion to Allah, to Iraq to defend their own faith from those terrible Sunnis.

Rome, 21 August (AKI) - Italy's Foreign Ministry has instructed the country's embassy in Cairo to monitor closely the plight of an Egyptian man, Mohammed Hegazi, who has received death threats following his conversion from Islam to Christianity. -- from this article

This is thanks to a handful of people -- to Oriana Fallaci, and more recently, to the writings and appearances on the RAI of the fearless Magdi Allam. Allam was born and raised in Egypt by parents who called themselves Muslims, were quietly pious, and sent him to Christian schools. Then he left Egypt for Italy, where he received his higher -- in all senses -- education, in and out of university, married an Italian girl, and now is a vice-director, I believe, of the Corriere della Sera. He appears frequently on the RAI (the state-owned television, of which there are three variants, Rai Uno, Rai Due, Rai Tre).

Magdi Allam has written several important books. Two are directly about Islam. The first is "Vincere La Paura" (Conquering Fear), a book which includes a "Lettera aperta a Oriana Fallaci" (in which Allam takes issue with her sweeping dismissal of Islam -- I think he does so wrongly) and a more convincing "Lettera aperta a Tariq Ramadan." Magdi Allam knows Ramadan, and from what he comes, perfectly, and dismembers him before your very eyes.

Wearing a burqa, evidently.

This is more evidence of the international character of the jihad, belying claims that various jihads around the world are merely local insurgencies.

"Russian man arrested in Afghanistan over terrorism suspicions," from ITAR-TASS (thanks to Twostellas):

ISLAMABAD, August 28 (Itar-Tass) -- A Russian citizen has been arrested in Afghanistan as a suspected associate of terrorists, the Iranian hews agency IRNA reported on Monday.

It said the man identified as Andrei, who professes Islam, and two citizens of Afghanistan had been arrested in the province of Paktia near the border with Pakistan.

A representatives of the Paktia authorities said they had been arrested after about 500 kilograms of explosives had been found in their automobile.

The Russian man allegedly told police he had entered Afghanistan from Pakistan after trips to Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. He planned to travel to Tajikistan from Afghanistan and then to Russia.

According to police, all three men were wearing women’s clothes.

Discussing the book Religion of Peace? and, you know, whatever. Tomorrow's schedule:

All times PDT:

3:35 AM Michael Graham Show WTKK

6:40 AM KZIM Morning Meeting

7:05 AM The Francene Show WHAS

9:00 AM Dennis Miller Show

1:00 PM George Putnam Show

Why more Muslims don't speak out forthrightly against the jihadists. From AP:

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt among worshippers at evening prayers Monday in Fallujah, killing nine people, including the mosque preacher who had been an outspoken opponent of al-Qaida, police said....

The main target was beliebed to be the preacher Abdul Sattar al-Jumaili, whose two sons were also killed. Al-Jumaili had returned to Fallujah from Syria the day before. Police said he often visited Syria because he was on an al-Qaida death list.

What have they been fighting up to now? "Pakistan’s Islamist press calls for jihad," by Praveen Swami for The Hindu:

NEW DELHI: Pakistan’s Islamist media published a series of explicit calls for violence against India in the six weeks before the Hyderabad bombings — a development that analysts believe reflects the weakening of General Pervez Musharraf’s regime, and raises fears of a renewed wave of terror strikes.

In an editorial published in the Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated Daily Jasarat’s August 19 Friday supplement, the newspaper demanded that the “slogan of jihad should reverberate in every nook and corner of Pakistan. If Pakistan allows jihadis to infiltrate into India then Kashmir could be liberated in six months.”

“Within a couple of years,” the newspaper asserted, “the rest of the territories of India could be conquered as well, and we can regain our lost glory. We can bring back the era of Mughal rule. We can once again subjugate the Hindus like our forefathers.”

Yet so many, in India and the West, continue to delude themselves that this subjugation is not part of the jihadist agenda.

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. -- Ronald Reagan

No kidding. "Turkey military: Secularism under attack," by Christopher Torchia for the Associated Press:

ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's military issued a stern warning on Monday about the threat to secularism on the eve of an expected triumph of the Islamic-oriented government: the election of a loyal — and devout — president.

There were no signs that the military planned to disrupt Parliament's vote on Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, but the statement describing "the centers of evil" arrayed against secular Turkey was a reminder of its past interventions to enforce the separation of mosque and state. This time, the military is dealing with a government that renewed its mandate in a resounding election victory in July and an emboldened prime minister who has urged the generals to stay out of politics.

Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said in a note on the military's Web site: "Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who can't embrace Turkey's unitary nature and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic."

The military often condemns separatist rebels who have been fighting for decades in the predominantly Kurdish region of southeast Turkey. But the potent reference to "centers of evil" and the timing of the announcement just before the presidential election suggested the conflict over the role of Islam in politics was its immediate concern.

The military, which has ousted four civilian governments since 1960, said its statement was issued to mark the 85th anniversary on Aug. 30 of a military victory that was crucial for the establishment of modern Turkey.

Gul, whose earlier bid to win election as president was blocked by the secular establishment because of concerns about his background in political Islam, was expected to win the post on Tuesday. He has pledged to uphold secular principles enshrined in the constitution, and to use his contacts in foreign capitals to promote Turkey's role on the international stage.

The military-backed secular establishment, however, fears Gul is so loyal to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would not use the presidency's veto powers as a traditional check on the government. The secular incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vigorously used his authority to block the promotion of officials deemed to have Islamic leanings.

"Nefarious plans to ruin Turkey's secular and democratic nature emerge in different forms everyday," Buyukanit said in his statement. "The military will, just as it has so far, keep its determination to guard social, democratic and secular Turkey."

"War is deceit" - Muhammad (Bukhari 4.52.267)

By Chris Brummitt for the Associated Press:

KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan accused Taliban militants Monday of falsely reporting civilian casualties to discredit Afghan and international forces. Six insurgents and two foreign soldiers, meanwhile, were killed in fresh fighting.

The U.S.-led coalition made the claim Monday after Afghan elders alleged that up to 18 civilians were killed late Sunday by coalition troops in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold.

Capt. Vanessa R. Bowman, a coalition spokeswoman, said credible intelligence suggested the claims were fabricated as part of a propaganda war. "The insurgents continue to follow their pattern of falsely reporting civilian casualties," she said.

NATO-led forces, whose operations in Helmand are being supported by U.S.-led coalition troops and aircraft, insist that no noncombatants were killed in the fighting. The claims could not be independently verified due to the remoteness of the area where the clash took place.

Reports of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces are highly sensitive in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly deplored such deaths, saying they undermine efforts to win the trust of the people.

Sunni-Shi'ite Jihad Update. "Extremists target Iraqi Shiite pilgrims," by David Rising for the Associated Press:

BAGHDAD - A sniper killed a Shiite pilgrim on a Baghdad bridge Monday while another was killed and six injured in other attacks as tens of thousands of faithful made their way to the southern city of Karbala for a major religious commemoration.

[...]

Iraqi security forces have mounted a major operation to protect Shiite pilgrims. Sunni religious extremists, including al-Qaida in Iraq, have launched massive and deadly attacks against pilgrims during Shiite celebrations in the past.

Despite the security measures, one pilgrim was shot on Baghdad's Jadiriyah bridge and gunmen hiding in an orchard south of the capital opened fire on another group, killing one and injuring three others.

Three more pilgrims were injured when gunmen blasted them in a drive-by shooting in southwestern Baghdad and police prevented another attack, defusing two roadside bombs planted along the route to Karbala in Musayyib, about 40 miles south of Baghdad, officials said.

More than a million Shiites from throughout the world were expected to converge on the Shiite holy city for the celebrations, which reach their high point late Tuesday and early Wednesday. The Shabaniyah festival marks the birth of Mohammed al-Mahdi, the 12th and last Shiite imam who disappeared in the 9th century.

"The women are not used to playing in hijab. I am very glad that the women tried it and it was fine. What is most important is the music." Is it really?

"German orchestra in Iran on landmark visit," from AFP (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

A German orchestra arrived in Tehran on Monday, defying increasing political tensions to give the first performances in Iran by a full Western classical ensemble since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Osnabrueck Symphony Orchestra from northwestern Germany will play works by Beethoven, Brahms and Elgar in Tehran this week following a successful visit by the Tehran Symphony Orchestra to their town last year.

The German orchestra, whose female players will have to wear Islamic headscarves to obey Iran's dress code, will be boosted by six Iranian musicians for the concerts.

The orchestra's directors were at pains to emphasise their visit would not stray into politics and was purely aimed at increasing cultural understanding between Iran and the West.

"My wish is to show the peoples of both our countries that there is no need to fear one another and it is a great pleasure to get to know one another," said the director of Osnabrueck's summer festival, Michael Dreyer.

"I hope that it will be increasingly normal to have cultural exchanges between Iran and Germany and the Western world," he told reporters after arriving in Tehran.

Dreyer said he had rejected a request by three German MPs to join the tour in order to keep the trip focused on music and not politics. The trip has been fully coordinated with Iran's ministry of culture and Islamic guidance....

The German orchestra brushed off the constraint of giving the concerts with their female players wearing Islamic headscarves, saying they had worn the garments during rehearsals in Germany in preparation.

"The women are not used to playing in hijab. I am very glad that the women tried it and it was fine. What is most important is the music," said conductor Hermann Baeumer.

"Captain Vanessa Bowman said the military had been unaware of the sensitivity of the issue." Indeed. There is so much about Islam and jihad about which they are unaware. And is that really excusable given today's world climate? An update on this story.

By Hamid Shalizi for Reuters (thanks to JE):

THE US military in Afghanistan has expressed regret over a campaign aimed at winning hearts and minds but which offended scores of Muslims when it dropped dozens of soccer balls bearing the name of Allah and the prophet Mohammed from helicopters.

The idea of kicking something bearing their names is considered deeply offensive to Muslims.

"This ball ... carries a message with it which, like an atom bomb, can cause carnage and insecurity in all parts of Afghanistan,'' a leading Afghan newspaper, Cheragh, said today.

US troops on Friday dropped dozens of free footballs for soccer-mad Afghan children from helicopters in an area of southeastern Afghanistan, all marked with flags of various countries.

But the balls depicted the Saudi Arabian flag, which features the Islamic declaration of faith and includes the names of Allah and the prophet Mohammed.

Fawad Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Kabul, said: "Americans themselves create insecurity by ignoring religious sensitivity, it is against Islam."

A spokeswoman for the US military in Afghanistan said the ball distribution was part of a goodwill humanitarian aid mission ... for the enjoyment of Afghan children''.

Captain Vanessa Bowman said the military had been unaware of the sensitivity of the issue.

"We do regret any disturbances caused,'' she said today.

What madness has overtaken us? "U.S. sponsors Islamic convention," by Audrey Hudson in the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

The Justice Department is co-sponsoring a convention held by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) — an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing federal terrorist funding case — a move that is raising concerns among the Justice's rank and file.

Justice lawyers have objected to the affiliation with ISNA, fearing it will undermine the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in Dallas.

"There is outrage among lawyers that the Department of Justice is funding a group named as a co-conspirator in a terrorist financing case," said a Justice lawyer who spoke to The Washington Times on the condition of anonymity.

According to an e-mail from Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, acting deputy chief of the Voting Rights Division, the sponsorship will involve sending government lawyers to man a booth for the Labor Day weekend event in Illinois.

Holy Land, the IAP, and CAIR: all working for the same goal. "Muslim charity trial may shed new light on terror aid," by David Koenig for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

DALLAS — Prosecutors have produced scores of documents, audio and videotapes, and intercepted phone calls in their attempt to prove that a Muslim charity based in a suburban Dallas office park was actually a fundraising arm of Middle Eastern terrorists.

Much of the evidence has surfaced before in books, newspaper articles and previous trials. But those who track terror-financing say the document haul from the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development has also produced new information.

They say the documents shed light on a web of related organizations of militant Palestinian supporters in the United States, some of whom saw their goal as destroying Western civilization.

The 1991 bylaws of a group called the Palestine Committee say it was created to be the highest authority on "work for the Palestinian cause on the American front." The committee was led by Mousa Abu Marzook, later deported to Jordan and labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government.

The committee oversaw a number of former and current Muslim organizations in the United States.

One was Holy Land, which was shut down in December 2001 and is accused of being a fundraising front for Hamas. Five of its former leaders are on trial in Dallas, charged with sending more than $12 million in illegal aid to Hamas.

Another was the Islamic Association for Palestine, which closed in 2004 after a federal judge found it and then-defunct Holy Land liable in the killing of an American teenager in Israel by Hamas gunmen.

And a third was the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which has emerged as a leading advocacy group for American Muslims.

For the first time, evidence in the case put CAIR's founder, Nihad Awad, at a Philadelphia meeting of alleged Hamas supporters that was secretly watched and recorded by the FBI.

The groups had overlapping rosters of leaders. Documents introduced by prosecutors in the Holy Land trial list several of the charity's leaders as officials in the Islamic Association for Palestine....

"It's clear these groups grew out of an effort to carry out a specific strategy in the United States," Farah said. "It's in their own words, it's a political infiltration that worked for 40 years."

Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, denied that his group or its current or former leaders had any ties to Hamas.

"That's one of those urban legends about CAIR," he said. "It's fed by the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere."

Gee, thanks, Parvez. But here again, one wonders how the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere was able to forge all these documents and bring them to the attention of the HLF prosecutors. I thought Dan Rather was the go-to guy for forgeries, and I doubt he'd be helpful in this case.

Here again, all the CAIR spokesman does is smear the truth-tellers, rather than deal with the evidence.

Ahmed said the Philadelphia gathering attended by CAIR's founder "was an open meeting of Palestinian activists who came together to discuss the Olso peace accords and their struggle to gain a homeland."...

One of the documents is a memo about the goals for the U.S. organization of the U.S. faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose members included some of the Holy Land leaders now on trial.

The memo's writer, Mohamed Akram, wrote that members of the Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within."

Hmmm. Let's see. What might be one effective way to do that? How about by vilifying and smearing as a "bigot" anyone who tells the truth about Islamic jihad and tries to defend Western civilization? And by going so far as to bring suit against people who dare to try to keep terrorists off airplanes? All the while gaining the ear of government, law enforcement, and media by claiming the mantle of civil rights victimhood?

A workable strategy, to be sure. And one that has been fantastically effective.

Verses 17-28 of Sura 4, “Women,” continues with various regulations for marriage and the treatment of women. Verses 17-18 continue the call to repentance in v. 16 by warning that Allah will only accept repentance from those who sinned out of ignorance, and will not look kindly upon deathbed changes of heart. Then v. 19 forbids the inheriting of women against their will, and enjoins men not to treat them harshly in order to get them to forfeit part or all of their dowry – “unless they be guilty of flagrant lewdness.” Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife, recounts according to Mishkat al-Masabih that Muhammad said: “The best of you is he who is best towards his wife, and I am the best towards my wives.”

Verses 20-21 continue with these exhortations toward just treatment, telling men that if they have decided to “exchange one wife for another,” they must not take back the dowry they have given to the wife who is to be discarded. Verses 22-25 prohibit marriage with various women who are related by blood or marriage.

V. 23 refers to “foster mothers,” or more literally “mothers who suckled you,” as being among those with whom marriage is forbidden. Men and women who are not related are forbidden by Islamic law to be alone together, but a man and a woman who are forbidden to marry each other – i.e., who are related in some way – can be alone together. Once a woman came to Muhammad and told him that her husband, Abu Hadhaifa, was angry because a freed slave of his, a young man who had reached puberty, “enters our house freely.” Muhammad told her: “Suckle him and you would become unlawful for him, and (the rankling) which Abu Hudhaifa feels in his heart will disappear.” The woman later reported that it worked: “So I suckled him, and what (was there) in the heart of Abu Hudhaifa disappeared.” This directive gained worldwide attention recently when a cleric at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, recommended that this could solve a problem in the workplace: a man could be alone with, and work with, a woman with whom he was not related, if the woman suckled the man and thereby became his foster mother. After the story got out and Al-Azhar was subjected to international ridicule, the lecturer who recommended this was suspended. Left unaddressed, however, was the root of his recommendation in the words of Muhammad himself.

Multiculturalism trumps feminism. "Cautious criticism: A Growing Number Of Activists Are Hesitant To Decry Female Genital Mutilation," by Zosia Bielski in the National Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

Academia's fixation on cultural sensitivity is changing the debate around female genital mutilation, with a growing number of professors and women's rights activists becoming hesitant to condemn the practice.

Where feminists rallied against the operation from the pages of Ms. magazine in the 1970s, today's critics are infinitely more cautious, with most suggesting that the Western world butt out until Muslim African communities are ready to reconsider what they are doing to their daughters.

The shift in attitudes about the practice-- which in the worst of cases involves the carving out of a woman's clitoris and inner labia and can cause lifelong urinary tract infections, sterility and even death -- comes at a time when high-profile victims of the operation such as writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and model Waris Dirie, both Somalis, have launched very public campaigns against the practice.

The issue is so explosive, it has two names -- female genital mutilation, or FGM, to those most vociferously opposed to the practice; and female genital cutting, or FGC, to those in the less-condemning camp.

The latter includes the chair of anthropology at the University of Toronto, who has written a new book on the subject. Although not prepared to defend what she calls FGC, Janice Boddy defends women who undergo the operation and want the practice to continue in future generations.

"There are good reasons within the society for the operation to continue, but these are cultural reasons. They are not scientific ones," says Prof. Boddy, author of Civilizing Women: British Crusades in Colonial Sudan.

Working through British and Sudanese archives, she looks at the history of FGC in that country, particularly European colonial interactions with the practice, from British nurses attempting to re-educate Sudanese midwives in the 1920s, to the country's outlawing of the practice in 1946 amid Western pressure.

"It isn't a happy situation by any means. I wouldn't want it to continue. But I think that up until this point, the West has not been particularly helpful in the way that it's gone about trying to assist in the eradication," Prof. Boddy says.

Of course, it's the West's fault. What isn't?

The BBC didn't see fit to take note of the new occupants until the 9th paragraph of this story. "Troops withdraw from Basra base," from the BBC (thanks to John):

British forces have withdrawn from a base in Basra they shared with Iraqi police - the first step in a plan to move out all troops based in the city.

Another 500 troops will now pull back from Saddam Hussein's former palace, their only remaining base in the city....

Then follow many details, and finally Paragraph Nine:

The British military spokesman in Basra has dismissed reports that Shia militia men from the Mahdi Army took over the base after British forces passed control to Iraqi police last night.

Witnesses told the Associated Press the Mahdi Army emptied the building taking generators, computers, furniture and even cars.

Major Michael Shearer told the BBC News website that officers from the Multi-National Force spoke to the local Iraqi Army commander who "assured us that the PJCC is under his control and being efficiently run by the Iraqi Army. He also stated that all the equipment remains within the PJCC".

An MoD spokesman said there was a green Shia flag flying on the building, but not the black flag associated with the Mahdi Army....

An update on this story. " Boy Confesses to Assaulting Ex-Muslim Jami," from NIS News (thanks to John):

THE HAGUE, 25/08/07 - A 17 year old boy on Friday confessed to assaulting Ehsan Jami.

The teenager from Leidschendam stated to an investigating judge that he beat and kicked Jami on 4 August. He was however released because the judge did not find the assault serious enough to justify an extension of his pre-trial custody.

Police arrested the 17 year old Muslim on Thursday based on statements provided by Jami. He said three boys attacked him. The other two are still being sought....

Note also the last line of the piece:

Various media had suggested in the past weeks that Jami may have invented the assaults.

Typical. If you speak out against the violations of human rights codified by Islamic Sharia, and against the Islamic Supremacist ideology in general, prepare to have your life threatened and your character assassinated.

Islamic Tolerance Alert: more on the persecution of Christians in Iraq. By Sahar Al-Haideri in the Miami Herald (thanks to Elias):

MOSUL, Iraq -- They have been threatened because of their religious faith, their distinctive clothing and their success in business. They have been killed because of a Danish cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

Many have sought safety by fleeing to the countryside, north to Kurdish-controlled territory or abroad to Syria.

They have seen their churches bombed, their clergy murdered and community members threatened with kidnappings.

The Christians of Mosul, once a substantial and predominantly middle-class community, have suffered the same fate as most other Iraqi citizens.

Christians are hardly the only religious minority under attack, as witnessed by this week's coordinating bombings against members of the Yazidis community, which left more than 250 dead.

But their religious faith has made them especially vulnerable in a city where the rule of law is non-existent and Islamic militant intimidate and kill with impunity.

''Life has become difficult in Mosul,'' said Ilham Sabah, a Christian attorney who conceals her faith by wearing a veil. ``The militants threaten Christian women; they set them on fire or kill them if they refuse to wear Islamic dress as Muslim women do.

''We only have one choice, and that is to flee Mosul and the hell created by the militants,'' she said.

"I did not desert the force because I feared death, but I was not sure whether the fighting in tribal district Waziristan was Islamic or not." This is yet another indication of the fact that Al-Qaeda and other jihadists are not repudiated by all too many other Muslims. It also shows why the jihadist appeal to peaceful Muslims on the basis of Islamic purity meets with such success.

"Scores of Pak soldiers desert forces," from the Times of India (thanks to all who sent this in):

ISLAMABAD: Scores of Pakistani soldiers have deserted the security forces deployed in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, mainly because they were not sure whether fighting against their 'own people' was morally right, media reports said on Saturday.

"I did not desert the force because I feared death, but I was not sure whether the fighting in tribal district Waziristan was Islamic or not," a soldier from paramilitary Frontier Corps told the Daily Times.

The man, who recently refused to serve in tribal areas, claimed the same question was haunting many other soldiers and the confusion was stopping them from "putting up a tough fight" against the Taliban and Al-Qaida elements in the area. Pro-Taliban militiamen pulled out of peace treaties with the government after troops stormed the Lal Masjid in the capital on July 10, and launched a series of raids on security forces.

He confirmed the desertions but insisted these should be ignored as "insignificant incidents”. "Small-scale desertion takes place in any force and in any country for one reason or another," Arshad told the newspaper.

However, six soldiers from only one suburb of Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, have deserted the Frontier Corps. The force is the first line of defence of around 90,000 troops deployed along the country’s western border against militants launching attacks at international forces in Afghanistan.

The "blasphemous ball," May 2006 version

I predicted that this ball would cause trouble in May 2006, although the one pictured in the May 2006 story differs slightly from the one pictured in this BBC story: the Israeli flag pictured near the Saudi flag on the May 2006 ball seems to have been removed. But that, as this story shows, has not calmed hair-trigger tempers.

By Alastair Leithead for the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

A demonstration has been held in south- east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah.

The balls showed the Saudi Arabian flag which features the Koranic declaration of faith.

The US military said the idea had been to give something for Afghan children to enjoy and they did not realise it would cause offence.

The footballs were dropped from a helicopter in Khost province.

Some displayed flags from countries all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, which features the shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam - the declaration of faith.

The words, which include the name of Allah, are revered, and Muslims are very sensitive about where and how they can be used.

As Charles at LGF says: “Sensitive,” in this case, being defined as “prone to murderous rage.”

Radio interviews for the book Religion of Peace? are winding down now, but there will still be a few tomorrow and this coming week. Tomorrow's schedule:

All times PDT:

6:00 AM Wake Up Call WFTW

7:10 AM Bill Meyer KMED

7:50 AM The Right Balance

8:00 AM Mornings on the Dove KDOV

9:00 AM Mike Rosen Show KOA

11:00 AM Point of View with Kerby Anderson (USA Radio Network)

12:00 PM The Flip Side Rightalk Radio

5:00 PM Frank Pastore Show KKLA

5:35 PM: Michael Reagan Show

"Hamas' new cartoon hero," from the Associated Press:

After killing off its Mickey Mouse look-alike, Hamas has turned to another Disney character - televising a cartoon with a "Lion King" wannabe to portray the Islamic group's victory in the Gaza Strip over the Fatah movement.

The cartoon depicts Fatah members as sneaky rats, brandishing guns and being showered with U.S. dollars, while Hamas is portrayed as a confident, calm lion that resembles Simba in the 1994 Walt Disney Co. Movie "The Lion King."

The five-minute video, titled "A message to the criminal gangs in the occupied West Bank," is the second production of the Hamas-run al-Aqsa TV enlisting a famous Disney character.

In May, Hamas TV used a Mickey Mouse knockoff to preach Islamic domination to children. After an uproar among Israelis and Palestinians, that character was killed off and his weekly show replaced.

Hazem Sharawi, an executive with Hamas TV, said the cartoon of the lion vanquishing the rats was broadcast Thursday but quickly pulled off the air for revisions. He said it was "flashed" For one day to counter what he called anti-Hamas propaganda coming from Fatah in the West Bank.

The cartoon also was posted on the website of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors the Arabic media.

'Viewers loved it'

The piece shows rats trampling over Gaza, burning houses, stepping over homes, uprooting trees, firing at mosques and desecrating the Quran, Islam's holy book.

Their leader is clearly a portrayal of Fatah's former Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan, who has fled Gaza. Wearing a tie and smoking a cigar, the chief rat grabs a microphone and tells the crowd: "Move back and let Hamas shoot me." Dahlan made that comment during the showdown with Hamas, and his voice is dubbed into the scene.

Throughout the video, the lion silently watches the rats, preparing his claws and shaking his mane. When he pounces, the rats flee in terror as he knocks them about with his claws. Injured and limping rats then say: "Off to the West Bank."

"Shahid is reported to be in Karachi..." Now that's interesting. I'm sure our Friend and Ally Pakistan will be very helpful in this matter.

"HuJI behind blasts in Hyderabad: Centre," from PTI (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW DELHI: Central security agencies on Saturday night said that banned Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami militant outfit of Bangladesh was possibly behind the twin blast in Hyderabad in which 30 people were killed.

Sources in New Delhi said that there could be similarities between the explosives used in Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad in May this year and tonight's explosion.

It was suspected that Shahid and Bilal, who were the masterminds of the Meacca Masjid blast, were also behind tonight's explosion.

Shahid is reported to be in Karachi and is instrumental in bringing people for arms training from Hyderabad.

From Iranian Press TV:

A bomb hidden under a bench in front of a food shop killed one person and wounded 10 others in Thailand's restive Muslim south.

The remote-controlled device exploded Saturday, while Buddhist Thais were waiting to give food to monks in the town of Pattani in one of three southernmost provinces where more than 2,500 people have been killed in violence since 2004 police said.

Two civilians were seriously wounded while the shop owner was killed.

The other wounded included monks and soldiers escorting them.

Nobody claims responsibility for the daily gun or bomb attacks in the far south, annexed by predominately Buddhist Thailand a century ago.

Eighty percent of the local population are Muslim, ethnic Malay and do not speak Thai as a first language.

Any bets on who did this? Congregationalists? Zarathustrians? Overzealous Jehovah Witnesses?

That's for sure -- oh, wait, that's not what he meant.

From the Pakistan Daily Times:

LAHORE: 9/11 has brought Americans closer to Islam, since the Americans started studying Islam after the bloody attacks and realised that Islam was a peaceful religion, said Walter Russell Mead on Saturday.

Mr Mead, who has never learned the meaning of the term "irony," spent the next twenty minutes insisting that his comment was serious.

The US foreign policy expert and Henry Kissinger Senior Fellow for the US Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations was speaking at Jamia Ashrafia on ‘The Influence of Religion on the US Foreign Policy’.

The good ol' CFR: "Making the world safe for jihad."

Osama was not a true leader of Islam and his acts were against the teachings of Islam, he said. Mead said as far as war on terror was concerned, the American Muslims were not a problem, but a solution, since they could act as a bridge between Islam and West. Answering a question regarding the US support for military regime, he said there was not true democracy in Pakistan and the United States wanted to see Pakistan a truly democratic Muslim state with better socio-economic conditions. Religion was never a controversial issue in the world and religious education was being given everywhere, including the US, Mead said.

What planet was this talk given on? "Religion was never a controversial issue"? You can't make this stuff up.

"Fla. Televangelist Loses Show After Muslims Complain," from WFTV:

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- A Christian televangelist who harshly criticizes Islam and other religions said Friday that his late-night program is being pulled off the air because of pressure from a Muslim group.

Earlier this month, officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations wrote a letter to the TV station's owners asking for an investigation of the show it broadcasts, "Live Prayer with Bill Keller."

In a May 2 broadcast, the televangelist said Islam was a "1,400-year-old lie from the pits of hell" and called the Prophet Mohammed a "murdering pedophile." He also called the Koran a "book of fables and a book of lies."

None of what is quoted rises to the level of incitement to violence or other illegal activity. Additionally, network officials should ask themselves what sort of precedent they are setting, and if they would now forbid strongly worded criticisms of any religion.

Council officials asked for equal air time for Florida Muslims to counter Keller's comments, but never got the chance.

The hourlong show, which airs nightly at 1 a.m., is broadcast on WTOG-TV, a CBS-owned station that airs the CW network locally. WTOG station manager Laura Caruso said the decision to end Keller's contract was a programming one, made by station executives and the televangelist.

But after speaking with CBS executives, the Islamic group claimed credit for Keller's demise. His last broadcast will be Aug. 31.

"They really based their decision upon our letter," said Ramzy Kilic, the group's civil rights coordinator. "They really did not know that Bill Keller was involved with this kind of anti-Muslim rhetoric."

Keller said his "Bible-based" message hasn't changed in the five years the program has aired.

"(CAIR) intimidated the folks in New York, and the folks in New York caved in," Keller said.

Keller said he is starting a new morning TV show on another Tampa Bay area station that will debut Sept. 3.

"It's been floated around as a general idea without anybody giving very careful thought to what it really means."

Deux-Rivisme rides again. By Nicole Itano for the Christian Science Monitor:

Athens - The deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea connect three continents and 21 countries with a combined population of more than 400 million. But can this vast and diverse region – with Christians, Muslims, and Jews; Africans, Europeans, and Arabs – operate as a coherent political entity?

No.

That's the idea that French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been touting in his first three months in office. Launching his presidency with big ideas, he's proposed the creation of a "Mediterranean Union" to address common regional issues such as immigration, terrorism, environmental degradation, and economic development. Despite its hazy outlines, the plan appears to be gathering momentum on opposite sides of the sea.

But many observers familiar with the nuts and bolts of Euro-Mediterranean relations are skeptical that such a grouping could function on the grand scale Sarkozy seems to be suggesting.

Yes.

"It's been floated around as a general idea without anybody giving very careful thought to what it really means," says Richard Youngs, director of the democratization program at FRIDE, a Madrid-based think thank. "If this does reflect a genuine desire on the part of the new French government to reengage itself in Mediterranean issues, that's welcome. But it requires some careful thought."

[...]

For European countries like France and Spain – which are increasingly feeling the effects of North African poverty and political insecurity – the idea of a new regional grouping for the Mediterranean is attractive precisely because it may offer a forum for tackling the diverse region's many problems. Egypt, Tunisia, and Spain have attached at least tentative support to the idea in recent months, despite the absence of any concrete suggestions from France as to how exactly such an entity would work.

Indeed, for many political analysts in the region, Sarkozy's nascent idea creates more questions than answers: Would it be a supranational organization like the EU with the power to set national laws or merely an institutionalized forum for discussion? And how would it interact with the existing regional organizations – such as the EU, African Union, and Union of the Arab Maghreb – to which its potential members already belong?

"The risk," says Dr. Youngs, "is of simply adding another initiative that merely confuses the picture even more."

The idea of a Mediterranean Union has been around for at least a decade. But the energetic French president has breathed new life into the concept as he's jetted around the region meeting with area leaders in what many analysts see as an attempt to boost France's role as a leader in international relations.

Sarkozy discussed it during meetings with his counterparts in Tunisia and Algeria in a July tour of the Maghreb, talked it up during a working dinner in Slovenia with foreign ministers of EU Mediterranean states, and advertised it during a joint press conference earlier this month with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak.

[...]

Dorothée Schmid, a researcher on Mediterranean issues at the French Institute for International Relations, says French diplomats are working to formulate a more concrete proposal that is likely to be made public sometime in the fall. A Mediterranean project, she suggested, may be a centerpiece of France's presidency of the EU in the second half of 2008.

But she warned that the political climate in the region now may be less conducive to cooperation than in the past, due to increased security issues and heightened international tensions between the Arab world and the West.

Ultimately, too, she says, states must ask themselves whether the Mediterranean is itself a region, or a meeting point between them.

"Is the Mediterranean a region in economic terms, in cultural terms – in any way except for the geographical aspect?" asks Ms. Schmid. "The legitimacy of a Mediterranean frame is quite dubious, I think. Especially on political grounds."

An update on this story. " Officials: Deadly blasts in southern India were acts of terror," from CNN:

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- The death toll continued to rise in southern India, where two blasts Saturday night killed at least 41 people in Hyderabad in what authorities are calling terrorists attacks.

More than 60 people were wounded, several critically, police said.

But the carnage could have been worse.

Authorities also found explosives at 16 other locations in and near Hyderabad, said Y.S.R. Reddy, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state.

Security was beefed up at the airport and railroads after police said the almost simultaneous blasts were coordinated attacks.

"This is definitely terrorist activity," Reddy said, urging everyone to stay calm. He scheduled a Cabinet meeting Sunday morning to discuss the incidents.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a statement expressing deep concern over the violence.

One explosion, suspected to have been a bomb, occurred as a laser music show was to begin at an outdoor auditorium in Lumbini Park after 7:30 p.m. (10 a.m. ET).

About 500 people were in the audience when the blast ripped through the middle row of seats, Reddy said.

"A senior police official said the explosives used in the twin blasts on Saturday were similar to the one used by terrorists in the Mecca Masjid blasts in May this year."

"30 killed, 60 wounded as terror strikes Hyderabad," from PTI (thanks to all who sent this in):

HYDERABAD: In a major terror strike, at least 30 persons were killed and about 60 injured in two powerful near-simultaneous blasts at a crowded park and a popular eating joint in Hyderabad on Saturday evening.

Twenty four people died when an explosion ripped through Gokul Chat Shop at Kothi locality at around 7.50 pm, Andhra Pradesh Home Minister K Jana Reddy told reporters.

In another blast five minutes earlier at a place five kilometres away, six persons perished in a blast in an auditorium in Lumbini Amusement Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was on, he said.

Reddy said about 500 people were in the auditorium at the time of the incident.

The blast ripped through the middle row of the auditorium when the show had just begun.

So powerful was the blast that some of bodies were flung into the air and scattered over the area....

Reddy said that "according to preliminary reports, it was a terrorist act".

A senior police official said the explosives used in the twin blasts on Saturday were similar to the one used by terrorists in the Mecca Masjid blasts in May this year....

As has been amply illustrated over the years here at Jihad Watch, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a particular clue about the nature of the global jihad and what to do about it, and there has been much too much politics as usual, and craven partisanship such as is exhibited here, when there really needs to be a new political alignment and a sober reappraisal of our international and domestic policies. "Clinton: Terrorist attack would help GOP," by Alexander Mooney for CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- She says she is the Democrat best equipped to fight terrorists, but White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton told New Hampshire voters Thursday that another attack on the United States would likely help Republican candidates at the polls.

Sen. Hillary Clinton said the Republicans would benefit politically if a terrorist attack occurred before the '08 vote.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' " Clinton, a New York Democrat, told a house party in Concord, according to the New York Post and The Associated Press and confirmed by her campaign.

"But, if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world."

Clinton added that if such a scenario occurred, she is the best Democratic presidential candidate "to deal with that."

Clinton was in the crucial early voting state Thursday to unveil her health care plan.

A Clinton spokesman, Isaac Baker, told CNN "Sen. Clinton was making clear that she has the strength and experience to keep the country safe."

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, who is also competing for the Democratic nomination, issued a statement Friday afternoon calling Clinton's remark "tasteless."

"Frankly, I find it tasteless to discuss political implications when talking about a potential terrorist attack on the United States," he said.

...and tells us to go back to sleep, since Jews, Christians, and Muslims got along swimmingly in medieval Muslim Spain, and therefore there is no clash of civilizations today.

Exhibit A, apparently, will be the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, a resident of this paradisial Al-Andalus. You can find in my book Religion of Peace? some quotations from Maimonides' actual writings that I doubt will make it into this documentary, in which Maimonides complains of the brutality of the Muslims toward the Jews. As soon as I get close enough to a copy of the book I'll post them.

UPDATE 8/27: The passages from Maimonides and other useful material has been posted in the comments field below.

I am on the road right now and am unable to post pictures, but you can see all the forbidden strips at HotAir, and I will post them later.

As Bryan Preston says there, we see in this "the creep of dhimmitude over the US media." He immediately goes on to say that that is over-dramatic, but I don't think so. After all, what other group enjoys this kind of solicitude from newspaper editors? Whether it is from fear or from an anxiety not to offend what they perceive as a victim class, it is still a voluntary restriction that newspapers do not take for other groups. It is another step toward placing a particular group beyond criticism, critical scrutiny, serious questioning -- at a time when members of that group harbor dreams of subjugating the rest of us.

UPDATE 8/27: Panel finally added, not because it's in the least funny, but in solidarity with sane public discourse that is not cowed or intimidated into silence.

Gee, your hair smells like the Great Satan! "Western-style barbers get the chop in Iran," by Robert Tait for The Guardian:

Police in Tehran have closed two dozen barber shops and hairdressers in a fortnight in the latest phase of a "morals" crackdown aimed at enforcing Islamic dress codes among young Iranians.

The businesses were shut after being identified as purveyors of decadent "western" culture.

Eleven women's hair-stylists were told to stop trading for offering customers' tattoos. Tattooed eyebrows - in which the hair is shaved and replaced with elaborate patterns - are popular amongst many young Iranian women.

One women's salon was shut when authorities discovered one of its employees was a man, a crime under Iran's Islamic laws.

A further 13 barbers were closed for giving customers excessively eye-catching haircuts and plucking men's eyebrows. Many young Iranian men wear their hair in a gelled-up bouffant that would look outlandish even in some western countries.

The closures were imposed by Amaken-e Omoomi, a police body for regulating businesses such as shops, restaurants and hotels, after it inspected more than 730 hairdressers in Tehran.

[...]

Men arrested in the patrols have been forced to identify their barbers and get fresh haircuts. They have then had to return to police stations for officers to decide whether their hairstyles are acceptable.

Mohammad Ali Najafi, head of Amaken-e Omoomi, told Fars news agency that police officers would accompany trade inspectors in future visits to barbers and hairdressers. Those breaking the law would be closed immediately, he said.

An update on this story. Very little is said about the cultural, let alone religious, reasons the neighbors might not aid a woman in obvious danger. The Somali advocacy spokesman offered the excuse that the largely Somali neighbors were afraid of the police due to past experiences in their home country, but one could still call 911, report the crime, and remain anonymous.

"Hallway rape suspect charged; he denies attack," by Mara H. Gottfried for the Pioneer Press:

Although police say as many as 10 people witnessed a sexual assault in a St. Paul hallway, the suspect said he has no memory of what happened.

Rage Ibrahim, 25, said he blacked out from drinking too much alcohol. But he said he wouldn't have committed rape.

"I'm so upset because of the situation I'm in," Ibrahim said, crying as he headed to the Ramsey County jail on Thursday to turn himself in. "I've got a mom, I've got a sister. I wouldn't rape anyone."

Surveillance video from a Highwood-area apartment hallway makes it clear that a sexual assault happened Tuesday, St. Paul police Cmdr. Shari Gray said.

Prosecutors charged Ibrahim, of St. Paul, on Thursday with first- and third- degree criminal sexual conduct.

[...]

The "bystander effect" might explain why people didn't help, psychologists say. Members of groups who witness a crime, versus one or two individuals, are less likely to intervene, because they don't feel individually responsible for what's happening, studies have found.

The culture of many people who live in the apartment building also could have influenced witnesses' behavior, said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul. A large number of Afton View apartment residents are Somalis, who tend to mistrust and fear the police, Jamal said.

"The only system they know (from Somalia) is a military, totalitarian government that tortures and executes people," he said. "Their understanding is a system that oppresses and that kills. People have no rights. They are used to keeping quiet and not saying anything."

[...]

Someone called 911 at 2:43 a.m. and reported two drunken people in the hallway. As a result, police classified the call as a disturbance and assigned it the department's lowest priority number for response.

Officers arrived at 3:25 a.m. and found Ibrahim and the woman in the hallway.

If police had known a violent crime was in progress, the call would have been classified as a Priority 2, rather than a Priority 4, said Tom Walsh, a police spokesman.

Priority 1 is reserved for reports of officers down, he said.

[...]

When police arrived, they found Ibrahim and the woman in the hallway, both half-dressed and with scratches on their faces, the criminal complaint said. Officers overheard the woman say she just wanted to die.

According to the complaint:

Ibrahim told police they were drunk and the woman was his girlfriend. Gray said the two were not boyfriend and girlfriend.

The woman told police Ibrahim had drugged and raped her. She said she had gone to a friend's apartment and that a man she knew by the nickname Gomay was there. Ibrahim later told police he is known as Gomay.

After drinking during the evening, the woman said, she began to leave. Gomay tried to stop her by repeatedly punching and slapping her as he attempted to rape her. She said Gomay was trying to kill her.

Paramedics took the woman to Regions Hospital in St. Paul for a sexual assault exam, which found semen on her body. In addition, the woman suffered numerous scratches, cuts and bruises on her legs, face and shoulder.

Police arrested Ibrahim at the scene. He was held in the jail until early Thursday, then released when the 48-hour window prosecutors had to charge him expired. Prosecutors charged him later in the morning, and an arrest warrant was issued. Ibrahim turned himself in early Thursday evening.

[...]

He and a friend picked up the woman Monday night and went to the friend's Winthrop Street apartment, he said. Ibrahim, who said he cleans planes for a living, said he and the woman drank two bottles of gin between them.

Despite the woman's contention Ibrahim drugged her, he said he "absolutely" had not.

Read it all.

Seattle Muslims in a Full Court Victimization Press: "We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were." The FBI agents shouldn't apologize for doing their jobs and trying to protect people. Gomez is right: "people in those communities have to get over this sensitivity toward feeling victimized." And instead of resenting anti-terror efforts, some cooperation with them would be most welcome.

An update on this story.

"FBI's release of ferry passenger photos resented," by Lornet Turnbull, Janet Tu and Mike Carter for the Seattle Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

For Arabs and Muslims across the Puget Sound area, a rise in the nation's threat level or a bombing halfway around the world often can mark a period of unease.

In the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaders in that community say incidents of profiling and harassment have ebbed and flowed — increasing when Muslims are linked to news of the day.

Now the FBI's release of photographs of two men of unknown origin, who the agency says were observed acting suspiciously aboard as many as six different Washington ferry routes in recent weeks, is creating new worries in the community.

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders are upset that the FBI didn't consult them — as it has done in other instances — before releasing the photos on the Internet and to news organizations. They worry that the action may fracture the relationship the agency and the community have carefully built.

The FBI has stressed that the release of the photos is a rare move, taken only after it had exhausted other efforts to identify the men. The agency also has said the men's actions could be innocuous, but it needs to question them.

The photos were snapped by a ferry captain last month after crew members alerted him to suspicious activity. The men seemed inordinately interested in the operation of the vessel, took photographs of the interiors of the boats and went into areas tourists and commuters don't normally go, the FBI has said. The agency has received many tips but has not yet found the men.

Dozens of Muslims and Arabs have complained to community leaders about the photographs. The fallout has led to a meeting planned today between Muslim- and Arab-American community leaders and law-enforcement officials.

"We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were," said Rita Zawaideh, head of the Arab-American Community Coalition....

Zawaideh said she met with FBI officials about the August incident three days before the agency released the photos of the two men. But the FBI didn't bring up that subject.

"Why not ask us then and we would have had a way to ask people in the community," she said.

Gomez said the agency needs to address certain sensitive issues, but "people in those communities have to get over this sensitivity toward feeling victimized."

Many passengers have been stopped and questioned recently, as the ferry system has stepped up security once the FBI concluded the men might be watching the system. The stops are based on activities, not skin color, Gomez said.

Two days ago, a Seattle Times photographer, who is white, was stopped and questioned after taking photographs near the Mukilteo ferry terminal.

The FBI didn't take the photos of the two men to the Arab- and Muslim-American community because the agency doesn't know if the men are Middle Eastern, Gomez added.

"That seems potentially prejudicial to me, and in some ways worse than simply putting [the photos] out the way we did," Gomez said. "It is not us saying these guys look Middle Eastern."

Zawaideh countered: "They're not saying these men are Arabs, but insinuating they are."

How on earth are they doing that, Zawaideh? They released pictures and said these men were acting suspiciously as reported by many people on several ferries. If they had instead gone to Muslim leaders and asked them for help, as you yourself suggest above, then they would have been announcing in a public way that these guys were Muslims. And I expect if they had approached Muslim leaders with these photos, the leaders would have been outraged, outraged, that the FBI was assuming that the men were Muslims. It's a no-win situation.

This all comes at a time when some local Muslim and Arab-American leaders say they've seen a new spike in discrimination complaints....

Both Zawaideh and S. Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Seattle chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), say their organizations have been receiving more reports lately involving allegations of discrimination.

Bukhari said he's heard of delays at the border, as well as cases of people being asked questions at the airport and searched so thoroughly they missed their flights.

I'd live with it if it happened to me, Arsalan. Better than getting blown up. At least for some of us.

"Iran on anti-racism committee," by Yaakov Lappin for YNet News:

Despite its numerous calls for Israel's destruction, and repeated denials of the Holocaust, Iran has been selected by the United Nations for a leading position in a committee that will plan the 2009 UN World Conference against Racism.

The planning committee, which will meet for the first time in Geneva on August 27, will be made up of an inner circle of 20 UN member-states, to be headed by Libya.

The decision to include Iran in the committee has been slammed by UN watchdogs. "As a UN spokesperson against racism, Iran will invert totally the message and mission of the United Nations," Anne Bayefsky, senior editor of the New York-based Eye on the UN, said in a press release.

"Iran is now poised to wrap itself in a UN flag as a lead agent of the next global conference against racism, Durban II," she added, referring to the 2001 UN conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa, which saw unprecedented levels of anti-Zionist rhetoric and calls for Israel's destruction.

Speaking to Ynetnews, Bayefsky said that "the leading exponents of anti-Semitism, whether directed at Jews individually or the Jewish people and its state generally, continue to be provided a global platform at the UN. This is but one example of a broader phenomenon."

"Eye on the UN has found that in 2006 the UN system as a whole directed the most condemnations for human rights abuses against specific states - first towards Israel and fourth towards the United States. Iran was lower down on the list of UN human rights concerns," Bayefsky said, adding: "And yet the US taxpayer continues to pay a quarter of the bill for activities which demonize Americans and Israelis on a global scale."

A spokesperson for the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights confirmed to Ynetnews that "Iran is one of 20 States who are members of the bureau of the Preparatory Committee," but added that "Iran does not occupy a leading role.”

When asked how a state which openly denies the Holocaust could find itself in such a role, the spokesperson said: "The Preparatory Committee is an inter-governmental body, meaning States were chosen freely to sit on the Prep-Com. It is the Member-States who decide."

'UN body hijacked again'

Bayefsky explained that the structure of the UN's Human Rights Council has effectively been taken over by the countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), allowing Iran and Libya access to key roles.

"The states were selected by the UN Human Rights Council and the Council is controlled by the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The majority of seats on the Council are held by the African and Asian regional groups and the OIC has a majority of seats on each of these groups. Western states do not have the votes to block this outrage and it is another example of the hijacking that has occurred of the UN's lead human rights agency," she said.

Hmm. One assumes Arab supremacist imperialism in places like Darfur probably won't be a high priority.

Reacting to the statements of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of the Geneva-Based UN Watch organization, said that the UN had failed to explain how Iran had ended up on the planning council.

A jihadist component to the strife in Sri Lanka. "Jihad armed men on the rampage in the East," from Asian Tribune:

Colombo, 23 (Asiantribune.com): Jihad armed group has suddenly gone berserk killing recently two Tamils in the East.

On the last 20 August, according to reports, Jihad armed men have killed, Jeyaraj (29 years old), a three-wheeler driver, at Jinna Nagar, a suburb located at the Third Mile Post, three km north of Trincomalee Town.

Also on the same day, Jihad gunmen killed Thiyagachandran (54 years old) at Valaichchenai, who is the brother of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Batticaloa parliamentarian S. Jeyananthamoorthy.

In a statement, Eelam Revolutionary Organization (EROS) revealed that they have lost one of its members known within EROS as "Gerald" otherwise known as Jeyaraj, who EROS claims was shot and killed on the evening of 20 August at Jinna Nagar in Trincomalee by a man identified as "Nizam" who is affiliated to a group calling themselves the "Jihad" – a armed group mainly of the Muslims in the Eastern Province.

The Jihad armed group have been in existence since 1985 and known to have targeted political opponents and civilians in the past, however this is the first time the Jihad group who are based in parts of Trincomalee, Amparai and Batticaloa have begun to [target] Tamils from the East.

Sources in the East told the Asian Tribune that since of late, [Jihad members] claiming themselves as holy warriors of Islam, has started functioning in the East and are involved in resettling Muslims in Oddamaavadi and in the adjacent villages.

Sources told Asian Tribune that Jihad armed group works very closely with some Muslim Government Ministers from the East. Also it was revealed that Jihad and some Muslim Ministers have taken steps to bring in Muslim internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and making arrangements to settle them from Welikantha to Oddamaavadi with the view to carve out that region as a separate Muslim district.

The attack occurred in an apartment hallway and lasted over an hour. While the report does not make clear the background of the witnesses, their reaction, or lack thereof, seems culturally inconsistent with American behavior.

Additionally, while the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center spoke on the alleged perpetrator's behalf, and claimed the police report "does not show 'the truth of what happened that night,'" what are they doing for the victim?

"Cops: Tape Shows at Least 10 Witnesses Ignoring Minnesota Woman's Cries for Help During Sexual Assault," from the Associated Press:

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A security video from an apartment hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman's cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors in Minnesota said.

The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found Somali immigrant Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway early Tuesday. The woman's clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the criminal complaint.

Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding, according to Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, who spoke on Ibrahim's behalf.

Ibrahim was charged with several counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

Walsh said police were shocked by the behavior of the bystanders.

The best outcome from this incident (along with the successful prosecution of the attacker) would be a larger inquiry into the welfare of women in the Somali immigrant community, from domestic violence to genital mutilation.

"(The video) shows one person looking out of her door probably three times," Walsh said. "It shows another person walking up, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt."

At one point, the 26-year-old woman knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he did not open the door or look out, but said he did call police — although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.

Minnesota law makes it a petty misdemeanor to not give reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm."

Walsh said it is unlikely police would pursue charges against witnesses in this case because authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger.

Jamal said Ibrahim went into the hallway after the woman because he thought she was too drunk to drive. They struggled over car keys, and "he is saying there was a huge misunderstanding," Jamal said, adding that the police report does not show "the truth of what happened that night."

"He did not rape her," Jamal said.

"Any changes could be a problem for other workers because supervisors at the plant determine breaks within allotted times, not the workers themselves."

An update on this story. "Swift offers partial accommodation for Muslim prayers," by Oskar Garcia for the Associated Press:

OMAHA — Meatpacking plant officials accused of discriminating against dozens of Somali Muslim workers have offered to tweak break times to help accommodate the workers’ prayer demands.

If the dozens of Muslim workers and Swift & Co. can agree on details, a solution could defuse the dispute that started earlier this year when 120 workers at the Grand Island plant abruptly quit because they weren’t allowed to pray at sunset.

Many say they were fired, quit or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue, and some have complained to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about the way they were treated.

In a letter to lawyers representing the workers, Swift said it could eliminate some breaktime conflicts, and offered to negotiate more scheduling flexibility with the union to allow more prayer time if the workers agreed to the proposal.

Advocates for the workers said Thursday that they were encouraged by the proposal, but said they would not accept a solution that did not accommodate the prayers for the whole year.

“We’ll continue negotiations with the company and hopefully we’ll come out with a solution that everybody can deal with,” said Rima Kapitan, a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who is representing the workers in the dispute. “We’re certainly not going to accept their proposals at their face.”

The five to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. Workers at the Grand Island plant say they quit, were fired or were verbally harassed over the issue.

[...]

But a lawyer for Swift said in a letter it would be possible to make prayer accommodations for most, but not all of the entire year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations provided a copy of the letter to The Associated Press.

“Swift concludes that it can potentially accommodate the maghrib prayer under the existing labor agreement, except on the following dates: Feb. 15 through March 8 (commencement of Daylight Savings Time), and May 23 through Aug. 1,” Swift attorney Donald Selzer wrote in the letter dated Aug. 20.

The company also offered to go to union representatives to negotiate lengthening the dinner break window if the workers agreed to the proposal. Lengthening the window would mean fewer days when prayers could not be accommodated, Swift said.

But the president of the local United Food and Commercial Workers Union said Thursday that changing the breaks might not be feasible for other workers in the plant.

“I don’t know that I can agree to that because I have 1,700 other people to worry about,” said Dan Hoppes, Local 22 union president. “I have to look and see what they’ve got in mind.”

Any changes could be a problem for other workers because supervisors at the plant determine breaks within allotted times, not the workers themselves.

Hoppes said he wouldn’t have a problem if the company allowed individual workers to take breaks.

“But that’s simply not the case,” Hoppes said. “That’s the problem with the breaks is they have to be uniform.”

Some good news in an update on this story, and Ehsan Jami's police protection will continue at the current level. "Police arrest suspected attacker of Islam critic," from Deutsche Presse-Agentur:

Amsterdam - The Hague police on Thursday announced they had arrested one of the three suspected attackers of Islam critic Ehsan Jami. A police spokeswoman said the arrest could be made thanks to the detailed description Jami gave of the 17-year-old young man.

Jami recently founded a committee for former Muslims, saying it was necessary to overcome what he called "persistent taboos" in Muslim society about leaving the faith.

Including, of course, the threat of death, per Muhammad's own orders: "Baddala deenahu, faqtuluhu" -- "if anyone changes his religion, kill him ( Bukhari vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57)."

He is also a member of the city council for the Labour Party in Leidschendam- Voorburg near the Hague.

Jami told police the attacker was someone he had seen in his neighbourhood several times in recent months.

Iranian born Jami received extra personal protection early August after being attacked for the third time by Muslim youths.

He lives in a secret location and receives police protection around the clock. He has not appeared in public since he was last attacked almost four weeks ago.

The attacks followed after Jami referred to the Muslim Prophet Mohammed as a "horrible man" in several interviews and said he wanted to start a debate about domestic violence and human rights in Islam.

The police said efforts would continue to arrest the other two alleged attackers.

In the meantime, police protection for Jami will remain unchanged.

“Mohammed said that as Muslims we should commit Jihad.” It ain't the Scotland of Robert Burns anymore.

"Student trained in terror in Capital," from The Scotsman (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

A STUDENT facing terrorism charges spoke of attending “training groups” in Edinburgh, a court heard today.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, 21, also told a fellow student how he wanted to be a suicide bomber, blow up Glasgow and that he had met Osama bin Laden.

He is facing five charges including possessing, collecting and distributing terrorist propaganda and providing instructional material for bomb making.
Siddique, from Alva in Clackmannanshire, denies all the charges.

At the High Court in Glasgow, Razia Hussain said the accused made a series of claims while they were studying computing at Glasgow Metropolitan College.

The 22-year-old told the court that Siddique would access non work related websites in class every time he had an opportunity.

Questioned by Crown counsel Brian McConnachie QC about what the websites displayed, she replied: “People getting blown up, people who were dead, armies and explosions.

“Mohammed used to explain to me about these sites, about people getting blown up.

“How this is right and should be done because we are Muslims.
“Mohammed said that as Muslims we should commit Jihad.”

Asked by Mr McConnachie what Jihad meant she answered: “To go and blow yourself up.”

Ms Hussain told the court that one image showed a dead man with a smile on his face.

She added: “Mohammed said this was because he had committed Jihad and God was going to be happy.

“He said he wanted to be one as well – a suicide bomber.”

“How many times did he say that?” Mr McConnachie asked.
“A few times,” she replied.

Siddique also denies causing a breach of the peace by threatening to become a suicide bomber and saying he was a member of the terror network al Qaida, as well as showing images of suicide bombers and beheadings.

Ms Hussain also told the court that the accused claimed to have met Osama bin Laden and was visiting or planning to visit “training groups” in Edinburgh or Stirling.

Islamic Tolerance and Little Aisha Alerts: "Two Christian girls of 11 and 16 kidnapped, converted to Islam and forced to marry," by Qaiser Felix for Asia News (thanks to Nicolei):

Faisalabad (AsiaNews) – Two Christian girls, little more than children, were kidnapped from their families recently, forcibly converted to Islam and then married off to strangers. Both of the kidnaps took place in Faisalabad, the third largest city in Pakistan, and both were completely ignored by the police. The phenomenon is not a new one however, underlined numerous human rights activist, but it is dangerously on the increase.

On August 5 Muhammad Adnan, a Muslim from Zulfiqar colony Faisalabad and his sister kidnapped Zunaira, an eleven years old Christian girl from her home in Warispura. After the kidnap, they forced her to convert to Islam and marry her kidnaper Muhammad.

The small girl’s mother, Abida, told AsiaNews: “When I was roaming in streets in search of my daughter two Muslim men of the area told me that they saw Adnan and his sister taking my daughter”. Abida decided to go to the kidnapper’s house, from which however she is thrown out. Returning home, she was contacted by two men who revealed the kidnappers identity and offer to act as negotiators for her daughters release in exchange for money.

Here, from Pajamas Media, is my response to John Derbyshire's brightly written review of my book Religion of Peace?.

John Derbyshire seems to think that since, in his view, Islam and Christianity are equally preposterous, they are equally likely to incite violence: “Mohammed’s flying through the air to Jerusalem on a white steed is no more preposterous than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; and so, God’s instructions to us through Mohammed are no more or less likely to make us better or worse than his instructions through Christ.”

Huh? “And so”? One thing is unbelievable, and so is another, and therefore they’re of equal moral value? Come now. I myself find National Socialism no more preposterous than Shakerism – does that mean that National Socialism is no more or less likely to make us better or worse than Shakerism? Does Derbyshire really want to get behind the idea that if something doesn’t ring true to him, it is therefore benign, or at least no more or less benign than some other farrago? I don’t think he does, even as he calls the whole exercise “infantile,” since he also says that he finds my “brief against Islam” to be “persuasive.”

Derbyshire’s review, while marvelously written and delightful to read, is full of inconsistencies. I don’t see how he could possibly find what I reveal about Islam to be “persuasive” if at the same time he thinks that Islamic and Christian doctrine are equally likely to inspire their adherents to commit acts of brutality, since the contrary assertion, as he himself notes, is a major point of my book. He also wonders whether “an equally learned Islamic scholar, bent on making the opposite case, might not produce equally persuasive points, to be then rebutted by Spencer, who would be re-rebutted by the Islamist…” I would welcome such a rebuttal, by the way, unless it were characterized by the torrents of abuse and sly deceptions and diversions that usually come to me from Islamic spokesmen in America, but the point is that while Derbyshire says he is persuaded, he evidently still suspects that I am just engaging in some kind of rhetorical sleight of hand.

They still show no sign of caring that what they're doing will make air travel much easier for jihadists to terrorize.

"Imams drop lawsuit against 'Doe' passengers," by Audrey Hudson in the Washington Times:

A federal court yesterday accepted a request by a group of Muslim imams to drop all claims in a federal lawsuit against unspecified "John Doe" passengers for reporting the men's suspicious behavior, which led to their removal from a US Airways flight last year.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota was amended to "hereby dismiss possible defendants 'John Does' as set forth in ... the first amended complaint as parties from this action," said the notice of dismissal. The lawsuit still targets US Airways and Minneapolis airport workers.

Hold the noisemakers. "Not all 'John Does' out of imams' sights," from GreensPiece:

The news that Omar Mohammedi of New York and Frederick Goetz of Minneapolis, attorneys for the notorious “Flying Imams,” have limited the scope of the latter group’s jihad intimidation lawsuit is a positive development – but let no one suppose that this means they have stopped gunning for all of the “John Does” that reported the imams’ suspicious activity on U.S. Airways Flight 300 on Nov. 20, 2006. For their filing only dismisses “possible defendants ‘John Does’ as set forth in paragraphs 21 and 22 of the First Amended Complaint as parties from this action.” Omitted from it is paragraph 20 of said complaint, which reads:

“20. Defendant Flight Attendants and Desk Agents ‘John Does’ were at all times relevant to the events mentioned herein employees and/or agents of Defendant U.S. Airways and were acting within the scope of their employment on U.S. Airways Flight 300 on November 20, 2006 and subsequent U.S. Airways flights on November 20-21, 2006.”

Thus, the imams and their litigious henchmen are still trying to cow into silence individual airline workers who, their humble pay grade notwithstanding, had, if anything, more of a duty to report suspicious activity than did the passengers for whose safety they were responsible.

There's more at GreensPiece, with links. Read it all.

Pirouz Sedaghaty Update. "Feds want Oregon Islamic charity figure held," by William McCall for the Associated Press:

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - A missing passport and questions about whether he supports radical Islamic doctrine will keep the co-founder of a defunct Islamic charity in jail at least another two weeks after he voluntarily returned to face tax fraud and conspiracy charges.

Pirouz Sedaghaty, 49, also known as Pete Seda, left the country in 2003 during an investigation that resulted in a federal grand jury indictment in February 2005, accusing him of helping to smuggle $150,000 out of the country to aid Muslim fighters in Chechnya.

He returned exactly one week ago, on the same day that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing arguments about warrantless wiretapping of the U.S. chapter of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation that Sedaghaty co-founded in the Southern Oregon town of Ashland in 1997.

Sedaghaty pleaded not guilty to the tax and conspiracy charges last week, and asked to be released pending trial.

But the U.S. Attorney's office asked that he be held in custody, arguing he is a flight risk, leading to a lengthy detention hearing on Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin.

The judge said he was being asked to decide whether religious beliefs could be the basis for keeping a person in jail, comparing it to whether a devout Christian opposed to abortion posed a danger to the community if he or she believed abortion should be prevented by any means possible, including violence.

"Under those circumstances it's appropriate to ask if a person believes in using violent means," Coffin said, adding that he did not want "to take on the role of censor."

Coffin said he expected to decide at the next hearing, in two weeks, whether to order Sedaghaty to remain in custody until trial or grant a conditional release.

Chris Cardani, the assistant U.S. Attorney handling the case, argued that Sedaghaty promoted a radical version of Islam based in Saudi Arabia known as Wahabbism, making him a danger because he could incite radical followers to acts of violence - even though he did not believe that Sedaghaty himself posed a danger.

"Are you telling me that you think he is a Trojan horse?" Coffin asked Cardani.

"Perhaps," Cardani replied.

He noted that Sedaghaty, a U.S. citizen who was born in Iran, had returned to the United States on a duplicate U.S. passport, and had not surrendered his Iranian passport until he appeared in court Wednesday.

Cardani said that raised suspicions about where Sedaghaty had traveled the past four years, noting he had lived in Syria, Iran and the United Arab Emirates at different times.

Cardani said Sedaghaty offered no explanation about how he supported himself, noting he had trouble finding work and apparently had to live on less than $80,000 from the sale of a house in Ashland for more than four years.

[...]

Matasar also called an expert witness, As'ad AbuKhalil, a California State University, Stanislaus, professor who disputed the government's claim that Sedaghaty supported radical Islamic doctrine.

AbuKhalil said Saudi wealth is used to promote Wahabbism worldwide by funding mosques and charities, and distributing a Saudi version of the Quran called the "nobel Quran" that has a more militant interpretation of its teachings.

That's "noble," and the Qur'an is often referred to as the "Noble Qur'an" (including at USC's Muslim Student Association Qur'an site) or "Qur'an Sharif." And the text of the scriptures (always accompanied by the Arabic version, of course) is the same in any event, any accompanying commentary notwithstanding.

Muslims seeking to perform charity work - one of the five pillars of Islam - often are forced to accept Saudi money in order to pay for buildings or supplies, and distribute the Saudi version of the Quran because it is typically the only free version available.

Forced? Or just not inclined to look elsewhere?

"The Saudis have been proven to have misused some of these charities for their own nefarious purposes," AbuKhalil said.

But a witness for the government, author Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a former Al- Haramain worker in Ashland, said the charity promoted radical Islamic doctrine by distributing the "noble Quran" to U.S. prison inmates.

He noted that version supports violent jihad, or holy war, although he said that Sedaghaty had been upset by the embassy bombings and the link to militant Muslims.

But the jihad's still on, of course. "Al Qaeda Maghreb says member behind Algeria attack," from Reuters:

ALGIERS, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's north Africa wing said one of its fighters was behind a bomb attack on a former senior Islamist rebel in Algeria but said the assault was carried out without the approval of the group's leadership.

Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb said it had not planned to target Mustapha Kertali, a founder of the banned Salvation Islamic Front (FIS) and once a leading member of its armed wing, as he was not involved in attacking its fighters.

Kertali was seriously wounded on Aug. 14 when a bomb exploded under his car as he drove away from a mosque in the town of Larbaa, 30 km (18 miles) south of Algiers.

"One of our soldiers targeted Mustapha Kertali without consulting the leadership and getting its approval," the group said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.

"The bombing ... which we have not ordered and took place without our knowledge, is a mistake and we assume its repercussions before God and our Muslim nation."

Kertali surrendered to authorities in 2000 under an amnesty. He supported another amnesty for rebels that President Abdelaziz Bouteflika issued last year as part of a wider national reconciliation plan to draw a line under the bloodshed.

"We do not see any reason for targeting this type of people who abandon jihad under the pretext of a truce and reconciliation unless there is evidence of his involvement in the war and the killing of mujahideen," the statement added.

[...]

Experts estimate several hundred guerrillas are still fighting in pockets of territory east of Algiers and in parts of the desert south.

Security experts say most belong to Maghreb al Qaeda, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).

Al Qaeda's north Africa wing said in a statement posted on the Internet last month that it was planning a violent campaign against "infidels" and government forces in the Maghreb region. It urged Muslims to stay away from possible targets.

"Invariably, survivors said it was their kader, or destiny, to meet such an end."

"When wrong boyfriends or clothes lead daughters to kill themselves," by Helena Smith for The Guardian:

Nuran Uca never made it to 61 Aydin Arslan Street. If she had gone to the colourful two-storey building, climbed its narrow stairwell, walked down a corridor and sat in the plump brown armchair that so many other women had used, she might be alive today. There, with counsellors from the Kam-er support group, she could have talked about the "crime" of falling in love with a man she could never marry.

Instead, on June 14 the Kurdish woman succumbed to the phenomenon that is claiming lives in this Kurdish area of south-east Anatolia: she hanged herself in the bathroom of her home.

"She was just 25 but it was especially tragic because both were teachers, educated people," said Remziye Tural at Kam-er, the women's organisation that has become a lifeline in Turkey's poor south-east for those who face death because of a perception of dishonour. "She was modern and wore tight clothes - which is why his family rejected her.

She was banned by her parents from seeing or speaking to him, and then they stopped her leaving the house. In the end the pressure was too much."

[...]

Invariably, survivors said it was their kader, or destiny, to meet such an end.

But women's groups and human rights advocates believe the suicides are tantamount to murder. Stories have emerged of girls as young as 12 being locked in rooms for days with rope, poison or a pistol.

"There's a lot of evidence to suggest that these are, in fact, 'honour killings' passed off as suicides - that these girls are being forced to take their own lives," said Aytekin Sir, a psychiatrist who has studied the practice. There is no evidence that Nuran Uca's family forced their daughter to kill herself.

Last year, Yakin Erturk, a special UN envoy, arrived at the same conclusion, saying "honour suicides" had clearly begun to replace "honour killings", with the deaths increasingly being disguised as accidents.

Death sentences

For a long time the potent forces of fear and shame in the communities stopped young women visiting the Kam-er centre on Aydin Arlsan Street. But recently at least four girls a day have gone there, often in fear of death sentences issued by their fathers and brothers for infractions perceived to have brought shame on their families.

Nearly one-fifth of those who walked through the doors of the organisation since it started up in 1997 complained of threats from their families. Some had received text messages on their mobile phones saying typically: "You have blackened our name. Kill yourself or we will kill you."

According to Vildan Aycicek, at the organisation's headquarters in the city of Diyarbakir, west of Batman: "Women apply to us when they think they cannot survive the violence any longer. Most are illiterate and don't know their legal rights. If they do, they have no idea how to use them."

There had, she said, been cases of Kurdish and Turkish women calling Kam-er's hotline from Britain and other countries saying they also feared for their lives. Worldwide, the numbers of "honour killings" are notoriously difficult to estimate. But in Turkey the vengeful practice is cited by academics as the cause of death for hundreds of women each year - far above the official annual figure of 70. Sometimes adultery, or a woman's desire for divorce, prompts an all-male "family council" to order a killing.

But the list of "offences" is long: rape, incest, pregnancy brought on by both, a girl ringing into a radio chat show, exchanging eye contact with a boy or wearing a skimpy shirt. Sometimes accusations are no more than rumours.

One villager near Diyarbakir explained the attitude of his home area. "Without rules you have chaos," said Seyikan Arslan. "If my sister or my mother made a mistake we [men] would have to make it right. They would have to pay to cleanse our honour."

[...]

The culture clash has played a large part in exacerbating tensions within families and particularly between patriarchal fathers and their female offspring. "Migration is behind the big rise in honour and suicide killings," said Dr Sir, whose research found that support for the deaths far outstripped other popular penalties such as a woman having her nose sliced off or head shaved.

[...]

Ironically, the suicides have also been blamed on Turkey's efforts to stop "honour crimes". With Ankara's reforming Islamic-rooted government determined to enter the EU, it has toughened laws against the killings. Lenient sentences for those who cite provocation as a mitigating factor are no longer possible. So, to save men from a life in prison, experts believe families are instead forcing women to kill themselves.

[...]

Absent from the campaign in Batman has been the mayor, Huseyin Kalkan, who was awarded damages by DC Comics after a lawsuit over the use of his town's name for the superhero Batman. That money, activists point out, could be used to save women like Nuran Uca.

Friend and Ally Alert: "Minister blasts pro-US foreign policy," from Dawn (thanks to South Asian):

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: Federal Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi on Tuesday stunned both the treasury and opposition senators when he roundly criticised the foreign policy, describing it as one of appeasement at the cost of national interests, sovereignty and honour.

He also condemned recently-passed US legislation and the derogatory statements about Pakistan made by some American presidential candidates.

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s Prof Khurshid Ahmed immediately stood up to endorse most of the views expressed by the minister, and welcomed the “change of heart,” describing it as part of the change that had taken place in the wake of the July 20 landmark Supreme Court judgment....

Dr Niazi said in his speech that the key role Pakistan played in bringing about the downfall of the former Soviet Union was a blunder. It resulted in the emergence of a unipolar world and gave the US a licence to attack any country it wished, he said.

He said that American presidential candidates’ statements threatening Pakistan’s internal security were a reflection of the jaundiced thinking of US leaders who had forgotten lessons of history and the glorious past of Muslims.

Lashing out at the recent US law attaching strings to financial assistance to Pakistan, Dr Niazi described it as insulting and demanded that “we must return and refuse to accept such assistance”.

Hey, that's a good idea, Dr. Niazi.

He said the country should learn to stand on its own feet by rejecting all foreign assistance as a proud Muslim nation....

The minister said that events which followed the 9/11 incident proved that it was the brainchild of Jews. He said that according to holy Quran, Jews and Christians could never be friends of Muslims....

If Dr. Niazi said that on an American radio show in the presence of someone like Ibrahim Hooper or Salam Al-Marayati, he would be roundly denounced as a racist Islamophobe. Do you even know Arabic, Dr. Niazi? Where did you get your degree in Islamic studies? Well?

But if Dr. Niazi were on his toes, he might be ready with these Qur'an passages:

"Never will the Jews or the Christians be satisfied with thee unless thou follow their form of religion." (2:120)

"O ye who believe! take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust." (5:51)

"Keep up the dawah and the psychological warfare," an Islamic jihadist in the U.S. Navy was told by one of his handlers a few years back. The jihadists know well the value of psychological warfare -- they know this is a way they can destroy their enemies, and they don't hesitate.

By Matthew Hickley for the Daily Mail :

Taliban fanatics have been making "hate calls" to the UK homes and relatives of soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Senior commanders believe they get the numbers either by monitoring troops' mobile phone calls or from staff at Afghan phone companies.

The wife of one RAF officer was told: "You'll never see your husband alive - we have just killed him."

It was some hours before officials could confirm that her husband was still safe and well. All troops serving in southern Afghanistan have now been banned from carrying mobile phones.

Soldiers in Iraq can keep their phones but have been warned to keep their use to a minimum.

A senior Army source said the use of mobile phones by troops presented "a huge security problem".

It was feared the Taliban had access to both telephone numbers and the content of conversations.