November 2007 Archives

This is the kind of incident that has one potential victim, but many potential repercussions. That victim in this case is a 54-year-old schoolteacher who, newly arrived in Sudan and naive as so many are about Islam, meets with the primitive nature of Islam.

For we can all recognize and instantly grasp, the teacher's innocence, just as we could all see the innocence of those Bulgarian nurses held for eight years by the Libyans, raped and tortured and threatened repeatedly with execution. And we know the story, of how she allowed her little seven-year-old charges to vote on the name they wanted to give the little teddy bear, little seven-year-old Muslim children not yet sufficiently brainwashed into every element of Islam, just the way some of the younger children, the American soldiers in Iraq have found, are still....still touchingly sweet, human, recognizable in their behavior, even genuinely friendly and grateful.

The truth-challenged unindicted co-conspirators of the Council on American Islamic Relations have been targeting radio host Michael Savage, as they have targeted so many others before him. They've been pressuring advertisers to stop advertising on his show, and they've been succeeding. Background here.

But Savage, unlike Fox, unlike National Review, unlike so many others, is unwilling to play the dhimmi and kowtow to these lying Islamic supremacist thugs in their continued assaults on the freedom of speech. It's about time that somebody with the resources to do so has fought back.

The text of Savage's suit can be found here. A few highlights:

The conduct of CAIR (in addition to raising money) in violating the copyright interests of Michael Savage was to gain media attention and control so that CAIR would be seen as the “moderate” voice in the media. In fact CAIR is a radical voice that deliberately attempts to be seen as centrist so that media time goes to CAIR and once on the air, CAIR directs its rhetoric to the benefit of its extremist clients. This is a deliberate tactic and the theft of the copyright material was part of a pattern and practice advancing this tactic.

30.

As set forth herein, CAIR is not a civil rights organization but is instead a political organization designed to advance a political agenda that is directly opposed to the existence of a free society that includes respect and dignity for all people and all religions.

The copyright infringement herein is part of this plan. CAIR’s fundamental purpose is to be a lobbyist for foreign interests.

[...]

34.

CAIR while claiming in its paperwork to be a civil rights organization was in fact co-founded in 1994 by Ibrahim Hooper, Nihad Awad, and Omar Ahmad, all of whom had close ties to the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was established by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook.

35.

The director of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation counter-terrorism unit has stated that IAP is “a Hamas front…(that is) controlled by Hamas, it brings Hamas leaders to the US, it does propaganda for Hamas.”

36.

CAIR opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a self-described charity founded by Hamas operative, Mousa Abu Marzook.

37.

At a 1994 meeting at Barry University, CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad stated that:

"I am a supporter of the Hamas movement." Awad wrote in the Muslim World Monitor that the 1994 trial which had resulted in the conviction of four Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who had perpetrated the previous year's World Trade Center bombing was "a travesty of justice."

38.

Hamas is listed as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Hamas is banned in the Muslim nation of Jordan, Australia and the United Kingdom.

39.

Plaintiff contends that CAIR is still associated with foreign groups as set forth more fully herein and that the wrongful intent in violating the copyright as set forth herein was based in part upon a desire to silence a vocal critic of Hamas.

40.

The involvement of CAIR’s founders in illegal conduct was addressed on February 2, 1995, when U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named CAIR Advisory Board member and New York Imam Siraj Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in Islamic Group leader Omar Abdel Rahman's foiled plot to blow up numerous New York City monuments.

41.

On May 7, 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference to protest the decision of the U.S. government to extradite Marzook for his connection to terrorist acts performed by Hamas. CAIR characterized the extradition as "anti-Islamic" and "anti-American."

42.

Prior to 9/11, CAIR continued in its claim that it was a civil rights organization. They made this claim when in October 1998, CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as "the sworn enemy," asserting that this depiction "offensive to Muslims."

43.

Also in 1998, CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al Qaeda bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR’s leader Ibrahim Hooper, claimed the bombings resulted from "misunderstandings of both sides."

44.

In a July 1998 news article CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad is quoted speaking to a group of California Muslims expressing his hope of seeing an America under the domination of Islam. In that article, Ahmad is quoted as saying,

Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.

45.

On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR’s New York office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims.

46.

CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website.

47.

The HLF is the Holy Land Foundation. On December 4, 2001, the Attorney General of the United States stated that “the Holy Land Foundation, received much of its early money from Mousa Abu Marzuq, a top Hamas official who, the U.S. courts have determined, was directly involved in terrorism."

Sudanese Muslims burn a photo of the Muhammad teddy bear teacher

Mohammed + Teddy Bear = Riot

Mohammed + Atta = No Riots

Have I got that right?

Aiding the jihad from Detroit. "Detroit man pleads guilty in bid to aid Hezbollah," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):

DETROIT (Reuters) - A Detroit-area man on Thursday pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges after a failed 1998 attempt to deliver global positioning systems and night-vision goggles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Fawzi Assi, 47, pleaded guilty in federal court in Detroit to attempting to provide support to a terrorist organization under U.S. law, federal prosecutors said.

The guilty plea marked the latest twist one of the first prosecutions under a 1996 U.S. law that made it illegal to provide money or other aid to terrorists groups as defined by the U.S. government....

Assi, who has been held in federal prison for the past three and a half years, now faces up to a 10-year prison term and a fine of up to $250,000, prosecutors said....

At the time of his arrest, Assi, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the United States in 1978, was an engineer with Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford Motor Co.

As predicted here last week, Perry Bacon, Jr., a reporter for the Washington Post, has demonstrated what passes for journalistic integrity these days by taking an eight-month-old column of mine in which I discuss the implications of Barack Obama's not being a Muslim as evidence that I'm involved in spreading rumors that he is a Muslim.

In "Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him" in yesterday's Post, Bacon says this:

Robert Spencer, a conservative activist, wrote in Human Events that "given Obama's politics, it will not be hard to present him internationally as someone who understands Islam and Muslims, and thus will be able to smooth over the hostility between the Islamic world and the West -- our first Muslim President."

Was I saying in this that Obama would, if elected, be our first Muslim President in a literal sense? Clearly not. I was saying he could be our first Muslim President the way Bill Clinton was our first black President. The whole first part of the column is about his not being a Muslim, and what the implications of that were in light of revelations in a Los Angeles Times piece that I linked at the beginning of the column. Although the link is now broken, the LA Times article can be found here. It says:

"To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago," Gibbs' Jan. 24 statement said. In a statement to The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, the campaign offered slightly different wording, saying: "Obama has never been a practicing Muslim." The statement added that as a child, Obama had spent time in the neighborhood's Islamic center.

His former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama's grade-school teacher as childhood friends, say Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both of the schools he attended.

So in my column I discussed what the reaction in the Islamic world might be to Obama's being, at least in the sense involved in his school registration, an ex-Muslim. Perry Bacon, however, makes no mention of that part of my column, or of the LA Times article from which I drew my information. He also, as I noted last week, made no attempt to contact me, although he did manage to get through to Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR, who of course told him that these horrible rumors I'm allegedly feeding were all part of our society's lamentable Islamophobia:

"The underlying point is that if you can somehow pin Islam on him, that would be a fatal blow," Hooper said. "It's offensive. It speaks to the rising level of anti-Muslim feeling in our society."

Ibrahim, I'll tell you what's offensive: pseudo-journalists like Perry Bacon who write agenda-driven articles like this one, and the facts be damned. But you wouldn't know anything about speaking out with no regard for the facts, now, would you?

Denial: "researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity."

Hmm. Good theories, fellows! But I do wonder if perhaps you considered that the Moroccan hostility toward homosexuals had anything to do with the fact that Islamic law regards homosexuality as meriting harsh punishment? Among the Sunni schools of Islamic jurisprudence (madhahib), the Hanafi school mandates a severe beating for the first offense, and the death penalty for a repeat offender. The Shafi’i school calls for 100 lashes for an unmarried homosexual, death by stoning for a married one. The Hanbali school requires stoning across the board. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, directed his followers to “kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him” (‘Umdat al-Salik, p17.3).

In many areas these injunctions are still followed. The Islamic Penal Law Against Homosexuals in Iran calls for the death penalty for sodomy and one hundred lashes for lesbianism for the first three offenses, with death for the fourth offense. Homosexuality is a capital offense not only in Iran, but also in Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania.

But of course, I am sure these "researchers" didn't consider any of that. To have done so would have been "Islamophobic."

"Amsterdam to Study Gay Bashers," from Spiegel (thanks to Insubria):

With the number of homophobic attacks rising in the Dutch metropolis, Amsterdam officials are commissioning a study to determine why Moroccan men are targeting the city's gays.

[...]

This month, Mayor Job Cohen commissioned the University of Amsterdam to conduct a study on the motives behind the hate crimes. Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity.

Another proportionate response. Muhammad Teddy Bear Madness Update: "Shoot UK teacher, say protesters," from the BBC (thanks to M.):

Thousands of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot.

Mrs Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed by a court on Thursday after children in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad.

She was sentenced to 15 days for insulting religion, and she will then be deported.

The marchers took to the streets after Friday prayers to denounce the leniency of the sentence.

The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks.

Marchers chanted "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad".

Hundreds of riot police were deployed but they did not break up the demonstration.

Why not?

Seriously, since -- as most assume -- all religions are equally capable of inciting their adherents to violence, why don't we see real headlines like the one above? Baptists targeting Methodists, Presbyterians bloodily retaliating for the last Episcopalian attack -- you get the idea. "43 Held after Bombs Found at Sunni Leader's Office," from AFP (thanks to all who sent this in):

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Authorities arrested more people on Friday after car bombs were found near the offices of Iraqi politician Adnan al-Dulaimi but did not say whether they thought he was the target or intended to use them himself.

Dulaimi, who told AFP he may have been targeted, said US and Iraqi troops held 43 people in raids on his Baghdad office and home after discovering two primed car bombs nearby.

"Early in the morning US and Iraqi troops came to my home and arrested 30 people, including my son Mekki," Dulaimi said.

He said troops had detained 13 people in a Thursday evening raid.

At the time, the Iraqi military Thursday announced the discovery of two vehicles packed with explosives at the premises in Baghdad's Hail Adel neighbourhood.

"Two car bombs, primed to explode, were found inside the office compound," Iraqi army spokesman Brigadier General Qasim Ata said on Thursday.

Troops destroyed the bombs in controlled explosions, causing heavy damage to Dulaimi's office and several nearby houses.

"It's a matter of regret that we found these car bombs at his office," Ata added, without saying whether Dulaimi was the target or whether the vehicles were meant to be detonated elsewhere.

On Friday, Dulaimi dissociated himself from the vehicles, which he said were found "somewhere behind my office and not close to it."

"There was no car bomb in or near my office," he insisted.

"I want to tell the Iraqi government, the American and Iraqi forces to check the information correctly because this announcement will make problems for the political process."

Indeed.

Muhammad Teddy Bear Madness is not over, and it won't be until Gillian Gibbons is safely out of Sudan.

"Sudan groups say teacher 'infidel,'" from CNN (thanks to Martin):

KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- Muslim groups in Sudan, angry at a female British teacher for allowing her students to call a teddy bear "Mohammed," are planning a protest in the capital Khartoum a day after she was sentenced to 15 days in jail.

The decision by a Sudanese court to jail Gillian Gibbons late Thursday was widely criticized outside of Sudan as too harsh, with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband saying he was "extremely disappointed" the charges were not dismissed.

In leaflets distributed earlier this week by Muslim groups and seen by CNN, the protesters promised a "popular release of anger" at demonstrations called for Friday.

The leaflets condemned Gibbons as an "infidel" and accused her of "the pollution of children's mentality" by her actions.

Sudanese media was reporting that the protests would take place outside the Unity High School where Gibbons worked as a teacher following Friday prayers. However, CNN was unable to confirm this.

I don't believe that Richard Dawkins actually exists, but whoever runs the richarddawkins.net website has posted audio of a bout for the ages -- not quite Ali vs. Frazier, but there is an Ali involved: Ayaan Hirsi Ali debating Ed Husain at the Centre for Social Cohesion.

Listen and judge for yourself who got the better of the argument. However, note also that Husain, after the manner of debate losers throughout the ages, has retold his side of the story in another forum, attacking Hirsi Ali and, unaccountably, Ibn Warraq and me in a Guardian column. My response, which touches on many of the arguments he makes in this debate, can be found here.

An update on this story, from CNN:

(CNN) -- An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden called on Europeans to abandon Afghanistan and accused NATO troops of killing women and children there.

Projection. After all, jihadists -- al-Qaeda and otherwise -- never, ever, ever targeted women and children.

The message surfaced on Al Jazeera television three days after al Qaeda's TV production unit promised fresh communication from the world's most-wanted terrorist leader.

It's the first message purported to be from bin Laden since the Arabic-language TV network aired an audiotape last month.

In Thursday's message, the speaker claims sole responsibility for the September 11, 2001, attacks and accuses America's NATO allies of killing civilians in Afghanistan, where the country's Taliban rulers allowed al Qaeda to operate prior to 9/11.

"You didn't respect the rules of war and attacked and killed women and children on purpose," the speaker says.

The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified. It is believed to be new, but there was no indication when it was recorded.

[...]

About 41,000 troops from the United States, NATO and other countries are taking part in the fighting, the largest ground operation in NATO's nearly 60-year history.

The previous message from bin Laden included no dated references, making it impossible to determine when it was taped based on its contents. In the message, bin Laden called on his followers to be loyal to the Islamic nation, not to individual leaders, groups, tribes or countries.

The tape marked the first time bin Laden spoke directly to the militants.

"Beware of your enemies, especially those who infiltrate your ranks," he said in Arabic.

"I advise myself and the Islamic nation not to follow individuals and countries," he said. "Everything should be seen in the light of Islam."

Addressing the mujahedeen in Iraq as "my brothers," he said, "You have done well to perform your duty."

This reminds me of an old Edward G. Robinson movie I saw once -- the name escapes me -- in which the horrified good guys discover that "putting out a contract" on someone meant "arranging for them to be killed." The argot is clumsy and not hard to decipher, although I suppose those using it escaped the attention of law enforcement officials, and that was all they wanted to do.

"Terrorism accused explains Islamist internet code," from AFP (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Schleswig - A terrorism suspect on trial in Germany declared Thursday his devotion to Osama bin Laden and explained the code words used by Islamists during internet chat.

Moroccan-born Redouane al-H said that when a member of an Islamist internet community was arrested, the others told one another he was "sick."

The codeword for explosives was "dough." He added that a "taxi driver" meant a suicide bomber and to "marry" meant dying as a martyr.

H, who is accused of forming a terrorist group to recruit suicide bombers for Iraq, was giving substantive testimony for the first time at his trial in the German city of Schleswig, near the Danish border.

H, aged 37, confirmed he had sworn a vow of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network which mounted the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

"Osama bin Laden is my religious authority," he said, adding that he had wanted to move to Iraq in summer 2005 to take part in a jihad or holy war against Americans, whom he described as Crusaders.

He confirmed that later, in an internet chat, he had said he would kill Crusaders, but he denied forming a terrorist group, saying he and his friends had merely planned a relief operation for Darfur, Sudan....

"In programmes broadcast throughout the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women last Sunday, Iranian state TV used the world family instead." International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Family?

From AKI (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

Tehran, 29 Nov. (AKI) - The word 'women' must now be replaced on Iranian state television by 'family', reformist Norouz news agency reports.

In programmes broadcast throughout the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women last Sunday, Iranian state TV used the world family instead.

In recent weeks, Iran's Centre for the Participation of Women changed its name to the Centre for Family Matters.

School surplus stock

Three cheers for capitalism. (Thanks to Timothy.)

Legal jihad. From AKI (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Manama, 29 Nov. (AKI ) - Seven of the ten Christian churches in the Bahraini capital of Manama may be closed because they have no legal permits.

According to the Arab newspaper, al-Sharg al-Awsat, the authorities are considering the move after protests in recent days by residents in an area of the city where several churches are concentrated.

Residents are objecting to the presence of a dozen churches in the same area, concerned that many of them are found in the same street as little as eight metres from each other.

However the problem with the seven churches is that they were created by Indian immigrants of Christian faith without authorisation by local authorities.

For this reason the Minister for Social Affairs has given the seven churches an ultimatum: obtain the necessary permits or face closure in two weeks.

"This position taken has unleashed the anger of several British Christian organisations that have accused Manama of persecuting Christians," the newspaper said.

The Bahrain authorities have stressed that they want to guarantee religious freedom in their national territory, saying that "the churches enjoy great freedom and our people are open and tolerant towards other cultures and societies".

I think it is likely that they have been shamed away from lashing her by all the international attention.

From AP (thanks to Davida):

KHARTOUM, Sudan — British teacher Gillian Gibbons has been convicted of inciting religious hatred for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation from Sudan, one of her defense lawyers said Thursday.

"The judge found Gillian Gibbons guilty and sentenced her to 15 days jail and deportation," said Ali Mohammed Hajab, a member of her defense team.

The director of the school employing Gibbons, however, noted that since she had already spent five days in prison, she would serve only 10 days.

"It's a very fair verdict, she could have had six months and lashes and a fine, and she only got 15 days and deportation," said Robert Boulos of the Unity High School, adding they would not appeal the decision.

Witless Moral Equivalence Update: the Secretary of State feels their pain. Let's tease out her analogy: the Israelis are at once white segregationists and the victims of racist bombers, and the Palestinians are simultaneously white racist bombers and poor black victims of segregation.

All right.

Does she realize that the checkpoints from which the Palestinians suffer are a result of the bombings? Does she understand that there would be no checkpoints if there were not so many Palestinians determined to murder Israelis and destroy Israel? Does she understand that the checkpoints exist not "because they are Palestinian," but because they approve of and abet murderous jihadism?

Probably not.

From "FM's complaints of Arab conduct denied" in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

She told delegates that when a local church was bombed by white separatists, four girls were killed, including one of her classmates.

"Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church," she said.

She added, however, that as a black child in the South, forbidden to use certain water fountains and shunned from certain restaurants, she was also in a good position to understand the feelings of the Palestinians.

"I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," she said. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."

"There is pain on both sides," Rice concluded. "This has gone on too long."

Abbas -- Abu Mazen -- has no power to commit anyone to anything. That is, he has no power to commit anyone on the Arab side. But Bush and Rice have set things up, in this ill-thought out attempt to come up with something, anything, that might be considered a "diplomatic victory in the Middle East" (given the obvious failure to deal adequately with the worldwide Jihad, and the obvious squandering of men, money, matériel, morale and attention in Tarbaby Iraq), so that Abbas' mere appearance at this Annapolis farce, happily of short duration, will commit Israel to several things.

His appearance will commit Israel yet again, publicly, in the form of the speeches and public commitments made by a hopelessly maladroit, terminally weak, and quite possibly corrupt prime minister, to the very idea not only of the "Palestinian people" (an idea that has to be undone, not further ratified for the nth time, by some idiotic Israeli unaware of how that clever construct prevents the recognition of the Lesser Jihad against Israel) but to the idea of a "solution" to that Lesser Jihad.

Here are the last few paragraphs of Ed Husain's attempt to equate "Zionism" and "Islamism":

"Just as Israel is an expansionist state which remains in occupation of the Golan Heights, Islamists plan for a state that would have an occupying army to support ever-expanding borders (see Hizb ut-Tahrir's draft constitution). Just as Zionists claim territory based on notions of "Jewish land" and God-given rights, Islamists wish to reconquer India and Spain as "Muslim land", once ruled by Muslim monarchs.

Zionists have achieved their state; Islamists are busy trying out every conceivable option to bring their dream Zion to fruition. For centuries, Jewish people said "Next year in Jerusalem", and for decades for now, Islamists have been repeating "Caliphate by next Ramadan". I did this for three Ramadans before realising I had been sold a pup and so abandoned Islamism, and slowly rediscovered Islam. There is a world of difference between Islam and Islamism, as there is between Judaism and Zionism.

While millions across the world make the distinction between Zionism and Judaism, to date that distinction is not yet clear for most of us when it comes to Islam. Islamism is not Islam, regardless of the claims of "Muslim spokesmen". To condemn Israeli excesses is not anti-semitic; and to criticise Islamism is not to be Islamophobic.

Among my closest friends, I count American Jews. As a Muslim, I see Jews as cousins-in-faith, the descendants of Jacob. In The Islamist, I denounce suicide bombings and support a two-state solution to the question of Palestinian nationhood, as endorsed by Muslim scholars at al-Azhar in Egypt. So I don't come to this as an enemy of Israel.

My problem lies with marketing political ideologies as religion. Whether it is evangelical Christianity in the United States and their religious support for rightwing Republicans, or Zionism posing as Judaism, or Islamism masquerading as Islam - all three are equally guilty of misleading people, creating conflicts and corrupting three of the world's greatest religions.

Note that Zionists are depicted by Ed Husain as religious fanatics. But Herzl, Max Nordau, and other early Zionists, and those who came later, such as Chaim Weizmann and his associates, or the incomparable Jabotinsky, writer, feuilletonist, boulevardier, and orator (Nabokov, the uncle of the writer, who as the Russian Ambassador to Great Britain heard Jabotinsky speak, and declared him to be the greatest orator he had ever heard) were all secular, worldly, thoroughly assimilated. They could have done nothing, continuing in their successful careers without giving a thought to the tragic condition and situation of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe.

Then there are those whom Ed Husain absurdly calls "Islamists," failing to realize that their goals are nothing but standard Islamic doctrine, even if their currently chosen means are, it seems, exclusively violent. (That in itself is strange, given that there are so many other instruments of Jihad -- the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa in the Bilad al-kufr, and of course slow and inexorable demographic conquest of those Lands of the Infidels.)

Why can't Wilders discuss the Qur'an? Why can't he attack it if he wants? Does anyone in the Netherlands think twice when someone attacks the teachings of the Bible? Why should the Qur'an be different? Obviously, the Justice Minister's response makes clear why: because Muslims will kill over this, and Christians won't.

"Dutch Lawmaker Planning Film Criticizing the Koran," from AP (thanks to all who sent this in):

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: — A Dutch conservative lawmaker said Wednesday he is making a film to highlight what he describes as "fascist" passages in the Koran, his latest high profile criticism of Islam.

The interior and justice ministers said they were concerned, but believed they had no authority to prevent the lawmaker, Geert Wilders, from screening his film.

Wilders plans to depict parts of the Koran he says are used as inspiration "by bad people to do bad things."

Less than 10 minutes long, the film is expected to air in late January. It will show "the intolerant and fascist character of the Koran," said Wilders, whose anti-Islam campaign helped his Freedom Party win nine seats in parliament in last year's election.

In the past, Wilders has said that half the Koran should be torn up and compared it with Adolf Hitler's book "Mein Kampf." He has claimed the Netherlands is being swamped by a "tsunami" of Islamic immigrants....

"Cabinet warns Wilders on anti-Koran film," from Dutch News (thanks to Syla):

The cabinet is concerned about a ‘provocative’ film about the Koran by anti-immigration party PVV leader Geert Wilders which he expects to be shown on tv at the end of January.

The justice, foreign and home affairs ministers, who are worried about a backlash from Islamic countries, have warned Wilders about the risks of screening such a film.

Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin stressed that while Wilders is free to express his views about the Koran, he also has a responsibility towards society in general. ‘Think about the what the repercussions could be,’ he said.

If the film is hard-hitting, it could evoke hard-hitting reactions against himself and others,’ says the minister. Those who want a free debate must show respect for all religions and for things that are sacrosanct for others, he said.

Wilders says it is not the aim of his film to insult people but if they are insulted, that is ‘a pity but not my problem’. He says he wants Muslims to realise that the Koran is a ‘terrible and fascist’ book which inspires people to commit ‘terrible’ deeds.

Let them into the EU! From the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

A priest from Turkey's Syriac Christian community has been kidnapped in the country's south-east, officials say.

Edip Daniel Savci's car was reportedly found abandoned near Midyat town in Mardin province on Wednesday.

A local clergyman had received a phone call demanding a ransom for his release, the Anatolia news agency said.

Attacks on Turkey's Christian minority have increased recently. A Catholic priest was shot dead last year and three Protestants were killed in April.

Five men accused of the attack on the Protestant missionaries went on trial in the town of Malatya last week.

He was duped, you see. Duped.

"Doctor sentenced in NY terrorism case," by Larry Neumeister for Associated Press (thanks to Sr. Soph):

NEW YORK - A doctor convicted of conspiring to treat injured al-Qaida fighters was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison, with the judge reasoning that a sentence to deter others was needed because terrorists cannot carry out their deadly aims without help.

U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska noted Dr. Rafiq Sabir, 53, showed no remorse after his May conviction for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida members so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans.

The judge said there was "no reason to believe that this defendant has abandoned any criminal intentions."

She said terrorism offenses were among the most serious crimes prosecuted and required stern punishments.

"If not for assistance to terrorists, then terrorist acts would not take place," she said.

Just before the announcement of the sentence in a crowded courtroom, Sabir, of Boca Raton, Fla., insisted he was "completely innocent."

He said a co-defendant, jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah, had duped him into taking an oath with an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter, never explaining that he was pledging loyalty to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.

"I'm an extremely gullible man," he said.

Sabir said he learned more about Shah at his trial than he had learned in the previous 20 years when they had become close friends.

He said he now realizes Shah tried to sell his services to al-Qaida.

"My intentions were entirely within the law," he said. "I had no idea I was being asked to be an al-Qaida member."

The judge said she concluded Sabir perjured himself when he testified during trial that he did not understand the accent of the FBI agent during the pledging ceremony and did not realize that "al-Qaida" was said or that references to "Osama" were about bin Laden.

Yes, he thought they were talking about Osama Smith, the local plumber. War Is Deceit, after all.

A Jihad Watch reader recently took issue with my noting that the world had never heard of the “Palestinian” nationality before the 1960s: "‘You are absolutely wrong on all counts. First of all there was never any Palestine to begin with... so who exactly do you mean by Palestinians?' There were also no "Israelis" as such until Israel was officially created. Both identities are constructed ones. Again, so what? In the end, they're fighting over land. If either side wanted peace, they'd have it by now. As it is, there are people on both sides who have profited, and continue to profit, from the continuation of hostilities."

No, but the word "Palestinians" and the invention of the "Palestinian people" was a deliberate construct. It did not begin right away. It was not the term used, ever since there were Arabs in what Western Christendom called "Palestine." The local Arabs never used the phrase until after the defeat in the Six-Day War. And then, having jettisoned Shukairy a few years before, the Arabs collectively decided, with a little help from public-relations advisers in the West, to thoroughly redo their presentation.

Execution. And the West continues to tiptoe around these madmen, instead of calling madness what it is. Muhammad Teddy Bear Madness Update from the Evening Standard (thanks to all who sent this in):

A major security operation was under way today as a British teacher charged with inciting hatred and insulting religion was brought before a court in Sudan.

Trucks protected by armed police transported Gillian Gibbons from her cell at the CID headquarters in Khartoum where she had been kept in custody following her arrest on Sunday for allowing pupils to name a school teddy bear Mohammed.

Security was also tight at the city's court building as fears that extremists might stage a kidnap attempt ran high.

Mrs Gibbons, looking tired and distressed and wearing a dark blue jacket and blue dress, was not handcuffed.

Reports have suggested she could learn her fate by 5pm today.

Before the hearing began the public and press were cleared from the court room but only moments later the case was adjourned for two hours.

The prosecutor-general said Mrs Gibbons, whose case has drawn international condemnation, can expect a swift and fair trial under Sudanese law.

Fair trial? On a charge that is ludicrous? Sudan should be on the receiving end of international condemnation at this point. That it isn't is just more testimony to the madness of our age.

Mrs Gibbons faces 40 lashes and a year in jail after after being charged with insulting Islam. Reports today suggested the complaint against her had been made by a secretary at the school.

She was charged after behind-the-scenes political moves to avoid a court case collapsed amid growing Islamic anger in the east African country.

A Sudanese official said it was "unlikely" that Mrs Gibbons would be convicted.

A powerful Sudanese newspaper urged authorities to call a hardline Islamist leader linked to Osama bin Laden to give evidence at her trial, to stress how offensive the case was to Muslims.

Extreme Islamic groups said Mrs Gibbons "must die" and urged Muslims to hold street protests after prayers tomorrow.

At least there are some calls for sanity from Muslim groups in the West:

The Muslim Council of Britain said it was "appalled" at the decision by Sudan....

One lawyer said that if Mrs Gibbons pleads guilty and makes profuse apologies, she could emerge with a "relatively minor penalty", such as a hefty fine or a jail term equivalent to the four days she has already spent in custody.

But he warned that rising anger in Sudan, as news of the case spread, might affect the court's decision....

Mrs Gibbons technically faces three charges - insulting Islam, inciting religious hatred and contempt for religious beliefs - each of which carries a maximum penalty of 40 lashes and a year in jail. But it is believed she will stand trial on only one....

Talib Abu Salam Ibn Shareef, aka Derrick Shareef, is the fellow who said: "I swear by Allah, man ... I'm down to live for the cause and die for the cause, man," and also "I just want to smoke a judge."

Derrick Shareef Update, man. "23-year-old pleads guilty to 'jihad' plot at Rockford mall," from Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

CHICAGO (AP) - A 23-year-old man who once dreamed of waging violent jihad in Illinois now faces 30 years to life when he's sentenced next year.

Derrick Shareef pleaded guilty today to plotting a hand grenade attack on a Rockford mall crowded with Christmas shoppers.

The softspoken, bushy bearded man was apparently inspired by the violent acts of Mideast terrorists.

Apparently.

Tomorrow at the National Press Club there will be a historic event: the highest religious authority for Muslims in America, "in the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving," will present a fatwa denouncing terrorism to a leading Roman Catholic prelate and other religious leaders, who will reciprocate with their own statement praising diversity!

"Historic Display of Unity: Fiqh Council of North America to present Fatwa denouncing terrorists to Cardinal McCarrick and other religious leaders," from the Bridges to Common Ground website (thanks to Christine at CVF):

WHEN Date: November 30, 2007 Doors Open: 12:00 pm Lunch Served: 12:30 pm Event Begins: 1:00 pm

WHERE
The National Press Club, Ballroom
529 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20045

A remarkable demonstration of the unity of the American people will occur when a Fatwa denouncing terrorists and their violence, issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, Islam's highest religious authority, will be presented to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Very Rev. Samuel Lloyd III and other leaders of our nation's religious groups.

The Fatwa states that a believing Muslim cannot condone violence against innocent people, cannot associate with people who commit or promote acts of violence, and, most importantly, must report to the proper civil authorities those that might harm Americans.

It further states that targeting civilians' life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is prohibited in Islam -haram- and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not "martyrs" and that there is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism.

Read the Fatwa

In response to the Fatwa, the Christian and Jewish leaders will present a Thanksgiving Season Proclamation welcoming the action and pledging to work together to make America inhospitable to terrorists.

Here's the fatwa, from the link above:

The following Fatwa was issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, Islam’s highest religious authority in North America.

In the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday, the Fiqh Council of North America states its unequivocal and unqualified condemnation of the destruction and violence committed against innocent men and women.

This condemnation of violence is deeply rooted in true Islamic values based on the Qur’anic instructions which consider the unjust killing of a single person equivalent to the killing of al humanity (Qur’an 5:32). There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism.

Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is prohibited in Islam ― haram ― and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.”

In giving thanks for America and for American people and in the light of the teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah, we, the Fiqh Council of North America, clearly, without hesitation, strongly issue this Fatwa:

1. All acts of terrorism are forbidden in Islam.

1. It is forbidden for a Muslim to cooperate or associate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

1. It is the duty of Muslims to report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process.

We pray for the defeat of extremism, terrorism and injustice. We pray for the safety and security of our country United States and its people. We pray for the safety and security of all inhabitants of this globe. We pray that interfaith harmony and cooperation prevail both in United States and every where in the world.

On behalf of the Fiqh Council of North America.

"In the spirit of this Season of Thanksgiving" the Fiqh Council at least could have served up something fresh. Instead, all they're going to give McCarrick and Lloyd tomorrow will be leftovers. This fatwa is almost identical to the one they issued in July 2005. That one had three points:

1. All acts of terrorism targeting civilians are haram (forbidden) in Islam.

2. It is haram for a Muslim to cooperate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

3. It is the civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians.

This one also has three points, although in the two intervening years the children of the inventors of Arabic numerals seem to have forgotten how to use them:

1. All acts of terrorism are forbidden in Islam.

1. It is forbidden for a Muslim to cooperate or associate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence.

1. It is the duty of Muslims to report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process.

Two years have passed, and many people, including I myself, have pointed out the weaknesses of this fatwa. Yet now it is being reissued with slight revisions, but without any attempt to address the concerns that have been raised. The Fiqh Council "states its unequivocal and unqualified condemnation of the destruction and violence committed against innocent men and women." Is this fatwa designed to deter Muslims from imbibing the jihad ideology and joining jihad groups? If so, it needs to be much more specific and pointed. It condemns violence against "innocent men and women," but jihadists contend that no non-Muslim is innocent. So a jihadist who reads this fatwa could agree with it entirely and continue to carry out violent attacks against those he considers to be kuffar harbi -- infidels at war with Islam, and not innocents at all. If the Fiqh Council really wants to do something to stop this, it should define what it means by "innocent men and women." But this has been pointed out for two years, and they haven't done it. Why not?

The same problem runs through the document. Qur'an 5:32 is dragged out again, although the statement does specify that it only forbids "unjust" killing, and it is of course silent about 5:33, which mandates crucifixion or amputation for those who make war against Allah and his messenger Muhammad. Targeting "civilians" is condemned, again without defining what constitutes a civilian, or refuting the jihadist contention that there is no concept of "civilian" in Islamic law. Again, why not?

Note also the modification of the third point, from Muslims must "cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of all civilians" to Muslims must "report to enforcement authorities any threat which is designed to place a human being in harm’s way, bringing them before a competent court of law and in accordance with due process." Court of law and due process -- in other words, we reserve the right to protest the treatment of people like Jose Padilla and others held at Guantanamo, etc.

Finally, "we pray for the defeat of extremism, terrorism and injustice" -- all again undefined. So is this fatwa really intended to defeat Islamic jihad? If so, why all the vagueness and refusal to confront jihadism on its own terms?

Those shoes

A year or so ago I was, as usual, in an airport when I spotted a very tall, shabbily-dressed man wearing red tennis shoes. As it happened, I was talking on the phone with Hugh Fitzgerald at that moment, and so I told him: "I just passed by Garrison Keillor." Hugh urged me to go up to him and talk to him, but I, being a shy, retiring type, balked: "What on earth would I talk with him about?"

"Ask him what he thinks of jihad. Tell him about the site," Hugh said, but I wouldn't. Now, however, I think Hugh may have been right. Or at very least, if I had had with me a copy of my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), it might have been worthwhile to slip it into Keillor's hand without a word. It probably would have ended up in an airport trash bin, but maybe, just maybe, it would have headed this off.

Here (scroll down to November 27) is Keillor's take on the Crusades, from his "Writer's Almanac" (thanks to Curt):

It was on this day in 1095 that Pope Urban II, while on a speaking tour in France, called for the first Crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Turks. There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years. But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican. But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.

Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.

Okay. Here we go again.

There was no imminent threat. Muslims had occupied Jerusalem for hundreds of years.

Yes, and how had they come to occupy Jerusalem? By means of an invading army, of course. And other invading armies, animated by the same jihad ideology, had also occupied much of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. They had entered France and besieged Constantinople. The Seljuk Turks' victory over the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071, when they took the Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes prisoner, opened all of Asia Minor to them. In 1076, they conquered Syria; in 1077, Jerusalem. The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people. The same year the Seljuks established the sultanate of Rum (Rome, referring to the New Rome, Constantinople) in Nicaea, perilously close to Constantinople itself; from here they continued to threaten the Byzantines and harass the Christians all over their new domains. The Christian Empire of Byzantium, which before Islam’s wars of conquest had ruled over a vast expanse including southern Italy, North Africa, the Middle East, and Arabia, was reduced to little more than Greece. It looked as if its death at the hands of the Seljuks was imminent. The Church of Constantinople considered the pope a schismatic and had squabbled with him for centuries, but the new Emperor Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118) swallowed his pride and appealed for help. And that is how the First Crusade came about: it was a response to the Byzantine Emperor’s call for help. There was no imminent threat? Alexius I Comnenus thought there was.

But Urban II had noticed that Europe was becoming an increasingly violent place, with low-level knights killing each other over their land rights, and he thought that he could bring peace to the Christian world by directing all that violence against an outside enemy. So he made up stories of how Turks in Jerusalem were torturing and killing Christians, and anyone who was willing to join the fight against them would go to heaven.

These stories were not made up. The persecution of Christians had been going on in the Holy Land for a long time. In 1004, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, al-Hakim (985-1021), ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over the next ten years thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives. In 1009, al-Hakim gave his most spectacular anti-Christian order: he commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed, along with several other churches (including the Church of the Resurrection). Al-Hakim commanded that the tomb inside be cut down to the bedrock. He ordered Christians to wear heavy crosses around their necks (and Jews heavy blocks of wood in the shape of a calf). He piled on other humiliating decrees, culminating in the order that they accept Islam or leave his dominions.

The erratic caliph ultimately relaxed his persecution and even returned much of the property he had seized from the Church. Thanks to al-Hakim’s change of policy, which continued after his death, in 1027 the Byzantines were allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Nevertheless, Christians were in a precarious position and pilgrims remained under threat. In 1056, the Muslims expelled three hundred Christians from Jerusalem and forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. After the Seljuk conquest, this situation only worsened.

About 100,000 men from France, Germany, and Italy answered the call, formed into several large groups, and marched across Asia Minor to the Middle East. Nearly half of them died from exhaustion and sickness before they ever reached their destination. They began sacking cities along the way, and they fought among each other for the spoils of each battle. When they reached the trading city of Antioch, they killed almost everyone, including the Christians who lived there. By the time they got to Jerusalem, it had recently fallen into the hands of Egyptians, who were friendly with the Vatican.

The Vatican? An anachronistic term for the 11th century, but why should a Scandinavian Lutheran know that?

But the crusaders attacked anyway, killing every Muslim they could find. The Jews in the city gathered in the temple, and the crusaders set it on fire.

Yes, and for this brutality, as common as it was in the conduct of warfare at the time, and not singular as it is frequently portrayed today, there is no excuse.

Pope Urban II died two weeks later, never hearing the news. But the crusading would go on for the next 200 years. In the fourth and last Crusade, in 1202, the crusaders never even made it to Jerusalem, but got sidetracked and wound up destroying Constantinople, which was at the time the last great city left over from the Roman Empire.

Four Crusades? Even in the Wikipedia article linked in Keillor's post, there is reference to nine Crusades, and other lesser crusading operations. And of course neither Wikipedia nor Keillor mentions that during the 200-year period in which the Crusaders were most active, there were no Muslim incursions into Europe, although there were many such incursions both before and after this period. That 200-year interruption may have saved Europe and Western civilization from being completely conquered and Islamized, and thus made it possible for Keillor to make a career out of being affectionately condescending toward his family and childhood friends and neighbors, and featuring their charmingly naif music. But does he thank the Crusaders, without excusing their crimes? Would he dare? Not on your life!

Ed Husain is the author of The Islamist, a book about how he entered and then left the jihadist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. He recently debated Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and has now written a piece in The Guardian, "Stop supporting Bin Laden," about how Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and I are -- unwittingly, of course -- playing into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself.

This is, of course, a familiar canard, and one that I have dealt with before, when Dinesh D'Souza made the same charge. The contention is that because I -- and Hirsi Ali, and Ibn Warraq, and others -- point out that there is a broad and deeply rooted tradition of violence and supremacism within Islam, therefore we are marginalizing other Islamic traditions and legitimizing bin Laden. In saying this, Husain (and D'Souza) implies that jihadism is a clear Islamic heresy, and that there is a broad tradition within Islam that rejects violence against non-Muslims and Islamic supremacism -- and that Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq and I are ignoring or downplaying it out of some base motives. Bin Laden or someone like him invented jihadism and grafted it onto a religion that has otherwise peaceful teachings.

In reality, however, while there are a few courageous reformers out there, all -- not just one, or a few, but all -- the orthodox sects and schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law (references can be found here). There is no sect or school recognized as orthodox that rejects this. It is not playing into bin Laden's hands to point it out; in fact, it is playing into bin Laden's hands to deny it and denigrate those who point out that it is so, for there can be no reform of what one will not admit needs reforming. There are some disagreements between modern jihadism and traditional jihad theology: modern jihad is all defensive, as there is no caliph authorized to call offensive jihad, and some assert that only the state authority can call jihad in any case. But these disagreements do not touch on the central point: that it is legitimate to wage religious war. If Ed Husain wishes to pretend to the world that the situation of Islamic theology and jurisprudence is other than what it is, how sincere a reformer can he be? Wouldn't a genuine reformer acknowledge the existence of problematic passages and doctrines and formulate new ways to understand them, rather than pretending that they don't exist at all -- except in the minds of violent fanatics and those he would have you believe are merely hatemongers?

Husain's account of the debate at the Centre for Social Cohesion (before which he appeared, like Ayaan, as an invited speaker, not a representative) is revealing:

...Organised by the thinktank the Centre for Social Cohesion, and masterfully chaired by Douglas Murray, a capacity crowd of politicians, journalists, Muslims, civil servants, authors, thinktankers, publishers, police bosses, Islamists, and feminists questioned Hirsi Ali and me on issues not ordinarily raised in public. Was the Prophet Mohammad responsible for the murders committed by some of his companions? Was the prophet a military leader? Is political sovereignty for God, or humans?

Good questions. Can we get answers from this reasonable reformist? Alas, no, for the questions themselves are ignorant and hostile:

These, and other, questions stem from a deep ignorance of, and hostility towards, a complex, millennium-old Islamic tradition.

Maybe they do. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be answered. Maybe he answered them in the debate, but he certainly doesn't do so here. And since there are Muslims who say Muhammad ordered his companions to kill prisoners and to murder his opponents, and that he was a military leader, and that political sovereignty belongs to Allah, not to humans, why are non-Muslims ignorant and hostile when they ask these questions?

Just as Wahhabites and Islamists bypass scholarship, context, and history in the name of "returning to the book", Hirsi Ali and others such as Robert Spencer and Ibn Warraq commit exactly the same error. What do I mean? Let's take the question of apostasy. At an Evening Standard debate the other night, Rod Liddle had no qualms in declaring Islam, with a barrage of other baseless abuse, "a fascistic ideology". Why? Because the Qur'an commands the killing of those who abandon it. Really?

Actually, no, but read on:

Well, here are a few facts that might help the new coterie of Islam-bashers retract ill-informed statements: a) there is no verse in the Qur'an that calls for the killing of apostates;

Actually, there is no verse in the Qur'an that calls clearly and unequivocally for the killing of apostates. But Al-Shafi'i, the jurist who founded the school of Sunni jurisprudence that bears his name, held that Qur'an 2:217 called for the killing of the apostate: "And they will not cease from fighting against you till they have made you renegades from your religion, if they can. And whoso becometh a renegade and dieth in his disbelief: such are they whose works have fallen both in the world and the Hereafter." Others point to Qur'an 4:89 -- "But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them" -- as calling for the execution of apostates. The Qur'an interpreter Baydawi explained this verse this way: "Whosoever turns back from his belief (irtada), openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel."

Is it ill-informed Islam-bashing for me to quote Baydawi and al-Shafi'i in their interpretations of these Qur'an verses? I don't see why. Is it not rather disingenuous of Ed Husain to assert flatly that no verse in the Qur'an calls for the killing of apostates, without bothering to inform us that leading Islamic thinkers have said otherwise? I am all for reform and the rejection of the idea that apostates should be killed, but I seriously doubt it can be affected by denial that a problem exists rather than by confrontation of the problem.

b) the Prophet Mohammed did not kill several people who freely left Islam;

Here again, Husain doesn't mention the reason why that fact would be notable: because Muhammad himself directed that apostates be killed:

"If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him." (Bukhari 4.52.60)

"Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him." (Bukhari 9.84.57)

(Nor is it just a couple of texts in Bukhari. Muhammad's statement "Whoever changes his religion, kill him" -- من بدل دينه فاقتلوه -- is attested in whole or part, with some variations but no change of substance, also by Muslim, Malik's Muwatta, Ibn Hibban, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, An-Nassai, Ibn Majah, the Sunan al-Kubraa, Bayhaqi, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Ya`laa, Humaidi, Abd al-Razzaq, and Ibn Abi Shaybah.)

So did he not kill apostates on some occasions? Great. But unfortunately, he didn't direct his followers not to kill apostates. In fact, he did just the opposite. When Muhammad conquered Mecca, according to his ninth-century biographer Ibn Sa‘d, he ordered the Muslims to fight only those individuals or groups who resisted their advance into the city -- except for a list of people who were to be killed, even if they had sought sanctuary in the Ka’bah itself. One of those was Abdullah bin Sa’d, a former Muslim who at one time had been employed by Muhammad to write down the Qur’anic revelations; but he had subsequently apostatized and returned to the Quraysh. He was found and brought to Muhammad along with his brother, and pleaded with the Prophet of Islam for clemency: “Accept the allegiance of Abdullah, Apostle of Allah!” Abdullah repeated this twice, but Muhammad remained impassive. After Abdullah repeated it a third time, Muhammad accepted.

Did he thus reject the killing of apostates? Not quite. As soon as Abdullah had left, Muhammad turned to the Muslims who were in the room and asked: “Was not there a wise man among you who would stand up to him when he saw that I had withheld my hand from accepting his allegiance, and kill him?”

The companions, aghast, responded: “We did not know what you had in your heart, Apostle of Allah! Why did you not give us a signal with your eye?”

“It is not advisable,” said the Prophet of Islam, “for a Prophet to play deceptive tricks with the eyes.”

Apostasy from Islam had always been for Muhammad a supreme evil. When he was master of Medina, some livestock herders came to the city and accepted Islam. But they disliked Medina’s climate, so Muhammad gave them some camels and a shepherd; once away from Medina, the herders killed the shepherd, released the camels and renounced Islam. Muhammad had them pursued. When they were caught, he ordered that their hands and feet be amputated (in accord with Qur’an 5:33, which directs that those who cause “corruption in the land” be punished by the amputation of their hands and feet on opposite sides) and their eyes put out with heated iron bars, and that they be left in the desert to die. Their pleas for water, he ordered, must be refused. That's also in Bukhari, the Hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable.

It stains credulity, in light of all this, for Ed Husain to give the impression that Muhammad disapproved of the murder of apostates. This kind of assertion may be comforting to non-Muslims who would prefer to believe that the notorious capital charges levied in early 2006 against the Afghan convert from Islam to Christianity, Abdul Rahman, were some sort of anomaly. Unfortunately, this claim simply does not accord with the facts of Muhammad’s life. And here again, if Ed Husain really wishes to work for reform within Islam, he can't stand before his fellow Muslims and pretend that those stories about Muhammad don't exist. They know they exist. He has to deal with them for what they are.

c) Sufyan al-Thawri, a second-generation Muslim, clearly stated that ex-Muslims should be free to exercise their will;

Great. And who is Sufyan al-Thawri? He was a renowned ascetic, but why do all the schools of Sunni jurisprudence -- Shafi'i, Maliki, Hanafi and Hanbali -- as well as the Shi'ites teach that the apostasy of a male adult merits death, if Sufyan al-Thawri's word is so authoritative? How can Muslims be persuaded to follow Sufyan al-Thawri rather than virtually all the mainstream Islamic jurists? It is easy to impress non-Muslims with a statement like this, when they don't know Sufyan al-Thawri from a hole in the ground, but unfortunately it is Muslims who today must be convinced that Islam doesn't mandate death for apostasy, and invoking Sufyan al-Thawri isn't going to accomplish that.

d) the four schools of Muslim jurisprudential thought that endorsed the killing of apostates did so on grounds of treason and sedition, not theology;

Yet another misleading point. It is true that the four schools of Sunni jurisprudence endorsed the killing of apostates because the apostate was seen as a threat to the stability of the Islamic state. But in that same Islamic jurisprudence, there is no separation between matters of state and theology, between the sacred and the secular. That is a Western, Judeo-Christian distinction. Islam has been since Muhammad moved from Mecca to Medina a political and social system as well as an individual religious faith. To say that something is political rather than theological is essentially meaningless in terms of traditional Islam.

And in any case, the death penalty for apostates is based on the statements of Muhammad quoted above, and so have his prophetic seal. To say they're not theological is simply false.

e) the 1843-44 Ottoman reforms enshrined the right of Muslims to accept other religions without state punishment.

Indeed, but under heavy Western pressure, and with resistance from the Islamic clerocracy. These reforms, in other words, were not affected by Islam or from within Islam, but in spite of Islam. Here again, this is not to say that a form of Islam could develop that teaches that the apostate should not be harmed, but the Ottoman reforms did not come about because such a form of Islam had actually developed. It had not.

I could go on.

Oh, please do. And I hope it will be in a debate with me.

Hirsi Ali vociferously objects to the Prophet Mohammed being a moral guide. For me, it is his guidance, compassion, humanity, warmth, love, kindness that rescued me, and others, from Islamist extremism. He warned against religious extremism. His was a smiling face. His tomb in Medina today radiates the peace and serenity to which he was called.

These are lovely greeting-card sentiments, but they do not mitigate the force of Muhammad's statements above, or of his call to his followers to offer non-Muslims conversion, subjugation, or war. I'm glad that Ed Husain has apparently rejected such calls. How can he persuade more of his fellow Muslims to do so?

I concede that there is a problem with extremism among sections of the Muslim population - a context-vacuous literalism continues to threaten the very spirit of Islam.

"A context-vacuous literalism"? So it would appear that Ed Husain is now granting that the Qur'an and Sunnah, taken literally, mandate warfare against unbelievers. It is only by a rejection of that literalism that their force for incitement can be mitigated. If that is what he means, I am with him. But I find this rather odd after he strongly implied above that the Qur'an and Muhammad, taken literally, do not command death for apostates.

That same extremism has unleashed what is called "al-Qaida": an operation that adopts Islamism as its political ideology and Wahhabism as its theology. Mainstream Muslims have common cause with the west in defeating this hybrid beast. Just as Christian fundamentalists threaten the fibre of the Christian spirit (see Chris Hedges' recent book)

Yes, do, and see also my book responding to his hysteria about "Christian theocrats."

...Muslim extremists with petrodollars seek to impose a new, bastardised, soulless, rigid religiosity on the world's Muslims.

As with the issue of apostasy, there is, and has always been, much disagreement and debate within Islam on this and other contentious topics. It is by rediscovering the Muslim pluralist past that we will defeat literalism-based claims of exclusivity in our midst. There is no stronger argument against religious fanatics than to illustrate the scriptural weaknesses of their case.

Here again, Husain seems uncertain as to whether Islamic scripture bears out the jihadist case -- albeit in a literalistic, context-free way -- or not. If their case has scriptural weaknesses, it is odd that no school of Islamic jurisprudence has noticed them and modified its teaching on warfare against unbelievers and apostasy.

Hirsi Ali and others also frequently cite Muslim scripture to support their claims of a mythical "monolithic Islam". In my debate with Hirsi Ali, I was struck by the simple anecdotes she forwarded to illustrate her case. In Hirsi Ali, I see the same selective use of scripture as those that she opposes. Her objections to the Qur'an should also lead her to object to the Bible - after all, Leveticus has more references to stoning and burning sinners than ever found in the Qur'an. That's not to say it makes it right: it's about fairness in criticism....

Fairness in criticism? Physician, heal thyself! Leviticus may indeed talk more about stoning than the Qur'an, but in reality neither Jews nor Christians stone adulterers today, and both have evolved interpretative traditions that reject the literal application of such commands. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where Islamic law is still in force, stonings are still practiced. Eight women are awaiting death by stoning in Iran today, and Iranian authorities justify this by quoting Islamic law, not the statements of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If she is employing a "selective use of scripture," so are they, and yet Husain's ire is directed at her, not at them. In my own books I've explained at length how Islamic authorities interpret Islamic texts to justify warfare against unbelievers and other atrocities: it is not my interpretation, or Ayaan's, but theirs.

Will Ed Husain confront it as such and work in good faith for Islamic reform, or will he continue to attack those who, if he really rejects jihad and Islamic supremacism, should be his allies?

When ex-Muslims such as Hirsi Ali ignore the nuances, complexities, and plurality inherent within Islam and allow the actions of a minority of Wahhabite-Islamists to speak for a billion Muslims, then she plays into the hands of extremists and allows their discourse to dominate one of the great faiths of our world. Worse, it creates a public space in which attacking all Muslims and Islam becomes acceptable, even fashionable. Demonising Europe's second largest minority helps nobody. No good can come of ratcheting up the prejudice against them. Yes, identify and combat extremists and in that fight you will find orthodox Muslims as partners. But continue to attack with ignorance, spite and hatred our history, our prophet, our scriptures, our scholars: then you confirm the al-Qaida narrative of a war against Islam. No, there is no moral equivalence between Bin Laden's murderous worldview and his critics. But a damage is being done that may take generations to repair.

When Muslims such as Ed Husain ignore the deep scriptural, theological and legal foundations of Islamic violence and supremacism, rather than acknowledging those foundations and calling for reform and reinterpretation of those aspects of Islam, then he plays into the hands of extremists and allows their discourse to dominate one of the great faiths of our world. For it will continue to dominate as long as it goes unchallenged, and Ed Husain and others like him hinder genuine reform by attacking those who are trying to call attention to these aspects.

Then he plays the basest "Islamophobia" card, suggesting that Ayaan is creating an environment in which "attacking all Muslims and Islam becomes acceptable, even fashionable." No. If anyone is doing that, it is Ed Husain: if he really wants to end "ignorance, spite and hatred" directed at Muslims, he could start by ending his sly disingenousness, his evasions, his half-truths and finger-pointing in the face of the biggest crisis of our time.

Crucifixion:

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter..." (Qur'an 5:33)

Beheading:

"Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens...." (Qur'an 47:4)

"Muslim crucified, two Buddhists beheaded in Thailand: police," from AFP (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) — A Muslim military informant was shot and crucified, while two Buddhist men were beheaded Wednesday by suspected Islamic separatists in Thailand's restive south, police said.

The Muslim man, a 58-year-old who belonged to a government-backed militia, was shot and then stabbed so badly that he was nearly decapitated, police Lieutenant Khanchitthol Kreunor told AFP.

Suspected rebels then drove six-inch nails through his head, arms and legs to attach him to two pieces of wood, which were laid out like a cross in the middle of a road in Rueso district of Narathiwat province, near the southern border with Malaysia, he said.

Khanchitthol said police found a note written in Thai and left near the cross, reading: "This is what the infidels deserve. The soldier dogs must meet this end."

"The victim was attacked and killed in such a grisly way because they knew he was a military informant. This is to terrify the people," Khanchitthol said.

About two hours later, two Buddhist fishmongers aged 20 and 61 were shot and then beheaded in another district of Narathiwat, police said.

The killings came after a month of spiralling violence in the region, which has seen more than 2,700 killed since separatist unrest erupted four years ago....

Muhammad Teddy Bear Madness Update. This woman is being charged under a law against "insulting religion and inciting hatred" for allowing schoolchildren to name a teddy bear Muhammad. It's an interesting illustration of how hate laws can be used. From CNN (thanks to all who sent this in):

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A British teacher arrested in Sudan after allowing her class to name a teddy bear "Mohammed" has been charged by authorities with offending religion, state-run media in Sudan report.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office confirmed Wednesday that Gillian Gibbons had been charged under Article 125 of Sudan's constitution, the law relating to insulting religion and inciting hatred....

Under Sudan's Sharia law, insulting Islam is punishable with 40 lashes, a jail term of up to six months or a fine.

Boulos said naming the teddy bear was "a totally innocent mistake" and that Gibbons had never intended to cause offense.

Will no one in the world stand up and call this madness? In a sane world, we would see the UN denouncing the Sudanese government, as well as the State Department and more. Instead, we see pleading with these monsters: it was "a totally innocent mistake," you see. In other words, the lashes would be completely justified if she had meant to poke fun at Muhammad, but she didn't mean to, you see, so please give her clemency.

Will no one stand up and call this what it is: sheer, outrageous madness?

The imam in question is Imam Musa, the Washington, D.C., Muslim leader who wants to establish an "Islamic State of North America" no later than 2050.

"Guard Accused of Hiding Ties to Imam," by Stephen Manning for AP (thanks to Marked Manner):

GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A former security guard at Andrews Air Force Base who failed to put his Muslim name on a job application was trying to conceal his ties to a controversial Washington imam, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

U.S. District Court jurors began hearing the case against Darrick Michael Jackson, who failed to list "Abdul-Jalil Mohammed" as an alias on an application for a job at the suburban Washington base, home to Air Force One.

Jackson's attorney, David Chamble, said that Jackson used the Mohammed name only while at mosque or with Muslim friends, and that he didn't consider it a true alias that he needed to disclose. Chamble called it "an innocent omission" and excoriated the government for pursing criminal charges against Jackson.

Jackson is charged with making a false statement and could face five years in prison if convicted.

He already was a security guard at Andrews when he reapplied in 2005 after the contract for security at the base changed. He had to fill out a federal form, which asked whether he had any aliases.

At the time, he was affiliated with the Masjid Al-Islam mosque in southeast Washington, which is led by a fiery imam named Abdul Alim Musa. Musa is not on trial in the case, but prosecutors said Jackson tried to hide his ties to Musa and the mosque to avoid an investigation that might have led to the denial of his application.

Federal prosecutor David Salem told jurors, without elaborating, that Musa "has made some inflammatory statements about the United States." He told jurors the government was not pursuing the case because of Jackson's religion....

Winfield Myers writes about the veteran dhimmi academic at Campus Watch:

Who would assess the Christian response to the letter from Muslim leaders, "A Common Word between Us and You," in the following words:

This is an initiative that I think has some traction. And I know, there's a desire on the part of a critical mass of Muslims who want to move forward, but to be quite frank, I'm concerned about the Christian leadership, and it's how the Christian leadership responds that will affect how this moves forward.

a. Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose $20 million donation to Georgetown bought him an eponymous Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding;

b. Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz, who successfully threatened Cambridge University Press with a lawsuit over the book Alms for Jihad, which CUP pulped;

c. The Dutch Catholic bishop Martinus "Tiny" Muskens, who says that Christians should refer to God as Allah to promote better relations with Muslims;

d. John Esposito, director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center at Georgetown.

If you guessed "d," you're correct.

Speaking with the Voice of America, Esposito--one of the most prominent professor of Middle East studies in America--remained true to form by blaming the West, in this case Christian leaders, for not responding with, one assumes, sufficient humility to the overture from Islamic leaders....

Curly, Moe, and Himmler

Naked moral equivalence, endorsed by Olmert, Bush, and -- of course -- Abbas.

Video here, of Bush reading from the joint statement.

Story here: "Mideast leaders vow 'new era of peace'"

And at FrontPage: "Moral Inversion at Annapolis," by P. David Hornik and "Palestinians: Aggressors, Not Victims," by David Meir-Levi.

Take a president with no understanding of the jihadist intransigence that fuels the Palestinian/Israel conflict -- not quibbles over the ownership of this or that piece of land -- who is desperate to shore up his sagging legacy. Take an Israeli prime minister who seems defiantly committed to the proposition that an Israel small enough and defenseless enough will be left alone by the jihadists, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Add in a "Palestinian" leader who is threatened at home by forces even more violently intransigent than he is, and who is leader of a group that tried to assassinate that same Israeli prime minister just a few months ago -- indicating that he himself is either complicit or ineffectual.

What do you get? A peace based on the equation of jihad terrorist violence against innocent people with resistance to that violence. Not an auspicious beginning.

Will his actions be just as tough? "Sarkozy Calls French Riots Unacceptable," by Christine Ollivier for AP:

PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that rioters who shot at police would be brought to justice as violence that rocked Paris suburbs appeared to ebb.

It was the first time Sarkozy, who had just returned from China, entered the fray since the rioting broke out Sunday night. The violence, which Sarkozy called "unacceptable," eased Tuesday night after police were deployed in force and quickly rounded up youths lobbing Molotov cocktails and setting cars ablaze.

The violence has drawn comparisons with riots that raged through suburbs nationwide in 2005, and has shown that anger still smolders in poor housing projects where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.

"We will find the shooters," and they will "be brought to account before justice," Sarkozy said after meeting with a wounded police captain hospitalized in Eaubonne north of Paris.

The violence erupted Sunday after the deaths of two minority teens whose motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.

Muslim leaders deny it. The very idea, however, that such a promise would win them votes -- which doesn't seem to being challenged by anyone involved -- belies the Western dogma that only a tiny minority of Muslims reject Western pluralistic government and mores.

"Kenyan Muslims deny Sharia claims," from the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

Kenyan Muslim leaders have dismissed as propaganda allegations that an opposition party promised to introduce Sharia for Muslims if it won elections.

The National Muslim Leaders Forum said its deal with the Orange Democratic Movement was to end the current discrimination against Muslims.

Christian leaders have been calling for the pact to be made public to end angry speculation ahead of December's polls.

Roughly one-third of Kenya's population of 34 million is Muslim.

Recent opinion polls show 45% of those interviewed support ODM's Raila Odinga compared to 43% who favour President Mwai Kibaki, who is running on a Party of National Unity ticket.

Rendition probe

Muslim leaders decided to make the pact public after a document circulated on the internet claimed that Mr Odinga's ODM had pledged to introduce Sharia in parts of the country where Muslims are in the majority.

Raila Odinga (front row with hat) at the ODM 2007 election campaign launch
The ODM is hoping Mr Odinga can hold on to his poll lead

"There was a fear that Muslims will force their faith on other people, Islam does not allow suppression of other religions and we will be the last to advocate for this," said Abdullahi Abdi of the National Muslim Leaders Forum.

Instead the memorandum of understanding, signed in August, states that Mr Odinga has pledged to defend Muslims against harassment and victimisation by state security forces who claim to be fighting terrorism.

Nuradin Abdi Update. From the Associated Press:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A judge on Tuesday sentenced a Somali immigrant to 10 years in prison for plotting to blow up an Ohio shopping mall with a man later convicted of being an Al Qaeda terrorist.

Nuradin Abdi, a cell phone salesman before his arrest, will be deported to Somalia after serving the sentence. U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley imposed the sentence as part of a plea deal Abdi agreed to in July.

In a 20-minute statement to the court, Abdi's attorney Mahir Sherif said his client apologized to the people of the United States, the people of Ohio and the Muslim community.

One of those miraculous changes of heart precipitated by getting caught.

"He apologizes for the things he thought about and the things he talked about and the crimes he pleaded guilty to," Sherif said. "He wants to make it very, very clear that he does not hate America."

Yeah, sure, it's a swell place. It's just so full of infidel Americans.

The alleged plot was never carried out and Sherif long maintained Abdi was guilty at most of ranting about the United States' handling of the war in Afghanistan.

Abdi pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to provide material support for terrorists. Three charges were dropped as part of his plea deal; Abdi could have received 80 years in prison had he been convicted of all the counts he had faced.

The UN and the human rights organizations should be rushing to protect this child. Muhammad Teddy Bear Madness Update: "Student defends Briton jailed for insulting Islam," by Opheera McDoom for Reuters (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A 7-year-old Sudanese student on Tuesday defended his British teacher accused of insulting Islam saying he had chosen to call a teddy bear Mohammad after his own name.

Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old teacher at the Unity High School in Khartoum, was arrested on Sunday after complaints from parents that she had insulted the Prophet Mohammad and is facing a third night in jail without being charged.

"The teacher asked me what I wanted to call the teddy," the boy said shyly, his voice barely rising above a whisper. "I said Mohammad. I named it after my name," he added.

Sitting in his garden wearing shorts, his family, who did not want their full names used, urged him to describe what had happened.

He said he was not thinking of Islam's Prophet when asked to suggest a name, adding most of the class agreed with his choice.

The East, that is, Islam, or at least Sufi mysticism. Attending a whirling dervish ceremony in Turkey, Charles waxed enthusiastic:

When they had finished the Prince gave a speech on Rumi’s appeal in the 21st century. “Whatever it is, it seems to me that Western life has become deconstructed and partial.” The East, on the other hand, had given us “parables of the soul”.

From "Whirling dervishes’ star turn caps Prince’s homage to Islamic mystic," by Alan Hamilton in the Times (thanks to all who sent this in).

Not that the dhimmi Eurocrats will need much of a push to do their bidding.

"Iran May Seek to Lure Europe with Gas," from Spiegel (thanks to Twostellas):

Iran wants to use its massive gas reserves to wield influence over Europe. But if offering to supply Europe with gas via a pipeline through Turkey doesn't work, then the Revolutionary Guards may resort to plan B.

Iran's huge gas reserves, Europe's energy needs and the US's hard line on Iran's nuclear program all add up to an explosive mixture.

Iran's huge gas reserves, Europe's energy needs and the US's hard line on Iran's nuclear program all add up to an explosive mixture.

Iran is planning to leverage its massive gas reserves to increase its influence in Western Europe -- by fair means or foul. If selling gas to Europe doesn't work, then Iran's Revolutionary Guards may resort to violence in the worst-case scenario.

According to intelligence sources in the Middle East, Iranian leaders are considering making an unusual offer to supply Europe with large quantities of natural gas. The gas would be supplied via the planned Nabucco pipeline, which will run from Azerbaijan to Austria via Turkey.

The offer would be attractive to European leaders as it would allow Europe to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas. Germany currently gets about a third of its natural gas requirements from Russia, and demand is expected to increase in the coming years. There are major concerns in Europe about the continent relying too heavily on Russia for its natural gas, particularly after a series of recent disputes in which Russia cut off energy supplies to Ukraine and Belarus.

According to minutes of a meeting obtained by SPIEGEL, a representative of Iran's Revolutionary Guard presented the proposal to Iran's National Security Council. The order to prepare the plan apparently came directly from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to the intelligence sources.

The Jihad Watch Interludes are now to be found, collected for easy clickable reference, on the upper left of the homepage, under the photograph of Oriana Fallaci. That link leads here, where you will find an explanation of why they're on the site. In order to make more likely that these selections do not lie neglected in the outer ether, they will now be posted also as part of the ever-changing group of new offerings, with each new entry placed at the bottom of the ever-lengthening cumulative list of previous entries.

These songs and excerpts from movies, and occasional poems, constitute “Interludes” that, like a dish of sherbet to cleanse the palate, are offered for sampling between one bout, and another, of grim and disturbing discussion of the nature and menace of Islamic supremacism. A means of mental escape over the North Wall, while the warden is not only deliberately averting his gaze, but also made sure to leave the ladder which you are expected to use. If, however, you find yourself unable to derive unalloyed pleasure from such offerings, and need metal more attractive, something in the uplift or enlightenment line, then you can, after having listened to a song or two or twelve, analyse away, to your heart’s content, what it was about that song, or singer, or sentiment expressed, that is so ineluctably un-Islamic in every way, and surely could never have been produced in a state or society suffused with Islam.

You can then add to the list of things not to be tolerated in Islam almost all of American, and West European, popular music. One more recognition of what we think of as harmless and is in Islam deemed haram and condemned with ferocity. Thus you can add to the lengthening list of things not to be tolerated in Islam, which obviously includes most forms of artistic expression, the free and skeptical inquiry without which the enterprise of science is not possible, the solicitude for individual rights and for the autonomy of the individual that is such an important part of advanced Western democracies, these harmless and pleasure-giving and laugh-provoking ("There is no humor in Islam" -- Ayatollah Khomeini) songs and movie excerpts, the mere insects of an hour. Insects of an hour they may be, but those insects keep chirping on the hearth, by the fireside, in the gloaming.

Those who stay to listen, and allow themselves to be amused or moved by the musical files so assiduously assembled by a harried staff of one, may be impressed to learn that that staff, in order to save time and conserve energy, has taken to wearing roller-skates so as to more quickly shoot from one part of the room in which the site’s musical and movie files are stacked and stored, to another.

Here, doled out daily by that sometimes accommodating, and occasionally truculent staff, as the tastiest if not always the most nutritious part of the panem quotidianum to be found placed each day in your lunch-bag, the one that contains the viaticum for each visitor's long day's journey, whatever time he arrives by unannounced click, into the remains of that day, is that list of Interludes:

Musical Interlude #1:

In The Gloaming, By The Fireside (Jessie Matthews)

Musical Interlude #2:

But We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye (Annette Hanshaw)

Musical Interlude #3:

Black Coffee (Marjorie Stedeford)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #4:

Voulez-Vous Le Taximeter? (Charlie Chaplin)

Musical Interlude #5:

Sittin' In The Dark (Anona Winn and Sam Browne)

Tell Me Dear Why Am I So Romantic? (Lillian Roth)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #6:

The Awful Truth (Irene Dunne and Cary Grant)

Musical Interlude #7:

I Can't Get Started (Bunny Berigan)

Musical Interlude #8:

Then I'll Be Tired Of You (Ambrose and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #9:

The Very Thought of You (Al Bowlly)

Melancholy Baby (Al Bowlly)

Cinematic Literary Musical Interlude #10:

Richard III (Ian McKellen)

Musical Interlude #11:

Exactly Like You (Elsie Carlisle)

Musical Interlude #12:

Si Tu M'Aimes (Jean Sablon)

Musical Interlude #13:

When You Take Me For A Buggy-Ride (Bessie Smith)

Musical Interlude #14:

The Wine of Love (Pyotr Leshchenko)

Musical Interlude #15:

If I Can't Have You (Lee Morse)

Musical Interlude #16:

I'm Dancing With Tears In My Eyes (Ruth Etting)

Musical Interlude #17:

My Old Man Said Follow The Van (Lily Morris)

Musical Interlude #18:

Tout Va Bien Madame La Marquise (Ray Ventura)

Musical Interlude #19:

I'll String Along With You (Smith Ballew Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #20:

At The First Sign (Hanka Ordonowna)

Musical Interlude #21:

I'm For Him One Hundred Percent (Frances Day)

Musical Interlude #22:

I Must Have That Man (Adelaide Hall)

Musical Interlude #23:

Let's Misbehave (Irving Aronson and The Commanders)

Musical Interlude #24:

Do, Do Something (Dorothy Lee)

Musical Interlude #25:

My Cutey's Due At Two-To-Two (Ted Weems and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #26:

I Want To Be Bad (Ambrose and His Orchestra)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #27:

The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo (Charles Coborn)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #28:

El Negro Zumbon (Silvana Mangano)

Musical Interlude #29:

You've Got Me Crying Again (Lee Wiley)

Musical Interlude #30:

Love Me Or Leave Me (Chick Endor)

Musical Interlude #31:

Je Cherche Un Millionaire (Mistinguett)

Musical Interlude #32:

She's The Sweetheart Of Six Other Guys (Harry Reser Orchestra, voc. Tom Stacks)

Musical Interlude #33:

You're Driving Me Crazy (Leo Monosson)

Musical Interlude #34:

Shanghai Lil (Gene Kardos Orchestra, voc.Dick Robertson)

Musical Interlude #35:

Love Me Tonight (Anson Weeks Orchestra, voc. Bill Moreing)

Musical Interlude #36:

Thanks For Everything (Artie Shaw Orchestra, voc. Helen Forrest)

Musical Interlude #37:

The Teddy Bears' Picnic (Henry Hall and His Orchestra)

Musical Interlude #38:

Looking For You (Jack Hylton and His Orchestra), voc. Pat O'Malley)

Musical Interlude #39:

My Dif'rent Kind of Man (Lizzie Miles)

Cinematic Interlude #40:

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Alec Guinness)

Musical Interlude #41:

Was kann der Sigismund dafür, daß er so schön ist?(Marek Weber Tanz-Orch., voc. Siegfried Arno)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #42:

Forty-Second Street (Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell)

Musical Interlude #43:

I Can't Believe It's True (Frances Langford)

Barry Rubin explains at the GLORIA Center some of the many things that are wrong with the Annapolis conference:

What would you do if your foreign policy agenda had these priorities:

* Get Arab and European support for solving the Iraq crisis.
* Mobilize Arab and European forces against a threat led by Iran and its allies, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah.
* Get Iran to stop its campaign to get nuclear weapons.
* Reestablish American credibility toward friends and deterrence toward enemies.
* Reduce the level of Israel-Palestinian conflict.

That pretty much describes the U.S. framework for dealing with the Middle East nowadays. The Annapolis conference is not going to contribute to these goals. The most likely outcome is either failure or a non-event portrayed as a victory because it took place at all. No one is going to say: We are so grateful at the United States becoming more active on Arab-Israeli issues that we are going to back its policy on other issues.

On the contrary, the conference is more likely to show the inability of the United States to produce results, thus undermining belief in U.S. leverage in the region in general. It shines the spotlight on the most divisive issue, the great excuse for not doing more to help U.S. efforts, raising its prominence. What most of Washington simply fails to understand is that any real demand for Palestinian or Arab concessions will be fodder for radical groups and frighten Arab regimes, pushing the latter away from support for America rather than toward it. And any Israeli concessions obtained by this process will not satisfy their demands either.

Despite thousands of claims by lots of famous people, national leaders, and respected journals, solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not make radical Islamism or terrorism go away. Would you like to know why? Because even if this issue could be solved—which isn’t about to happen for reasons requiring a different article—to do so would necessitate a compromise including an end to the conflict, acceptance of Israel, and compromises by the Arab side. These steps would inflame the extremists and make any Arab rulers who accepted it vulnerable to being called traitors. It would increase instability in the Arab world, also by removing the conflict as splendid excuse and basis for mobilizing support for the current rulers. Arab politicians understand this reality; most people in the West don’t.

Read it all.

An Orwellian story on the Annapolis Appeasement Party: it's Israel that isn't ready for peace. Forget about those suicide bombers and the annihilationist rhetoric. The ones who don't want peace are, of course, the Jews. Maybe Matthew Lee means that Israel isn't ready for total surrender.

Meanwhile, there is nothing much in this document. They're going to establish a Palestinian state. Great. But then, unless Israel decides to rush headlong to suicide, that will stall on the Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel. Or it will stall when the Palestinians recognize Israel but then in Arabic say the opposite, and act as if they still believe it has no legitimacy. And they are certain to do that.

"Israel, Palestinians OK negotiating plan," by Matthew Lee for Associated Press:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed Tuesday to immediately resume long-stalled talks toward a deal by the end of next year that would create an independent Palestinian state, using a U.S.-hosted Mideast peace conference to launch their first negotiations in seven years.

In a joint statement read by President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged to start discussions on the core issues of the conflict next month and accepted the United States as arbiter of interim steps.

"We agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements," it said.

"We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008," said the document, which was reached after weeks of intense diplomacy and was uncertain until just before Bush announced it.[...]

Yet none of those difficult issues were mentioned in the joint document, which was to be endorsed by the conference participants, including key Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Syria, later in the day.

And, despite their agreement and impassioned rhetoric, neither Olmert nor Abbas showed any sign of yielding on the fundamental differences that have led to the collapse of all previous peace efforts: the borders of a Palestinian state, the status of disputed Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

But Olmert did promise that "the negotiations will address all the issues which thus far have been evaded. We will not avoid any subject. While this will be an extremely difficult process for many of us, it is nevertheless inevitable."

For his part, Abbas made an impassioned appeal to Israelis to support the peace process, saying that war and terrorism "belong to the past."

Oh yeah? Well, since you are one of the chief ones responsible for it, now you will have to back up those words.

"Neither we nor you must beg for peace from the other. It is a joint interest for us and you," he said. "Peace and freedom is a right for us, just as peace and security is a right for you and us."

"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end. It is time for us to look at the future together with confidence and hope. It is time for this tortured land that has been called the land of love and peace to live up to its name," Abbas said.

Occupation. Most will take this to mean he will accept the 1967 borders. But they weren't acceptable to the Palestinians before 1967.

His speech was immediately rejected by Hamas, which stormed to power in the Gaza Strip in June, a month before Bush announced plans for the peace conference.

Abbas "has no mandate to discuss, to agree, or to erase any word related to our rights," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in Gaza. "He is isolated (and) represents himself only."

In the face of such resistance, Arab support for the process is deemed essential and Olmert, speaking directly to those at the conference who have no relations with his country, said: "It is time to end the boycott and alienation toward the state of Israel."

"We no longer and you no longer have the privilege of clinging to dreams which are disconnected from the suffering of our peoples," he said.

After reading aloud the freshly reached agreement, Bush shook hands with Abbas and Olmert. Then those leaders shook each other's hands.

To maximize the moment of potential breakthrough, the three went through the gestures again. This time, they clasped hands together. And, for a moment, Bush stepped back and raised his hands to encourage the other two to come together for a handshake, which they did.

It harkened back to a memorable image of his predecessor, Bill Clinton, in one of his own Mideast efforts.[...]

Yes, and so much came from that!

Saeb Erekat, a principal Palestinian negotiator, sounded upbeat, saying that after seven years of a stalemate "now we have an opportunity" to get back to serious talks with broad backing.

"We have the whole world. We have President Bush. And it is going to be two states living side by side in peace," Erekat said. "Today is over. What's important is tomorrow."

Privately, however, members of the Palestinian delegation expressed skepticism that a deal resolving all the so-called final status issues could be reached within a year, and by the end of Bush's term in January 2009.

The joint document is general and doesn't deal with the difficult issues that that long divided Israel and the Palestinians. And the negotiation process is expected to be very tough and very long, according to Palestinians, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn't want to publicly spoil the conference's positive atmosphere.

The Palestinians believe Israel is not ready for total peace and Olmert will face a difficult time politically as any deal takes shape. Meantime, Abbas is seen as reliable, but also weak and a leader who can't in the end deliver on an agreement.

An update on this story. "Bid to stop whipping over toy bear," from CNN (thanks to Mackie):

LONDON, England (CNN) -- UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Tuesday that officials were working to secure the early release of a British teacher who faces being whipped in Sudan after she allowed her class to name a teddy bear "Mohammed."

Gillian Gibbons, 54, has been accused of blasphemy and is being held by police in the capital Khartoum, Kirsty Saunders, British Foreign Office spokeswoman told CNN.

Police arrested the school teacher after she asked her class of seven-year-olds to come up with a name for the toy as part of a school project, according to widespread media reports.

Parents of students at the Unity High School in Khartoum informed the authorities and Gibbons was taken into custody Sunday, Saunders told CNN.

So far Gibbons has yet to be charged with any offense, however, under Sudanese law, insulting Islam is punishable with 40 lashes, a jail term of up to six months or a fine, she said.

However, a Sudanese official told CNN that if police decided that Gibbons had acted in good faith, she would most likely be spared punishment.

"If the intentions are good, definitely she will be absolved and will be cautioned not to repeat this thing again," Mutrif Siddig, Sudan's under secretary for foreign affairs, said.[...]

According to a report in The Times newspaper, Gibbons had asked the children to pick their favorite name for the new class mascot, which she was using to aid lessons about animals and their habitats.

A member of the Sudanese government told CNN Muslim parents at the school informed the authorities after considering that her actions were offensive to their faith.

Mutrif Siddig, Sudan's under secretary for foreign affairs, said: "To give the name of Mohammed to this teddy bear, it was considered as insult by some parents. And this school is mixed, it is not all Christian students."[...]

Separately, CNN contacted a member of staff, who confirmed the school had been shut down temporarily as a result of the incident involving Gibbons. He refused to give his name and said no other members of staff were available.

"Attacks target doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists."

"Prelate Says Mosul Christians Targeted," from Zenit (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

ROME, NOV. 26, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The bishop of Mosul, Iraq, said that in his city, as in other parts of the nation, there is an effort to force Christians and educated professionals to emigrate.

Bishop Faraj Raho, a member of the delegation that accompanied newly elevated Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, to Rome for Saturday's consistory, spoke with AsiaNews about the continuing conflict in Mosul.

"Unlike Baghdad, the situation in Mosul is not improving," said Bishop Raho. "It is apparent that U.S.-led coalition forces have begun 'cleaning up' the country in the south where the influence of Iran and Syria is strongest: Basra, Ramadi, Baquba and Baghdad. As the United States moves up, so do the terrorists, who are now concentrated in Mosul."

"In Mosul," he continued, "religious persecution is more noticeable than elsewhere, because the city is split along religious lines. Unlike Kirkuk, where divisions are ethnic with Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs vying for Christian support, the division between Muslims and Christians is sharper in Mosul."

The bishop said there is a move to empty the city of its Christian inhabitants, though he said "such a plan does not target Christians alone, but the intelligentsia and the professional class as well, Muslims included."

"However, if Christians are only 3% of the city's total population, they represent 35% of those with a higher education. Forcing these people to leave means preventing the country from rising again. It means fueling ignorance, which is a support for terrorism," Bishop Raho explained.

He continued, "Such a plan is under way elsewhere in the country. Attacks target doctors, lawyers, professors, journalists. The plan is the brainchild of those who run international politics and Iraq's neighbors. No one wants a free and independent Iraq because it would be too strong. Together we would constitute a great intellectual and economic power. By keeping the country weak and divided, it is easier to dominate it."...

Hamas and Islamic Jihad hold to the hard line, refusing to understand that Abbas is getting what they want by different means. By Nidal al-Mughrabi for Reuters (thanks to Mackie):

GAZA (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Palestinians joined anti-Annapolis rallies in Gaza and the West Bank on Tuesday, chanting "Death to Israel" and calling President Mahmoud Abbas a traitor for attending the peace talks.

Speaking at the largest protest in Hamas-run Gaza, leaders of the Islamist group which seized the enclave from Abbas's forces in June said the president had no right to make concessions to Israel at the U.S.-hosted conference.

"Let them go to a thousand conferences, we say in the name of the Palestinian people that we did not authorize anyone to sign any agreement that harms our rights," Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, told a cheering crowd.

"Anyone who does so will be judged by history as a traitor."

Hundreds also defied a ban on anti-Annapolis rallies in the West Bank, where Abbas holds sway, to attend protests held by a snall Islamist group in Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron -- where up to 3,000 people gathered.

Abbas's security forces clashed with protesters, hitting out at the crowd with batons, shooting into the air and firing tear gas to disperse the rallies. A journalist was injured and up to 30 people were arrested in Ramallah, a Reuters witness said.

In Gaza, journalists estimated crowds of up to 100,000 people. Hamas put the number closer to 250,000 -- similar to the turnout at a rally called by Abbas's secular Fatah faction earlier this month for the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death.

Waving Palestinian flags as well as the green Hamas banner and black flag of the Islamic Jihad faction, protesters shouted "Abbas is a traitor"....

Human Events asked me to write about reactions on the "Muslim street" to the Annapolis summit, so I did that for this week's column: "Gloom Before Annapolis." But the "Muslim street" reactions didn't leave me much room to say what I really thought of the conference itself. Frank Gaffney's piece in the Washington Times, "Gang rape in Annapolis," is much better and more worth reading:

It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today's so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice's conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia.

This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction.

The Bush Administration also, at least as far as the dismemberment goes. Read it all.

Escalation. "Rampaging Youths" Update. "77 police officers hurt in Paris riots," by Angela Charlton for the Associated Press:

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France - Rampaging youths rioted for a second night in Paris' suburbs, firing at officers and ramming burning cars into buildings. At least 77 officers were injured, a senior police union official said Tuesday.

The overnight violence was more intense than during three weeks of rioting in 2005, said the official, Patrice Ribeiro. He said that "genuine urban guerillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons" were among the rioters.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town in Paris' northern suburbs.

Residents claimed that officers left the crash scene without helping the teens, whose motorbike collided with the car. Officials cast doubt on the claim, but the internal police oversight agency was investigating.

Rioting first erupted in Villiers-le-Bel on Sunday night. It grew worse and spread Monday night to other towns north of Paris. Rioters hurled stones and petrol bombs at police, authorities said.

The use of firearms added a dangerous new dimension. Firearms are widespread in France, and police generally carry guns. Guns, though, were rarely used in the 2005 riots that spread to poor housing projects nationwide.

Police are facing "a situation that is far worse than that of 2005," said Ribeiro, national secretary of the Synergie officers union.

"Our colleagues will not allow themselves to be fired upon indefinitely without responding," he warned on RTL radio. "They will be placed in situations which will become untenable."

Yet another indication of why large-scale Islamic reform is not on the horizon. "Indonesia: Egyptian Islamic scholar blocked from speaking at seminar," from AKI (thanks to Fjordman):

Jakarta, 26 Nov. (AKI) – The Indonesian government has yielded to the pressure of the country’s traditional religious institutions and prevented an Egyptian progressive Islamic academic from speaking at an international Islamic seminar to be held in Malang, East Java, on Tuesday.

The organisers of the seminar said that Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd withdrew from the event under pressure from the government.

The director of Islamic higher education institutions Abdurrahman Masud said his office had received demands from "people and Islamic organizations" to bar Abu Zayd from attending.

It is believed that the decision was made under pressure from the Indonesia Ulama Council, a traditional state-sanctioned religious organization that has recently gained more leverage with the government.

Masud told the The Jakarta Post newspaper that “We suggested that Abu Zayd not attend (the forum) in Malang for its goodness and damage. It is not a ban but suggestion.”...

Abu Zayd is considered one of the leading progressive Islamic thinkers. He lives in exile in the Netherlands, where he moved after suffering religious persecution in Egypt for his views on the Koran as a religious, mythical and literary work.

But what did they repent of? They repented of takfir -- the practice of branding fellow Muslims non-Muslims, and thus lawfully to be killed. This practice is used promiscuously by modern jihad groups, and it is that that Saudi authorities made sure they "repented" of -- because that targets them. They did go farther -- read on -- but nagging questions remain.

"Over 1,500 Extremists Freed After Repenting," from Arab News (thanks to all who sent this in):

RIYADH, 26 November 2007 — Saudi authorities have released more than 1,500 reformed extremists, who were detained on charges of embracing and spreading takfeer (the ideology that brands other Muslims who disagree with them as infidels).

The extremists, under the guidance of the Ministry of Interior, had undergone lengthy counseling, according to Muhammad Al-Nujaimi, a member of the Counseling Committee and professor of comparative jurisprudence at the King Fahd Security College....

The committee is tasked with the duty of reforming youths in an intellectual and rational manner on the basis of Shariah. “The committee has met around 5,000 times to offer counseling to 3,200 people, who were accused of embracing the takfeer ideology. The committee has successfully completed reforming 1,500 people,” Al-Nujaimi said.

The suspects were largely confused about the meaning of jihad, which led to their believing in committing blind violence. They also viewed that the present Muslim rulers, scholars and public were infidels, and therefore demanded the establishment of a single Islamic state, said Al-Nujaimi.

Blind violence is out? Good. What about calculated, open-eyed violence? And note again the emphasis on not viewing Muslim rulers as infidels.

“After several graded sessions with the committee, and having been convinced of their misguided vision, they renounced their erroneous ideologies, including the concept of driving out all infidels from the Arabian Peninsula,” he said.

I guess they would have subjected Muhammad himself to a few sessions.

The committee first evaluates the personality and the ideological crisis suffered by the suspect, and then decides on how to clean his mind of the mistaken impressions, said Al-Nujaimi.

Clean. Not wash. Got it?

The signers are a veritable who's who of Christian leaders in the United States. And there's nothing essentially wrong with such a gesture: no community has a monopoly on evil, or is entirely free from it. But it is singularly unfortunate in this instance, since Muslim groups worldwide have never, in any context, offered a similar gesture. Where are the apologies for the jihad conquests and dhimmitude? They will, most assuredly, not be forthcoming.

From the Khaleej Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

ABU DHABI—Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century, according to leading Christian leaders.

Responding to an open letter in October signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world, the Christian leaders also asked the Muslim world for forgiveness “We want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbours. Before we “shake your hand” in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world”, they said in the letter which was made available to the press here yesterday.

Following is the full text of the letter:

As members of the worldwide Christian community, we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. A Common Word Between Us and You identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ’s call to love God and neighbour was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of Israel embodied in the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). We receive the open letter as a Muslim hand of conviviality and cooperation extended to Christians worldwide. In this response we extend our own Christian hand in return, so that together with all other human beings we may live in peace and justice as we seek to love God and our neighbours.

Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility. Since Jesus Christ says, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye” (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the “war on terror”) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbours. Before we “shake your hand” in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world.

Religious Peace-World Peace “Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world.” We share the sentiment of the Muslim signatories expressed in these opening lines of their open letter. Peaceful relations between Muslims and Christians stand as one of the central challenges of this century, and perhaps of the whole present epoch. Though tensions, conflicts, and even wars in which Christians and Muslims stand against each other are not primarily religious in character, they possess an undeniable religious dimension. If we can achieve religious peace between these two religious communities, peace in the world will clearly be easier to attain. It is therefore no exaggeration to say, as you have in A Common Word Between Us and You, that “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.” Common Ground What is so extraordinary about A Common Word Between Us and You is not that its signatories recognize the critical character of the present moment in relations between Muslims and Christians. It is rather a deep insight and courage with which they have identified the common ground between the Muslim and Christian religious communities.

What is common between us lies not in something marginal nor in something merely important to each. It lies, rather, in something absolutely central to both: love of God and love of neighbour.

Surprisingly for many Christians, your letter considers the dual command of love to be the foundational principle not just of the Christian faith, but of Islam as well. That so much common ground exists-common ground in some of the fundamentals of faith-gives hope that undeniable differences and even the very real external pressures that bear down upon us can not overshadow the common ground upon which we stand together. That this common ground consists in love of God and of neighbour gives hope that deep cooperation between us can be a hallmark of the relations between our two communities.

The blushing bride

War Is Deceit Update: "Official: Bride, groom stopped in Iraq actually terror suspects," by Mohammed Tawfeeq for CNN (thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Marisol Seibold):

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- Soldiers manning a checkpoint near Baghdad stopped a wedding convoy to find that the purported bride and groom were wanted terror suspects, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Monday.

The Army set up the checkpoint last week in the Taji area, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Baghdad.

The soldiers became suspicious of the convoy because its members -- save the "bride" -- were all male and because one of the cars in the convoy did not heed orders to stop, the official said.

Also, soldiers said, the people in the car seemed nervous and the groom refused to lift his bride's veil when soldiers asked him to, according to the official.

Soldiers ordered everyone out of the car, the official said.

Upon inspecting the convoy, soldiers found a stubbly-faced man, Haider al-Bahadli, decked out in a white bride's dress and veil.

Bahadli was wanted on terror-related charges, as was his groom, Abbas al-Dobbi, the official said.

I'll bet the Europeans are in a frenzy of anticipation. "Islamist site says new Bin Laden message soon," from Reuters (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden will address the people of Europe in a message to be posted on the Internet "soon," an Islamist Web site said on Monday.

"Soon, God willing, (we will post) a new message to the European people from the lion Imam who defeated the Americans and tyrants, Sheikh Osama bin Laden," said the pro-al Qaeda Web site which regularly posts messages from the militant leader.

"Let this message be posted by various Western Web sites so that we deliver to them the truth of their lost war and (confront) them with the purposely hidden fact," it said, adding that the message was produced by al Qaeda media arm As-Sahab.

Good news. Andrew Cochran has details at the Counterterrorism Blog.

On 20 November 2007, Andrew Cochran reported on this blog about the success of the U.S. ITFC in shutting down elements of Al-Qaeda's financial network in Iraq, and that the government of a key Gulf state has assisted in these efforts. On the same day, the Washington Post published a report of its own about the U.S. efforts to break Iraqi insurgents’ financial networks, and the growing interest of insurgents in money rather than ideology.

A significant evidence for the U.S. successes in this field has recently appeared from an unexpected direction - Al-Qaeda itself. The Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF)—the primary indoctrination and propaganda means of Al-Qaeda, published on the same day - 20 November 2007, on the main Jihadi forum of Al-Hesbah, an unprecedented announcement, which we may title A CALL FOR DONATIONS. It was not the first time that Jihadi elements posted material on the significance of the Jihad bil-Mal (financial Jihad). However, past writings on the issue have had the religious and indoctrination nature. This time it looks as a genuine call resulting out of a real stress. The post by the “official” GIMF provides it also a nature of an official call by Al-Qaeda, not just some group belonging to the Iraqi insurgency. It does not refer to Iraq or any other place in particular, and therefore, it might also indicate the stress in which the organization is found in other regions of Jihadi fight as well, in the field of finance.

Read it all.

Now that the rumors about Hillary and her aide have hit the Times of London, Hillary will feel she cannot abandon her protégé. She instead is likely to become indignant, more determined to be seen, defiantly, with Huma Abedin on every occasion and to attack those who express the slightest, perfectly justified reservations about the perfectly plausible notion that Mrs. Clinton gets her idea of Islam, or of what Islam might be, necessarily skewed, from someone apparently full of personal charm and good looks (never to be discounted, often dangerously employed). One need only see how the personal charm of all those Shi'as in exile, Ahmad Chalabi, Kanan Makiya, Rend al-Rahim Francke, not to mention Paul Wolfowitz's close friend, helped present a misleading view of Iraq. They sold to the Bush Administration an Iraq which would be eternally grateful to its American liberators, an Iraq that within months of the toppling of the old regime would be back on its feet, still celebrating in Baghdad its liberation, with that celebration "making the liberation of Kabul look like a funeral procession" -- as Bernard Lewis is reported to have assured others in Washington.

Think of the personal charm, those liquid brown eyes, of that nice Pakistani lady who shows up at the local elementary school to teach the students "about Islam." She is armed with a prayer rug, and pretty postcards of mosques, including of course the Mosque of Omar, and her beautiful exotic dress, and those wonderful exotic foods she brings, the chicken with pita, and the honeyed pastries, which the children are all so looking forward to -- mmm...it all smells so good -- after her talk, about Ramadan, and Iftar dinners, and how little Muslim boys and girls obey their parents and pray and are deeply devout just like, exactly like, little Christian boys and girls, so what's there to worry about? What indeed?

Drudge is highlighting the Hillary Clinton/Huma Abedin innuendo, which has made the Times of London.

Pamela had background on this awhile ago: the whispers are that Hillary Clinton is carrying on a lesbian relationship with her top aide, Huma Abedin. It's certainly a salacious rumor, but what concerns me about it is not the affair but the fact that Hillary's closest aide is a Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia, and whose father was an Islamic scholar there:

The back story, as it were, begins 32 years ago in Kalamazoo, Mich., where Ms. Abedin, who declined to participate in this article, lived until the age of 2. Her family then relocated to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she lived until returning to the States for college. She attended George Washington University. Her father, who died when she was 17, was an Islamic and Middle Eastern scholar of Indian decent. He founded his own institute devoted to Western-Eastern and interfaith understanding and reconciliation and published a journal focusing on Muslim minorities living in the diaspora. Her mother, a renowned professor in Saudi Arabia, is Pakistani.

An Indian Muslim scholar who relocates to Saudi Arabia and founded an institute there is most likely a Wahhabi. The article also says that Huma Abedin herself is "a Muslim” and “very conservative” -- and that she rarely leaves the Senator's side.

Does she influence Hillary's view of jihad terrorism? If so, in what way? These are the kinds of questions I'd like to see answered more than ones about the affair.

And a CIA op says there are a dozen Hizballah cells in the U.S. "Hezbollah Will Avenge Iran Strike," by Jason Groves in the Daily Express (thanks to Mackie):

TERRORIST group Hezbollah is poised to launch bloody reprisals in Britain for any Western attack on Iran, a former intelligence chief has warned.

Richard Kemp, who was senior adviser on terrorism to Tony Blair, said the Iranian-backed group had established sleeper cells in this country to carry out revenge attacks.

He said: “Hezbollah cells are operating in this country, in London. The big question is how capable Hezbollah groups are in Europe.

“What I can say is that Hezbollah is probably the world’s most effective terrorist organisation, and that includes Al Qaeda.”

Hezbollah’s record of terrorism in the Middle East stretches back 25 years. Last year its rocket attacks on Israel sparked a full-scale war between Israel and Lebanon, where its political arm holds seats in government.

But the organisation, which is thought to receive funding and weapons from Iran, has now established a network of terror around the world.

Four years ago the CIA warned that Hezbollah had a dozen terrorist cells in the US.

The chances of a Western attack on Iran have increased sharply recently because of fears about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Mehrdad Konsari, a former Iranian diplomat now exiled in Britain, said the probability of a Western attack on Iran had increased to “more than 50 per cent” during the last year.

No, I am not making this up.

"Terror group told to prepare for U.S. training," from WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):

Much of the senior leadership of the most active Palestinian terrorist organization in the West Bank recently received orders to prepare to enter U.S.-run security training courses, according to the author of a new book.

The courses, meant to train forces to fight terrorism, are to be reportedly stepped up following this week's Annapolis summit.

WND's Jerusalem bureau chief Aaron Klein, author of the recently released ""Schmoozing with Terrorists," said yesterday he received information much of the senior leadership of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group were told they will be entering U.S. anti-terror training courses for security forces associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah forces.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror group for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006. The Brigades is responsible for more terrorism from the West Bank than any other Palestinian Arab organization, carrying out thousands of shootings and grenade attacks.

Many members of the Brigades serve openly on Fatah's security forces, including the Force 17 presidential guards and Fatah's Preventative Security Services, which function as Palestinian police forces. Abbas last June appointed senior Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader Mahmoud Damra as commander of Force 17. Damra, who was arrested by Israel last November, was on the Jewish state's most-wanted list of terrorists.

The U.S. has been running bases in Jericho to train Fatah militias since the late 1990s. Over the years, the U.S. also has provided Fatah militias with arms, reportedly including thousands of high-powered assault rifles during the past year alone.

[...]

The U.S. training programs include courses in the use of weapons. They are being partially funded with a $86.5 million grant approved by Congress in April and are slated to be infused with more funds from a $400 million grant President Bush asked Congress to approve last month ahead of this week's U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian summit in Annapolis, Md.

The training courses are to be stepped up following the Annapolis summit to prepare Abbas' forces for their stated role in fighting terror in West Bank.

[...]

"It's scandalous that in the midst of the war on terror, our tax dollars are used to fund, train and arm the most active Palestinian West Bank jihad group," said Klein.

"It took no investigative reporting whatsoever on my part to discover members of U.S.-backed, trained and armed Fatah militias are also members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group," writes Klein. "I simply went around the West Bank and asked Fatah militia members, who walk around with American-provided high-power assault rifles, whether they are also in the Brigades."

[...]

Speaking to Klein through a translator, Yousuf said his American training was instrumental in attacks on Israelis.

"All the methods and techniques that we studied in these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he said.

"We sniped at Israeli settlers and soldiers," he said. "We broke into settlements and Israeli army bases and posts. We collected information on the movements of soldiers and settlers. We collected information about the best timing to infiltrate our bombers inside Israel. We used weapons and we produced explosives, and, of course, the training we received from the Americans and the Europeans were a great help to the resistance."

Yousuf said the training included both intelligence and military tactics.

[...]

The leader of the Brigades in Nablus, Ala Senakreh, received U.S. training and serves in the Palestinian Preventative Security forces. Senakreh is widely considered to be the West Bank chief of the Brigades; his cell is accused of planning multiple suicide bombings.

"In other words, a U.S.-trained police officer charged with stopping terrorism in Nablus is also the known head of the city's terror group. Something smells a little wrong here," writes Klein.

In his new book, Aaron Klein lists more such follies:

* The Bush administration has sent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons per year to Palestinian militias without official congressional oversight.

* U.S. weapons have been used in scores of terrorist shootings, including against Israeli schoolgirls.

* U.S. intelligence has coordinated security with terrorists.

* The U.S. funds Hamas-run schools and a university in which the chemistry lab has been used to produce rockets and suicide bomb belts.

* U.S.-funded streets and sports stadiums have been named after enemies of America, including Iraqi insurgent leaders, suicide bombers and even hanged Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

There is a great deal more. Read it all.

Keystone Kops, yes, and also murderous thugs. "Owls Gather at Annapolis," by Youssef Ibrahim in the New York Sun (thanks to Ruth King):

Mr. Bush the son, and his secretary of state Ms. Rice are going into this one as anemic supplicants pleading with a collection of keystone cops for anything that can be dubbed success. A far more attainable success may have been wrung from an Iraq conference seeking to build on what finally seems to be some progress there. Instead, Ms. Rice picked a sure loser — ending the 50-year conflict of Arabs and Jews in one afternoon photo opportunity.

Equally hard to believe is the coyness of it all. The ever-precious Saudis first said no, then maybe, and then okay. The Egyptians, who were not needed in the first place, said please. The Syrians are doing us the favor of coming.

Yet it remains unclear how the same Saudis, who last week were busy condemning a rape victim to 200 lashes, can contribute to anything called a "civilized" Middle East. Nor how President Assad's killing machine, which for two years has been picking off pro-Western politicians in neighboring Lebanon, will push peace negotiations.

At Annapolis, too, goes a uniquely hapless prime minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, who almost singlehandedly in the summer of 2006 lost a war to Hezbollah. This is negotiating from a position of strength?

Clearly what will happen at Annapolis is that Mr. Bush, the man who promised modernity and democracy for the Middle East, will inaugurate it with a speech that will be quickly forgotten, then leave the grounds for the rest of the world to grumble over the next year about yet another American Middle East failure.

"A brother of one of the dead teenagers, Omar Sehhouli, said the rioting 'was not violence but an expression of rage.'" Right.

Omar Sehhouli. Typical French Catholic youth, I suppose. Note the non-specifics about the perpetrators, and the frequent recourse to passive voice.

"Riots break out in Paris suburbs," from the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

Youths have damaged police stations, shops and cars in two Paris suburbs, following the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike hit a police car.

Police said 21 officers were injured in the rioting in the northern suburbs of Villiers-le-Bel and Arnouville.

The Villiers-le-Bel police station was set ablaze and another in Arnouville was pillaged, police say. At least seven people were arrested.

The violence - reminiscent of riots in 2005 - lasted for more than six hours.

In 2005, the deaths of two youths in nearby Clichy-sous-Bois led to France's worst civil unrest in more than 40 years.

Clashes broke out on Sunday night after two teenagers - aged 15 and 16 - were killed when the motorcycle they were driving collided with a police car.

Police sources said the two were riding a stolen mini-motorcycle, and that neither was wearing a helmet.

The police car was on a routine patrol and the teenagers were not being chased by police at the time of the accident, police said. The collision wrecked the front of the car and smashed the windscreen.

Burning cars

Witnesses have accused the police of leaving the scene and of preventing local people from trying to help the youngsters as they lay in the road. The brother of one of the victims has called for the officers involved to be convicted.

After the accident, dozens of youths went on a rampage, setting the police station in Villiers-le-Bel on fire, ransacking the Arnouville police station and torching two petrol stations.

Riot police were sent to the area, but youths blocked their way with burning cars.

French media report that the rioters also damaged the Arnouville-Villiers-le-Bel railway station and nearby shops.

The mayor of Villers-le-Bel, Didier Vaillant, appealed for calm and said he would ensure there was "an impartial investigation, for full light to be shed" on the accident.

A brother of one of the dead teenagers, Omar Sehhouli, said the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".

An innocent mistake! "'Muhammad' teddy teacher arrested," from the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

A British school teacher has been arrested in Sudan accused of insulting Islam's Prophet, after she allowed her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an "innocent mistake" by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.

Ms Gibbons was arrested after several parents made complaints.

A spokesman from the British Embassy in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, said it was unclear whether she had been charged.

Embassy officials are expected to visit Mrs Gibbons in custody on Monday.

The BBC's correspondent Amber Henshaw said Ms Gibbons' punishment could be up to six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine.

The school has been closed until January for fear of reprisals.

Madness. And yet the world tiptoes around and tries to accommodate this madness, instead of calling it what it is.

As the Munich -- uh, that is, Annapolis -- conferences approaches. The huge unrecognized fallacy of this conference is that the Palestinians will ever be satisfied with a smaller Israel. The only Israel that will satisfy them, because of the jihad ideology, is no Israel at all. Fantasy-Based Policymaking Update, by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):

JERUSALEM – At the request of the Palestinians, the U.S. has been holding back from Israel reports critical of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' purported attempts to fight terrorism in the West Bank, according to diplomatic sources familiar with the reports.

The U.S. has been closely monitoring Abbas' implementation of commitments to fight armed groups in the West Bank ahead of this week's Annapolis summit. In line with understandings, State Department and U.S. security representatives were to share their observations with Israel while the U.S. also monitors Israeli commitments to dismantle anti-terror road blocks and to take initial steps toward bulldozing what are termed illegal outposts, or Jewish structures built in the West Bank without government permits.

While the U.S. has been reporting to the Palestinians on Israel's actions on the ground ahead of Annapolis, according to informed diplomatic sources, it has withheld some State Department reports critical of Abbas' Fatah security forces purported fight against terror.

[...]

On Wednesday, Olmert and Abbas will meet with Bush about specific ways to carry out the declarations presented at the conference. According to Israeli sources, the three will discuss creating a Palestinian state before Bush leaves office in January 2009.

The unbelievers are unclean (as per Qur'an 9:28), and have nothing to offer to the pious. "Taliban burn aid agency food: officials," from AFP (thanks to Sr. Soph):

WANA: Local Taliban militants seized and burned thousands of kilogrammes of food destined for pregnant women from a hospital in South Waziristan, officials said on Sunday.

The food, mainly lentils and cooking oil, had been supplied by the aid charity Save the Children to feed pregnant women suffering from malnutrition.

A Taliban activist said they were destroyed because “foreign NGOs want to harm our future generations.”...

In March 2006, a twenty-two-year-old Iranian student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliberately trying to kill people and succeeding in injuring nine. After the incident, he seemed singularly pleased with himself, smiling and waving to crowds after a court appearance at which he explained that he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” Later he wrote six letters to the Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper of the University of North Carolina, explaining why he did it. In one of them, he gives a list of “Qur’an Notes Relevant to 3/3/06 Attack.”

These include “Instructions and guidelines for fighting and killing in the cause of Allah.” Under “Reasons for fighting in the cause of Allah,” he cited verses 14 and 15 of sura 9, explaining that fight was “to release anger and rage from Allah’s followers’ hearts.” And indeed, in those verses Allah promises that as he punishes the unbelievers at the hands of the believers and covers them with shame, he will “heal the breasts of believers, and still the indignation of their hearts.” Ibn Juzayy and the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, however, focus on the portion of the verse that says that “Allah turns to anyone He wills.” Ibn Juzayy explains: “Allah will turn to some of those unbelievers and so that they become Muslims.” That decision, as we have seen, is all Allah’s. Allah will not leave bereft those who “strive with might and main” (v. 16). The word used here is jahadu (جَاهَدُواْ), a form of “jihad,” as it is rendered here.

"The Justice Ministry maintained ... that the ruling was legal and followed the 'the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad,' noting that she had 'confessed to doing what God has forbidden.'"

Note to the Saudis: Please keep trying to defend an indefensible verdict to a global audience. It only further demonstrates the incompatibility of Sharia law with human rights. An update on this story. "Justice Ministry: Saudi Gang Rape Victim Was an Adulteress," from Fox News:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The Saudi Justice Ministry announced that a girl gang raped by seven men and then sentenced to six months prison and 200 lashes for adultery had confessed to cheating on her husband, in its latest response to the negative international reaction to the incident.

The statement, which was carried by the Saudi Press Agency late on Saturday, confirmed that the flogging sentence against the rape victim would be carried out and condemned foreign interference.

"The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defend her," said the statement. "The charged girl is a married woman who confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with."

In 2006 a Shiite Saudi 19-year-old, known only as the "Girl from Qatif," said she had recently been married and met a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.

She was sentenced to prison and 90 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her and when her lawyer, Abdul Rahman al-Lahem, appealed the sentence, he was removed from the case, his license suspended and the penalty doubled to 200.

The increase in sentence received heavy coverage by the international media and prompted expressions of astonishment from the U.S. government, while Canada called it "barbaric."

The Justice Ministry maintained, however, that the ruling was legal and followed the "the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad," noting that she had "confessed to doing what God has forbidden."

The ministry added that the woman and her husband were "convinced on the verdict and agreed to it."

The alleged rape has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no lawyers are present.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Judges -- appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council -- have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means that no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge's discretion.

The Justice Ministry's account of the incident differed substantially from that given by the woman and her lawyer and largely glosses over her rape by seven men, focusing instead on her plan to meet her lover for tryst in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while."

"Then they where spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man," the statement added.

Under Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law, women are not allowed in public in the company of men other than their male relatives. Also, women in Saudi Arabia are often sentenced to flogging for adultery and other crimes.

The seven men convicted of raping the woman were given prison sentences of two to nine years. The initial sentences for the men convicted of the gang rape ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

Harmonic convergence. An update on this story. "U.S. intel center wary of terrorist attack," by Sara A. Carter for the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

The nation's largest intelligence training center changed security measures in May after being warned that Islamist terrorists with the aid of Mexican drug cartels were planning an attack on the facility.

Fort Huachuca changed security measures after sources warned that possibly 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists were smuggled into the U.S. through underground tunnels with high powered weapons to attack the post, according to multiple confidential law enforcement documents obtained by The Washington Times. [...]

According to the FBI advisory, each Middle Easterner paid Mexican drug lords $20,000 “or the equivalent in weapons” for the cartel's assistance in smuggling them through tunnels along the border into the U.S. The numerous tunnels supposedly ended at warehouses in Laredo, Texas, and in Arizona. [...]

"We are always taking precautions to ensure that soldiers, family members and civilians that work and live on Fort Huachuca are safe," Mr. Garner said. "With this specific threat we did change some aspects of our security that we did have in place."
According to the FBI report, the weapons associated with the plot were smuggled through a tunnel from Mexico to the U.S.

A "senior terrorist" claims credit for a great deal of mayhem.

From the TimesOnline (thanks to Sr. Soph):

IN a small windowless cell lit by a single light bulb, Louai al-Sakka sits isolated from the world and fellow inmates for 24 hours a day.

His concrete box is in the bowels of Kandira, a high-security F-type prison 60 miles east of Istanbul, which was built to house Turkey’s most dangerous criminals.

The prison has been criticised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International. The guards control everything, including the cell’s light switch.

Sakka’s only visitor is Osman Karahan, a lawyer who shares his fervent support for militant Islamic jihad.

Since being convicted as an Al-Qaeda bomb plotter last year, Sakka has decided to reveal his alleged role in some of the key plots of recent years, providing a potential insight into the unanswered questions surrounding them. His story is also one of a globetrotting terrorist in an organisation that is truly multinational.

He is an enigma and, despite his involvement in three terrorist outrages involving British citizens, he is virtually unknown in this country.

By his own account he is a senior Al-Qaeda operative who was at the forefront of the insurgency in Iraq, took part in the beheading of Briton Kenneth Bigley and helped train the 9/11 bombers. He has been jailed in connection with the bombing of the British consulate in Istanbul.

Certainly, the intelligence services have shown a keen interest in the 34-year-old Syrian who says he was in Iraq alongside Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious insurgent who was killed last year in a United States air-strike.

But, as with many things in the world of Al-Qaeda, there might be smoke and mirrors. Some experts believe that Sakka could be overstating his importance to the group, possibly to lay a false track for western agencies investigating his terrorist colleagues.

Over the past three weeks The Sunday Times has conducted a series of interviews with Sakka through his lawyer. We were given a number of documents including a memoir in Arabic of his life.

So who is the mysterious Al-Qaeda operative in the concrete cell and what do his claims tell us about the terrorist network and his role within it?

He was travelling under the Turkish name Erkan Ozer – one of his 16 false identities – when he was arrested in the southeastern town of Diyarbakir in August 2005. His downfall was as a result of a nighttime explosion that caused a fire in his apartment a week earlier. When fire-fighters reached the blaze they found a do-it-yourself bomb factory with vats of hydrogen, bags of aluminium powder and 6kg of plastic explosives.

Sakka had been planning to sink Israeli cruise ships off the Turkish coast using motorised dinghies. Despite having plastic surgery to disguise his face, he was easily identified by the Turkish authorities.

Police later discovered documents linking him to the Istanbul suicide bombings that killed at least 27 people after trucks exploded outside the British consulate, the HSBC bank and two synagogues. The court indictment described him as “a senior member of the Al-Qaeda terrorist organisation tasked with special high-level missions”. It said he had met Osama Bin Laden, who had told him to organise attacks in Turkey.

But was this all? Last week his lawyer claimed his scope was much wider. “He was the nnumber one networker for Al-Qaeda in Europe, Iran, Turkey and Syria,” Karahan said.

Read it all.

SYDNEY, Australia, Nov. 24 — Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of the electorate on Saturday, as his Liberal Party-led coalition lost its majority in Parliament.

He will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party leader and a former diplomat. “Today Australia looks to the future,” Mr. Rudd told a cheering crowd in his home state, Queensland. “Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward.”

Mr. Howard’s defeat, after 11 years in power, follows that of José María Aznar of Spain, who also backed the United States-led invasion of Iraq, and political setbacks for Tony Blair, who stepped down as Britain’s prime minister in June. -- from the New Duranty Times

This outcome was predicted at Jihad Watch on March 27, 2007. Here is that post, edited slightly for clarity:

"One is that the Howard government has been seen to be bending over backwards to please the Americans, and this coincides with a huge increase in anti-war sentiment (given too that the pretexts for the Iraq war, WMD and al-Qaeda links have been shown to be pure BS)." -- from a reader

One more reason to get out of Iraq. For others, who are the most natural allies of the United States, may lose power -- and only because they have embraced, in a folie a deux, the mad Bush policy of remaining in Tarbaby Iraq. The Howard government is likely to lose, and if it does, it will be in the main because of the war in Iraq, which is unpopular -- and rightly unpopular, because it makes no sense.

"The problem stems from the fact that extremists and extremist recruiters have seen universities as safe spaces from which to recruit students." Has anyone looked into the possibility that the "extremists and extremist recruiters" find universities safe spaces because the academic establishment finds their views in harmony with its own?

"Brit universities are terror hotbeds," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):

British universities are coming under the spotlight in the country's fight against terrorism, with critics calling them a hotbed of extremism while lecturers say any clampdown threatens their freedom of speech. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently highlighted universities as one of the key areas where authorities needed to act against extremist influences. However, a row is brewing over how officials can clamp down on radical groups recruiting students for militant causes without infringing on genuine academic debate. The issue of campus extremism came to the fore in the aftermath of the London suicide bombings by four young British Islamists which left 52 people dead in 2005. That was followed by a report by Professor Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, which suggested campuses were a breeding ground for extremists. Glees caused a stir across the academic community by estimating that dozens of British universities had been infiltrated by fundamentalists, based on historical terrorism cases which had involved students or former students. He now says the situation is even worse. "What we have seen since 2005 has been an increase in the number of students and former students involved in terrorist crimes," he said. [...]

"The problem stems from the fact that extremists and extremist recruiters have seen universities as safe spaces from which to recruit students," Glees said.

"The universities are not properly supervising what goes on at campuses, they weren't and they're still not, and it is clear they don't intend to do so in the future."

Syrian troops used to stand on top of the Golan Heights and fire upon Israeli farmers along Lake Tiberias. Perhaps we will see that happening again. And meanwhile, Hizballah is taking advantage of the political crisis in Lebanon to make thousands of new recruits, and the Saudis, on their way to the Annapolis debacle-to-be, announced that they won't be going in for any "theatrics" such as handshakes with Israeli officials, dirty kuffar that they are. The concessions are coming entirely from Israel, with jihadist intransigence looking to be rewarded once again.

By Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):

JERUSALEM – In exchange for Saudi Arabia attending this week's U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian conference in Annapolis, the Israeli government agreed to recognize the importance of a Saudi-sponsored "peace initiative" in which the Jewish state is called upon to evacuate the strategic Golan Heights, the entire West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, WND has learned.

WND obtained a draft Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be presented at the Annapolis conference and to serve as an official outline of a final settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority

The wording is still being negotiated by both sides, but according to Israeli diplomatic sources, Israel agreed to a Saudi request that the declaration document include reference to a Saudi-backed Arab Peace Initiative, first presented in 2002 and reissued earlier this year at a meeting of the Arab League, an umbrella association of Mideast Arab states.

When it was first revealed, the Arab Initiative was heavily criticized by the U.S. and Israel because the text requires the Jewish state to withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and allow for the creation of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, including the evacuation of the Temple Mount - Judaism's holiest site.

The Initiative also called for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights, strategic mountainous territory that looks down on Israeli population centers and that was twice used by Syria to launch ground invasions into the Jewish state.

But now Israel has recognized the Arab Initiative as a precondition for Saudi Arabia to attend the Annapolis summit, according to diplomatic sources in Jerusalem.

While Israel doesn't commit itself to the Arab Initiative's requirements, a clause in the current draft of the Israeli-Palestinian declaration slated for the Annaplis conference and obtained by WND reads: "We recognize the critical supporting role of Arab and Muslim states and the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative."

It's OK. The opposing soccer coach says they're good guys. All is well. More stellar reporting from AP: "Saudi Islamic school defends self against 'Terror High' label," by Matthew Barakat for Associated Press (thanks to Twostellas):

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - Its most virulent critics have dubbed it ''Terror High'' and 12 U.S. senators and a federal commission want to shut it down.

The teachers, administrators and some 900 students at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax County have heard the allegations for years - after the Sept. 11 attacks and then a few years later when a class valedictorian admitted he had joined al-Qaida.

Now the school is on the defensive again, with a report issued last month by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom saying the academy should be closed pending a review of its curriculum and textbooks.

Abdalla al-Shabnan, the school's director general, says criticism of the school is based not on evidence but on preconceived notions of the Saudi educational system.

The school, serving grades K-12 on campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria, receives financial support from the Saudi government and its textbooks are based on Saudi curriculum. Critics say the Saudis propagate a severe version of Islam in their schools.

But al-Shabnan said the school significantly modified those textbooks to remove passages deemed intolerant of other religions. Among the changes, officials removed from teachers' versions of first-grade textbooks an excerpt instructing teachers to explain ''that all religions, other than Islam, are false, including that of the Jews, Christians and all others.''

At an open house earlier this month in which the school invited reporters to tour the school and meet students and faculty, al-Shabnan seemed weary of the criticism.

''I didn't think we'd have to do this,'' he said of the open house. ''Our neighbors know us. They know the job we are doing.''

Indeed, many people familiar with the school say the accusations are unfounded. Fairfax County Supervisor Gerald Hyland, whose district includes the academy, has defended it and arranged for the county to review the textbooks to put questions to rest. That review is under way. The academy's Alexandria campus is leased from Fairfax County.

Schools that regularly compete against the academy in interscholastic sports - many of them small, private Christian schools - are among the academy's strongest defenders.

Robert Mead, soccer coach at Bryant Alternative High School, a public school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax county, said the academy's reputation has been unfairly marred by people who haven't even bothered to visit the school.

''We've never had one altercation'' with the academy's players on the soccer field, Mead said. ''My guys are hostile. Their guys keep fights from breaking out.''

The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the spotlight until the Sept. 11 attacks. Criticisms were revived in 2005, when a former class valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was charged with joining al-Qaida while attending college in Saudi Arabia. He was convicted on several charges, including plotting to assassinate President Bush, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Most recently, the religious freedom commission - an independent federal agency created by Congress - issued its report, saying it was rebuffed in its efforts to obtain textbooks to verify claims they had been reformed.

The commission recommended that the academy be shut down until it could review the textbooks to ensure they do not promote intolerance....

On Nov. 15, a dozen U.S. senators, including Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., wrote a letter to the State Department urging it to act on the commission's recommendations. And on Tuesday, Reps. Frank Wolf, R-Va., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced legislation to write the commission's recommendations regarding the academy into law.

Michael Cromartie, the commission's chairman, said he does not question the character of the student body or the faculty, most of whom are Christian. The commission is focused specifically on the textbooks, and has legitimate concerns given the problems that have been endemic in the Saudi curriculum, he said.

''It's not about whether the students are civil to their opponents on a ball field. It's about the textbooks,'' he said.

At the open house, seniors said they worry that news accounts will hurt their college applications. Most students said they were shocked that the government panel had recommended closing the school.

Omar Talib, a senior, said the school caters to students from across the Muslim world, not just Saudis. It makes no judgments on other religions or against Shiite Islam, as some critics have contended.

''I have four children at this school. I've never heard them say 'Mom, today we learned we should kill the Jews,''' said Malika Chughtai of Vienna. ''If I heard that kind of talk, I would not have them here.''

A courageous stand!

This is a big improvement over what we have seen from American Muslim advocacy groups. There is still a long way to go, however. How about a forthright renunciation of Islamic supremacism and the imperative ultimately to impose Sharia? "Quebec's Muslims get organized," by Jeff Heinrich for The Gazette (thanks to Jojo):

SHERBROOKE - The burgeoning Muslim population in Quebec is organizing itself to avoid "exaggerated" demands for special treatment and rein in "preachers of hate," the Bouchard-Taylor commission heard this morning.

"The Muslim community is large, but distinctions must be made," said Abdallah Annab, president of the Association des marocaines et des marocains de l'Estrie, which represents many of the 1,500 Muslims in the Eastern Townships.

"A Muslim from Afghanistan is not a Muslim from the Maghreb - there are several doctrines, there is Sunni Islam and Shi'ite Islam, and there are clear divisions between them," said Annab, a Sunni from Morocco who works in Sherbrooke as a tax auditor for Revenu Quebec.

His association prepared its brief with the local Sunni Muslim association in Sherbrooke "in order to find a basis of agreement to ensure that our image as Muslims is not tarnished and there aren't any exaggerated demands for accommodation," he said.

"In general, there aren't many that are exaggerated," he added.

Ah. What a relief. Still, just talking about the possibility is a step up.

But one way to short-circuit unreasonable demands is to rein in imams at mosques who fill the faithful's heads with distorted views of Quebec society, Annab said.

"We do suggest that there be limits to what (Muslim) preachers say. They should adapt to the reality here and understand the realities of Quebec society," Annab told commissioners Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor.

"Because what happens sometimes - and we don't know how they wind up here - is that preachers come here to preach hate," he said.

How does that happen, exactly? It might be worthwhile to find out.

"And we must insist on this point, that people who give religious instruction be informed, and that there be some kind of control over what they say."

Outside the hearing, the leader of the Sherbrooke's Sunni Muslim community agreed that some demands have been exaggerated, but denied that mosques in the region are cauldrons of intolerance.

"People have asked for things which, it can be said, are not legitimate, but it's usually done out of ignorance," said Elmostafa Habboub, a Moroccan-immigrant educator who heads the Association culturelle islamique de 'Estrie.

Ah. Ignorance. Of course. There is always so much of that: misunderstanders of Islam, ignorantly thinking it enjoins them to commit acts of violence.

He gave no examples of accommodations asked for in the Townships, but added "it's just a matter of time" before some begin to make headlines.

Far from being hate-mongers, Muslims in Sherbrooke reach out to other religions, said Habboub, whose association has allied with local Catholic, Protestant and Syrian Orthodox organizations to call for the creation in Quebec of an ecumenical council to act as a "filter" for accommodation requests.

Haboub volunteers at Sherbrooke's only mosque, frequented by Muslims from 30 countries, mostly from North Africa. (There's also a small Shi'ite centre in the east of the city).

"There are some little frictions from time to time," said Habboub. "But at the Sherbrooke mosque, I think the message is quite, quite all right. We've never had any complaints from anyone. We've always been very peaceful."

Testifying later with association colleague Walid Dridi, Habboub added that Muslims asking for an accommodation in Quebec shouldn't be surprised if they're refused....

Very well, then. Get along without the relief.

"Islamists protest US naval presence for cyclone relief," from IANS (thanks to Twostellas):

Dhaka, Nov 24 - Several hundred activists of the radical Islamic group Hizb ut Tahrir staged protests here before the arrival of two ships of the US Navy for distributing relief supplies among cyclone-affected people.

Two warships, USS Essex and USS Kearsarge -- each carrying 20 helicopters and 3,500 marines on board with emergency relief supplies, medical and emergency evacuation teams -- are scheduled to enter Bangladesh waters Saturday and Tuesday.

The protesters Friday carried a banner reading 'Prevent American ships from entering the Bay of Bengal in the name of distributing relief' and chanted slogans 'Go back to America' and 'US has no place in Bangladesh'.

The outfit's leader Kazi Morshedul Haque told the rally that every Bangladeshi had come forward to help cyclone victims along with the army, navy and air force, 'so it is a shame on us, Muslims, that we are allowing the US on our land'.

Great idea! After all, it isn't as if there are any jihadists in Canada.

By Greg Quinn for Bloomberg (thanks to Twostellas):

Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Canada asked the U.S. to exempt passengers on overseas flights that cross U.S. airspace from checks against watch lists, saying the nations already cooperate on air security and the checks may violate privacy.

Already, flights between Canadian cities that cut through U.S. airspace to save time are exempt from the Department of Homeland Security's planned `Secure Flight Program,' Canadian Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon said today in a statement. Canada filed a written request for the broader exemption.

``In light of our complementary security systems and the security cooperation of Canada and the United States, and the relative risk, we believe that there are excellent security grounds for the proposed Secure Flight Program to exempt all flights to, from and within Canada that overfly the United States,'' Cannon said from Ottawa.

Canada also is worried the U.S. may gather information on Canadians without their consent, a principle ``central'' to the country's privacy laws, according to a background paper that accompanied the statement. The U.S. list might be used to track people ``beyond those who pose a threat to aviation security,'' the paper said.

That's a legitimate concern. So also, of course, is the possibility of jihadists entering the U.S. from Canada.

The jihadists are set to get a great deal of what they want at Annapolis, but some folks are never satisfied. "Summit terror threat advisory issued," by David Dishneau and Brian Witte for Associated Press:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Federal authorities have advised local law enforcement agencies to be alert to possible terrorism threats because of the Middle East peace conference next week in Annapolis, Homeland Security and FBI officials said Friday.

Although intelligence reports indicate no credible threats by domestic extremist groups to the conference or Islamic or Jewish sites in the Annapolis area, "nonetheless, the Department of Homeland Security does not discount the threat of the lone wolf terrorist, including individuals radicalized by homegrown extremist groups or Internet content," said a bulletin issued by the agency and the FBI.

The threat assessment bulletin highlights about a dozen groups, including the radical Islamic fundamentalist organization Hamas, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese umbrella organization of radical Islamic Shiite groups that is a bitter foe of Israel.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Laura Keehner said the bulletin was sent to law enforcement agencies "in an abundance of caution."

Hey, not a bad idea!

"Study Jihadists, take advantage of DOD foreign culture, language programs, Guardmembers urged," by Staff Sgt. Jim Greenhill for the National Guard site (thanks to Marked Manner):

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (11/20/2007) - Understanding the Jihadist challenge to the West is crucial for National Guard members who defend the homeland and wage the warfight abroad.

So says Dr. John Finney, the international security affairs advisor to LTG H Steven Blum, the chief of the National Guard Bureau.

Finney encouraged Citizen-Soldiers and –Airmen to study Islamic history, cultures, societies and languages.

Guardmembers must clearly distinguish between radical, violent Jihadists and the vast majority of Muslims, Finney said, citing an observation by Bernard Lewis, eminent Princeton University historian of the Islamic world:

“Most Muslims are not fundamentalists,” Lewis wrote in his 2004 book “The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror,” and “most fundamentalists are not terrorists but most present-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.”

[...]

According to Finney:

Jihadists are a very small, fanatical Muslim minority who seek to violently overthrow the international system and replace it with an Islamic state.

In their view, the word “jihad” means fighting as in warfare; other Muslims define the term as an internal struggle to please God. Jihadists believe they must fight not only non-Muslims but also the Muslim majority, which they view as apostate, to impose their extremist vision on the world.

Among Jihadist beliefs:

* Islam is the one, true faith and will dominate the world; Muslims are in conflict with unbelievers.
* Only God can make laws, not man. Government must be by strict interpretation of Islamic law called Shari’a.
* The Quran and traditions about Mohammed’s life called the hadith contain the whole truth for determining a proper life for individuals and society at large.

And how do those propositions differ from traditional Muslim beliefs?

Jihadist ideologues from Sayyid Qutb to Osama Bin Laden have framed the West as Islam’s mortal enemy, call democracy a false religion and advocate expelling U.S. influence from the Arabian Peninsula and Mid East, removing secular governments, eliminating Israel, purging Jewish and Christian influence and establishing a new Caliphate or Muslim empire.

The key to countering the Jihadists lies is directly confronting and defeating their ideology, Finney said. This means understanding the basis of the Jihadist worldview and developing an effective response that demonstrates the falseness of the Jihadist message of exclusivity, hatred and violence.

A democratic form of government, culturally Islamic and built from within Islamic societies, is the most effective antidote to the Jihadist argument, he stated. Thus, Guardmembers should have at least a basic familiarity with Jihadism and a good grasp of how democratic institutions and values, adjusted to incorporate Islamic practices and beliefs, are the most effective counterpoint to Jihadist ideology, Finney indicated.

While militant Islamism isn’t new – clashes with the modernizing West date back at least to the 18th century. Jihadism is a particularly serious challenge because of its cult of suicide bombers, extensive financing, skilled manipulation of the media and the Internet and potential access to weapons of mass destruction.

In fact, "militant Islamism" dates back to much earlier than the 18th century. Finney might be surprised to discover that "militant Islamists" believing in exactly those same three point above swept out of Arabia beginning in the seventh century and conquered large swatches of Asia, Africa and Europe. Even then the distinction between them and "traditional Muslims" was hard to pinpoint.

Among essential short-term and long-term Western strategies in confronting the Jihadist challenge that Finney outlined:

* Using the military and law enforcement to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Fine.

* Challenge extremist preaching and recruitment. Address Jihadist claims with specific counterpoints.

I'd like to see how Finney proposes to do that in detail. With a Qur'anic argument? With an argument from the Sunnah and Islamic jurisprudence, trying to claim that warfare against unbelievers is Islamically illegitimate? If he has bought into the jihad/hirabah nonsense, he may be in for a rude surprise when jihadists don't find his Islamic arguments as compelling as he thought they would.

* Seek resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Since it is the intransigence of the jihad ideology that has all along prevented a resolution to this conflict, and no one is addressing the Palestinian adherence to that ideology, this point probably means "push for more Israeli concessions."

* Reduce the corruption, economic backwardness and tyranny that Jihadists exploit.

Study after study has shown that jihadists are generally better educated and wealthier than their peers. But why let the facts get in the way of fashionable analysis?

* Encourage democratic governance while understanding that a Muslim form of democracy might not look exactly like Western models; Islamic practices and beliefs can coexist with democracy.

Yes, it might not look exactly like a Western republic. Women and non-Muslims may not have exactly the same rights that Muslim males enjoy. Amputations and stonings may be part of the penal code, with capital punishment for anyone perceived as "insulting Islam." But otherwise it will be very democratic!

I've got a counter-proposal for Dr. Finney. How about combating jihadism with this simple five-point plan:

1. Exhort Muslims in the West to focus their indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.
2. Call upon Muslims in the West to renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any manifestation of Islamic supremacism, including 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. Call upon Muslims to begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Call upon them to work actively with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Uh, no thanks. From Adnkronos International:

Banda Aceh, 23 Nov. (AKI) - Tourism authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province hope that its practice of Sharia or Islamic law will attract visitors.

"We invite international tourists to visit Aceh to observe how an Islamic community lives and how the Islamic code of Sharia is applied," said Cipta Hunai, an Aceh tourism official, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

Muslim-devout Aceh is the only province in Indonesia allowed to apply Sharia law. However observers say that the application of Sharia in the province has harmed the rights of the poor and women.

Hunai said that Sharia allowed for the development of a peaceful and secure community in Aceh which would be appreciated by tourists. He said that Sharia law in Aceh was a tourist attraction because it allowed foreigners to see a reality, that perhaps, they did not already know.

Just like communist "model villages" were an accurate reflection of reality. In agriculture learn from Dazhai! In Sharia, learn from Aceh!

"Here the tourists can visit many mosques and see how a community lives under laws based on the Koran," he said.

Hunai denied that public canings - which are allowed and used to punish some crimes - could shock and discourage non-Muslim tourists.

"We don't believe that this can scare anyone. In any case, the punishments are carried out to correct Muslims who have made mistakes," he said.

"But one must remember that these punishments are only applied to Muslims and here even the religious minority is respected," he added.

Corporal punishment is carried out in Aceh for crimes including the sale or consumption of alcohol, gambling or meeting a person of the opposite sex, that is not your husband, wife or family member, in a private place.

In other words, about the only thing a tourist could do in Aceh is learn about Sharia, one way or another.

A welcome display of sanity. But to lay the foundation for a genuinely tolerant society, teachers and texts will need to deal with the legacy of dhimmitude and Islamic intolerance forthrightly, rather than simply insisting that Islam respects other religions. For example, they will have to deal with Qur'anic references to Jews and Christians as apes and pigs," and the Qur'an's assertion that nonbelievers are the "vilest of creatures." Without that, other preachers can simply come along at a later date and point out to students what their teachers did not address.

From McClatchy Newspapers:

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Judged solely by one of the big, bold words on its cover, the book that Fadel Mahmoud clutched in his hands would be considered blasphemous in many parts of the Muslim world.

Most people in Kurdish northern Iraq believe that the Quran, the holy book of Islam, is the final word on religious life. Mahmoud and other teachers, however, are preaching a message of religious tolerance in hopes of preserving the region's relative stability.

The book in his hands is an introduction to Judaism written by an Arab.

Last month, the Kurdish Regional Government's Ministry of Religious Affairs began requiring its 19 campuses, from grade school to college, to broaden their curriculums by including courses on comparative religion that better expose students to other religious thought, including Christianity and in some cases Judaism.

"We're trying to reach the point where all the religions can find common ground. We are not interested in talking about the points of disagreement," said Mahmoud, an instructor at the College of Kurdistan in Sulaimaniyah .

A decade ago, the government of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region shut down the religious madrasas, or schools, run by mosques amid unsettling signs that imams, some from outside the region, were fomenting a brand of Islam that threatened to undo the fragile peace that reigned here after a 1991 U.S.-backed uprising against Saddam Hussein.

Madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan that preach a radical form of Islam have been a huge concern to the United States , which has accused some of stoking anti-Americanism among the poor, who attend for a free education.

"We the Kurdish people, we believe in a peaceful kind of religion. We want to live in peace. We are not going to build a foundation for terrorists," said Sheik Mohamed, the region's minister of religious affairs.

Mohamed said the ministry's introduction of a comparative-religion class was intended to raise broader awareness of the other religions practiced by Kurdistan's ethnic minorities, which account for about 3 percent of the region's roughly 5 million people.

"Islam obligates Muslims to respect other religions," said Najim al Dine Kader Raheem , 47, who's studying at the College of Kurdistan so that he can lead his own mosque one day. "All of the prophets come from the same place— ours is Arab— and we believe in the same God."

Teaching about Jews in a predominantly Muslim country has its risks, conceded Araz Najmaddin Abdulla, the general director of curriculum for the regional Ministry of Education, which runs the public school system.

Because nothing uttered by a Muslim that has later come under scrutiny from non-Muslims has ever been taken in context. An update on this story. "Mosque show maker plans legal action," from The Guardian:

The documentary maker cleared by regulators of misleadingly editing a Channel 4 programme about extreme Islamic preachers is considering legal action.

David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions which made the Dispatches film Undercover Mosque , said he was still "very, very angry".

With the backing of Channel 4 he hoped to launch a libel action against the West Midlands police and a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer who was quoted in a joint press release accusing Hardcash Productions of "completely distorting" what some of the preachers were saying. The media regulator dismissed the complaint saying it was a legitimate investigation.

"Hardcash's reputation has been severely damaged and it was a good reputation," Henshaw told the Guardian. "The Ofcom judgment is great. But damage was done that day in August, huge damage."

The programme, which took nine months to make, went undercover in several mosques in the Midlands and showed examples of preachers calling for homosexuals to be killed, espousing male supremacy, condemning non-Muslims and predicting jihad.

Henshaw said: "A lot of these mosques were apparently committed to inter-faith dialogue. Yet what was going on on a very regular basis was pretty uncompromising, hardline, anti-semitic, homophobic, misogynist preaching."

Well, at least it wasn't Islamophobic. That would be over the line, you see.

"Turkey is a secular nation with a majority Muslim population. By welcoming Turkey into Europe we will prove how two cultures can not only exist together, but thrive together, as partners in the modern world." -- from the remarks here by Jack Straw

Turkey is a "secular nation" with a "majority Muslim population"? Turkey is, despite more than 80 years of Kemalism, with its systematic campaign to suppress Islam's political and social power, not nearly "secular" enough. Islam is back -- not that it ever went away -- and how. Erbakan, and then Ergodan, and then Abdullah Gul, and all the rest of it. The cunning assault on the legitimacy of the army, the final upholder of Kemalism. The assault from within the universities on secular rectors and professors, and the determination to renew state support for Muslim schools and openness to government hiring of graduates of strictly Muslim schools and colleges. No, Turkey is not what it may once have been -- say, in 1940, or even 1950. Islam keeps coming back.

And Turkey does not have a "majority Muslim population." Its population is 99% Muslim. Does Jack Straw recall just how, over the last century, such a feat was accomplished? Does he know that Constantinople in 1914 was 50% non-Muslim, and that Turkey as a whole was about one-quarter non-Muslim? What happened to all those non-Muslims, Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Levantines of every description? Did he forget, or did he never know?

Feel the love. Taslima Nasrin Update from The Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW DELHI: A controversial Bangladeshi author was sent to the Indian capital under armed escort Friday after authorities ordered her to leave western Rajasthan state fearing violence by Muslims who accused her of insulting Islam.

They should also stand up and say that this kind of violent intimidation will not be tolerated. But don't hold your breath.

Taslima Nasrin, who fled Bangladesh in 1994 after Islamic extremists threatened to kill her, has lived in the eastern city of Calcutta for the last two years but left Thursday after members of the All India Minorities Forum led angry protests against her a day earlier and demanded her deportation from the city.

Idrees Ali, a forum leader, accused Nasrin of hurting the religious sentiments of Muslims through her writings.

Nasrin traveled from Calcutta to Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, but the state government ordered her to leave because they feared she would attract more protests.

"She didn't inform the government of Rajasthan before coming here and as she requires high security we asked her to leave," Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria told reporters.

What if the test fails? Would its effects be reversible?

By James Slack in the Daily Mail (thanks to all who sent this in):

Jack Straw has argued more than 70m Turkish citizens should be allowed to join the EU to prove the West and Islam can live peacefully side-by-side.

During a visit to Turkey, the Justice Secretary gave strong support to the country's controversial bid for full membership of the European Union.

Other member states, including France, have reservations against the country - whose 71m population is almost exclusively Muslim - being granted membership amid continuing human rights abuses.

But Mr Straw, who also backed Turkey's case while Foreign Secretary, said he was "frustrated with the difficulties being placed in the way of Turkey's accession".

He added: "Statesmen and women across Europe need to take care with Turkey's future."

Full membership would allow Turkish citizens full rights to work and live in the UK, where many have strong family ties, without visas.

In a speech at the Bosphorous University in Istanbul, Mr Straw said: "One of the most significant threats faced today by civilised nations comes from the barbarism of international terrorism, from a violent and misguided ideology that seeks to drive a wedge between Western and Islamic cultures, and to resurrect a bloody past long since buried.

Hmm. What ideology might that be, Jack? Or is it The Ideology That Must Not Be Named?

"A stable, prosperous Turkey anchored in the EU would be a powerful symbol indeed that the true divide lies not between our cultures but between the vast majority of civilised people across the world and the uncivilised few who use terror to destroy the common values and beliefs which bind the rest of us.

"Turkey is a secular nation with a majority Muslim population. By welcoming Turkey into Europe we will prove how two cultures can not only exist together, but thrive together, as partners in the modern world. Accession means a more pluralist, tolerant and inclusive Turkey – and a more pluralist, tolerant and inclusive Europe."...

What if Turkey adopts Sharia, which seems to be the desire of the Prime Minister and a significant portion of the population?

But Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK, said: "We need to be extremely cautious about admitting Turkey to the EU. The population will approach 100m by that time.

"We have already seen the huge impact of Eastern European migration to the West.

"Where dies [sic!] Europe end its land border? Do we really want a border with Syria, Iraq and Iran?"

Good question.

What is wrong with Vince Cannistraro, an ex-CIA counterterror chief? Steven Emerson explains for IPT News Service (thanks to all who sent this in):

Cannistraro has a history of defending despicable behavior, harmful to America's national security. Famously, Cannistraro was a long-time apologist for now-convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami al-Arian, even going so far as writing a letter on Al-Arian's behalf after the University finally terminated him for repeatedly lying about his ties to the terrorist group...

And now he's defending Nada Nadim Prouty, who has confessed to rifling FBI files for information about Hizballah investigations.

Read it all.

Near Beslan. This could be the work of a non-jihad-related "criminal gang," but authorities are investigating it as a terrorist attack. From the BBC (thanks to all who sent this in):

An explosion aboard a bus in Russia's North Ossetia region has killed at least five people, including a nine-year-old girl, and hurt 12.

The bus was travelling from the city of Pyatigorsk and had stopped on the border with the Kabardino-Balkaria region when the explosion took place.

"It was an attack," a police official told AFP news agency.

Unrest linked to militants and criminal gangs is common in Russia's Caucacus republics bordering restive Chechnya.

The blast was caused by a device containing over 300g of explosives and loaded with nails and scraps of metal, police sources told the Reuters news agency.

As many as 19 people were on the bus, including two drivers, when the explosion took place.

Russian prosecutors have begun investigating the blast as a terrorist attack, according to the Interfax news agency.

A school in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia was the scene of a siege by militants in 2004, that left more than 300 people dead, most of them children.

Come on. They were just joking. Can't you take a joke? This one'll kill ya. "Denmark convicts men in bomb plot," from the BBC (thanks to km):

A court in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, has found three men guilty of planning bomb attacks.

Mohammed Zaher, Abdallah Andersen and Ahmad Khaldhahi were part of a group of four men arrested after a raid in the city of Odense last year.

Chemicals used to make explosives were found at one of the men's homes, the court heard. The men had also been recorded discussing targets to attack.

The fourth man, Riad Anwar Daabas, was acquitted by the court. [...]

The men were charged with acquiring chemicals and equipment used to make triacetone triperoxide (TATP) - an explosive compound used in the 2005 London bombings.

The evidence against them included a bottle containing a small amount of TATP, found at one of the suspects' homes, and surveillance recordings in which the men are apparently heard discussing targets for possible attack.

The men had denied the charges and said they were joking when discussing the targets, the AP news agency says.

Feel the love.

From Christian Today (thanks to Pamela):

BAGHDAD - Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.

The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers, they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

The three cousins executed Hayali and his wife Zeinab Kamel at the all-boys school in Jalawlah in Diyala province, village police chief Captain Ahmed Khalifa said....

Human Rights Watch has taken notice of this case. Now, if they noted in their report that the rules preventing Shadia Nagui Ibrahim from officially calling herself a Christian are rooted in Islamic law, and not just Egyptian law, and still called for change, that would be tremendous progress. But they probably have dealt with a gaggle of ignorant or willfully dissembling apologists telling them Muhammad never said anything that would impede individual freedom of conscience. No compulsion in religion, right? Right?

Sharia Alert, and Islamic Tolerance Alert. "Woman sentenced over religion," from the South African Press Association:

Cairo - An Egyptian Christian woman has been jailed for three years because her father's brief conversion to Islam 45 years ago made her legally a Muslim while her official papers said she was Christian, her lawyer said on Thursday.

Shadia Nagui Ibrahim, 47, was charged with fraud for stating Christianity as her religion on her marriage certificate, unaware that her father's conversion to Islam in 1962 had made her officially a Muslim, said Michael Maurice.

Nagui Ibrahim left home in 1962 when daughter Shadia was two years old, converted to Islam and took on the Muslim name Mustafa.

Three years later, after a reconciliation with his wife, he moved home and re-converted to Christianity. In the process, he got someone to forge his documents back to say he was Christian.

Detained for falsifying documents

State reluctance to allow citizens to put their religion of choice on national identity cards means many seek forged documents that can result in criminal prosecution, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this month.

In 1996, the man who forged Ibrahim's documents was detained for falsifying dozens of documents and confessed to changing Ibrahim's papers.

Authorities detained Ibrahim and also informed his daughter that on paper, Ibrahim was still a Muslim and therefore so was she. Children in Egypt automatically take their father's religion.

Under Egyptian law it is also illegal for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man.

She was charged with "providing false information on official documents" for stating she was Christian on her marriage certificate in 1982.

After a lengthy trial, she was sentenced to three years in absentia in 2000, but the case was subsequently dropped.

She was detained again in August this year and sentenced to three years after just one brief court session, her lawyer said.

So says Glenn Beck in his bestselling new book, An Inconvenient Book.

And wouldn't it be nice if it were so? But -- inconvenient as it may be -- saying "I have read the Koran and can tell you that I unequivocally believe that Islam is a religion of peace" is like saying, "I have read the Qur'an but I read it with my eyes closed."

The Qur'an counsels warfare -- hot warfare, with casualties and prisoners -- against unbelievers in numerous passages, including 9:5, 9:29, 2:190-193, 8:60, 2:216-217, 8:65-67, 9:111, 60:8-9, and 47:4, and that's just off the top of my head. There are many other such passages as well. I am not talking for the moment about whether such fighting is defensive or offensive, or prescribed for all time or only for the believers of Muhammad's day, or justified or not for whatever reason. I am merely pointing out that the Qur'an -- regardless of (as the common objections will surely come) what the Bible or any other sacred text says or does not say -- at face value mandates warfare against unbelievers in numerous passages. Anyone who reads it attentively will see this.

Now, that fact alone does not establish that Islam is not a religion of peace. Some contend, or Glenn Beck may assume, that the traditions and laws of Islam mitigate the literal meaning of these texts. (Whether or not this is actually true is irrelevant to the present discussion, which is just about the Qur'an itself.) They may think that they are universally interpreted in a spiritualized manner, or that they are not regarded literally, or that modern Muslims do not see them as binding. But Glenn Beck did not, unfortunately, say or suggest any of those things. Rather, he said, "I have read the Koran and can tell you that I unequivocally believe that Islam is a religion of peace," which is a statement about the Qur'an. It suggests that its contents are other than what they are.

Now, Beck continues by saying: "The overwhelming majority (I believe at least 90 percent) of all Muslims are good, peace-loving people." That may be so, but it does not follow from the contents of the Qur'an in any case. Religious traditions are large things, and while the contents of the Qur'an are what they are, that does not mean -- and I have never argued, although the careless, foolish and malevolent frequently assume that I do -- that every Muslim knows all of those contents, takes them to heart, and acts upon them, or ever will.

Beck's statement is a typical one, showing one of the ways in which this issue gets clouded. People see that there are peaceful Muslims and assume on the basis of their existence, and because of presuppositions they have about the nature of religious texts in general, that the jihadists must be twisting the peaceful message at the religion's core. Or they think that the only way we can support genuine Muslim moderates is by retailing polite fictions such as this one. This completely ignores, of course, the fact that jihadists around the world are making recruits today by appealing to peaceful Muslims as the exponents of "pure" and "true" Islam, and quoting the Qur'an and Sunnah copiously to buttress this claim.

Until the Glenn Becks of the world, and Muslims and non-Muslims of good will, understand that and begin to confront it rather than pretending it is not happening, that recruitment will continue.

"Lawyers gathered after the blast to shout 'Down with Pakistan.'"

From Reuters (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEARLY simultaneous blasts outside courts in three northern Indian cities killed at least 10 people in what a senior government official said were terrorist strikes.

Police said the blasts were reported from Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, all in the populous state of Uttar Pradesh.

Brij Lal, a senior state police officer, told local television that 10 people had been killed; three in Faizabad and seven in Varanasi....

“I believe it is the handiwork of groups who are trying to spread terror in our country,” junior Home Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said.

India has been hit by blasts frequently in recent years and most of them have been blamed by investigators on Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir....

While Lucknow is the capital of the state, Varanasi is a popular Hindu pilgrimage centre.

At least 15 people were killed and 60 wounded there in three explosions in 2006.

Faizabad is a twin city of Ayodhya, a Hindu holy centre where hardline Hindu groups razed an ancient mosque in 1992, saying it was built on the birthplace of Hindu god-king Ram.

Ayodhya has since been a flashpoint for Hindu-Muslim tensions across the country and the disputed site was also targeted by suspected Muslim militants in 2005.

Outside the Lucknow court, where police said the explosive was attached to a motorcycle, lawyers gathered after the blast to shout “Down with Pakistan”.

The lawyers said they suspected the blast was in retaliation for an attack by a mob on three suspected militants of a Pakistani-based group when they appeared in court a few days ago....

Egypt is a corrupt country out of control. By permitting successive governments to count on American support, the viciousness and corruption are allowed to continue without any consequences. From 1882 to 1922, the British brought some semblance of efficiency and a reduction of corruption to the Egyptian Civil Service. Even when they left, the experience of their presence, the English presence, and obvious Western power and civilizational superiority, allowed for signs of secularism. Few women, for example, wore a hijab in Egyptian cities in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. And advanced Egyptians, conscious of being "Egyptian" and not "Arab," sought (vainly) to find a way to "reform" Islam; Abduh and Afghani had not yet been challenged, and overwhelmed by, the Muslim Brotherhood. But the ancien regime of fat Farouk came to an end when Gamal Abdel Nasser and Naguib and the other colonels arrived on the scene. There was the famous rioting against Jews, Copts, and Europeans, in Alexandria. Almost overnight, Greeks, Italians, Jews, and many others who had lived there had their property stolen by the Egyptians, who called it "nationalization." The Egyptian Muslims who ran everything took billions of dollars in property, the fruit in some cases of family entrepreneurial activity that had gone on for a century or more.

Following Nasser was Saint Sadat: the same Sadat imprisoned by the British for his pro-Nazi activities during World War II. He had been a loyalist of the intolerable Nasser, whose pan-Arabism, like all pan-Arabism, has been traditionally presented in the West as an alternative to Islam, hostile to Islam and its goals. It is true that both Nasser, and Saddam Hussein, the two most famous despots with ambitions to be leaders with pan-Arab appeal, were often described, inaccurately, as "secularists" because the opposition that most concerned each was mosque-based: in the case of Nasser, the Muslim Brotherood; in the case of Saddam Hussein, Shi'a mosques of the Shi'a majority opposed to his Sunni despotism. And each dealt with his respective political opponents with wonted ruthlessness. But Pan-Arabism should more accurately be seen as a subset, a limited version with more modest initial goals -- today Arabdom, tomorrow the world. And since Islam is a vehicle for Arab imperialism, pan-Arabism means, necessarily, promotion of Islam, and vice-versa. The goal of a unified Arab state, the goal that Nasser was said to embody, was merely a way-station on the path -- fi sabil Allah -- to spreading Islam until it, and therefore the Arabs (the "best of peoples") would everywhere dominate. Pan-Arabism was not, as so many wrong-headed analysts would have it, a movement hostile to Islam or to what is often called, misleadingly, "pan-Islamism" (which is merely the geopolitical dimension of mainstream Islam).

I never listened to Frank Zappa's music, but I know he was friendly with Nicholas Slonimsky toward the end of the latter's long life. Slonimsky was related to V. V. Vengerov, the celebrated Pushkinist, who is alluded to in Nabokov's "Ada."

Other Slonimsky relatives included an Russian inventor of the telegraph, who never bothered to patent it, which gave Samuel F. B. Morse his victory by default, as well as another relative who died in the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and who was, on his non-Slonimsky side, the last descendant of Pushkin. Such information, and much more, can be found in Slonimsky's constantly amusing "Perfect Pitch." I have also inhaled, in short but intense doses, Slonimsky's anthology of damning reviews, at their first or early performances, of composers and performers, an anthology called "The Lexicon of Musical Invective." There was a particularly funny one about a Russian critic's response to Tchaikovsky, but now I've forgotten it. It's not easy being 98.

Anyway, my original point, before the deliberate decision was taken to engage in deliberate digression, was, and remains, this: that if Frank Zappa was friendly with Nicholas Slonimsky (they were brought together initially by a shared admiration for Varese) and if Zappa's life was music, he could not possibly have been a Muslim, that is, one who is likely inculcated with the idea that music is a bad thing, not to mention the fact that to Muslims, Slonimskys are also a bad thing. The very idea is absurd.

Movie theatres are a favorite target of maddened Muslims of the poorer sort. They may be unaware of the kinds of material their ruling classes possess for private delectation, and target the products of Bollywood and Hollywood with equal outrage.

The most famous example of this is the burning down, with 400-500 people inside, of a cinema in Abadan, Iran, during the days when Khomeini-maddened crowds were toppling the pillars and pylons of the Shah's establishment. They were inflamed by those audiocassettes made in France by Khomeini. From his French-police-protected exile in Neauphle-le-chateau, he made the tapes which were then sent to Iran, recopied by the bazaris, and distributed far and wide by a nest of mullahs. And those mad Muslim mobs his tapes enflamed were similar to the maddened Muslim mobs that attacked American institutions, including the embassy and consulate in Pakistan, when one group of Muslims tried to seize the Mecca mosque and wrest it from the control of the Al-Saud. The House of Saud was properly viewed as corrupt, and necessarily viewed, by those same Muslims, as "Infidels" -- because the worldview of Muslims always requires that everything, including indignation at greed or corruption, be phrased solely by reference to Islam, in terms that will arouse Muslims.

Robert Spencer remarked here that “misunderstanders of Islam can even be imams..."

That is true. Even imams can get the idea, forbidden for non-Muslims to hold, that Islam counsels warfare. Even ayatollahs and sheiks al-azhar can be misunderstanders of Islam. Yes, so many Muslims all over the world, from southern Thailand to southern Sudan to southern France to southern Michigan, can be misunderstanders of Islam. And the madrasas and seminaries are apparently having great difficulty clearing those little misunderstandings up.

Deeply learned theologian of Shi'a Islam he may have been, but even the Ayatollah Khomeini, judging by the quotation below, was a Misunderstander of Islam:

The BBC does its best to whitewash this case, blaming the murders on nationalism, but it can't help reporting also that the killers suspected the missionaries of a "plot to undermine Islam," and that missionaries are viewed as a threat in the hinterlands. "Turks in Christian murder trial," by Sarah Rainsford for the BBC (thanks to PRCS):

Five young men are due to go on trial in eastern Turkey, accused of killing three Christians earlier this year.

The Christians, who included a pastor and a German missionary, were stabbed repeatedly and had their throats cut.

The suspects, aged 19 and 20, were detained at the scene of the crime, a Protestant publishing house in Malatya.

The murders have prompted three Christian families to leave the town, leaving only around two dozen people in its small Protestant community.

The five suspects face three life sentences each, while two other are charged with membership of a terrorist organisation.

The killings were gruesome, condemned at the time by Turkey's prime minister as savage.

The three Christians had their hands and feet bound.

They were stabbed repeatedly, then had their throats cut.

One was a local pastor, another a German missionary who had lived in Turkey with his family for several years....

Christians threatened

In all cases, the alleged killers have been nationalist-minded young men or even teenagers.

In Malatya, the accused claimed to police they were acting to protect Turkey against a plot to undermine Islam and divide the country.

The state prosecutor has asked for three life sentences for each man charged with murder.

But a lawyer acting for the victims' families says he is concerned by the tone of the indictment.

More than half of the 31 files focus on the missionary work of the men murdered.

They includes contact details of those people they approached.

The lawyer believes that will help those accused plead provocation.

There are only around 100,000 Christians left in Turkey, less than 1% of the population.

But nationalists view missionaries in particular as a threat, especially in remote places like Malatya.

War Is Deceit Update: "34 killed as Al-Qaeda fighters attack Iraqi villages," from AFP (thanks to DFS):

BAGHDAD : At least 34 people were killed in fierce gun battles as suspected Al-Qaeda fighters - some dressed as Iraqi soldiers - attacked three villages, officials said on Thursday.

Gunmen dressed in army uniforms launched an attack on Howr Rajab, a Sunni village south of Baghdad, killing three soldiers and wounding three, a security official said.

They then commandeered a Humvee armoured vehicle and charged into the village where they assaulted the headquarters of the Howr Rajab Awakening Council, a local anti-Qaeda front made up of Sunni Arab men.

Witnesses said fierce clashes ensued when Iraqi troops and Awakening members fought back. At least 10 civilians were killed and four wounded in the clashes.

A doctor at Baghdad's Al-Yarmuk hospital said the facility had received the bodies of 10 civilians from the village.

An interior ministry official confirmed three soldiers had been killed and put the death toll of civilians at 18. [...]

Awakening councils, groups made up mainly of Sunni Arabs who have joined US forces in fighting Al-Qaeda, have sprung up across Iraq and are credited as helping bring about a drastic reduction in violence across the country. [...]

In the past few months, the US military has launched a crackdown in and around Howr Rajab and persuaded several villagers to join the fight against Al-Qaeda.

The attack there came a day after leaflets were distributed in the village warning Sunni Arabs against becoming US allies.

"There will be many battles between us. We will bomb each and every house in the village and chop the heads of people unless they return" to the anti-American insurgency, said one leaflet, put out in the name of Al-Qaeda.

"I regret that there are Muslim people (who died) and Allah akbar if there are kaffir people (unbelievers) who died."

"Bali bomber warns: Australia is next," by Cindy Wockner for The Daily Telegraph (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

ONE of the key Bali Bombers has issued a chilling warning from his death row prison cell, warning Australia "will be down next year".

Imam Samudra and two of his cohorts on death row for their role in the 2002 bombings were yesterday defiant, unapologetic and welcoming of their forthcoming executions as they were visited in their island jail by some of their family members.

Samudra, the so-called field commander of the Bali bombers, took the opportunity to hold a "press conference" to correct what he said was misinformation.

He had never said he was sorry about the bombing, he was only sorry that Muslims died, he said.

"I regret that there are Muslim people (who died) and Allah akbar if there are kaffir people (unbelievers) who died," he said.

As the 2½ hour visit ended, Samudra beckoned The Daily Telegraph over and issued his warning: "Australia will be down, next year Australia will be down."

"The official said the number of foreign fighters has dropped off since the Sinjar raid. The U.S. military believes both Syria and Saudi Arabia in recent months have taken a number of actions to reduce the flow of foreign fighters."

That's nice of them, over four years into the war, though it certainly sounds like the Sinjar raid helped, too. And now, Libya has some explaining to do. "'Al Qaeda rolodex' found in Iraq," by Barbara Starr for CNN:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As many as 60 percent of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq in the past year have come from Saudi Arabia and Libya, according to documents discovered in a raid in September near the Syrian border, a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad confirmed to CNN Thursday.

The documents confiscated in that raid listed the identities of more than 700 foreign fighters in Iraq, whom the United States believes entered that country since August 2006. The official describes the documents as "an al Qaeda rolodex."

Scrutinized along with other intelligence in the hands of the U.S. military, the documents show that 60 percent of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq during that time frame came either from Saudi Arabia or Libya, the official said.

The United States believes 305 foreign fighters came from Saudi Arabia, and 137 came from Libya.

The raid took place in Sinjar, close to the Syrian border. That raid has been discussed in the past by the U.S. military, but this is the first time the intelligence findings have been discussed in such detail. The New York Times first reported the new information on Thursday.

The official said the number of foreign fighters has dropped off since the Sinjar raid. The U.S. military believes both Syria and Saudi Arabia in recent months have taken a number of actions to reduce the flow of foreign fighters.

No surprise, as nothing has been done about it, and jihadists are allowed to behave in a way that is a clear and present danger to British society in the name of academic freedom, which would be one of the first things to go under sharia law, which they are working to impose. An update on this story. "British universities extremist hotbeds?" from Reuters:

British universities are coming under the spotlight in the country's fight against terrorism, with critics calling them a hotbed of extremism while lecturers say any clampdown threatens their freedom of speech.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown highlighted universities as one of the key areas where the authorities needed to "act against extremist influences".

However, a row is brewing over how officials can clamp down on radical groups recruiting students for militant causes without infringing on genuine academic debate.

[...]

The issue of campus extremism came to the fore in the aftermath of the London suicide bombings by four young British Islamists which left 52 people dead in 2005.

That was followed by a report by Professor Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, which suggested campuses were a breeding ground for extremists.

Glees caused a stir across the academic community by estimating that dozens of British universities had been infiltrated by fundamentalists, based on historical terrorism cases which had involved students or former students.

He now says the situation is even worse.

"What we have seen since 2005 has been an increase in the number of students and former students involved in terrorist crimes," he said in an interview.

"And we are even more entitled today to speak about there being a significant number being involved in Islamist terrorism. The evidence is even stronger and more compelling today than it was in 2005."

In the next few weeks, the government will meet with university chiefs to discuss "how we maintain academic freedom whilst ensuring that extremists can never stifle debate or impose their views."

"We are not asking and have never asked universities to spy on or monitor extremism," Rammell said.

"The guidance we issued to vice chancellors last year and are in the process of updating gives advice on how to ensure ... tolerance and open debate, protect vulnerable students, protect staff and students and tackle violent extremism where it may appear."

Glees is adamant that the softy-softly approach will not work. He said students should learn about radical ideas but the real issue is who teaches them and where.

"The people who are going around on campuses aren't learned professors and bright young dons - they are the same sort of people who go round radicalising people in prisons, madrassas and mosques," he said.

"Shop worker Abdul Rahman admits urging Muslims to jihad," from the Times Online:

A Pakistani student urged British Muslims to join jihad, or holy war, in the Middle East and Afghanistan, a court heard today as the suspect admitted to terrorism-related charges.

Abdul Rahman, 25, who admitted disseminating terrorist information as part of a plea-bargain, was linked to a “radical cell” committed to fighting jihad with their “Muslim brothers,” Manchester Crown Court was told.

When arrested in January this year Rahman had a jiffy bag ready to send to Afghanistan containing two hunting knives and mobile phones.

Just more standard equipment for an inner spiritual struggle.

Today he pleaded guilty to possessing a letter which amounted to a “call to arms” from a friend who was fighting in Afghanistan, as well as to disseminating terrorist propaganda and aiding the breach of a control order. He faces up to six years in jail.

Parmjit Cheema, for the prosecution, told the judge that Rahman was a "key player" in a terrorist cell.

"This defendant was involved in scouting, recruiting and encouraging others to join their philosophy of extreme jihad, or holy war.

"Their particular interest was the perceived assault on Islam and Afghanistan and the need to provide resources and fighters for that conflict.

"They were a group or cell of young men espousing the radical extreme jihadi philosophy that non believers are legitimate targets, especially if engaged with the true believers of Islam. In this case the Taleban and the residual insurgents."

As opposed to moderate, mild jihadi philosophy.

The link above also has video footage of Abdul Rahman and others training. More information from "See the disturbing video that shows Muslim extremists training at al Qaeda camp in the Lake District," from This Is London:

The film referred to one as a suicide bomber whilst two others were seen crawling, commando-style, through the snow and undergrowth near Langdale, Cumbria, praising Allah and the Chechen Mujahideen.

In Rahman's house, police found hunting knives, two-way radios, GPS equipment and propaganda - including a document referring to terrorist finishing schools called How Can I Train Myself for Jihad?

Yesterday Rahman admitted two offences under the 2006 Terrorism Act and pleaded guilty to a further charge of helping a terror suspect defy a control order.

The case illustrated the weaknesses of control orders, said one senior police source outside court.

He added: 'There is real concern these orders are not worth the paper they are written on and do nothing in real terms to protect the public.

[...]

Parmjit Cheema, prosecuting, said Rahman took a job in a mobile phone shop and mixed with radical Muslims, sharing a house with some of them.

[...]

She said Rahman played a vital role supporting jihadists in Pakistan and acting as a "pipeline" to the UK.

In January this year he met up with a 22-year-old man, known only as AK for legal reasons, who had just been served with a control order.

Rahman gave him £480 to flee the country. Before taking a flight to Lahore via Tehran, CCTV filmed AK at Birmingham Airport after he had ditched his usual traditional Muslim attire for Westernised clothing.

Thanksgiving Day seems as good a day as any to begin a new feature at this site: The Interlude. The Interlude is intended to be a relief, like the Relief of Khartoum or Mafeking, from a siege -- in the case of JihadWatch, the relentless mental siege of Islam, Jihad, Islamic Supremacism.

The relief provided may be literary, musical, cinematic, philological, historical, or anything-at-all in nature. Feel free to copy here every adjective Polonius offered Hamlet, and then some. There is only one firm requirement: the Interlude must have nothing to do with Islam, with Sharia. It must be forbidden by Islamic rigorists. It must have nothing to do with the very thing from which we are trying to deal with, and also trying, in several senses, to escape.

The Interlude’s appeal is thus to the well-known Pleasure Principle. And I have proof that it works. For as the only begetter of the Interlude, I have already derived pleasure from being the self-appointed principal who will choose what does the appealing.

So here, suitable for postprandial listening on Thanksgiving Day, when you have left the others sitting or sprawling or lying in various rooms, in various postures, exhibiting various states of contentment or distress, and have gone off by yourself (or possibly with a complicitous companion) for a furtive quick visit to the nearest accessible computer for your daily fix -- admit it, you’re an addict -- is

Musical Interlude #1:

In The Gloaming, By The Fireside (Jessie Matthews)

And here is Musical Interlude #2:

But We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye (Annette Hanshaw)

And here is Musical Interlude #3:

Black Coffee (Marjorie Stedeford)

And Cinematic Musical Interlude #4:

Voulez-Vous Le Taximeter?(Charlie Chaplin)

And Musical Interlude #5:

Sittin' In The Dark(Anona Winn and Sam Browne)

In a precursor to Thanksgiving Day, on March 23, 1798, President John Adams proclaimed a national Day of Fasting and Humiliation, set for the following May 9. It was a dark time. His proclamation read:

As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to the promotion of that morality and piety without which social happiness can not exist nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed; and as this duty, at all times incumbent, is so especially in seasons of difficulty or of danger, when existing or threatening calamities, the just judgments of God against prevalent iniquity, are a loud call to repentance and reformation; and as the United States of America are at present placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power, evinced by repeated refusals to receive our messengers of reconciliation and peace, by depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow-citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas – under these considerations it has appeared to me that the duty of imploring the mercy and benediction of Heaven on our country demands at this time a special attention from its inhabitants.

I have therefore thought fit to recommend, and I do hereby recommend, that Wednesday, the 9th day of May next, be observed throughout the United States as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that the citizens of these States, abstaining on that day from their customary worldly occupations, offer their devout addresses to the Father of Mercies agreeably to those forms or methods which they have severally adopted as the most suitable and becoming; that all religious congregations do, with the deepest humility, acknowledge before God the manifold sins and transgressions with which we are justly chargeable as individuals and as a nation, beseeching Him at the same time, of His infinite grace, through the Redeemer of the World, freely to remit all our offenses, and to incline us by His Holy Spirit to that sincere repentance and reformation which may afford us reason to hope for his inestimable favor and heavenly benediction; that it be made the subject of particular and earnest supplication that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it; that our civil and religious privileges may be preserved inviolate and perpetuated to the latest generations; that our public councils and magistrates may be especially enlightened and directed at this critical period; that the American people may be united in those bonds of amity and mutual confidence and inspired with that vigor and fortitude by which they have in times past been so highly distinguished and by which they have obtained such invaluable advantages; that the health of the inhabitants of our land may be preserved, and their agriculture, commerce, fisheries, arts, and manufactures be blessed and prospered; that the principles of genuine piety and sound morality may influence the minds and govern the lives of every description of our citizens and that the blessings of peace, freedom, and pure religion may be speedily extended to all the nations of the earth.

And finally, I recommend that on the said day the duties of humiliation and prayer be accompanied by fervent thanksgiving to the Bestower of Every Good Gift, not only for His having hitherto protected and preserved the people of these United States in the independent enjoyment of their religious and civil freedom, but also for having prospered them in a wonderful progress of population, and for conferring on them many and great favors conducive to the happiness and prosperity of a nation.

Given under my hand the seal of the United States of America, at Philadelphia, this 23d day of March, A.D. 1798, and of the Independence of the said States the twenty-second.
By the President : JOHN ADAMS.

There are many obvious parallels between the situation he outlines and the one that prevails today. We are "placed in a hazardous and afflictive situation by the unfriendly disposition, conduct, and demands of a foreign power," although not strictly speaking a nation-state. We have experienced "depredations on our commerce, and the infliction of injuries on very many of our fellow-citizens while engaged in their lawful business on the seas." Adams was referring to an undeclared naval war with France that was going on at the time, but he could just as well have meant the undeclared war that we face today: the jihad that could strike anywhere, anytime, while you're shopping, or going for a walk, or flying in an airplane.

Adams asks that on the "said day the duties of humiliation and prayer be accompanied by fervent thanksgiving to the Bestower of Every Good Gift," and that seems like a good idea today, particularly since his call for fasting and prayer has given way to a regular day of thanks. Today we should, in his words, "give thanks to the Bestower of Every Good Gift," for all those individuals who never would have flourished in a strict Sharia state such as the Islamic supremacists are laboring to impose upon the world, and for their achievements that are likewise not consonant with Sharia.

These include: Adams himself and his son, truculent as they were. George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. James Madison. The Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Constitution. Sam Houston. Davy Crockett. William Lloyd Garrison and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Frederick Douglass. The Gettysburg Address. The Emancipation Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau. Longfellow and Poe and Emily Dickinson. Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin and Mr. Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe. Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin and Duke Ellington and Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Bob Dylan. Mr. A. Braxton. Georgia O'Keeffe, Walker Evans.

This is a list made in haste. It is drastically incomplete. It also consists only of Americans, since this is, after all, an American day, but the list of the great people whose lives and works could never have taken the course they did under Sharia, and great achievements that could never have been made under Sharia, is international.

Make your own list. The only condition is that they all must conflict with Sharia: people who paved the way for free and representative government, or for freedom of inquiry. People who celebrated the human spirit in whatever way, leaving monuments to its strength and vitality. Artists, musicians, and others whose life's work would be forbidden and destroyed by the likes of the Taliban. This is a dark time like the one Adams spoke of. Let us give thanks, because in doing so we remember what we have that is worth defending.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Sharia Alert from the Caucasus: "Chechen leader: Head scarves for women," by Musa Sadulayev for Associated Press (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

GROZNY, Russia (AP) -- The president of Chechnya has called for all women to cover their heads with scarves, the latest in a series of his unofficial orders toughening social customs for women in the violence-wracked, mainly Muslim Russian region.

The recommendation by President Ramzan Kadyrov during a TV address last week was not a legally binding order or legislation passed by the regional parliament.

However, several government institutions in the capital of Grozny, including the main government-owned publishing house, posted signs earlier this week forbidding women without head scarves from entering, and guards were enforcing the rule.

Human rights activists reported that at least two universities had also barred women without covered heads from attending classes.

"Legally speaking, you can't demand that women wear head scarves, but in Chechnya, under many governments, authorities have tried to adhere to national traditions," said Dzhambulat Saidumov, a 25-year-old Grozny lawyer. "I support observing folk traditions, but I oppose forcing people to (observe) them if they don't want to."

In his televised comments, Kadyrov gave no explanation for his recommendation, except to say that Chechens should do more to respect their national traditions.

The Kremlin has pinned its hopes for a lasting peace in the North Caucasus region on the gruff-talking, rough-mannered Kadyrov, whose father, Akhmad, also held Moscow's hopes until he was assassinated in a bombing in 2004.

Since being sworn in as president in April, the younger Kadyrov has continued leading a reconstruction boom in Grozny that began when he was prime minister. Once a moonscape of rubble and shattered buildings, much of it now has newly painted buildings, street lanterns, paved roads and parks.

He made several, sometimes quixotic public statements about women's behavior in the region and openly advocated adherence to Islamic customs. He has said Chechnya does not need Islamic law, but also said he favors polygamy - illegal in Russia - because there are more women than men in the region, and he disapproved of Chechen girls who wear Western, instead of Chechen, dresses to their weddings.

[...]

During Chechnya's brief period of de-facto independence in the 1990s, the region's government implemented Islamic law as a concession to the growing influence of Muslim fundamentalists in the republic.

And that influence has not waned.

Motivated by a desire to "promote terrorism."

"11 years for refusing to testify to grand jury in Hamas funding case," from The Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

CHICAGO: A former professor accused of taking part in a Palestinian terrorist network was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison Wednesday for refusing to testify before a U.S. grand jury.

Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 49, a former associate professor of business at Washington's Howard University, was taken into custody by federal marshals immediately after the sentencing, during which prosecutors warned that he might flee.

Ashqar was convicted earlier this year of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to testify in 2003 before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian militant movement Hamas.

He and co-defendant Muhammad Salah were acquitted of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy aimed at bankrolling Hamas in its violent attacks on the government of Israel. But prosecutors presented telephone records showing that Ashqar was in contact with Hamas leaders.

The judge found that Ashqar's refusal to testify was motivated by a desire to "promote terrorism." That toughened the federal sentencing guidelines and guaranteed that he would get a stiff sentence.

Naive Kids Update: Ahmed Mohamed promotes an alternative to jihad/martyrdom bombings. Instead of killing yourself in the process of taking out a crowd of infidels, you see, you use a remote-controlled device to kill the infidels only. What a concept!

"'Martyrdom' Detonator Video Details Revealed In Case," by Elaine Silvestrini for The Tampa Tribune (thanks to H.B.):

TAMPA - A prosecution court filing provides new details of a videotape the government says was made by a University of South Florida student and posted to the Web site YouTube.

The video, authorities allege, was made by Ahmed Mohamed, 26, who was arrested in South Carolina on Aug. 4 along with Youssef Megahed and accused of transporting explosives.

The prosecution says Mohamed acknowledged making the video in which he demonstrated how to use a remote-controlled toy to detonate a bomb.

The prosecution court filing quotes Mohamed as saying in Arabic on the video, "Instead of the brethren going to, to carry out martyrdom operations, no may G-D bless him, he can use the explosion tools from distance and preserve his life, G-D willing, the blessed and exalted, for the real battles."

See below for an explantion of usage for the word "God." It makes Mohamed sound like an Orthodox Jew -- which he assuredly is not.

The quote comes in a reply the government filed to a motion by Megahed seeking to have his case tried separately from Mohamed. Megahed's attorneys argue that terrorism-related allegations against Mohamed will unfairly prejudice the jury against Megahed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Hoffer writes in his response that he opposes the severance of the case, saying there is no basis to think the jury could not be fair to both defendants.

The "G-D" portions of the quote stand for the word "god," according to Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office. "Jay did that out of respect to God. That's the way he prints that name," Cole said....

Hoffer notes in his filing that the video was found by investigators on a laptop computer owned by Mohamed. Megahed was seen trying to stow the computer as deputies approached their car in North Carolina, the prosecution says.

Describing the video, a new prosecution court filing says, "Referring to the disassembled toy car, the narrator said 'We will cut the circuit of ... these two wires that supply the electric current to the motor and rather ... than giving electricity to the motor, we will route it to the detonator.' "...

Naive kids indeed.

She hurt their feelings

The Muslims are blaming the Communists, but the Reds deny the charge, and after all, we have seen rioting before after someone "hurt Muslim sentiments."

"Army deployed after Calcutta riot," from the BBC (thanks to Visvas):

Troops have been deployed in the Indian city of Calcutta after protests over a controversial writer turned into riots.

Police using tear gas and baton charges were unable to control crowds calling for Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasreen to leave India.

Rioters blocked roads and set cars alight. At least 27 people were hurt. More than 100 arrests have been made.

Crowds were also protesting at recent attacks on Muslims in the Nandigram area in the east of West Bengal state.

A number of people have been killed and thousands left homeless in Nandigram after violence over now-abandoned state plans to industrialise farm land in the area.

Roads blocked

Wednesday's trouble in the state capital began after the predominantly Muslim All-India Minority Forum called for blockades on major roads in the city.

The group said Ms Nasreen had "seriously hurt Muslim sentiments". Many Muslims say her writing ridicules Islam.

Police arrived in strength to disperse the demonstrators.

Violence then broke out in Ripon Street in the north of the city and spread to Park Circus, Moulali and many other areas of central Calcutta.

The BBC's Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta says he saw two army columns, one in Park Circus and one in Moulali. [...]

"The protesters started pelting policemen with brick bats and acid bottles in several places, so we can say the trouble making was planned and co-ordinated," Calcutta police chief Gautam Chakrabarty said.

Idris Ali, a senior leader of the Minority Forum, blamed the state's ruling Communists for the violence. [...]

The All-India Minority Forum says Taslima Nasreen's Indian visa should be revoked and she should be forced to leave the country.

Critics say she called for the Koran to be changed to give women greater rights, but she vehemently denied making the comments.

Oh, but (shudder) what if she really did make them?

Score one for the forces of intimidation and terror-enabling. "Bias suit against US Airways upheld," by Audrey Hudson in the Washington Times:

A federal judge has ruled that a lawsuit filed by a group of imams against US Airways and a Minneapolis airport can proceed.

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery said in a 41-page opinion late yesterday that the imams, who say they were discriminated against when they were removed from a flight last year, have a plausible claim that their constitutional rights may have been violated.

The imams "have adequately stated a claim" that airport police may have "seized plaintiffs in violation of their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures," Judge Montgomery ruled.

The Imams' CAIR lawyer is thrilled:

"This preliminary victory shows that any American can have a day in court," said Omar Mohammedi, attorney for the imams.

"The case is about civil rights violations and constitutional principles that we all cherish. Our judicial system has always been, and will remain, the hope for all minorities who seek to redress civil rights violations," Mr. Mohammedi said.

However, the judge dismissed two of the imams' complaints. The imams had argued that they suffered from emotional distress as a result of the incident, and one of the imams said he was discriminated against because he is blind.

US Airways says the captain's decision to remove the men from the flight "was not arbitrary and capricious" but that he relied on a passenger's note saying the men had made anti-American comments and sat in a "dispersed seating arrangement" and on a flight attendant's observation that two of the imams "had asked for seat-belt extensions, but only one seemed to need one." Passenger records also indicated that three of the men were flying on one-way tickets.

In summarizing the events that led up to the men's removal from the November 2006 flight from Minnesota to Phoenix, the judge wrote that "it is dubious that these facts would lead a reasonable person to conclude that plaintiffs were about to interfere with the crew of Flight 300."

Jed Babbin, the editor of Human Events, for which I write a weekly column, contacted me yesterday evening to tell me he had received a call from a Washington Post reporter, Perry Bacon, asking him about a column I wrote eight months ago entitled "Our First Muslim President?” -- about, of course, Barack Obama.

Apparently the Post is reacting to a recent Robert Novak column in which Novak said this:

WASHINGTON -- Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

What could it be? Well, there are some signs that at least some people think it has something to do with Obama's Muslim upbringing. This week also Doonesbury's Garry Trudeau has been editorializing about a viral email that has been going around claiming that Obama is still a Muslim, and now the Post's Perry Bacon is digging into eight-month-old articles. Bacon asked Babbin, "The article’s entitled 'Our First Muslim President.' Do you think that’s reasonable?"

Of course, the article is actually entitled "Our First Muslim President?," with the question mark, and it debunks those viral emails by making it clear that Obama has left Islam. It suggests that Obama's Muslim past may actually make him a more attractive candidate in many circles, allowing him to present himself as the one candidate who really understands the Islamic world, and thus the only one who can make peace with it. In fact, it was so neutrally written that some people took it as my endorsement of Obama's candidacy. That it certainly wasn't, but it wasn't remotely the kind of dirty-trick attack that Perry Bacon seems to be assuming it was. I guess now I'm working for Hillary, or maybe that Bacon was hoping to hang on me what Hillary's people are doing: Jed tells me that Bacon's questions represent "an apparent effort by the Washington Post to defend Hillary Clinton and protect her from the backwash of the tricks she’s trying to pull."

We'll see what kind of story he produces, but I suspect already that Perry Bacon of the Washington Post, who made no attempt to contact me while asking about a column that I wrote, is set to join the illustrious S. I. Rosenbaum of the St. Petersburg Times, Eric Gorski of Associated Press, and Elizabeth Holmes of the Wall Street Journal in the Jihad Watch Journalism Hall of Fame. If you're looking for a sly ideologue trying to masquerade as an objective observer, just call a reporter.

Now, everyone knows CAIR is a neutral civil rights organization that is scrupulous about telling the truth. Never mind that CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper has defamed me on national television, or that the organization's website even featured a link, for a time, to a tissue of lies about me and Jihad Watch penned by a mendacious and pathetic thrice-convicted felon.

Never mind that CAIR's Ahmed Bedier, quoted in this story, has posted a vile hate message at this site, and has never bothered to answer my questions to him about the Islamic supremacist ideology. Never mind also that Bedier characterized two men who are now under indictment after being found with pipe bombs in their trunk -- one of whom has admitted to making a video about how to use remote-controlled bombs against American soldiers -- as a couple of "naive kids." Never mind the terror convictions of CAIR officials. Never mind the Islamic supremacist statements made by CAIR reps. Never mind the unindicted co-conspirator status. Alan Colmes says they're ok, they must be ok! They're as pure as the driven snow!

And that's why this girl, despite the fact that no evidence whatsoever bears out her story, must be believed. The "Islamophobia" myth requires constant shoring up! Call another press conference, Ahmed!

"Muslim girl's tale in doubt," by Abhi Raghunathan for the St. Petersburg Times (thanks to Twostellas):

ST. PETERSBURG - Hannah Chehab's tale of harassment drew widespread attention last week.

She said a fellow Azalea Middle School student choked her, pulled off her Muslim head scarf and threatened to shoot her. School officials were slow to respond, Hannah and her parents said. A local Islamic group called a press conference to draw attention to the allegations.

But a police report released Tuesday says investigators found little evidence to support Hannah's story.

Several classmates told police that Hannah, 11, routinely talked and played around with the boy she accused of threatening her. The school resource officer who investigated the complaint found several witnesses who contradict Hannah's account. School videocamera footage doesn't support her tale either, the police report says.

Police said it's unclear if Hannah's hijab was ever removed.

"Our investigation did not reveal any information or evidence to support the girl's allegations," said police spokesman Bill Proffitt. He said the investigation has been closed and no charges will be filed.

The school district has said an assistant principal reprimanded the boy, isolated him from other students during lunch that day and assigned him to a work detail.

Hmmm. Will this boy's parents sue CAIR?

Ahmed Bedier, executive director of the Tampa chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, brought the girl to a press conference last week to draw attention to the incident and criticize the district's response.

On Tuesday, Bedier said the school district failed to notify police until after the press conference. Bedier said Hannah's parents still haven't decided whether they're going to send her back to Azalea.

Pinellas County school officials have maintained that Azalea Middle School acted appropriately.

Hannah's complaint centered around an 11-year-old boy who, she said, choked her and threatened to shoot her with a BB gun. She also said the boy tugged at her head scarf and tipped it off, "exposing her hair and neck," according to a police report.

Hannah and her parents complained that school officials, including an assistant principal at Azalea, offered a misleading account of events.

But when the school resource officer interviewed students in the class where Hannah said her head scarf was taken off, several said that Hannah and the boy had been joking around and talking, as they often did.

Several students said the boy tugged at Hannah's head scarf. Some students said the hijab came off, but others said it came down partway.

The teacher in the classroom told the officer that just one curl of Hannah's hair was exposed as she walked to the bathroom to fix her hijab.

According to the report, Hannah didn't report any threats while talking to an assistant principal, though she and her parents now dispute that account.

Several students did say they heard someone threaten to shoot Hannah. But the accounts of the threat vary.

Bedier said Hannah was a good student who doesn't get into trouble. He said the report doesn't negate her claims.

"Hannah is very troubled and she's basically in disbelief," Bedier said. "She was a victim in this situation.

"There's no evidence so far to show that she's lying."

Correction: There's no evidence so far to show that she's telling the truth.

Several School Board members praised Hannah last week when, flanked by her mother and Bedier, she appeared at a board meeting and read a statement. But on Tuesday, board member Jane Gallucci said she had concerns about the lack of emotion in the 11-year-old's presentation.

"It was as if she was reading a book," said Gallucci, who for many years worked as a middle school guidance counselor for the district. "If this was as traumatic as she said it was, there would have been more emotion in the retelling."

Looks as if it is. And it is, of course, because of the government's politically correct eagerness to hire Muslims, to show that the war on terror is not anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. And because no one in the government is studying the jihadist ideology, no one has the faintest idea how to screen applicants for it -- or any interest in doing so.

Keystone Kops Alert: "Is U.S. gov't infested with terrorist moles?," from WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Davida):

Thanks to lax background checks, even after 9/11, the Hezbollah spy who managed to obtain sensitive jobs at the FBI and CIA is not the first terrorist supporter to infiltrate the U.S. government.

An alleged al-Qaida operative also infiltrated the Environmental Protection Agency, according to federal investigators and court documents obtained by WND.

The case, details of which are revealed here for the first time, involves Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani national who obtained a sensitive position with the EPA in Washington as a toxicologist even though she was not a U.S. citizen.

Like the Lebanese national suspected of passing secrets to Hezbollah, Tehseen lied about her citizenship on her government application, a falsehood that the government failed – in both cases – to catch in its security background investigation.

In hiring Tehseen in 1998, the EPA also missed another red flag in her file – her husband's ties to Pakistani intelligence, which has a long history of clandestine support for both the Taliban and al-Qaida. Her husband served as a major in the Pakistani military specializing in intelligence.

FBI investigators say that while Tehseen had access to classified information as a toxicologist, she and her husband ran a charitable front for Osama bin Laden's inner circle in Peshawar, Pakistan. She even got colleagues to donate to the front – called Help Orphans and Widows, or HOW – which, among other things, operated an orphanage and madrassa for more than 200 boys on the Pakistani-Afghan border.

Investigators say Tehseen, a "very devout" Muslim who wears a hijab, was really acting as a conduit for money funneled to bin Laden from the Missouri-based Islamic American Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department has blacklisted for helping fund bin Laden's operations overseas. Treasury has frozen IARA's assets, and the FBI has conducted raids on its offices.

Investigators also suspect the building she used for the orphanage doubled as a safehouse for al-Qaida.

"She had big-time contacts with al-Qaida, including with people just once removed from bin Laden himself," said an FBI special agent familiar with the case.

There is much more. Read it all.

How could they not defend it? They're just applying Islamic law. "Saudi defends verdict against gang-rape victim," from Reuters (thanks to John):

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia defended on Tuesday a court's decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes of the whip, after the United States described the verdict as "astonishing".

The 19-year-old Shi'ite woman from the town of Qatif in the Eastern Province and an unrelated male companion were abducted and raped by seven men in 2006.

Ruling according to Saudi Arabia's strict reading of Islamic law, a court had originally sentenced the woman to 90 lashes and the rapists to jail terms of between 10 months and five years. It blamed the woman for being alone with an unrelated man.

Last week the Supreme Judicial Council increased the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison and ordered the rapists to serve between two and nine years in jail.

The ruling provoked rare criticism from the United States, which is trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to attend a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland next week.

A State Department spokesman told reporters on Monday that "most (people) would find this relatively astonishing that something like this happens".

Nothing astonishing about it at all. It's just Islamic law, but why would the State Department know or care about that?

As the human rights lawyers descend upon Manitoba to take up Hagar Outbih's case, Kathy Shaidle puts the whole thing in perspective:

Stories like this one make the news more frequently these days. I don't get it. Muslim reps always say, "No one is making me wear a headscarf. It is an expression of modesty", blah blah.

Well: is it mandatory or not? If not -- and you say it isn't, not me -- then the girl can remove it to compete.

The rules say you can't wear such a scarf. So take it off and follow our rules.

Oh but wait: suddenly the scarf IS mandatory. See why we get annoyed?

"Head scarf breaks rules," from the CP:

A Judo Manitoba official reduced an 11-year-old girl to tears yesterday when he refused to allow her to compete in a tournament wearing a hijab, or Muslim head scarf.

While other children squared off in the match at a Winnipeg gym, Hagar Outbih could only watch from the sidelines and wonder why she was singled out.

"He said that I can't fight. If I want to fight I have to take it off or I have to leave," Outbih said as tears rolled down her face.

Hagar's mother, Khadaja, tried to console her daughter.

"As a mom I feel so bad that my daughter would go through this." she said.

Judo Manitoba president Dave Minuk made the ruling.

He said it was based on International Judo Federation guidelines.

"It has nothing to do with religion, it is a safety issue," Minuk said. "It (the hijab) could be used to strangle somebody. It could fall over her face."

"As order slides, Palestinian women face honor killings," by Ilene R. Prusher for the Christian Science Monitor:

QALQILYA, WEST BANK - All the women in the family say Wafa Wahdan was wonderful.

But her sisters-in-law add that they noticed a few little things. She had changed the way she dressed in the past year to a less conservative style and she sometimes went out for a drive without saying where she was going.

A few weeks ago, the body of the young mother of four was found in a garbage dump east of town. Police arrested two of the woman's male cousins for having trapped Ms. Wahdan and shot her to death, committing the third "honor killing" in Qalqilya last month.

Wahdan's brutal murder devastated her husband and immediate family, who say that the rumor mill's tales of Wahdan having an affair were untrue. But regardless of their veracity, suspicion alone can be enough to get a woman killed by distant relatives looking to "cleanse" the family honor when there is talk of an illicit relationship.

According to local organizations, such murders have risen in the Palestinian territories to nearly 50 this year – a fact that many here blame on the absence of any true law and order, which allows individuals to enforce their own version of justice. Palestinians here say the image of an ever-weaker Palestinian Authority has increased after Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, making this local vigilantism harder to combat.

Particularly galling to many here is the fact that a man who admits to murdering a female relative for reasons of honor can be sentenced to as little as six months in jail. Palestinians say that policy is based on an old Jordanian law, which still holds in the West Bank: Article 341 considers murder a legitimate act of defense when the killer acts "in defense of his life or his honor."

Saed Taha, dean of Qalqilya's College of Islamic Law, says that honor killings in the Palestinian territories are never carried out according to proper Muslim stipulations and thus are unacceptable according to sharia, or Islamic law. In Islam, an unmarried woman found guilty of having an affair can be sentenced to 100 lashes; for a married woman, the sentence is death by stoning. But first, four witnesses must say they saw the illicit act with their own eyes.

"When the sentence is only six months, the consequence is that [perpetrators] encourage others to do the same," says Dr. Taha. "Islam does not allow anyone to take the law into his own hands. And for a woman to be sentenced [for illicit affairs], it would have to take place in a system that operates under Islamic law, which we don't have right now."

Tribal traditions are often a motive

But ancient tribal mores, not Islam, are usually what drive family members to demand that their honor be restored. In this case, according to several of Wahdan's relatives interviewed for this story, the men of the family met and came to a joint decision that Ms. Wahdan should be killed.

It is a recurring pattern that anything that looks bad in the international media is "just a tribal thing," with nothing to do with Islam. But the legal course confirmed by Taha shows more Islamic law-- so often promoted as a solution, though it would at best only replace lawless injustice with the rigorously legalistic injustices of sharia law-- would not help. Indeed, Islam only further reinforces the notion that a woman's value depends on her obedience and reputation for chastity:

Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. (Qur'an 4:34)

The article continues:

"These men have no fear of God," says Wahdan's mother, Umm el-Walid. She pulls out of a photograph of her daughter, big-eyed and pretty, sitting with some of Mrs. Walid's now-motherless grandchildren.

"Had my daughter had an extramarital relationship, her husband would have been the first to notice and do something," says Wahdan's mother, stopping to squint out tears. "They charged her, sentenced her, and executed her all in one fell swoop."

Her children harassed in school

Hala Wahdan, a sister-in-law, says the other women in the family, who are now trying to take care of the late woman's children, are devastated. The oldest kids, aged 9 and 12, are being harassed in school.

"Her children are extremely affected by this, especially with people gossiping and saying things that aren't true," she says. "They tell her 9-year-old girl, Noura, 'You're the daughter whose mother was killed because of honor.' And to the 12-year-old son, 'Your mother was killed because she was messing around.'"

Read it all.

There is no doubt whatsoever that he is right about the double standard.

By Mike Collett-White for Reuters (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

LONDON (Reuters) - A Christian activist sought on Tuesday to use blasphemy laws to prosecute a top BBC executive over the broadcaster's decision to screen "Jerry Springer-The Opera," a musical many Christians found offensive.

[...]

Gledhill argued that "Jerry Springer - The Opera" would never have been staged or aired in Britain had it been a satire about Islam, not Christianity.

"No theatre would have produced it. Neither would the BBC have broadcast it," he said.

Several leading artists have complained that overreaction by minority groups in Britain have encouraged self-censorship in the arts.

"Overreaction" is good. That's all it is, folks. Overreaction. Someone might just overreact a little, and slit your throat:

Grayson Perry, a cross-dressing potter who has won the prestigious Turner Prize, said in remarks reported this week that he consciously avoided tackling the topic of radical Islam in his art because of what he saw as a threat of reprisals.

"I've censored myself," the Times quoted him as saying. "The reason I haven't gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat."

"New Islamist Video Threatens Germany, Austria," from Deutsche Welle:

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said his government is taking seriously a new threat contained in an Islamist video demanding that Germany and Austria pull their troops out of Afghanistan.

In the video received by the Austrian broadcasting corporation ORF on Tuesday, Nov. 20, a previously unknown group calling itself the Global Islamic Media Front indirectly threatened attacks in Germany and Austria if the two states do not pull their troops from Afghanistan.

It also demanded that Austria release two Islamists held in detention there.

Austrian Interior Ministry spokesperson Rudolf Gollia said the roughly four-minute-long video was predominantly focused on Germany and that Austria was mentioned toward the end.

"The German soldiers still occupy Afghanistan and we repeat our call from the last video that Germany withdraw its troops from Afghanistan," the video's German subtitles say. "This only serves your own security in your country.

We've heard that before. But would it be... "A lasting peace?"

"The same applies to Austria too. The Mujahideen have spared you so far, therefore the number of dead soldiers is not particularly high. But this will now change..."

Germany has some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the ISAF mission. Three Austrian soldiers serve as part of ISAF in Kabul.

No immediate threat

"There is no identifiable, immediate threat, but nevertheless such a message needs to be taken seriously," the ministry's Rudolf Gollia said. Austria has not raised security levels for government members depicted in the video.

[...]

Gollia said the video also mentions the arrest of two alleged Islamic militants in September in Vienna over another Online threat, calling their detention a "mistake."

"Graft thwarts effort to win over jihadists," by Mark Forbes for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Official efforts to seduce jailed Indonesian terrorists with money and privileges are being undermined by corruption and rival efforts from new Islamic gangs.

In this battle for hearts and minds, controversial "deradicalisation" tactics behind prison walls - including senior police inviting Bali bombers to parties - have succeeded in winning over 22 convicted terrorists, according to an International Crisis Group study.

Valuable intelligence has been gathered but the study, based on intensive interviews with prisoners and officials, also exposes the program's lack of co-ordination and shambolic, corrupt prison administrations.

Jemaah Islamiah prisoners have formed their own gangs inside several prisons, successfully recruiting inmates and even guards to their radical ideology, the study found. Prisoners have published hardline texts and held study groups and meetings via the internet and mobile phones.

The International Crisis Group's senior adviser in Indonesia, Sidney Jones, said the innovative strategy should continue, but with clearer aims and benchmarks, along with wide-scale prison reforms.

Of the 170 Islamic terrorists in Indonesian jails, 22 were taking part in the deradicalisation program, Ms Jones said.

"Five were pretty serious terrorists, and it's better having five out of the network than in. I think police are on to something looking at economic aid as the first step in changing attitudes, but they need to work out new strategies on how to get to those who aren't participating, because the real hardliners are not."

There was a danger that the program's gains could be offset by radicals recruiting other prisoners, Ms Jones said.

A predictable problem, when one does not engage the ideology directly: There will be some who can't be bought off.

The report states that unless prison corruption is tackled, jihadis (radical Islamists) "will be able to communicate with anyone they want and get around any regulation designed to restrict their influence over other inmates.

"Unless prisons get more and better-trained staff, they will not be able to address the problem of gangs and protection rackets among inmates that serve to strengthen jihadi solidarity.

"Cipinang, the main prison in Jakarta, is said to operate like a hotel," the report says.

Two rival gangs controlled the prison and its rampant drug trade, and extorted other inmates. The jihadis formed the "Ustadz Gang" (the gang of Islamic scholars) for protection after JI leader Abu Bakar Bashir was released in 2006 and they rejected extortion threats.

[...]

In Bali's Kerobokan prison, where 10 Australian drug traffickers are jailed, a similar gang culture, and Islamic stronghold, also prevails.

Before being transferred to Java, the three Bali bombers, Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas, had a profound impact on other inmates and guards, the report reveals.

Amrozi opened a business with other prisoners selling vouchers for mobile phones, and had easy access to phones, along with a laptop provided by a guard.

"The terrorists generally had three key qualities that were attractive to ordinary criminals: access to money, from a range of sympathetic donors; an idealism that hardened criminals apparently appreciated; and a willingness to fight," the report says.

One Kerobokan guard provided Amrozi with his laptop. Now jailed in Semarang, he is the most militant of the jail's inmates, authorities say.

So, let's replace the "wrong" kind of corruption with the "right" kind:

The report states that the deradicalisation program assumes that, through kindness and cash handouts "police can change the jihadi assumption that government officials are by definition thoghut (anti-Islamic), and the prisoners may begin to question other deeply-held tenets.

And how do they differentiate inmates who had a true change of heart from those who are willing to tell authorities what they want to hear in exchange for handsome incentives? And to a hardliner, it only changes a government official from being anti-Islamic and useless to anti-Islamic and temporarily useful.

"Once prisoners show a willingness to accept police assistance, they are exposed to religious arguments against some forms of jihad by scholars whose credentials within the Islamic movement are unimpeachable," the report says. "Some have then accepted that attacks on civilians, such as the first and second Bali bombings and the Australian embassy bombing, were wrong. The economic aid, however, is ultimately more important than religious arguments in changing prisoner attitudes."

Bottom line: Throwing money at the problem isn't going quite according to plan, so let's throw more money at it, and that should take care of it.

Barry Rubin in the Jerusalem Post articulates a widespread malady among the Western intelligentsia:

The idea that poverty, relative backwardness, violence and instability must be caused by external circumstances is ingrained in much of the Western intelligentsia. It contributes to a tendency to apologize for those regimes and radical groups that are the main cause of continued stagnation and suffering in the Middle East.

In fact, of course, these problems are usually based more on history, culture, geography, ideology and choices made.

For example, Muslim-majority countries have much lower participation of women in society; are more rural and agricultural, and have had no enlightenment or industrial revolution. Governments don't care about developing good health and educational systems. Lack of freedom and cultural restrictions - things changed and challenged in Europe from the 16th century onwards - harm economic development and social progress. And so on.

Yet the idea that underdevelopment or instability is caused by imperialism is so highly developed among the Western intelligentsia that it ignores the fundamental internal shortcomings that are the real problem, thus understating the problems caused by traditional culture, the need for reform or the value of the virtues that led to Western successes.

MOST REVEALING in this respect is a recent exchange between Syrian author Nidhal Na'isa and Egyptian cleric Sheikh Ibrahim al-Khouli on al-Jazeera television, October 30, 2007. Khouli said: "Western civilization is not really a civilization."

Na'isa responded by asking, "How did you come here [Qatar] from Egypt in two hours? On camels, it used to take you over six months to make a pilgrimage." [translations by www.memritv.org] He might have added: Who developed the technology making it possible for you to speak to millions of people through airwaves to a box with pictures and sounds?

Other Arab liberals have pointed out that the ability to build airplanes is superior to the ability to crash them into buildings (the September 11 attacks).

[...]

INDEED, there are four main pillars critical to the Middle East's dominant ideology:

• that its problems arise from Western and Israeli oppression;

• that the struggles and violence of radical Arab nationalists and Islamists are based on genuine grievances;

• that the West behaves wrongly because it is hostile or ignorant about Arabs and Muslims;

• and that Arab and Muslim society is vastly superior to the West - which justifies their rejection of it and will ultimately pave the way for their victory over it.

The first three pillars are too commonly accepted in the West; the last is largely ignored - creating a critical flaw in Western thinking, since the key to understanding the Middle East is not "Islamophobia" in the West, but the region's own "Westophobia." Within this broad category we can discern many other phobias: of modernity, secularity, democracy, freedom, female equality and of Judaism and Christianity.

THE BOTTOM LINE is that change is needed not in Western policies and perceptions, but in the Middle East itself. After all, the West succeeded precisely - as Arab liberals well understand - because its societies put a priority on internal change: education and honest inquiry; productive virtues; better social infrastructure; more human and civil rights; and a freer culture.

[...]

Confronted by the daily avalanche of naïve nonsense or outright mendacity about the Middle East in the Western media, academia, and sometimes governments, I am haunted by something a Syrian friend told the "Syrian Journal" author:

"You know what pisses me off the most? Not the fascists here. But the appeasers in the West. What sort of message is that sending to us - those of us who want some reform, who want our children to live in an open society like you have in the West?"

CAIR seems to be following a risky course here. Conyers himself may be pliant, but if there are hearings, some information may come out that CAIR doesn't want to see coming out. "CAIR seeks removal of label in terrorism case," by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is seeking help from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. to pressure the Justice Department to change the group's status as a co-conspirator in a terrorism case.

CAIR officials recently met with Mr. Cony