December 2007 Archives

More work for poor, heavily burdened Ibrahim Hooper: after he has straightened out all those Turkish misunderstanders of Islam, he will have to trek to Pakistan to introduce this imam to Islam's true, peaceful teachings. And maybe when he gets back he can explain to us how it is that so many Islamic clerics, who have devoted their lives to studying the Qur'an and Hadith, seem to get it so drastically wrong -- and all in the same way.

"Cleric’s chilling warning to UK," by Oliver Harvey for The Sun (thanks to John):

A FANATICAL Pakistani cleric told The Sun yesterday of his chilling dream to turn the world Muslim – by force if necessary.

Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60, spoke openly of imposing Islamic law’s stoning and beheading on Britain – as Pakistan was rocked by unrest over the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

He warned: “We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.

“We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force.”

Rehamn, 60, spoke in the Pakistani town of Kahuta as the call to prayer echoed over the dusty streets.

He is Imam of the town’s fundamentalist religious school or madrassa, where classes for kids as young as nine include Jihad or Holy War and barbaric punishments.

His teachings are frightening enough. But his mosque lies in the shadow of the secret bunker where Pakistan produces nuclear weapons.

And when asked if it would be right to nuke British infidels, he laughed and answered: “Probably.”

Rehamn, in a flowing grey beard and turban, explained Islamic, or Sharia Law as we sat surrounded by some of his 250 students.

He said: “Adulterers who are married should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.

“Homosexuals must be killed – it’s the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do.

“Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.”

So what does he think of Britain? The dad insisted: “The nonbelievers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.”

Read it all.

Another Eurabia Alert. "3 held on Dutch violence fears," from CNN:

(CNN) -- Dutch police raided five homes in Rotterdam early Monday, arresting three men suspected of planning an imminent act of violence, according to a spokeswoman for the Netherlands' Justice Department.

Two of the suspects, aged 31 and 32, are Dutch-Moroccan and the third is a 39-year-old Sudanese man, spokeswoman Desiree Leppens told CNN.

Disgruntled members of the Dutch Reformed Church, no doubt.

She said special police forces conducted the raid after the Justice Department received information from General Intelligence and Security Services on the three men.

"We got the information yesterday evening and around 6 o'clock (Monday morning) we had the first arrest," Leppens said.

Dutch authorities have launched an investigation and must charge the men by the end of the week, she said. She said it is too early in the investigation to elaborate on what charges are being considered.

She had no other details on the raid or what led authorities to the suspects.

Eurabia Alert. "Brussels cancels New Year revelry," from Sky News:

Traditional New Year's Eve celebrations in Brussels have been cancelled over heightened fears of a terror attack.

The Belgian capital is on high alert after police detained 14 people on suspicion of helping to plot a jailbreak for an alleged al Qaeda militant.

Last week the government said it believed the suspects were planning to use explosives to attack the city and free inmate Nizar Trabelsi, who is serving 10 years for plotting to a car bomb at an air force base.

Tunisian Trabelsi was arrested just days after the 9/11 terror attacks.

He has denied his supporters were planning attacks and a judge has said the 14 should be released as there is not enough evidence.

But the heightened security measures at the airport and subway stations will remain in place until at least January 3.

The Belgian capital's Christmas market was supposed to stay open all night on New Year's Eve but it will now shut at 6pm. The ice rink will close two hours later.

"We've reviewed the situation and the conclusion is that there is no reason to scale back the current level of alert," said Jaak Raes, director general of the government's Crisis Centre.

"The aim is not to create panic ... but to avoid unnecessary risks."

If you're surprised by this, call me. I've got a very nice deal I can make you on a lovely suspension bridge. "'Peace partner' ready to make nice with Hamas: Weeks after U.S. announced $555 million to bolster Abbas against terror group," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):

JERUSALEM – In a major policy speech today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas urged dialogue with rival Hamas, calling for a "new page" to be started with the terror group.

"There is no way for any party here to be an alternative to the other, and there is no room for terms like coup or military takeover, but only for dialogue, dialogue, dialogue," Abbas said, referring to Hamas at a large rally marking the 43rd anniversary of his Fatah organization.

Abbas called for "a new page, writing in its lines a credible agreement based on partnership, on life, on our homeland and our struggle to liberate it."

He said new elections should be held in an effort to reconcile the warring Hamas and Fatah factions in hopes of improving life for Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Abbas' calls for dialogue fly in the face of the U.S. and Israeli policy of isolating Hamas and negotiating with Fatah, which the U.S. considers moderate.

For those who have not been keeping up with the Interludes that have been put up, sometimes steadily and sometimes in fits and starts (all are are available for retrieval by clicking on the link under the photograph of Oriana Fallaci at left), here, by way of inveiglement, are #65-#135, a little more than half of those put up between Thanksgiving and Hogmanay, 2007. And here is an explanation of why they're here at all.

Musical Interlude #65:

If I Could Be With You (Hal Swain Orch.)

Musical Interlude #66:

You're The Cream In My Coffee (King Solomon and His Miners, voc. Scrappy Lambert)

Musical Interlude #67:

Girl of My Dreams (Blue Steele Orch.)

Musical Interlude #68:

Say A Little Prayer For Me (Jack Payne Orch. & voc.)

Musical Interlude #69:

You Made Me Love You (Artie Shaw Orch., voc. Helen Forrest)

Cinematic Interlude #70:

Art Criticism (Alberto Sordi)

Musical Interlude #71:

Time On My Hands (Lee Wiley)

Cinematic Musical Interlude #72:

The Jitterbugs (Gracie Fields)

Musical Interlude #73:

Lover Come Back To Me (Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore)

Musical Interlude #74:

You Ought To See Sally On Sunday (Bertini and His Tower Blackpool Band)

Musical Interlude #75:

I'm Doin' What I'm Doin' For Love (Libby Holman)

Musical Interlude #76:

The Missed Rendezvous (Aleksandr Tsfasman)

Musical Interludes #77-79: Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields (Vaudeville Songs)

77.

Hello Bluebird!

78.

In A Spanish Town

79.

Why Don't You Practice What You Preach?

Musical Interlude #80:

My Handy Man (Ethel Waters)

Musical Interlude #81:

He's Only A Working Man (Lily Morris)

Musical Interlude #82:

Every Now And Then (Helen Kane, Donald Douglas)

Musical Interlude #83:

Lonely Melody (Bix Beiderbecke)

Musical Interlude #84:

Positively Absolutely (Jan Garber Orch.)

Musical Interlude #85:

Blue Moon (Aleksandr Varlamov Orch. & voc.)

Musical Interlude #86:

Ain't You, Baby (Ray Miller Orch., voc. Dusty Rhoads)

Musical Interlude #87:

She Didn't Say Yes(Ray Noble Orch.)

Musical Interlude #88:

Love Will Forgive You Everything (Hanka Ordonowna)

Musical Interlude #89:

Until Today (Bunny Berigan)

Musical Interlude #90:

Body and Soul (Annette Hanshaw)

Musical Interlude #91:

I'm Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now (Jane Green)

Musical Interlude #92:

When You're Caught In The Web Of Love (The High-Hatters)

Any takers? Anyone? Anywhere? Alevis? Anyone?

"Muslim Minority Marches Against German Crime Show," from Spiegel Online (thanks to all who sent this in):

The popular German TV series "Tatort" has provoked an uproar within a segment of its Turkish community. Alevi Muslims, who practice a tolerant offshoot of Shiism, say the show has revived a centuries-old incest libel and may inflame immigrant tensions in Germany.

Up to 20,000 Alevi Muslims in Germany gathered in front of the Cologne cathedral on Sunday to protest a broadcast of a popular TV series called "Tatort" (Crime Scene). Alevi leaders said the show played on a centuries-old prejudice against Alevis by showing a character involved in incest.

The protest "was absolutely peaceful," said a police spokesman according to Agence France-Presse. An Alevi leader in Germany, Mehmet Ali Toprak, told the Tageszeitung newspaper: "The Alevis respect freedom of press and freedom of opinion and are opposed to any ban on cultural expression. But these values must not be used to harm the dignity of a minority."

In other words, they've got to go, and pronto.

"There Are No Jokes In Islam" Update: "Barclaycard chief forced to quit after making 'joke' about Muslims," from the Daily Mail (thanks to Twostellas):

A Barclaycard executive has been forced to quit after making an insulting remark about Muslims.

Marc Howells, one of the company's leading figures, left his £200,000-a-year job following the tasteless quip during a staff meeting as he discussed quarterly figures.

Colleagues were stunned when he said: "The results were like Muslims - some were good, some were Shi'ite."

Offended members of staff complained to senior bosses about the "wholly inappropriate" comment.

Mr Howells, 42, who worked for Barclaycard's European arm and has a £2million home in St John's Wood, was forced out earlier this month after negotiating an undisclosed pay-off, classed as "redundancy under compromise".

A company source said: "No one could quite believe their ears when he came out with his Shi'ite joke.

"He had a very responsible job in a multinational company. What on earth was he thinking of?

"There were a few embarrassed guffaws but everyone except him knew he was for the high jump the moment he said it."

Such is the way of the world today.

In Morocco, I've been told more than once, they don't have jihadists. Islam is different there. It's a long way from Morocco to Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Yet Morocco too doesn't seem free of jihadist sentiment. "Jihadists in Jails Win Leverage Over Their Keepers," by Michael Moss and Souad Mekhennet for the New York Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

CASABLANCA, Morocco — Ahmed Rafiki sprawled on the makeshift couch in his cell, a fresh red henna dye in his long hair and beard.

As Muhammad recommended.

Known to other militants as the father of Moroccan jihadists, he was convicted in 2003 of leading young men to fight Americans in Afghanistan. But here in Oukacha Prison, Mr. Rafiki, an Islamist cleric, is serving the final months of his sentence in style.

His kitchen and larder are stocked three times a week by his two wives. His curtained doorway leads to a private garden and bath. He has two radios and a television, a reading stand for his Koran and a wardrobe of crisply ironed Islamic attire.

“In my case,” he said with a smile, “the people treat me well.”

Hardly a scene of harsh interrogation and detention for which Moroccan prisons are known, Mr. Rafiki’s plush prison life is evidence of an awkward balancing act between the crackdown on militants in many countries and the power those militants can hold over the authorities.

Through hunger strikes and protests, Mr. Rafiki and Oukacha’s 65 other militant inmates have won perks — including exclusive use of the conjugal rooms — that make them the envy of the prison’s 7,600 other inmates.

One recent morning, a prisoner advocate handed the warden a long list of inmates not linked to terrorism cases who were demanding equal time with their wives.

“‘Why do they get much more rights than we get here?’” the advocate, Assia El Ouadie, said the other prisoners constantly asked her. “‘Do you want us to become terrorism prisoners, and then we will get those rights?’”

Read it all.

They planted a string of bombs near entertainment venues. Now, what kind of "separatist rebels" would do that? Well, Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon tells us in paragraph 3 that they are "militants." In paragraph 4 we find out that this happened in a "Muslim-majority region," and in paragraph 9 we learn that the Thai South was previously "an ethnic Malay sultanate."

Could this be an Islamic jihad, based on the Islamic principle that "Islam must dominate, and not be dominated," and that Muslims must not, when they have the strength to overturn it, accept rule by the kuffar? Only an attentive and informed reader might come to that understanding from this AFP story, which is typical of coverage of the Thai jihad (except that it doesn't use the word "restive"). It's just a separatist uprising, you see. Why Muslims in Thailand would want to separate from the rest of Thailand is unexplained -- that's irrelevant. It's just a separatist uprising. Move along.

"One killed, dozens injured in bombings in Thai south: police," from AFP (thanks to Anne Crockett):

NARATHIWAT, Thailand (AFP) — A string of bombs planted by suspected separatist rebels rocked Thailand's troubled south Monday, killing one person and injuring dozens near the Malaysian border, police said.

Explosives planted at entertainment venues across Sun Ngai Kolok town in Narathiwat province wounded 27 people in the early hours of Monday, two of them seriously, police said.

"It was likely done by militants who target innocent people during new year," local police chief Colonel Prabphan Meemongkon told AFP.

He said police managed to defuse one bomb at a hotel in the Muslim-majority region, where rebels are waging a bloody battle for a separate state, but five devices struck two other hotels nearby.

The first blasts hit at about 12:40 am Monday (1740 GMT Sunday), sending people fleeing into a hotel car park, where another bomb was hidden.

A police officer in Narathiwat said that explosives had been packed into cigarette packets, which were planted inside a hotel disco.

Another blast hit a hotel karaoke bar, he said.

Later in nearby Yala province, one person was killed and four were injured when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded outside a restaurant, police said.

More than 2,800 people have been killed in four years of separatist unrest in Thailand's south, an ethnic Malay sultanate until Buddhist Thailand annexed it a century ago, provoking decades of tension....

In the event that the jihadists get close to it. From the National Terror Alert Response Center (thanks to Mackie):

US special forces snatch squads are on standby to seize or disable Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the event of a collapse of government authority or the outbreak of civil war following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The troops, augmented by volunteer scientists from America’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team organization, are under orders to take control of an estimated 60 warheads dispersed around six to 10 high-security Pakistani military bases.

Military sources say contingency plans have been reviewed over the past three days to prevent any of Pakistan’s atomic weapons falling into the hands of Islamic extremists if the administration of President Pervez Musharraf appears threatened by civil unrest....

Barry Rubin discusses the meaning of the Bhutto assassination.

Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto's assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I'm not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as is that country. But rather the lesson--as if we need any more--for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast.

This is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said that it was obvious. "The Russians," he said, "they kill people."

A dozen years earlier, in 1933, the Iraqi official Sami Shawkat, gave a talk which became one of the most famous texts of Arab nationalism. "There is something more important than money and learning for preserving the honor of a nation and for keeping humiliation at bay," he stated. "That is strength....Strength, as I use the word here, means to excel in the Profession of Death."

What, you might ask, was Shawkat's own profession? He was director-general of Iraq's ministry of education. This was how young people were to be taught and directed; this is where Saddam Hussein came from. Seventy-five years later the subsequent history of Iraq and the rest of the Arab world show just how well Shawkat did his job.

September 11 in the United States; the Bali bombing for Australia; the tube bombing for Britain; the commuter train bombing for Spain, these were all merely byproducts of this pathology. The pathology in question is not Western policy toward the Middle East but rather Middle Eastern policy toward the Middle East.

Ever since I read Shawkat's words as a student, the phrase, "Profession of Death," which gave his article its title, struck me as a pun. On one hand, the word "profession" meant "career."

To be a killer--note well that Shawkat was not talking specifically about soldiers, those who fight, but rather those who murder--was the highest calling of all. It was more important than being a teacher, who forms character; more important than a businessperson, who enriches his country; more important than a doctor who preserves the life of fellow citizens. Destruction was a higher calling than construction. And for sure in the Arabic-speaking world what has been reaped is what has been sowed.

But also the word "profession" here reminds me of "to profess," "to preach." What is of greatest value is for an educator to preach and glorify death. What kind of ideology, what kind of society, what kind of values, does such a priority produce? Look and see.

Like children playing with dynamite, Western intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats fantasize that they are achieving results in the Middle East with their words, promises, apologies, money, and concessions. Yet how can such innocents cope despite--or perhaps because of--all their good intentions with polities and societies whose basic ruling ethos is that of the serial killer?

And what can be achieved when those most forward-looking and most creative, those who want to break with the ideas and methods creating a disastrous mess, the stagnant system which characterizes so much of the Middle East, are systematically murdered? Read the roll: King Abdallah of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon, the bold author Farouq Fawda in Egypt, Iraqi Sunnis who dare seek compromise, Palestinian moderates, Algerian modernists, and thousands of women who seek a moderate degree of freedom.

The radicals are right: dying is a disincentive. And for every one killed how many thousands give in; and for every one threatened how many hundreds give in?

Seventy-five years after Shawkat, Hamas television teaches Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip that their highest aspiration should be to become a suicide bomber, with success measured by how many Jews are killed. And, by the way, the Palestinian Authority's television in the West Bank sends a similar message, albeit not quite as often.

Will billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) change anything when the men with the guns take what they want? Are PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, respectively a timid bureaucrat and a well-meaning economist, going to take a bullet for lifting one finger to get a compromise peace with Israel?

How are you going to get a government of national conciliation in Iraq when the insurgents have shown they can gun down any Sunni politician or cleric who steps out of line?

The current supporters of the Lebanese government are probably the bravest politicians in the Arabic-speaking world, men willing to defy death. But how can they stand firm when Western governments rush to engage with the Syrian government that murdered them, and Western media proclaim the moderation of a Damascus ruler who systematically kills those who oppose him?

Can anyone really expect a stable society capable of progress in Pakistan when a large majority of the population expresses admiration for bin Ladin? And what about the Saudi system where, as one local writer put it, the big Usama put into practice what the little Usama learned in a Saudi school.

Don't you get it? The radical forces in the region are not expecting to retain or gain power by negotiating, compromising, or being better understood. They believe they are going to shoot their way into power or, just as good, accept the surrender of those they have intimidated.

That is why so much of the Western analysis and strategies for dealing with the region are a bad joke. Usama bin Ladin understands that, as he once said, people are going to back the strongest horse in the race.

According to all too many people in the Western elites, the way to win is to be the nicest horse.

But doesn't this assessment sound terribly depressing and hopeless? Well, yes and no.

Radical Islamists like to proclaim that they will triumph because they love death while their enemies--that is, soon-to-be-victims--love life.

Be careful what you wish for, though, because you probably will get it. For those who love death the reward is...death.

For those who love life, the outcomes include decent educational systems, living standards, individual rights, and strong economic systems.

All these things, and others that go along with them, are what really produce strength. And isn't it interesting that, contrary to Shawkat, the nations that put the priority on these things enjoy far more honor and suffer far less humiliation than happens with his model.

The profession of death has wrecked most Middle Eastern societies. But it has never succeeded in defeating a free society. It is not an effective tactic for destroying others but only for devastating one's own people.

Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The Sami Shawkat philosophy: alike in its Arab nationalist, Islamist, and Pakistani authoritarian versions which dominate Middle East politics.

The Somali jihad resurgent. "Somalia: Hundreds of Islamist militants advance on Baidoa," from AKI (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Jarail, 31 Dec. (AKI) - Several hundred Islamist militants belonging to the al-Qaeda linked 'Young Mujahadeen' group have gathered at a disused miliatary base 40 kilometres from the southern city of Baidoa, where Somalia's transitional government is based, pan-Arab daily al-Sharq al-Awsat reports, quoting unnamed government sources.

The 'Young Mujahadeen' are being led by the Islamic Courts movement's former miltary commander, Mukhtar Rabow, whose battlename is Abu Mansur.

The group's objective is to launch intermittent attacks against Baidoa. To fend off such attacks, the Somali authorities have deployed an 'extraordinary defence plan' for the city, al-Sharq al-Awsat said.

Islamist militants in recent days have taken the village of Jarail, in the central part of the country, and over the weekend waged fierce firefights with Ethiopian troops in the capital, Mogadishu.

The militants are reported to have launched rocket attacks against government offices and the stadium in Mogadishu, which has become the Ethiopian troops' base.

Ethiopian troops came to the rescue of the embattled Somali government a year ago and swiftly ousted the Islamic Courts, which had briefly controlled large areas of south and central Somalia.

Remnants of the fundamentalist movement have since reverted to guerrilla tactics, waging a deadly insurgency, mainly on the streets of Mogadishu.

Hundreds of people, mainly civilians, have died in clashes between Ethiopian-backed government forces and insurgents over the past six months. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis have been forced to flee Mogadishu, sparking what the United Nations has described as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

"We condemn the government's silence with regard to this phenomenon." Hey, great! Finally some Muslim moderates are going to get to work against those Islamic jihadists, eh? Well, no. It isn't Islamic jihadists they're upset about. It's Christian missionaries, of course.

"Algeria: Islamic MPs ask for action against Christian missionaries," from AKI (thanks to Insubria):

Algiers, 31 Dec. (AKI) - Lawmakers from the Algerian Islamic political party of al-Nahda have asked the government to intervene to slow down "the activities of Christian missionaries in the country".

Algerian MP Muhammad Hudeibi was quoted as saying this in the local el-Khabar newspaper.

"We want the government to cut down this type of activity because the expansion of evangelisation in Algeria has become an important problem and is not marginal as some think it is," said Hudeibi.

For some years, the local media in Algeria have reported on the activities of a number of missionaries, particularly those from evangelical and Protestant churches, who have succeeded in converting entire Algerian families to Christianity, particularly those who come from the eastern area of Kabilia.

"We condemn the government's silence with regard to this phenomenon," said the Algerian MP.

"We are collecting the signatures of other lawmakers in order to begin a discussion in parliament on this problem," he said.

Does it arise from Qur'anic imperatives, or had those Qur'anic imperatives lain dormant until they were revived under Nazi influence?

Read the exchange between Matthias Küntzel and Andrew Bostom on this question at FrontPage.

Some disassembly required. An update on this story. "Aksa Martyrs Brigades calls for Fayad's assassination," by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post:

Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Sunday called for the murder of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad for "collaboration" with Israel and the US.

This was the first time the group has openly called for Fayad's assassination. In the past, the group distributed leaflets strongly condemning Fayad and calling for his dismissal.

Fayad has been under heavy criticism from some Fatah leaders and activists, who accuse him of denying them public funds and plotting to undermine Fatah's grip on power. Other Fatah leaders have also accused Fayad of seeking to consolidate his power with the hope of replacing Mahmoud Abbas as PA president.

The threat was made in a leaflet distributed by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. Some Fatah officials in Ramallah sought to distance themselves from the threat, claiming that the leaflet had been forged. They even went as far as accusing Hamas of being behind it.

"The command of the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip calls on all its elements and striking forces in the West Bank to immediately eliminate the so-called Salaam Fayad," the leaflet said. It claimed that Fayad's Ramallah-based government was working for Israel and the US.

Calling on Abbas to fire the Fayad government, the leaflet criticized Fayad for cutting off the salaries of many Fatah supporters in the Gaza Strip. It also attacked him for allowing the PA security forces in Bethlehem to hand over to Israel three Israelis who had entered the city on Saturday.

"We call on all our members and the policemen in the West Bank not to obey orders from the Fayad government, because it's serving an American agenda and helping Israel eliminate the Aksa Martyrs Brigades," the group continued. It also called to fire PA Interior Minister Abdel Razzak al-Yahya for announcing that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the West Bank had been dismantled.

Whoops. No virgins. "Two suicide bombers die in botched Pak attack," from Reuters (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

KARACHI - Two suspected suicide bombers were killed in Pakistan’s central Punjab province early on Sunday when the devices they were carrying exploded prematurely in an apparent botched attack on a former minister, police said.

The blast in Haroonabad, in southern Punjab, comes just days after former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was slain in a suicide attack, triggering widespread violence that has killed at least 44 people.

Police said they believed Mohammad Ejaz-ul-Haq, a former religious affairs minister in President Pervez Musharraf’s government who had earlier been staying at a house 200 metres (yards) away from the site of the blast, was the intended target.

“My guess is that they were there to target Mister Ejaz-ul-Haq who visited the area a day earlier,” Zafar Abbas, district police officer in nearby Bhawalnagar, told Reuters by telephone. Haq had already left the area before the incident.

Police found scattered body parts and the wreckage of a motorcycle at the scene of the blast, and suspect they either met an accident or fell from the bike, detonating the explosives.

“We have retrieved two heads, which are badly mutilated and cannot be identified. One appeared to be in his early 40s while the other is a younger one,” said another police officer....

Police said some religious elements at a nearby mosque had chanted slogans against Ul-Haq and Musharraf’s former government over a military assault on a Taliban-style movement at Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, which triggered a wave of suicide bombings.

The madness continues at Al-Azhar. From Agence France-Presse:

CAIRO - AL-Azhar, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, on Sunday declared that any woman pregnant by rape must abort the baby immediately in order to maintain 'social stability'.

'A raped woman must terminate the pregnancy immediately upon learning of the pregnancy if a trusted doctor gives her clearance for the abortion,' the Islamic Research Council of the Cairo-based institution said in a statement.

This would ensure 'social stability,' it said.

According to the independent Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights (ECWR), two women are raped every hour in this country of 76 million.

Many factors contribute to the increase in sexual harassment including rising unemployment, the huge cost of marriage and the fact that sex outside marriage is forbidden, experts say.

Egyptian law bans abortion except on the grounds of 'necessity", which includes instances when a woman's life or health is in danger or in cases of fetal abnormality.

Savage's CAIR suit is heating up. "Michael Savage lawsuit links CAIR to 9/11 plot," from WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Doug):

WASHINGTON – It's no longer just a charge of copyright violation in the case of Michael Savage v. Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Now the radio talk star is going for the legal jugular in his battle with the group that bills itself as a Muslim civil rights organization.

The San Francisco-based talker has amended his lawsuit against CAIR for misusing audio clips of his show as part of a boycott campaign against his three-hour daily program to include charges the group "has consistently sought to silence opponents of violent terror through economic blackmail, frivolous but costly lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and abuses of the legal system."

The amended lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California, also charges CAIR with using extortion, threats, abuse of the court system, and obtaining money via interstate commerce under false and fraudulent circumstances – calling it a "political vehicle of international terrorism" and even linking the group with support of al-Qaida.

The federal government recently named CAIR, based in Washington, D.C., as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to funnel $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas.

And as WND has reported, CAIR has been associated with a disturbing number of convicted terrorists or felons in terrorism probes, as well as suspected terrorists and active targets of terrorism investigations.

"Groups like CAIR have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States," said U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., co-founder of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus.

Savage and celebrity civil rights attorney Daniel Horowitz are attempting to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to make the case that "CAIR and its co-conspirators have aided, abetted and materially sponsored al-Qaida and international terrorism."

CAIR launched a campaign against "The Savage Nation," as the program is called, using extended audio clips of the show to make the case that advertisers who supported the talker were actually endorsing "hate speech" against Muslims.

Savage turned the tables on the activist group by initially suing for copyright violation of the show's material. This week the suit was expanded with some of the strongest allegations ever made against CAIR publicly.

Among the charges is that CAIR is "part of a deliberately complex and deliberately confusing array of related organizations" and that its "organizational structure is part of a scheme to hide the illegal activities of the group, funding, the transfer of funds and to complicate investigation of the group."

Other highlights of the suit:

* "CAIR is not a civil rights organization and it never has been. … CAIR was and is a political organization that advocates a specific political agenda on behalf of foreign interests."

* "The copyright infringement was done to raise funds for CAIR so that it could perpetuate and continue to perform its role in the RICO conspiracy set forth in Count Two and to disseminate propaganda on behalf of foreign interests that are opposed to the continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation."

* "CAIR would have to register as a foreign agent if their activities were not hidden under the false claim that they are a civil rights organization that enjoys tax-exempt status."

* "CAIR was tied to terror from the day it was formed. The group was incorporated on or about 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad. Both men were officers of a terror organization known as the 'Islamic Association of Palestine.'"

* "CAIR's parent group, IAP, was founded in or about 1982 by Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook was IAP's ideological leader and controlling director from the date of its founding until shortly after his deportation from the United States in 1997. At all time relevant, Marzook was an operative of, and/or affiliated with, the 'Harakat al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah,' or 'Hamas.' Hamas is an international terrorist organization."

* In 1998, "CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles billboard describing Osama bin Laden as 'the sworn enemy,' asserting that this depiction [was] 'offensive to Muslims.'"

* In 1998, "CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the two al-Qaida bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR's leader Ibrahim Hooper claimed the bombings resulted from 'misunderstandings on both sides.'"

* "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."

* "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." The Holy Land Foundation, the suit charges, is "a terror organization."

* "CAIR receives significant international funding. For example, in 1999 the Islamic Development Bank gave a $250,000 grant to CAIR to purchase land for a national headquarters. In 2002, the World Association for Muslim Youth, a Saudi government-funded organization, financed distributing books on Islam free of charge and an advertising campaign in American publications. This included a quarter page in USA Today each Friday, for a year, estimated to cost $1.04 million. In 2003, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to distribute the Koran and other books about Islam in the United States. In 2005, CAIR's Washington branch received a donation of $1,366,466 from a Saudi Arabian named Adnan Bogary. In 2006, Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and UAE minister of finance and industry, financed the building of a property in the U.S. to serve as an endowment for the organization. This gift is thought to generate income of approximately $3 million a year."

* "The role of CAIR and CAIR-Canada is to wage PSYOPS (psychological warfare) and disinformation activities on behalf of Wahabbi-based Islamic terrorists throughout North America. They are the intellectual 'shock troops' of Islamic terrorism."

* "The Council on American-Islamic Relations is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda."

* "CAIR has links to both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson has stated before Congress that CAIR is a front for Hamas."

Read it all!

Maybe this book from Waqf Ikhlas Publications made them misunderstand their religion. "Turkey arrests five for al Qaeda links: report," from Reuters:

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey has detained five people for links with al Qaeda after police operations in four cities including the capital Ankara, Turkish TV reported on Sunday.

The arrests follow the detention at the weekend of 19 people for suspected links to the Islamist militant group, which had claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks against the British Consulate, two synagogues and an HSBC bank in Istanbul killing more than 60 people in November 2003.

The court ordered five of the suspects to be held for possible trial.

Turkish media said one of the suspects was a Turk who taught English language in the country's central city of Aksaray.

Authorities have stepped up security in main cities ahead of the New Year Holiday, fearing bombings. Istanbul municipality cancelled a traditional New Year's Night party in the city's main square.

Pop quiz! Who said that? Me? Andy Bostom? Serge Trifkovic? Greg Davis? Must have been one of us "Islamophobes," no?

Whoops! Nope! It comes from a book, Islam and Christianity, printed by a Muslim publishing house, Waqf Ikhlas Publications, and distributed by the modern, moderate, secular Turkish government to non-Muslims who come to work in Turkey. It's on page 316 of the 7th edition.

I expect that Ibrahim Hooper and Salam Al-Marayati will be on the phone to Waqf Ikhlas Publications forthwith, explaining to them that they're misunderstanding Islam and jihad. Oh, those Turkish Islamophobes!

The learned architects of the current policy

Close your eyes and repeat it over and over again: We are not in a war. We are not in a war. We are not in a war. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. The aimless death cult has nothing to do with Islam. Keep your eyes closed, now! If you keep your eyes closed and believe very, very hard, it will come true!

"Britain Drops 'War on Terror' Label," from the Daily Mail via Military.com (thanks to Sparta):

The words "war on terror" will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country's chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless "death cult."

The Director of Public Prosecutions said: 'We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language."

London is not a battlefield, he said.

"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."

His remarks signal a change in emphasis across Whitehall, where the "war on terror" language has officially been ditched.

Officials were concerned it could act as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, which is determined to manufacture a battle between Islam and the West.

The term "Islamic terrorist" will also no longer be used. Officials believe it is unhelpful because it appears to directly link the religion to terrorist atrocities....

In "Why the Left Hates Democracy," my longtime sparring partner Dinesh D'Souza expresses his attachment to the democratic principle: an attachment so strong and unyielding that he says, If they want Sharia, let them have it!

So why does the left hate democracy in the Muslim world? The reason is simple. Muslims are socially conservative and generally want a greater role for Islam in their private and public lives. Consequently Muslim democracies are likely to be more conservative socially than they are when secular despots rule them. The left fears Muslim democracy because it is terrified of Muslim values, especially sharia or Muslim holy law. Feminists and gays are not likely to fare very well under Muslim holy law.

When Iraqis rejected secular candidates and voted for a party that pledged to have sharia, at least in some forms of domestic law, the New York TImes howled that democracy could be "consigning Iraqi women to a life of subjugation." Columnist Maureen Dowd warned that "the Iraqi election may actually be making things worse" because "it is going to expand the control of the Shia theocrats." These complaints might have some plausibility if women or Sunnis were not permitted to vote. But women and men both voted for the Dawa party, and so essentially the Times and Dowd were arguing that if Iraqis don't want equal roles for men and women, their democracy is a sham.

All this puts me in mind of that great American statesman, Stephen A. Douglas, the originator of the concept of popular sovereignty. Regarding slavery in Kansas he said, "I care not whether they vote it up or vote it down," as long as the will of the people was expressed and carried out. And now D'Souza casts himself as the great Douglas of Dhimmitude, who cares not whether the people of Iraq vote Sharia up or down, as long as they express their almighty popular will. And look, he says: even women voted for it, so how oppressive can it be?

Well, some slaves fought willingly on the side of the Confederates during the Civil War, too, but I don't think that proves anything about slavery itself. And as for popular sovereignty, we have too many Douglases today, and no Lincolns. "Feminists and gays" are indeed "not likely to fare very well under Muslim holy law," but that's just the beginning. All women, feminist or not, will be subject to restrictions on the value of their testimony (cf. Qur'an 2:282) and their inheritance rights (cf. Qur'an 4:11), and made vulnerable to religiously-sanctioned beating (cf. Qur'an 4:34). Non-Muslims will be subject to restrictions on their freedom of worship and made to pay a special tax -- and you can see from the links that where hardliners gain control, this is already happening. Non-Muslims would not be considered equal to Muslims before the law.

D'Souza has thus placed himself in a paradoxical position: he believes in the rights of man, from which come the concept of popular sovereignty. He believes in the right of self-determination so strongly that he advocates that Iraqis and other Muslims exercise it even to the point of disenfranchising and relegating to inferior status large segments of their societies.

To break this paradox, we need a leader with the courage, the insight, and the will to say that he or she believes in the rights of the individual as delineated by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (for all the limitations of that document, it enshrines Judeo-Christian principles of human rights as universal, including the freedom of conscience and the equality of dignity of all people, both of which are denied by Sharia), and thus opposes Sharia.

And finally, D'Souza completely ignores the fact that wherever Sharia is imposed, the jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism have not been far behind, and have set large segments of the Sharia society (if not its leadership, although the House of Saud is a highly questionable case) against the U.S. and the West. So he is advocating, in sum, the adoption of a system that will ultimately make the United States more enemies.

There is no easy solution. I am certainly not advocating that the U.S. topple Sharia regimes around the world. I do think we should adopt a defensive anti-Sharia posture, and oppose its encroachment in the U.S. and Europe. As for Iraq, I don't think there is anything we can ultimately do to keep it from being adopted, but we certainly should not be aiding and abetting that adoption. That would be like selling the Reds the rope they will use to hang us.

For fear of You Know Who. Islamic Tolerance Alert from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

...MATT BROWN: It's a small, tight-knit community in one of the world's most intense hot spots. 3000 Christians live amongst 1.5 million Muslims, and the two groups usually get along well.

FATHER ARCHEMANDRITE ARTEMIOUS, GAZA GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH: We don't talk about friendship, we talk about brothership. Both of them are Palestinians but with different religions. Same blood, same nationality.

MATT BROWN: But lately, dark forces have been shadowing the Christians of the Gaza strip. The worshippers have been rocked by a murder.

FATHER ARCHEMANDRITE ARTEMIOUS: Afraid, very sad, they have a lot of questions.

MATT BROWN: Anisa Ayyad's son, Rami, has been killed. He was a prominent and vocal advocate for his faith. Ramzi Ayyad believes his brother was killed by a radical Muslim.

RAMZI AYAD, BROTHER (translated): Rami was well known in the Christian society as a very strong believer. He spent most of his time in the Church praying and teaching others, so he stood out.

MATT BROWN: In the lead up to the murder, Christians were targeted in a string of escalating attacks. And Christians and Muslims alike have been alarmed.

FATHER ARCHEMANDRITE ARTEMIOUS: For Christians, after what happened to Rami, so they are afraid to be here because they see bombing, then they see shooting, then they see hitting and then they see killing. What is the next one?

MATT BROWN: His family are Greek Orthodox Christians, but Rami Ayyad was a member of the Baptist Church, the only Evangelical Church in the Gaza strip.

When Rami Ayyad was confronted by Islamic radicals, he was warned to convert to Islam or face the judgement of God.

PASTOR HANNA MASSAD, GAZA BAPTIST CHURCH: He told us he would never give up his faith, even if it will cost him his life.

MATT BROWN: The tension was mounting. Then, finally, Rami Ayyad was stalked, kidnapped and killed.

PASTOR HANNA MASSAD: We believe it's because of his faith. They, the militant group who didn't like Christian and they tried to put pressure on him and when he continued to hold to his faith, they killed him.

MATT BROWN: The Islamist militant group, Hamas, seized control of Gaza in June and the eyes of the world have been upon them ever since. Hamas is more moderate than groups like al-Qaeda or the Taliban and it promised to safeguard the Christian minority. So it was alarmed at the message the execution of such a well known Christian could send.

AHMAD YUSSUF, HAMAS SPOKESMAN: Killing somebody who is a Christian, this will give the impression that there is a divide between the Muslims and the Christians and Hamas started it in Christian.

MATT BROWN: Some in Gaza believe al-Qaeda inspired radicals have been testing the limits under Hamas. A special team of the Hamas executive force has been ordered to investigate. The trail leads deep into the murky world of Gaza's gunmen, political factions and crime families. And Hamas has promised a sceptical Christian community it will catch the culprit.

AHMAD YUSSUF: He must go to justice and must be punished on his criminal act.

FATHER ARCHEMANDRITE ARTEMIOUS: For now, we're waiting. As they promised, that they'll find (inaudible) that killed Rami. So we're waiting.

MATT BROWN: Many Christians say there's a growing intolerant Islamist sentiment in Gaza, one Hamas has failed to quash. Church leaders complain that Hamas hasn't done enough to counter anti Christian incitement in the prayer rooms of Gaza's mosques....

Failed to quash? Why would they want to quash it? They want it to grow.

Khalid Hasan and I may have our differences, but I wholeheartedly applaud his courage and clear-sightedness in writing this in the Daily Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

The most shameful part of the Aqsa tragedy lies in the online and offline rumours that those who consider themselves “rightly guided” have been circulating. Some suggested that she had a black boyfriend (note the racism), others that she was sexually promiscuous, and some even called her a drug pusher. In other words, her father had every moral right to kill her, is the message. The Canadian imams, many of them in their self-styled attires and operatic headgear came out with other justifications. Sheikh Alaa El-Sayyed, imam of a Toronto mosque, said, “Women who wear hijabs occupy higher positions in Islam, according to religious teachings.” Where did the imam get that because nowhere does Islam lay that out? He also said, “We cannot let culture supersede religion. If we stay away from the teachings of Islam, we will pay for it.” Translated into straight language, it means that since Aqsa stayed away from the teachings of Islam, she had to “pay for it”.

Hot on the heels of Why Can't Muslims Debate? Part 1 and Part 2 comes this: Why Can't Leftists (and Their Islamic Allies) Respect Those Who Disagree With Them? There is a tendency among those on the Left to assume that everyone with a point of view different from theirs is an idiot, as well as a satanic, cynical manipulator. Just think of the caricature of George W. Bush, as simultaneously the half-wit marsupial who can't form a coherent sentence and the evil mastermind behind the 9/11 inside job.

And so we come to a "Dr Marranci," who back in September posted a series of questions to me that I overlooked until today, when a reader kindly pointed them out to me. The questions, although couched in invitations to civil debate, are patronizing in the extreme (see, for example, #7). He cautions me that I should reply civilly, as if I am likely to reply with a string of invective. There's the evil side of the equation. And he accuses me of, among other things, attempting "to link historical facts of the past to the present situation, so that Muslims, all of them, even the ‘moderate’ majority, are trying to reduce us to Dhimmitude, of the same kind experienced in Europe during the Middle Ages." Have I ever said such a thing? Of course not. The idea that I might think that "all" Muslims are trying to do anything in particular puts me firmly in the idiot camp.

Now, I've written seven books, hundreds of articles, and about 19,000 blog posts, and in them I have said a great many things about Islam and Muslims, and jihad and terrorism, and dhimmitude and Islamic supremacism. Before formulating his questions, Marranci seems to have read maybe one or two of those articles and blog posts, and leaps to numerous false assumptions about what I believe and what I argue about these subjects. Now, I am of two minds about this. The questions are leading, condescending, and manipulative, but I think I should answer them anyway. After all, it would be asinine of me to demand that someone read my books before he asks me any questions. But my own question to Dr. Marranci is, On what basis do you assume that I hold the positions you obviously assume I hold from your questions? I'll be glad to have a civil debate, but it has to be civil on both sides, no? Without one side assuming he is dealing with an evil idiot. And finally, before I answer your questions, your contention that I've read some books and am trying to impose the content of those books on an Islamic world that is much larger and more complex than those books is, simply, false. Rather, I report, as you'll see if you read my writings, on how Islamic jihadists today are trying to take the contents of those books and bring it out into the world, and how peaceful Muslims are so far unable to stop them from doing so. You seem, like many others, to assume that it is I who have made the connection between Islam and violence and supremacism, when in fact it has already been made by many, many Muslims, and I simply report on it.

So, to your questions:

1. Do you think that there is only one ‘real’ interpretation of Islam as religion so that only certain Muslims (those whom you labelled Islamo Fascists) are the ‘real’ Muslims?

No.

2. Do you think that Muslims think, behave and act in a certain way because of Islam?

Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.

3. Do you believe that Western Civilization is a unitary, unilinear historical process derived from a unique historical reality?

No.

4. Do you believe that there is an attempt to reduce to the state of Dhimmitude the West, so that we have to assume that there exists a unitary plan and project aimed to achieve such a goal? If so, who is behind the plan?

Yes, but I do not think that means that we must assume that there exists a unitary plan and project aimed at achieving such a goal.

5. Do you believe that Muslims are a lobby trying to take hegemonic control of universities, mass media, and other key elements in order to implement the Shari’a at a global level?

Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.

6. Is the Shari’a one? If so, could you provide a clear example of the applied version? If this is not the case, where can we find what you define as the Shari’a?

No. From the Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, Hanbali, and Ja’fari schools of jurisprudence.

7. Which is, according to you, the difference between Islam and Muslims? Are they the same?

Um, I think...um...maybe...Islam is the belief and Muslims are the believers? Um, is that it? And no, they’re not the same.

8. How do you define Fascism, radicalism, fundamentalism in general, and what kind of elements can make it ‘Islamic’?

Fascism: everything in society is oriented toward the supreme goal. Radicalism: taking something really, really seriously. Fundamentalism: technically this has to do with the acceptance of five doctrinal points among 19th century American Protestants, but people like you also often apply it to Muslims who stress the traditional faith and literal understanding of the Qur’an and Sunnah. Fascism is Islamic when Muslims push forward a societal program in which everything is oriented toward Islamic purity.

9. Does your definition of the West and Westerners include also the Muslim generations which are born in Europe or the US?

Some of ‘em. Not all of ‘em.

10. What is your definition of Civilization?

A type of culture or society, of a specific time and place.

11. What makes the West a Civilization?

Lots of things. Above all today I’d say a commitment to the equality of dignity of all people, which the schools of Islamic law deny, a commitment to the equality of rights of all people before the law, which the schools of Islamic law deny, a commitment to freedom of conscience, with the schools of Islamic law deny, and a certain attachment to art as ennobling the human spirit, such as is not possible in a strictly iconoclastic culture.

12. Why do you refer to the flirtation of Muslim leaders with Fascists but omit any reference to the parallel relationship of Zion-Revisionists with the same Fascist leaders? What is the difference at a historical level?

The “Zion-Revisionists” didn’t have a program for world domination, and the subjugation of unbelievers. Historically, they never did. The jihadists always have had one, and still do.

That's it. I'll admit my answers are a bit laconic and tongue-in-cheek. I'll admit that I tend to react that way when I'm being condescended to. If Dr. Marranci really wants to debate, I'm game. If he wants to lecture me about the difference between belief and practice, which I have written about ad infinitum, and about the meaning of words, like an errant schoolboy, then he is going to have to find another mark.

UPDATE: I just posted this and then found this post over at Marranci's. Here is another manifestation of the tendencies I described above, along with a strange example of projection: Marranci says that he hopes I will "find the time to debate, correctly and academically" with him, and then sneers that my "worshipers" and I are "extremely good in sophistic polemic, but they seem in difficulties when the discussion is open and civilised." I would suggest in turn to Dr. Marranci that when he refers to my "worshipers" and compares me to Mussolini (and note also his illustration to this post), he is proving his proficiency at "sophistic polemic" and his disdain for "open and civilised" debate, despite his protestations.

SECOND UPDATE: Dr. Marranci again demonstrates his attachment to "open and civilised" debate by, instead of focusing on anything substantive that I have said above or elsewhere, tries to portray me as some kind of cult leader. And while criticizing me for being a humorless SOB and a kicker of kittens, he takes the fact that I posted a link to an "I love Robert Spencer" t-shirt below as evidence that I really am trying to form a cult of personality.

Since I began this post by discussing the intellectual bankruptcy of many of my opponents and their tendency to do nothing but demonize me rather than deal with what I actually say, I can't help but be amused by Dr. Marranci's readiness to prove my points. For the record, this humorless SOB (me, not Marranci) posted the "I love Robert Spencer t-shirt" as a joke. A j-o-k-e. After all his condescending word-definition questions, I suppose I should ask Marranci if he knows what a joke is. For the record, I have nothing to do with this t-shirt. I did not design it, I do not sell it, I do not receive any money from its sale, I do not know who did design it, and for that matter, I don't even think it refers to me. There is a Broadway actor who has the misfortune of sharing a name with me, and I suspect the shirt is referring to him. But I found it by chance on Amazon, and thought it was funny.

However, I am thinking of buying one and sending it to Dr. Marranci, gratis.

Osama bin Laden emerges from his hideout in this undated file photo

Even a dog can walk around in the daylight. But not Osama bin Laden. "Blood for blood, destruction for destruction." Blah for blah. Talk about a tired act.

"Bin Laden issues warning on Iraq, Israel," by Salah Nasrawi for Associated Press (thanks to Sr. Soph):

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden warned Iraq's Sunni Arabs against fighting al-Qaida and vowed to expand the terror group's holy war to Israel in a new audiotape Saturday, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."

Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.

The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.

Bin Laden's comments offered an unusually direct attack on Israel, stepping up al-Qaida's attempts to use the Israeli-Arab conflict to rally supporters. Israel has warned of growing al-Qaida activity in Palestinian territory, though terror network is not believed to have taken a strong role there so far.

Islamic Tolerance Alert:

"We intend to liberate Palestine, the whole of Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the sea," he said, threatening "blood for blood, destruction for destruction."

"We will not recognize even one inch for Jews in the land of Palestine as other Muslim leaders have," bin Laden said.

In Iraq, a number of Sunni Arab tribes in western Anbar province have formed a coalition fighting al-Qaida-linked insurgents that U.S. officials credit for deeply reducing violence in the province. The U.S. military has been working to form similar "Awakening Councils" in other areas of Iraq.

Bin Laden said Sunni Arabs who have joined the Awakening Councils "have betrayed the nation and brought disgrace and shame to their people. They will suffer in life and in the afterlife."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said bin Laden's tape shows that al-Qaida's aim is to block democracy and freedom for all Iraqis.

"It also reminds us that the mission to defeat al-Qaida in Iraq is critically important and must succeed," Fratto said. "The Iraqi people — every day, and in increasing numbers — are choosing freedom and standing against the murderous, hateful ideology of AQI. And we stand with them."

Several hours before the tape was issued, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said al-Qaida was becoming increasingly fearful of losing the support of Sunni Arabs and had begun targeting the leaders of the Awakening Councils.

Petraeus said al-Qaida attaches "enormous importance" to "these tribes that have turned against them, and to the general sense that Sunni Arab communities have rejected them more and more around Iraq."

"They are trying to counter this and they have done so by attacking them," which is increasingly turning Sunnis against al-Qaida, he said.

In the audiotape, bin Laden denounced Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the former leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, who was killed in a September bombing claimed by al-Qaida.

"The most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life," bin Laden said.

Note, yet again, the exclusively religious nature of his appeal to Muslims.

"This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval"

"War Is Deceit" Update "IDF: Chemicals were disguised as EU aid," by Talia Dekel for the Jerusalem Post:

The IDF and Shin Bet uncovered 6.5 tons of potassium nitrate hidden in sacks that were disguised as aid from the European Union, the army announced on Saturday.

Security forces discovered the stash in the cargo of a Palestinian truck at a West Bank checkpoint earlier in December. According to the IDF, the material, hidden in sugar sacks, was planned to be used by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

"Potassium Nitrate is a banned substance in the Gaza Strip and the Judea and Samaria region due to its use by terrorists for the manufacturing of explosives and Kassam rockets," the IDF spokesperson wrote in a statement.

"This is another example of how the terror organizations exploit the humanitarian aid that is delivered to the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip with Israel's approval," the statement read.

Some Sunnis might beg to differ. But it is abundantly clear, particularly given Iran's aid to Hamas and the Taliban, that this is how the mullahcracy has been trying to position itself.

"Islamic unity is the lesson of Ghadir: Leader," from the Tehran Times (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

TEHRAN -- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said here on Saturday that the important lesson from the Ghadir event is to avoid division in the Islamic world.

“Hazrat Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS) was the Prophet’s appointee, but when he noticed that realizing this right might harm Islam and cause discord, he not only did not make any claims but cooperated with those who ruled the Islamic society… because Islam needed unity,” the Supreme Leader told thousands of well-wishers in remarks made on the occasion of the Eid al-Qadir holiday.

By following Imam Ali (AS), today the Iranian nation is the standard-bearer of Islamic unity in the world, the Leader noted.

Stressing the need for vigilance in the face of enemy plots to spread the “virus of discord” between followers of various Islamic schools of thought, the Leader added, “The great lesson of Ghadir is to fight against discord and to put this important lesson into practice, the followers of Islam should avoid insulting each other’s sanctities and stop bringing up provocative and sensitive issues.”

“And, as it was expressed in the hajj message, through their vigilance and unity, they should disappoint the plan by the (global) arrogance (imperialist forces) to create religious divisions and a Shia-Sunni clash.”

Eid al-Ghadir is the anniversary commemorating the last sermon of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him and his household) at Ghadir Khumm on Dhul Hijjah 18, in the year 10 AH. It is celebrated mainly by Shias, who regard it as confirmation that Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib (AS) was to succeed Prophet Muhammad (S).

Some, alas for Khamenei, beg to differ indeed.

Sunni/Shi'ite Jihad Update. "Bomb in Baghdad Kills at Least 7 In Crowd of Mostly Shiite Shoppers," by Joshua Partlow and Zaid Sabah for the Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

...Friday's blast occurred in Tayaran Square, east of the Tigris River, near a barricaded bazaar of vegetable carts and used-clothing dealers. The U.S. military said seven people were killed and 29 wounded. Iraqi police officials cited higher tolls: 14 killed and more than 60 wounded.

Camouflaged Interior Ministry commandos took up positions around the square throughout the afternoon, ordering at gunpoint any car that slowed down to keep moving.

Many of the victims were taken to Kindi Hospital in eastern Baghdad, where angry young men roved the parking lot while the wounded wailed inside. Policemen and hospital staff members said the government had ordered them to deny journalists access to the hospital, openly identifying themselves as members of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that dominates the Health Ministry.

"Are you crazy? We are the Mahdi Army, and you know how it works," one policeman said outside the hospital.

A couple of housekeeping notes:

1. People say false things about me rather frequently -- attributing to me statements I have never made, and positions I have never held. I suspect that this is because it is easier to dismiss a straw man than to deal with what I actually say. Usually these are better off ignored, but when they start spreading and people start asking me about them, then I think it is better to clarify them. And so it has been brought to my attention that a man who has published a deeply flawed work about Muhammad and Islam, in a consideration of how many active jihadists there are, says this: "Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is on another planet with his estimate of as many as 650 million jihadists - one in every two Muslims."

Have I ever actually made such an estimate? No, I have not. If I had done so, I really would be on "another planet." What I have done, and what this individual has apparently misunderstood, is state that jihadists enjoy the support of, in some areas, up to half of the Muslims. This is borne out by the recent poll in which 46% of Muslims in Pakistan expressed a favorable view of Osama bin Laden, and by the Al-Jazeera poll that put that support among Muslims worldwide at just under 50%. Does this mean that 50% of Muslims are or ever will be active jihadists? No, of course not, and I have never said it did, anywhere, at any time, in any forum.

2. A person who has used the names "Idontlikemuslims" and "osgood bombay" has posted genocidal comments here, and ones asserting that every single Muslim is the enemy. We do not hold either position here, but are working in the defense of human rights. This person has been banned by IP and by user name, but neither method is foolproof. Such comments, of course, only play into the hands of those who oppose our resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. And the only people talking about genocide, concentration camps and the like are those who oppose the anti-jihad resistance, and who use such charges to try to discredit us.

All that leads me to believe that "Osgood Bombay" is a provocateur, who is trying to discredit the site by leaving such comments here so that they can be used by our enemies. It has happened before.

So I ask everyone who reads this site regularly: if you see comments that use abusive language for Muslims or anyone, and which advocate genocide or incarceration, or which say that each and every Muslim is the enemy, or something similar, please write to me using the Contact Us box at left (scroll down) and let me know where it is -- I will remove it. Comments are unmoderated; I don't have time to read them all myself, and don't have the money to hire someone to do so. So any help you all can give is much appreciated.

The OIC pushed it through. "Defamation of religions," of course, means "speaking the truth about the elements of Islamic teaching that jihadists use to incite to violence."

"Islamic Bloc Scores 'Defamation of Religions' Resolution at UN," by Patrick Goodenough for CNSNews.com (thanks to Jamie Glazov):

(CNSNews.com) - Alongside a resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly this week calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, the world body passed a raft of other human rights-related motions. One of them, introduced by Islamic nations, focuses on combating the "defamation of religions."

Resolutions on the human rights situation in North Korea and Iran also passed, although dozens of countries -- including human rights violators Cuba, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe -- voted against the motions.

An annual resolution on "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" also passed by an overwhelming margin, with only the United States, Israel, and three small Pacific island nations voting "no." There were four abstentions.

The motion on defamation of religions has been a priority for the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) since 9/11. It took on new impetus following a Danish newspaper's publication in 2005 of cartoons satirizing Mohammed.

Introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the OIC, it passed on Tuesday by a 108-51 margin, with 25 abstentions. As with many of the other votes, the U.S. lined up with democracies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere against developing nations, including repressive regimes.

Although the resolution refers to defamation of "religions," Islam is the only religion named in the text, which also takes a swipe at counter-terrorism security measures.

It expresses alarm about "discrimination" and "laws that stigmatize groups of people belonging to certain religions and faiths under a variety of pretexts relating to security and illegal immigration."

In other words, as far as the UN is concerned, it is now wrong to resist the jihad.

Muslim minorities are subjected to "ethnic and religious profiling ... in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001," it says.

The resolution decries "the negative projection of Islam in the media" and voices "deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism."

You see, this association is all the fault of non-Muslims. The fact that Muslims themselves routinely commit violent acts and justify them with reference to Islamic teachings is a fact we are not supposed to, indeed not allowed to, notice.

OIC secretary-general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu earlier this month addressed an international conference on "Islamophobia," held in Turkey, and told the gathering that freedom of expression was being used as a cover in the West to promote anti-Islam sentiment.

The OIC soon will release its first-ever annual report on "Islamophobia."

'Flawed and divisive'

On a number of the General Assembly resolutions passed Tuesday, the U.S. stood in the minority, including one dealing with practices that contribute to "fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," and another on a report on preparations by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council for a major conference on racism, scheduled for 2009.

The international conference is intended to review progress achieved on a program of action adopted at an earlier racism conference, held in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

The Durban event was marred by controversy, with attempts spearheaded by Arab and Muslim states to equate Zionism with racism. The U.S. government sent a low-level delegation and then recalled it midway in protest against the attacks on Israel.

On Tuesday, only the U.S., Israel and the Marshall Islands voted against the resolution on preparations for the Durban review conference.

In an earlier explanation of vote, American envoy Grover Joseph Rees told member-states that although the U.S. supported the stated objectives of Durban gathering, "the outcomes of the conference were deeply flawed and divisive."

"The resolution now before us endorses that flawed outcome and is therefore itself seriously problematic," he said.

Indeed.

Outrage.

This reminds me of a story from about 1990 or 1991. There was a big Gay Pride march in a major American city. Afterward, I was talking to a couple of Catholic seminarians whose seminary was along the road the marchers used, and they said that marchers had slipped condoms through the mail slot in the seminary's front door. The seminarians threw them away, and that was the end of the incident. The marchers had meant to taunt the seminarians, and the seminarians shrugged off the taunt. There were no marches. Security was not beefed up. The incident got no publicity whatsoever.

Compare and contrast.

"Pork in mosque creates tension ahead of MK visit," from Express News Service (thanks to Twostellas):

ERODE: Tension prevailed in Dharapuram after a slice of pork was found inside a mosque at Kannan Nagar near the by-pass road in Dharapuram on Friday.

Sources said that the slice of meat was thrown into the mosque through the iron gates. A mosque worker Ibrahim spotted it when he opened the door of the mosque this morning.

Later in the day, over 5000 Muslims assembled near the Big Mosque, Jinna Maidan and took out a march to the RDO Nagarajan’s office and sought action against the miscreants behind the incident.

Superintendent of Police Sonal V Mishra, Town Inspector of Police Sivakumar and SI Shunmugam went to the mosque and held an enquiries. The local Muslims numbering more than 500 visit the mosque, wherein a Madarassa too functions, on a daily basis.

Since the incident occured on the eve of Chief Minister M Karunanidhi’s visit to Erode on Saturday, security has been beefed up in the town.

Peace In Our Time! "Abbas's Government Dismantling Militant Groups: Minister," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The top Palestinian security official said on Saturday his government was dismantling militant groups, including those connected to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction.

The pledge by Interior Minister Abdel-Razak al-Yahya came one day after Palestinian militants killed two off-duty Israeli soldiers who were hiking near the West Bank city of Hebron. Two of the militants were also killed in an ensuing gun battle.

Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference last month in Annapolis, Maryland to launch negotiations with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement by the end of 2008.

But Israel has said it will not implement any agreement until the Palestinians meet their obligations under the long-stalled "road map" peace plan to rein in militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Hamas Islamists seized control of Gaza in June after routing Abbas's secular Fatah forces there, but Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank.

The Palestinians assert that they are meeting their security obligations in the West Bank by launching a security clampdown in some of the largest cities.

"There is no al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades any more," Yahya told Voice of Palestine radio, referring to Fatah's largest armed group.

He said Abbas's Western-backed government has started "working to dismantle" other militant groups, though he did not spell out how that would be accomplished.

"We wish they (other groups) will respond positively and follow al-Aqsa's example," Yahya said.

Sorry, Yahya: "Islamic Jihad vows not to disarm," from Xinhua (thanks to Twostellas):

GAZA, Dec. 29 (Xinhua) -- A senior leader of Islamic Jihad (Holy War) movement in Gaza said on Saturday that his movement would not disarm since resistance against Israel was a way to achieve the Palestinian people's goals.

"For us, the resistance was not our aim but a way to reach the goals of the Palestinian people who are suffering from the occupation and have no other choices to face the Israeli aggression," said Naffez Azzam, a senior Jihad leader in Gaza City.

Azzam's remarks came in response to earlier statements by Interior Minister of the Western-backed Palestinian government in West Bank saying al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, armed wing of Fatah movement led by President Mahmoud Abbas, was dismantled.

He wasn't involved, he says, but he thinks it was great. From Edinburgh Evening News (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

A MILITANT warlord in Pakistan today rejected government claims that he was behind the assassination of former prime minister and popular leader Benazir Bhutto.

A spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, described as the country's leading al-Qaida general, dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda".

"We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," the spokesman said.

"The government is levelling a baseless allegation and we think it is doing so to divert the attention of the people of Pakistan from the real killers."

Mehsud is the leader of the newly formed Tehrik-i-Taliban, a coalition of Islamic militants committed to waging holy war against the government.

The interior ministry yesterday released a transcript of a conversation between Mehsud and another militant in which he offered congratulations for the suicide attack.

"It was a spectacular job. They were very brave boys who killed her," Mehsud said, according to the transcript....

A potpourri of charges. "Morocco jails 15 people convicted of terror links," from Agence France-Presse:

RABAT: Morocco's anti-terrorist tribunal has jailed 15 Islamists for between one and four years in three separate cases on conviction of terrorist activity or connections, the MAP news agency reported Friday. The special court in Sale near Rabat sentenced seven people late on Thursday to between one and two years in prison after the prosecution accused them of links to May 2003 attacks in Casablanca which killed 45 people, including 12 suicide bombers. Another group of seven were jailed for four years each after being found guilty of receiving paramilitary training with Algeria's extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which was in January renamed the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Those seven, who included a former resident in Belgium and two ex-students in Syria, allegedly wanted to go to Iraq to fight a "holy war." The 15th case concerned Jawad Tarmil, a Moroccan expelled from Algeria, who was accused of GSPC membership and jailed for two years for forming a criminal group, terrorist activity and serious breaches of public order, MAP reported.

Somalia Jihad Update. "Somali town captured by Islamist fighters," from Agence France-Presse:

Mogadishu - Islamist militia on Friday took control of a town in south-central Somalia after Ethiopian soldiers withdrew overnight, witnesses said.

No word on the reason for their withdrawal, either in this story, or one from the BBC. The AFP article continues:

The Islamists, who briefly controlled much of south and central Somalia before they were ousted by Ethiopia-backed Somali government troops early this year, have since been waging near daily attacks against the joint forces.

"The Ethiopian forces withdrew from the town overnight and now I can see the former Islamic courts fighters," said Mohamed Haji Elmi, a local elder.

The Islamists took over Guriel, 300km north of the capital Mogadishu, which they had previously controlled.

Infiltration. "Muslim pressure," by Bill Gertz in the Washington Times (scroll down):

Pro-Muslim officials at the Pentagon are putting political pressure on one of the U.S. military's most important specialists on Islamist extremism, according to defense officials.

Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law on the Joint Staff, met recently with Hasham Islam, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England's close aide. The officials said Mr. Islam, a Muslim who is leading efforts for the Defense Department's outreach to Muslim groups, sought to convince Mr. Coughlin to take a softer line on Islam and Islamic law elements that promote extremism.

There is also evidence that a whispering campaign is under way to try and discredit Mr. Coughlin as a "Christian extremist with a pen" and force him out of the building, according to the officials.

Mr. Coughlin came under fire from pro-Muslim officials after a memorandum he wrote identified several groups that are being courted by Mr. Islam's community outreach program as front organizations for the pro-extremist Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Coughlin based the memorandum on documents released as evidence in a federal terrorism trial that he stated "are beginning to define the structure and outline of domestic jihad threat entities, associated nongovernmental organizations and potential terrorist or insurgent support systems."

Mr. Coughlin noted that the documents identified one of the Muslim Brotherhood front groups as the Islamic Society of North America, whose leaders were hosted by Mr. England in April at the Pentagon, raising concerns that the deputy defense secretary does not understand clearly the nature of the Islamist threat he is working against as the No. 2 official.

Mr. England has been a leading advocate of what critics in the Pentagon say is a misguided attempt to reach out to the wrong Muslims, regardless of their views, in an effort to counter Muslim extremism.

That approach has kept military and civilian officials from conducting much-needed assessments of how Muslim extremists are waging war because doing so would involving analysis of Muslim religious tenets, a politically taboo subject area.

Aye, there's the rub.

Ali Eteraz at Pajamas Media suggests that if the U.S. would drop Musharraf and support an independent panel investigating the killing of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistanis would wake up to the evils of political Islam and vote pro-American:

An independent panel will likely conclude that it was the terrorists that killed Ms. Bhutto and not any elements associated with Musharraf himself. By doing so, Musharraf will be able to clear the cloud of suspicion hanging over his head, and might, in the process, be able to use the international community to identify how much the pro-Taliban elements have infiltrated Pakistan’s government. By severing itself from Musharraf and calling for an objective international panel, the US might also be able to see the extent of Musharraf’s complicity with the Islamists, if any.

If the U.S. can create the conditions for such a public demonstration of the history and extent of jihadist killing and infiltration, it would arm the people of Pakistan with unerring proof about who is their real enemy. It would be a boost to their sense of survival. It would demonstrate that the US is looking out for them. They would be able to take these feelings to the polls.

Historically, Pakistanis have never voted for religious fanatics. Today the U.S. must use an international panel to remind them that the reason they have never voted Islamist is because Islamists do not care for Pakistani lives. This kind of gesture will give resolve to the people of Pakistan. When facing the kind of terrorism Pakistanis do every day, resolve is the most important thing.

So that's all it will take: if the U.S. abandons Musharraf and sponsors an independent investigation into Bhutto's death, the Pakistani jihad will melt away. The 46% who registered approval for bin Laden as recently as September will vanish, and the the 9% who said they had a favorable view of George W. Bush will skyrocket. The 74% who said they opposed "U.S. military action against al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan" will begin, presumably, to change their minds.

I wish it were that simple. Unfortunately, Andrew McCarthy was far closer to the mark when he wrote yesterday:

The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.

The real Pakistan is a place where the military, ineffective and half-hearted though it is in combating Islamic terror, is the thin line between today’s boiling pot and what tomorrow is more likely to be a jihadist nuclear power than a Western-style democracy.

Search the archives here and you will find abundant confirmation of all these points. And the most obvious reason why the Pakistani jihad will not evanesce if Musharraf goes away is that it existed before him, and has been gaining in strength and influence ever since the founding of Pakistan -- and particularly around the time Benazir Bhutto's father was murdered by the Zia al-Haq regime, which introduced numerous Sharia provisions into Pakistani law.

In a piece entitled "Who's Afraid of Benazir Bhutto?" (thanks to James), which seems to be about whether the jihadists or Musharraf killed Bhutto, my old debating partner Dinesh D'Souza revisits the disastrous thesis of his last book: that America's immoral society has created the global jihad, as a reaction by beleaguered proponents of traditional morality against the depravity and debauchery swamping the earth courtesy American pop culture.

What does this have to do with who killed Benazir Bhutto? Absolutely nothing, but it enables D'Souza to give the impression that Bhutto and Bernard Lewis would line up in agreement with the idea that everything would be just fine between the West and the Islamic world if we just went back to the days of Ozzie and Harriett and Doris Day.

Meanwhile, although it has been many months since he released his book, D'Souza has still not managed to come up with a second name of a "traditional Muslim" with whom he thinks American conservatives should ally. The first he mentioned was Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa, whom the New York Times identified as a supporter of the jihad terror group Hizballah. Whoops. Maybe the second attempt will be more successful, but I know he has another book out since then, and maybe he just hasn't had time to get to it. Since he has revisited his older book today, however, maybe he will take a moment to answer a few of the questions I asked in my review of his book here -- notably, if the jihad is a reaction to American pop culture, are Buddhist schoolteachers who are being murdered in Thailand exponents of American pop culture? Are Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia on their way to school the vanguard of an invasion by Eve Ensler? Are churches torched in Nigeria because they are showing blue movies during off hours?

But I don't expect any answer, of course. D'Souza, after all, has never bothered to retract or correct his ridiculous claim that I want Muslim countries to replace the Qur'an with the Torah. Some people will say anything, I guess. And others, more fool they, will believe them.

But the January 8 elections are still on. "Bhutto Killing Blamed On Terror Groups," from SkyNews (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

The assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose funeral was held today, has been blamed on al Qaeda and the Taliban.

They were accused of the killing by Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz who said he had evidence which solved the "whole mystery".

He was speaking after Ms Bhutto was laid to rest in a ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of grief-stricken mourners.

[...]

Ms Bhutto's murder has sparked violence across Pakistan and thrown next month's elections into doubt.

At least 32 people have died in the riots. Police have been told to shoot if necessary to maintain law and order.

Troops are patrolling the streets of Hyderabad and Karachi, where an earlier attempt was made on Ms Bhutto's life.

Despite the turmoil Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro has said elections will still go ahead on January 8.

"Right now the elections stand where they were," he told a news conference. "We will consult all the political parties to take any decision about it."...

Much better to leave it to a Tiny Minority of Extremists to wield all legislative, executive, and judicial power, eh? This story appears to precede Bhutto's assassination yesterday, but is nonetheless highly relevant to yesterday's events.

"Taliban leader warns against using religion for electoral gains," by Iqbal Khattak for the Daily Times:

BANNU: A senior Taliban leader warned parties on Thursday against “using religion for electoral gains”, saying they would join parties urging boycott of January 8 polls.

“In Shariah, democracy is un-Islamic. Our movement is completely against what you call democracy in which a small majority can decide irrespective of the fact whether what they have done was good or bad,” the Taliban leader, asking not to be named, told Daily Times in an interview here.

He said the Taliban were “against elements who are using Islam for electoral gains”.

This un-named Taliban leader doesn't appear to take into account the fact that democracy might be used to bring about more Sharia law; after all, the success or failure of a democracy depends on the values that inform its participants-- both candidates and voters. But perhaps Sharia-by-democracy isn't fast enough, and those gains won't guarantee the abolition of the present system. And at any rate, this election won't hand the Taliban the absolute power to which they believe they are divinely entitled.

The warning comes at a time when Maulana Fazlur Rehman, contesting the National Assembly seat NA-26 in Bannu besides NA-24 (Dera Ismail Khan), is rallying for party candidates to win as many National and provincial assembly seats amidst stiff challenges from rival candidates in southern districts of the Frontier province, the JUI-F heartland.

Severe punishment: “Our members in Bannu district are strictly barred from taking part in the elections and anyone found guilty of violating the directive will be severely punished,” said the senior Taliban leader who did not wish to be identified.

He said there were around 500 Taliban members in Bannu city. “We will join forces trying to convince the people that people’s solution of problems does not rest with democracy,” he said.

A surprisingly good editorial for a mainstream media source -- this one is in the Union Leader, "Murder in Pakistan: Hatred all over the world":

SO, THEY don't hate us for our freedoms, eh?

The horrific murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's best hope for democratic reform, is almost certainly the work of al-Qaida or al-Qaida-linked extremists. You know, the guys who would stop hating us if only we quit pursuing our interests in the Middle East.

Al-Qaida, the Taliban and Islamic extremists in general have long hated Bhutto for her pro-Western sympathies, for opposing their primitive utopianism, and for simply being a woman who dared do a man's job. They have threatened to kill her before, and now a shooter/suicide bomber has done it.

[...]

Anwar Sadat. Benazir Bhutto. Theo Van Gogh. Daniel Pearl. Three thousand Americans on 9/11. The editors of Jyllands-Posten -- almost. Salman Rushdie -- almost. Pervez Musharraf -- almost. We could go on, but maybe you get the point. The message is perfectly clear: Challenge the jihad, pay with your life.

A radical Islamic army seething with rage and delusion grows stronger, slaughtering more and more of our potential allies, as we spend years debating whether, to save our civilization, our warriors should ever be allowed to pretend to drown a captured enemy combatant.

If we don't see this threat with greater clarity, we will lose our chance to thwart its ambitions before it reaches its full strength. What we are seeing is only a taste of what is to come if the jihad is allowed to grow unchecked.

Here is a terrific piece by Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies on the Wall Street Journal's recent hatchet piece on Israel and the Christians of Bethlehem:

In this holiday season, there are journalistic conventions one comes to expect: stories lamenting the commercialism of Christmas; stories summing up the 12 months gone by and predicting the direction of the New Year; and stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land.

Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News -- in recent days, all have run pieces in the last category. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal -- my favorite national daily newspaper -- on Dec. 24. It was written by Ken Woodward, a religion writer whose work I've long respected. But in this instance his subject was not religion but foreign affairs, and what he produced was the usual anti-Israeli dogma.

His op-ed was headlined: "The Plight of Bethlehem: Why Christians can't visit the holy shrines in Jerusalem." The first thing to note is that, according to Palestinian tourism officials, 450,000 foreigners will have visited Bethlehem by the end of this year -- a 50 percent increase over the 295,000 who came last year. Every hotel room was filled. Among the tourists on Christmas Day were 7,000 Israeli Christian Arabs. Fadel Badarin, the chief of the Palestinian tourism police, declared that in 2007 "the tourism situation in Bethlehem was great."

The low point for tourism to Bethlehem came in 2002. Then-Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat had turned down the peace offers forged by President Clinton during his last days in office. Arafat went on to launch a wave of suicide bombings against Israel, a terrorist assault known as the al-Aqsa Intifadah. At one point in that conflict, Palestinian terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and used the Christians inside -- including nuns and priests -- as human shields.

Yet Woodward argues that Israel "cannot blame the Christians' dire circumstances" on the Intifadah because "Muslims are suffering just as much as the tiny Christian minority." Does Woodward actually believe militant Islamists spare ordinary Muslims from suffering? Does he not know that the majority of victims of Islamist terrorism -- in Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere -- have been moderate Muslims?

Woodward also seems unaware of the extent to which Bethlehem's Christian population has declined since 1995 -- the year Arafat's Palestinian Authority took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Oslo Accords. Arafat quickly fired the city's Christian politicians and replaced them with his cronies.

Conceding that "Israel, of course, must protect its security," Woodward nevertheless slams Israel for doing so. He singles out the security barrier separating the Christian village of Beit Jala from the Jerusalem neighbor of Gilo. Woodward fails to mention that Palestinian snipers had used locations in Beit Jala to shoot at Israeli men, women and children in Gilo. On my first trip to Israel, in 2002, I visited Gilo. The residents had indeed erected a concrete barrier to stop the bullets. On it, they had painted a mural of Beit Jala -- to remind them of the neighbor it had become too dangerous to look upon.

Read it all.

On Christmas Eve, the Guardian published an odd commentary piece by Ajmal Masroor, the director of Communities in Action. It was odd because Masroor was openly proselytizing for Islam, wondering why former British Prime Minister Tony Blair didn't convert to Islam rather than to Catholicism. One doesn't usually see such open proselytizing in a major newspaper. In any case, in the course of his piece Masroor said this:

According to Blair, Islam "extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition". I agree, but why has he embraced Catholicism with its history of hostility towards science and is embedded with superstition?

Why indeed? I can't and won't speak for Blair, but the idea that Islam extols science while Christianity is hostile to it is historically and conceptually false. And it's an important question, not only for science, but also for the defense of the West in general against the civilizational challenge posed by the Islamic jihadists. In my book Religion of Peace?, therefore, I discuss it in detail, beginning with an explanation of the importance of the question from none other than Friedrich Nietzche, who once noted that “there is no such thing as science ‘without any presuppositions.’…a philosophy, a ‘faith,’ must always be there first, so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.”

It may be jarring to those who are accustomed to believing that faith and reason are perpetually at odds with each other, and that religion is an eternal enemy to science, but it is nevertheless a matter of historical fact that modern science has derived a great deal of its direction, meaning, limit, method, and right to exist from Christianity. It is likewise true, and probably just as jarring to those who assume that all religions are essentially identical in character, that Islam has not provided, either historically or in the present day, the same kind of impetus to its development.

At Regensburg, Pope Benedict XVI observed that “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.” The one hundred Muslim authorities who wrote an Open Letter to the Pope replied that “To say that for Muslims ‘God’s Will is not bound up in any of our categories’ is also a simplification which may lead to a misunderstanding. God has many Names in Islam, including the Merciful, the Just, the Seeing, the Hearing, the Knowing, the Loving, and the Gentle….As this concerns His Will, to conclude that Muslims believe in a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil is to forget that God says in the Qur’an, Lo! God enjoins justice and kindness, and giving to kinsfolk, and forbids lewdness and abomination and wickedness. He exhorts you in order that ye may take heed (al-Nahl, 16:90). Equally, it is to forget that God says in the Qur’an that He has prescribed for Himself mercy (al-An’am, 6:12; see also 6:54), and that God says in the Qur’an, My Mercy encompasses everything (al-A‘raf 7:156). The word for mercy, rahmah, can also be translated as love, kindness, and compassion. From this word rahmah comes the sacred formula Muslims use daily, In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. Is it not self-evident that spilling innocent blood goes against mercy and compassion?”

Fair enough, although we have often seen the limitations within an Islamic context of condemning the spilling of “innocent blood”: who is innocent? Under what circumstances? But aside from that, the authors of the Open Letter seem to be contradicting the Pope’s point about the Islamic view of God, but they do not actually do so. In attempting to refute the idea that Islam envisions “a capricious God who might or might not command us to evil,” the writers offer a number of Qur’an quotes that assert that “God enjoins justice and kindness,” and is merciful and compassionate. Yet in noting that in Islam, Allah’s “will is not bound up with any of our categories” and quoting Ibn Hazm saying “Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry,” the Pope was not so much saying that in the Islamic view Allah would command his people to do evil, but that he might change the content of the concepts of good and evil. In other words, Allah would always enjoin “justice and kindness,” but what constitutes “justice and kindness,” just as what constitutes “innocent blood,” might change.

This idea has extraordinarily important implications for the development of science. There is an odd passage in the Qur’an that sums up this perspective, and how it differs from the Judeo-Christian view of God: “The Jews say: Allah’s hand is fettered. Their hands are fettered and they are accursed for saying so.” (5:64).

The Jews, in their wickedness, claimed that “Allah’s hand is fettered,” but in fact Allah’s hand is not fettered. It is unclear what Jewish concept the Qur’an is referring to in this case, but the indignant response to it is clear: Allah’s hand being unfettered is a vivid image of divine freedom. Such a God can be bound by no laws. Muslim theologians argued during the long controversy with the Mu‘tazilite sect, which exalted human reason beyond the point that the eventual victors were willing to tolerate, that Allah was free to act as he pleased. He was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. “He cannot be questioned concerning what He does” (Qur’an 21:23).

This could be as big as when Sinatra broke with Capitol and formed the Reprise label: a jihadist website has denounced Al-Jazeera as "the channel of the infidels" and announced that the Elvis of jihad, Osama himself, would be posting his latest on the Net, and presumably bypassing the dinosaur media. Who would have imagined that the jihadists have trouble with their own mainstream media also?

"Web site to carry new bin Laden tape on Iraq," from Reuters (thanks to Sr. Soph):

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Islamist Web site said on Friday it would carry a new recording from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden about "foiling plots" in Iraq.

The Web site said the 56-minute recording would also be about the Islamic State in Iraq, an al Qaeda-linked group in the country.

It did not say when the video or audio recording, produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab and entitled "The Path to Foiling Plots in Iraq," would be posted.

Al Qaeda messages have been often released within three days of their announcement on Web sites.

"May God expose the cover-up by Al Jazeera, the channel of the infidels," said the Web site, which is often used to issue messages from al Qaeda.

It was not clear whether this meant bin Laden would speak about a controversy in which his supporters have accused the popular news channel of misrepresenting his comments on Iraq.

Some Islamists have said Al Jazeera misrepresented bin Laden's views by airing excerpts of comments he made in October that insurgents had made mistakes in Iraq because of fanaticism.

Here, from today's FrontPage, is my take on the murder of Benazir Bhutto and its chief beneficiaries (news links in the original):

Al-Qaeda has claimed credit for the murder on Thursday of Benazir Bhutto: “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen.” According to an Italian jihadist website, the hit was ordered by none other than Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al-Qaeda’s Number Two man. However, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel was cautious about such reports: “I’m aware that al-Qaida may have claimed responsibility. I’m aware of news reports of that. But,” he told reporters, “I don’t have any specifics for you on that. Whoever perpetrated this attack is an enemy of democracy and has used a tactic that al-Qaida is very familiar with, and that is suicide bombing and the taking of innocent life to try to disrupt the democratic process.”

And disrupted it is. The remaining democratic opponent of the Musharraf regime, Nawaz Sharif, announced that his party would boycott national elections set for January: “We have decided to boycott elections in honor of Ms. Bhutto,” he said. “Under the present circumstances and under Musharraf, neither is campaigning possible nor is a free election.”

"The suspects were allegedly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (MIO)," an organization whose founders "aimed to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state under Sharia law."

"Three Tajiks sentenced for preparing attacks: court," from Agence France-Presse:

Dushanbe. Three Tajiks accused of being members of a militant Islamic group were sentenced on Wednesday to between 10 and 17 years in prison for allegedly preparing attacks, a court official said.

The three had "prepared themselves to carry out attacks but were arrested by the police," the official from the Sogd court in northern Tajikistan said.

Police seized bomb-making materials and arms during a search of their home, he said.

The suspects were allegedly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (MIO). They were also found guilty of organising an army and calling for the overthrow of the government by force.

The MIO was formed in 1988 by former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani and the Islamic ideologue Tohir Yuldashev -- both ethnic Uzbeks who aimed to overthrow the government and create an Islamic state under Sharia law.

Rumor has it that a female Muslim journalist and a male Sikh politician might be romantically involved, though they maintain they're just friends. Either way, they're spending time alone together. Would she marry a non-Muslim? Would she leave Islam for him? None of the clerics' business? Oh, but it is. In fact, it's time for a fatwa.

"Shahi Imam issues fatwa against Aroosa," by Kanchan Vasdev for The Tribune:

Ludhiana, December 26 - Compounding problems for Aroosa Alam, the Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Ludhiana, today pronounced the "fatwa" against her for her proximity with the former Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh.

He called upon the Sik clergy in the state to ask Capt Amarinder Singh about his relationship with Aroosa. “He should tell us whether he has turned a Muslim or she has changed her religion”. He even claimed that during the Captain's visits to England and Dubai, he was seen with Aroosa instead of his wife and MP Perneet Kaur.

While pronouncing the edict, Habib-ur-Rehman Saani, Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, religious centre of the Muslims in the state, said Aroosa had violated the Sheriat law by visiting a man without being accompanied by any male relative.

Terming her stay with an “unrelated man” as an “unforgivable sin,” the Imam called for her social boycott. The fatwa, a copy of which is with The Tribune, reads: “It is a mortal sin for any woman to stay with an unrelated man. If a Muslim woman cannot even go to haj without her husband, brother or son, how can she stay with an unrelated man?”

The Islam does not permit man-woman friendship. If a Muslim woman has illicit relations with a man, she should be lynched. “Had she been in Saudi Arabia, she would have been stoned by now,” said the Imam.

[...]

The Shahi Imam claimed that she did not belong to a very respectable family in Pakistan. “Aroosa's mother was better known as ‘General Queen’ due to her relations with Gen Yahya Khan. She has spoiled at least 10 homes in her country and now she is trying to do so in Punjab”. He said he would call upon the Muslim clergy in Pakistan to excommunicate her.

The Shahi Imam urged the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister of Punjab to initiate a high-level probe into Aroosa's visits to the state. He suspected that she might be an ISI agent, who was purposely targeting Capt Amarinder Singh, who was well versed with the security and defence installations in the country.

Aroosa rejected the fatwa. According to the Times of India, she said, "I think Islam does not prohibit friendship and brotherhood. Religious interpretation of Islam is so wrong. Islam is a very liberal religion."

Time for an effigy burning: "Muslims to burn Aroosa’s effigy for her remarks on Islam," from Express India:

Ludhiana, December 27 The Muslims in north India have decided to burn the effigy of Pakistani journalist Aroosa Alam tomorrow, on her response to the statement regarding the fatwa issued on her.

The fatwa was issued by the Shahi Imam of Ludhiana.

In a statement issued here, Mustkin Ahrari, the spokesman of Jama Masjid said, “Her statements are not tolerable, and hence our organisations in the entire north India will burn her effigies.”

While a number of political parties are opposing Aroosa’s visit to India on one ground or the other, Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, state president of Lok Bhalai Party said that the political parties should stop issuing loose comments about Aroosa. Ramoowalia added that calling her an ISI agent is ridiculous.

He said, “I am not in good terms with Captain Amarinder Singh, but useless statements about Aroosa are not justified.” SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar has already stated that their body has nothing to do with this issue.

And of course, it might.

By Dharmendra Ashwal for AHN:

Islamabad, Pakistan (AHN) - Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, opposition groups have warned of a civil war in Pakistan. Riaz Malik, of the opposition Pakistan Movement for Justice party (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf), warned, "The impact will be that Pakistan is in more turmoil - it will be the start of civil war in Pakistan."

"There will be a lot of fingers pointed at the government. There is a very real danger of civil war in Pakistan," Malik said.

Meanwhile, the entire nation is under a security alert following the suicide bombing and attack that killed Bhutto late Thursday evening in Rawalpindi. Bhutto's supporters took to the streets in cities like Karachi and Lahore, and more unrest is expected on Friday.

In Peshawar police had to use tear gas and batons after angry demonstrators blocked the main highway and torched billboards and posters of the former ruling party, according to reports.

Geo News, a local TV channel, quoted Punjab Home Secretary Khusro Pervaiz Khan as saying that the provincial government has called in the army and contingents of the Rangers to help the police maintain the law and order in these districts.

While the jihadists say that Al-Zawahri himself ordered the killing. "U.S. Checking al Qaeda Claim of Killing Bhutto," by Brian Ross, Richard Esposito & R. Schwartz for ABC's The Blotter (thanks to James):

While al Qaeda is considered by the U.S. to be a likely suspect in the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Banazir Bhutto, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot confirm an initial claim of responsibility for the attack, supposedly from an al Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

An obscure Italian Web site said Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, al Qaeda's commander in Afghanistan, told its reporter in a phone call, "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahedeen."

It said the decision to assassinate Bhutto was made by al Qaeda's No. 2 leader, Ayman al Zawahri in October. Before joining Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, Zawahri was imprisoned in Egypt for his role in the assassination of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

Bhutto had been outspoken in her opposition to al Qaeda and had criticized the government of President Pervez Musharraf for failing to take strong action against the Islamic terrorists.

"She openly threatened al Qaeda, and she had American support," said ABC News consultant Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser. "If al Qaeda could try to kill Musharraf twice, it could easily do this," he said.

Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for the bomb attack Oct. 18 during Bhutto's homecoming rally that killed 140 people but left the former prime minister uninjured.

Senior U.S. officials say it will take several days to sort out who was responsible and that it will be "a test of credibility for the Pakistani government."

An update from the Canadian Press, "Pakistan in turmoil over Bhutto's assassination, Musharraf blames terrorists":

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's opposition leader and one of the country's best known politicians, was assassinated Thursday in a stunning suicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a rally.

The death of the charismatic former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary election into chaos and stirred fears of mass protests across Pakistan, a key ally for the West in the war against terrorism.

A wave of violence had already begun by Thursday night. In anger and grief, protesters rioted in the southern port city of Karachi, firing shots at police, setting tires and cars on fire and burning a gas station. One person was killed north of Karachi in the violent aftermath of the assassination.

Violence also erupted in other cities in Pakistan.

President Pervez Musharraf blamed terrorists for Bhutto's death and urged the nation to remain calm.

[...]

"This is the work of those terrorists with whom we are engaged in war," Musharraf said in a nationally televised speech.

"I want to express my resolve and seek the co-operation from the entire nation and we will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out," the president said.

[...]

No one claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Really? What about this?

Bhutto's supporters blamed the president for complicity, but suspicion was likely to fall on Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida and the Taliban, who hated Bhutto for her close ties to the Americans and support for the war on terrorism. A local Taliban leader reportedly threatened to greet Bhutto's return to the country from exile in October with suicide bombings.

[...]

In Karachi, shop owners quickly closed their businesses as riots broke out. Fayyaz Leghri, a local police official, said gunmen shot and wounded two police officers.

One man was killed in a shootout between police and protesters in Tando Allahyar, a town 190 kilometres north of Karachi, said Mayor Kanwar Naveed. In the town of Tando Jam, protesters forced passengers to get out of a train and then set it on fire.

Violence also broke out in Lahore, Multan, Peshawar and many other parts of Pakistan, where Bhutto's supporters burned banks, state-run grocery stores and private shops. Some set fire to election offices for the ruling party, according to Pakistani media....

The Press Trust of India calls Benazir Bhutto "an uncompromising champion of democracy and a moderate face of Islam."

Al-Guardian, meanwhile, in "Moderniser, moderate, martyr," seems to assume that everyone will know what Benazir Bhutto was moderate about:

In doing so, she presented herself as a moderate, willing to stand up to the Islamist militants in the madrassas and to take on the pro-Taliban fighters in the lawless Afghan border areas instead of making truces.

And to be sure, it does seem clear that someone who was moderate as opposed to "Islamist militants" and the Taliban was a moderate Muslim, not a moderate Christian or moderate vegetarian, even if the Guardian doesn't spell it out.

Calling Benazir Bhutto a moderate Muslim is one manifestation of what's wrong with the term, and how confusing and misleading it can be. Benazir Bhutto was indeed a Muslim, at least nominally, but when she was in power in Pakistan what she championed was a Western secularist, socialist vision, not an Islamic one by any stretch of the imagination. She did not, in other words, offer an alternative vision of Islam itself, shorn of its draconian and supremacist elements. She didn't offer or stand for an alternative understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah that taught that Muslims should not wage war for Islam, subjugate unbelievers, or institute stoning and amputation and the rest. Rather, she essentially advocated that in some areas Islamic law should be set aside. That, along with her gender, is what aroused the ire of the Islamic leaders in Pakistan against her, as it has against Musharraf.

So is a moderate Muslim, or someone who presents a moderate face of Islam, simply one who stands for less Islam, particularly in the political sphere? Maybe. But most of the people in the West who use the term "moderate Muslim" imagine that it refers to those who advocate not less Islam but a different Islam -- and indeed, one that is more authentic than the jihadists' version. Many of those who refer to the need to support moderate Muslims imagine that there is a version of Islam that is simultaneously traditional and peaceful, that deserves our support against the radicals.

That Islam, unfortunately, does not exist, and assuming that it does exist has led policymakers and law enforcement officials to numerous errors in many fields. And Benazir Bhutto did not represent such an Islam. She certainly supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, but that was a matter of calculation, not conviction -- and in any case would hardly be evidence of moderation in anything. She was, in the precise and encompassing words of Andrew McCarthy, "an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption."

In the coming tumultuous days and weeks, it would be wiser for analysts and government officials to remember her that way than as a champion of a chimerical and elusive moderate Islam.

Andrew C. McCarthy tells the truth about Pakistan, a truth that eludes the government and the learned analysts, in National Review:

A recent CNN poll showed that 46 percent of Pakistanis approve of Osama bin Laden.

Aspirants to the American presidency should hope to score so highly in the United States. In Pakistan, though, the al-Qaeda emir easily beat out that country’s current president, Pervez Musharraf, who polled at 38 percent.

President George Bush, the face of a campaign to bring democracy — or, at least, some form of sharia-lite that might pass for democracy — to the Islamic world, registered nine percent. Nine!

If you want to know what to make of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s murder today in Pakistan, ponder that.

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West.

The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

The real Pakistan is a place where the intelligence services are salted with Islamic fundamentalists: jihadist sympathizers who, during the 1980s, steered hundreds of millions in U.S. aid for the anti-Soviet mujahideen to the most anti-Western Afghan fighters — warlords like Gilbuddin Hekmatyar whose Arab allies included bin Laden and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the stalwarts of today’s global jihad against America.

[...]

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

Read it all.

"Peace is impossible under Musharraf," says Nawaz Sharif.

"Assassination Poses Dilemma for US," by Matthew Lee for AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration scrambled Thursday with the implications of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination after investing significant diplomatic capital in promoting reconciliation between her and President Pervez Musharraf.

President Bush, speaking briefly to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, demanded that those responsible for the killing be brought to justice and the White House said there needs to be a thorough investigation.

``The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy,'' said Bush, who looked tense and took no questions. He expressed his deepest condolences to Bhutto's family and to the families of others slain in the attack and to all the people of Pakistan.

His appearance came as U.S. officials here struggled to cope with the immense policy implications of the assassination on relations with a nuclear-armed country that has received billions of dollars in American financial assistance and is an ally in the war on terrorism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush planned to speak with Musharraf as soon as it could be arranged Thursday.

[...]

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said it was too soon to say who was responsible.

``I'm aware that al-Qaida may have claimed responsibility,'' Stanzel said. ``I'm aware of news reports of that. But I don't have any specifics for you on that.'' He did say, ``Whoever perpetrated this attack is an enemy of democracy and has used a tactic that al-Qaida is very familiar with, and that is suicide bombing and the taking of innocent life to try to disrupt the democratic process.''

[...]

In his comments in Crawford, Bush said, ``Mrs. Bhutto served her nation twice as prime minister and she knew that her return to Pakistan earlier this year put her life at risk, yet she refused to allow assassins to dictate the course of her country.''

``We stand with the people of Pakistan in their struggle against the forces of terror and extremism. We urge them to honor Benazir Bhutto's memory by continuing with the democratic process for which she so bravely gave her life,'' he said....

That democratic process is on the ropes: "Pakistan's Sharif Says His Party Will Boycott Ballot," by Khalid Qayum for Bloomberg:

Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan's former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said his party will boycott national elections next month after Benazir Bhutto was killed today, and he called on President Pervez Musharraf to quit as the nation's leader.

``We have decided to boycott elections in honor of Ms. Bhutto,'' Sharif told reporters in Islamabad this evening. ``Under the present circumstances and under Musharraf, neither is campaigning possible nor is a free election.''

[...]

Sharif called for a nationwide strike tomorrow to protest against Bhutto's killing.

``Peace is impossible under Musharraf,'' he said. ``Pakistan's unity is impossible under Musharraf. He is the root cause of all problems.''

The latest casualty on Al-Qaeda's central battlefield

This is even more likely after the murder of Benazir Bhutto. But the military is still talking about educational and employment initiatives, as if they will make the jihad go away. This despite the fact that study after study has shown that jihadists are generally better educated and wealthier than their peers. "US military beefs up Pakistan force," by Bruce Loudon for The Australian (thanks to JE):

US Special Forces are to increase their presence in Pakistan amid assessments that the country is to become the central battlefield for al-Qaida as it is driven from Iraq.

"Pakistan should be carefully watched because it could prove to be a significant flashpoint in the coming year," US think tank Strategic Forecasting said in an evaluation of al-Qaida's tactics as the Islamist group comes under mounting pressure in Iraq.

With the "rapid spread of Talibanisation" in Pakistan's insurgent northwest, the country would become "especially important if the trend in Iraq continues to go against the jihadis and they are driven from Iraq", the assessment said.

"As the global headquarters for the al-Qaida leadership, Pakistan has long been a significant stronghold on the ideological battlefield. If the trend towards radicalisation continues, the country could become the new centre of gravity for the jihadi movement on the physical battlefield."

The Stratfor assessment coincided with reports from Washington suggesting US Special Forces would expand their presence in Pakistan in the new year.

[...]

According to reports in Pakistan, areas in the North West Frontier Province, the federally administered tribal areas, Baluchistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir were earmarked for investment that would boost education and employment in an effort to wean local tribesmen away from their support for the jihadi movement.

The area, seen as crucial in the battle against al-Qaida and the Taliban, was the subject of a summit meeting in Islamabad involving President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai.

The two leaders held what sources described as "unusually cordial and friendly" meetings on how to boost co-operation in the war against the jihadis. They agreed to intensify their exchanges of intelligence, something Mr Musharraf described as "the key to fighting and enhancing our capability against terrorists and extremists".

Mr Karzai said: "Afghanistan and Pakistan are twins. More than that, they are joined at the body."

The jihad continues. “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen.”

"Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto's death," from AKI (thanks to all who sent this in):

Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.

More details to come later:
From Khaleej Times

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in the city of Rawalpindi on Thursday, her party said.

“She has been martyred,” said party official Rehman Malik. Bhutto, 54, died in hospital in Rawalpindi. Ary-One Television said she had been shot in the head.

Police said a suicide bomber fired shots at Bhutto as she was leaving the rally venue in a park before blowing himself up.
“The man first fired at Bhutto’s vehicle. She ducked and then he blew himself up,” said police officer Mohammad Shahid.

And from AP:

"The surgeons confirmed that she has been martyred," Bhutto's lawyer Babar Awan said.

A party security adviser said Bhutto was shot in neck and chest as she got into her vehicle to leave the rally in Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad. A gunman then blew himself up.

"At 6:16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack.

Her supporters at the hospital began chanting "Dog, Musharraf, dog," referring to Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf. Some smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears.

"At least two of the suspects had been accused by prosecutors this year of being members of the al-Qaida-linked terror group and of having undergone military training with it in Algeria."

"Mauritania: Sleeper cell killed French," by Ahmed Mohamed for the Associated Press:

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania - Mauritania's interior minister blamed a terrorist sleeper cell Wednesday for the Christmas Eve killing of four French family members visiting the African country.

Mauritania, on the edges of the Sahara desert, has been relatively free of terrorism by comparison with neighbors such as Algeria, where earlier this month a suicide bomber killed 37 people.

"The cowardly act of violence toward the French tourists was an act of terrorism," said Mauritania's Minister of the Interior Yall Zakaria Alassane in an address to lawmakers on Wednesday. "There are sleeper cells in Mauritania and one of them committed this act," he said.

The manhunt for the three suspects that gunned down the four French tourists on Monday has been expanded to neighboring Senegal. Helicopters patrolled the border.

Sidi Mouloud Ould Brahim, governor of the region where the attack occurred, said the three suspects crossed the border into Senegal late Tuesday. Senegalese officials could not confirm whether the suspects were in their territory.

Initially police had said the gunmen were attempting to rob the French family as they picnicked on the side of a road near Aleg, a small town 150 miles east of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott. But a day later, Mauritanian prosecutors called the slaying an act of terror and said the suspects are believed to be members of a regional al-Qaida-linked network.

A statement issued by the public prosecutor's office in Mauritania's capital on Tuesday said the attack was carried out by three men who it said were known members of the Algeria-based terror network al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa.

At least two of the suspects had been accused by prosecutors this year of being members of the al-Qaida-linked terror group and of having undergone military training with it in Algeria.

Deutsche Welle reports five arrests have been made:

Mauritania's public prosecutor says five Mauritanian Islamists have been arrested, in connection with the murder of four French tourists. Police on Wednesday were searching for three Islamists said to have defected to neighbouring Senegal. On Tuesday, the French Foreign Ministry had countered speculation that the murderers might have terrorist motives. However, the Mauritanian authorities say they believe the shooting may have been the work of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb - a Sunni Islamist militia which aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. The attackers shot the five French tourists on Monday when they stopped their car on the roadside on the way to Mali.

More tough talk from the mullahcracy.

From Al-Bawaba (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Foreign Minister of Iran Manouchehr Mottaki warned US officials on Wednesday against starting new games with Iran, advising them to learn from their past failures. The minister made the remark while commenting on a recent statement by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani during a joint press conference with his Bahraini counterpart, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmad al-Khalifa.

"The US officials experienced a game with Iran 27 years ago. Now we warn them not to enter the same game again," Mottaki said referring to the issue of the 1975 agreement between Iran and Iraq. The 1975 treaty known as the 'Algiers Accord,' was signed in 1975 by the then Iranian and Iraqi officials to settle disputes over borders between the two countries including the Arvand Rud (Arvand River) and the Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran.

As immigrants pour in, native Swedes pour out. How long before Sweden becomes a Sharia state?

"Sweden's population boom continues," from The Local (thanks to Dan):

Sweden's population is continuing to grow at a rapid clip, according to preliminary figures from Statistics Sweden....

The increase can be largely attributed to immigration figures, which are the highest since records began.

Some 100,000 new immigrants will have begun calling Sweden home by the time the fireworks are let off to mark the beginning of the New Year.

Birth rates were also higher than average in 2007, with the number of births (107,000) outnumbering deaths by 16,000. This can be compared to 2002, when the birth surplus was just 806.

Emigration figures, though practically unchanged since last year, remain relatively high. Some 45,000 people are expected to have left Sweden by the end of the year. As with immigration, Swedish nationals make up the largest group.

Others leaving the country in large numbers include, Nordic citizens, Germans, Brits, Chinese and Americans.

1938 Alert. "Iran Negotiating Purchase of Tur-M1 Missile System from Russia," from Fars News Agency (thanks to Davsmi):

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said that Tehran has entered negotiations with Moscow for the purchase of Russia's Tur-M1 Missile system. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting here on Wednesday, the General noted the fourth meeting of Iran-Russia defense commission, and said, "During the meeting, the Iranian side entered negotiations with the high-ranking Russian delegation in different areas, and the two sides reached agreements on a number of issues, including a discussion about Tur-M1 missile system."

Earlier today, the defense minister also said that Tehran had signed a contract with Russia Tuesday night on the purchase and deployment in Iran of another advanced missile system called S-300.

Najjar dismissed any link between the said contract and the recent report by 16 US intelligence bodies which confirmed the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities, adding that the date of S-300 delivery would be revealed to public later in future.

S-300 is considered as among the most advanced anti-missile systems in the world capable of targeting various types of missiles and warplanes at different altitudes. Despite Tour-M which can identify and trace targets merely at low altitudes, S-300 enjoys the required capabilities to trace and destroy targets at low and high altitudes, granting Iran air superiority over enemy missiles and aircrafts.

Daniel Pipes explains in "The Palestinian Economy in Shambles":

Western financial aid to the Palestinians has, I showed last week, the perverse and counterintuitive effect of increasing their rate of homicides, including terrorist ones. This week, I offer two pieces of perhaps even stranger news about the many billions of dollars and record-shattering per-capita donations from the West: First, these have rendered the Palestinians poorer. Second, Palestinian impoverishment is a long-term positive development.

[...]

Unsurprisingly, Hellman characterizes the Palestinian economy as "in shambles."

Such shambles should come as no surprise, for as the late Lord Bauer and others have noted, foreign aid does not work. It corrupts and distorts an economy; and the greater the amounts involved, the greater the damage. One telling detail: at times during Yasir Arafat's reign, a third of the Palestinian Authority's budget went for "expenses of the President's office," without further explanation, auditing, or accounting. The World Bank objected, but the Israeli government and the European Union endorsed this corrupt arrangement, so it remained in place.

Indeed, the Palestinian Authority offers a textbook example of how to ruin an economy by smothering it under well-intentioned but misguided donations. The $7.4 billion recently pledged to it for the 2008-10 period will further exacerbate the damage.

Paradoxically, this error might help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. To see why, consider the two models, hardship v. exhilaration, that explain Palestinian extremism and violence.

The hardship model, subscribed to by all Western states, attributes Palestinian actions to poverty, isolation, Israeli roadblocks, the lack of a state, etc. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA leader, summed up this viewpoint at the Annapolis conference in November: "the absence of hope and overwhelming despair … feed extremism." Eliminate those hardships and Palestinians, supposedly, would turn their attention to such constructive concerns as economic development and democracy. Trouble is, that change never comes.

The exhilaration model turns the Abbas logic on its head: the absence of despair and overwhelming hope, in fact, feed extremism. For Palestinians, hope derives from a perception of Israeli weakness, implying an optimism and excitement that the Jewish state can be eliminated. Conversely, when Palestinians cannot see a way forward against Israel, they devote themselves to the more mundane tasks of earning a living and educating their children. Note that the Palestinian economy peaked in 1992, just as, post-Soviet Union and post-Kuwait war, hopes bottomed out to eliminate Israel.

Exhilaration, not hardship, accounts for bellicose Palestinian behavior. Accordingly, whatever reduces Palestinian confidence is a good thing. A failed economy depresses the Palestinians' mood, not to speak of their military and other capabilities, and so brings resolution closer.

Palestinians must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before they will drop their foul goal of eliminating their Israeli neighbor and begin to build their own economy, polity, society, and culture. No short-cut to this happy outcome exists. Who truly cares for Palestinians must want their despair to come quickly, so that a skilled and dignified people can move beyond its current barbarism and built something decent.

The huge and wasted outpouring of Western financial aid, ironically, brings on that despair in two ways: by encouraging terrorism and by distorting the economy, both of which imply economic decline. Rarely has the law of unintended consequences worked so imaginatively.

Read it all.

Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate Malaysia. "Malaysian Hindu loses bid to ban Muslim conversion," by Jalil Hamid for Reuters (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (Reuters) - Malaysia's highest court threw out on Thursday a bid by a Hindu woman to stop her estranged husband from converting their youngest son to Islam.

Her case is another sign of strain in the social fabric of the multi-racial nation, where many non-Muslims believe their rights are being trampled by the Muslim majority.

R. Subashini took legal action after her husband converted himself and their elder son, now four, to Islam in 2006. She says she now fears the husband wants to take their two-year-old, who still lives with her, and convert him to Islam as well.

The Federal Court rejected her request for an injunction on technical grounds, leaving her free to try again, but one judge noted the court's jurisdiction was limited, given the husband was now a Muslim and therefore governed by Islamic or sharia law.

"The civil and sharia courts cannot interfere with each other's jurisdiction," said Nik Hashim Nik Abdul Rahman, one of two judges who dismissed the case. One judge dissented.

Family law has become an emotional battleground between Malaysia's religious communities, with non-Muslims complaining civil courts are too willing to surrender jurisdiction to their Islamic counterparts in cases involving a Muslim conversion.

Marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims are forbidden in Malaysia, so once a non-Muslim spouse converts to Islam, the union is broken, lawyers say. While it can still exist under civil law, in reality the Islamic court does not recognise it.

A lawyer for R. Subashini said that although his client's case failed on a technicality, the judges' comments made it clear they recognised the husband's right, as a newly converted Muslim, to have recourse to the Islamic courts....

Just when you think things can't possibly get more absurd: "Terrorists' new mission: Protect President Bush," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com (thanks to Ruth King):

JERUSALEM – Members of the most active West Bank terror organization are set to participate in security forces being deployed to protect President Bush during his visit to the Palestinian territories next month, WND has learned.

Bush is due in the region Jan. 9 as part of a follow-up to last month's U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian Annapolis summit.

During his trip, the American president is scheduled to hold talks with Israeli leaders in Jerusalem, and meet quickly with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

According to Israeli security officials coordinating deployments of forces with the PA for Bush's Ramallah visit, members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's declared military wing, have been called upon by the PA to participate in the protection of Bush's convoy and in securing the parameter during the meeting with Abbas.

The Brigades is listed as a terror organization by the U.S. State Department. The group took credit along with the Islamic Jihad terror organization for every suicide bombing in Israel between 2005 and 2006, and is responsible for thousands of shootings and rocket firings. Statistically, the Al Aqsa Brigades perpetuated more terrorism from the West Bank than Hamas, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.

Many Brigades members, including the group's chiefs, serve openly in Fatah's Force 17 presidential guard units and the Palestinian Preventative Security Services; thousands of Force 17 and Preventative officers are slated to secure Ramallah during Bush's visit there.

Read it all.

...while Reuters once again shows its true colors by referring to the "occupied West Bank."

"Israel captures Islamic Jihad members in West Bank," from Reuters (thanks to all who sent this in):

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops captured two top members of the Islamic Jihad militant group in raids in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.

Israeli troops arrested an Islamic Jihad leader, identified as Mohammad Assayda, near the West Bank city of Nablus, the militant group said.

Assayda, who was released from Israeli jail in September, is a lecturer at al-Najah University.

Islamic Jihad militant Samer al-Saadi was captured in a separate raid in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a Palestinian security officer told Reuters.

While a Palestinian priest utters sweet dhimmi nothings -- saying, as dhimmis have always said, that the Muslims are wonderful, and the Christians identify with them -- the reality suggests otherwise. "Christmas under Hamas rule," by Katya Adler for BBC News (thanks to Mark Durie):

Earlier this year, the Islamist Hamas party took control of Gaza, home to a thriving Christian community now preparing to celebrate their first Christmas under Hamas rule.

Manawel Musallam - priest, headmaster and Gazan - is a rotund, avuncular man, fond of wearing berets.

I have come to his office to ask how Christians in Gaza were faring on this, their first Christmas under the full internal control of Hamas.

"You media people!" Father Musallam boomed at me when I first poked my head around his door.

"Hamas this, Hamas that. You think we Christians are shaking in our ghettos in Gaza? That we're going to beg you British or the Americans or the Vatican to rescue us?" he asked.

"Rescue us from what? From where? This is our home."

[...]

"You see," Fr Musallam told me, as he gazed indulgently at the goings-on on stage. "Our identity is a multi-layered one."

"Of course, I am a Christian believer, but politically I am a Palestinian Muslim. I resist Israel's military occupation, obviously not with weapons.

"The Jihad can never be mine but with my words, my sermons, I am a Palestinian priest."

[...]

"We have lived alongside Muslims here since Islam was born," said Fr Musallam, waving his arm at the stage.

"They have a special word for us, the Christians of Palestine. They call us Nasserine - the people of Nazareth. They recognise that we have always been here.

"Even the more extreme Muslims see a difference between us and other Christians they regard as enemies and call Crusaders."

There is no evidence to suggest the Hamas government here officially discriminates against Christians but its takeover in Gaza - its military wing's leading role in armed resistance against Israel, along with the Islamic Jihad faction - have all led to the increasing Islamisation of Gazan society.

And that has encouraged some extremist Muslims to take action.

A Christian bookshop owner was killed here a couple of months ago.

There was a kidnap attempt on another Christian recently.

And a number of Christian families we spoke to say they had received death threats.

They question Hamas' willingness to take action to protect them.

However, it was under Hamas armed escort that we met the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, on a special pre-Christmas visit to Gaza.

It was quite a spectacle.

The Patriarch, dressed in a purple cassock, stepped out of a black, shiny Mercedes at the Latin Church in Gaza City.

'God's creatures'

A crowd of police cars screeched to a halt all around him, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Bearded gunmen dressed in black jumped out to guard him.

In previous years, the Patriarch's Christmas sermon has concentrated on the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli military occupation but this year he preached steadfastness in the face of intimidation by Islamist fanatics.

"They forget we are all God's creatures," he told a concerned-looking congregation.

"But nobody can tell us Christians how to dress, how to live or how to pray".

The patriarch called on the Hamas government to take responsibility and to protect the Christian citizens of Gaza, along with everyone else.

As the crowded church was belting out hallelujahs, I stepped into the church courtyard for some fresh air.

The Muslim call to prayer was beginning to echo from the myriad of mosques all around.

I thought how this reflected the situation in Gaza in Christmas 2007 - that while the muezzin were on loudspeaker, the church bells here are played from a cassette tape.

A nervous young nun adjusted the volume - loud enough to peel through the church but not to penetrate its walls - it might risk offending Muslim Gazans passing by.

Mark Durie sums it up:

I was reminded by this story of the text of the 7th century "Pact of Umar", in which Chrisitans, when surrendering to Islam, agreed to silence their bells: "We shall use only [wooden] clappers in our churches very softly."

The prohibition on ringing bells was one of the universal restrictions imposed by Islamic law upon 'dhimmis' - non-Muslims living under Islam after conquest. The bells of Middle Eastern Christians fell silent for more than a thousand years, until the European Powers dismantled the dhimmi system during the 19th and 20th centuries. Now the age-old discriminatory laws are being enforced again, and Hamas is proving as good as its word, for when it took power in Gaza the local Christians were told that as they were now in a full Islamic system they 'must accept Islamic law'. The silence of the bells bears witness that Hamas has told the truth about its intentions.

The silence is bad enough, but what distressed me most about Adler's report was her claim - paradoxically in the very same article - that "There is no evidence to suggest the Hamas government here officially discriminates against Christians…"

This Christmas season Gazan Christians are being resubjected to the odious, humiliating discriminations of the dhimmi system. This makes Christmas a very good time for the rest of the world to wake up and pay attention to the stark historical reality of dhimmi Christians' lives under Islamic rule, and to the intolerable reimposition of these conditions in many Muslim societies in the present day.

A lame soccer chant brings a charge of racism. "Soccer: Betar J'lem punished for fans' racist chants," by Allon Sinai in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to Carl in Jerusalem):

Betar Jerusalem will play its next home match at Teddy Stadium in front of empty stands after an Israeli Football Association tribunal found the club's fans guilty of racist abuse during the Toto Cup semifinals at National Stadium in Ramat Gan two weeks ago.

Jerusalem supporters chanted insults against the prophet Mohammed during Sakhnin's semifinal match against Bnei Yehuda while they were waiting for the start of their team's game against Maccabi Haifa.

Ironically, Betar's next home game is against Sakhnin on January 12 .

"We don't accept this punishment and we plan to appeal," Betar spokesperson Oded Zargari told Betar's official Web site on Wednesday.

"We think that there's no reason that our fans, who behave well at Teddy, should be punished. The abuse was shouted at a stadium at which we as a management had no control."

"If the IFA feels that 'Mohammed is dead' is a racist chant than we think that they should also take action against the Sakhnin fans shouting 'Allah Akbar'. We hope the IFA's Supreme Court will overturn this decision."

But...but...the Shi'ites would never aid the Sunnis, right? Right? Isn't that what the learned analysts always tell us?

Wake-up call for the learned analysts, were it possible to wake them up: "Iran behind flood of weapons to Taliban, MacKay charges," from the Ottawa Citizen (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan - Canada has challenged the Iranian government over concerns that weapons and bomb-making equipment are slipping across the border to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said yesterday.

"We're very concerned that weapons are coming in from Iran," Mr. MacKay told reporters, while visiting Canadian troops with Gen. Rick Hillier in Kandahar province.

"We're very concerned that these weapons are going to the insurgents and are keeping this issue alive. We've certainly made our views to the Iranian government about this known."

I'm sure the Thug-In-Chief will be quaking.

Still more short-sighted realpolitik. There seems to be an endless supply, and no amount of evidence will shake the false assumptions on which this sort of thing is based.

By Thomas Harding and Tom Coghlan for the Telegraph (thanks to all who sent this in):

Agents from MI6 entered secret talks with Taliban leaders despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain would not negotiate with terrorists, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Officers from the Secret Intelligence Service staged discussions, known as "jirgas", with senior insurgents on several occasions over the summer.

An intelligence source said: "The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia. The British would also provide 'mentoring' for the Taliban."

The disclosure comes only a fortnight after the Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

Opposition leaders said that Mr Brown had "some explaining to do".

Indeed.

Because "making women look pretty can get a person killed in her Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood."

By Diaa Hadid for Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 46 minutes ago

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Umm Doha cuts hair and waxes eyebrows in secret from her living room because making women look pretty can get a person killed in her Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood.

Hardline Muslim extremists who believe it is sinful for women to appear beautiful in public have forced many beauticians to move their trade underground.

Sunni and Shiite militants began blowing up salons roughly two years ago. They killed several stylists and bullied others into putting down their scissors and makeup brushes for good, all in an effort to stamp out what they view as the corrupting spread of Western culture.

Besides beauty salons, militants have also targeted liquor stores, barber shops and Christian churches.

In the past year, most beauty salons in the Shiite-dominated southern city of Basra went underground, as they did in the Sunni-controlled neighborhood of Dora in west Baghdad.

Feel the love.

From News.com.au (thanks to all who sent this in):

POLICE in Pakistan have stopped a 15-year-old boy they say was carrying a bomb made of dynamite and nails from gettnig into a rally by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

The boy got past the first of four security checkpoints set up outside the rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar but was caught at the second, said police officer Rahim Shah, according to the Associated Press.

In October, suicide bombers struck a parade celebrating Ms Bhutto's return from exile, killing more than 140 people in the southern city of Karachi.

...doodah, doodah. Andrew Bostom, editor of the admirable collection The Legacy of Jihad and the forthcoming The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, has started a blog. And, true to Andy's shy, retiring nature, the very first entry is fatwa-worthy. Mabruk, Andy!

Imagine the conversation among the Israeli authorities: Who cares if we get blown up? At least we won't be discriminating!

"Mofaz: No More Anti-Arab Discrimination at Airport," from Israel National News (thanks to Romy):

(IsraelNN.com) Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz will eliminate the criterion of nationality from airport security checks, thus making these checks "less racist" and more Arab-friendly, IDF Radio reported.

In a reply to a High Court petition against supposed anti-Arab discrimination at Ben Gurion Airport, the Transportation Ministry will present a new set of criteria for security checks, which will include age, occupation and military service. It will soon be brought before the Attorney General for review.

A law abiding Arab should not be treated differently from a Jew, Mofaz said. "Why should the Director of the Nahariya Hospital, an Arab Israeli, who saves lives every day, be delayed at the security check more than anyone else?", Mofaz told IDF Radio.

Certainly. Good point, Mofaz. But if you are planning to pretend that Muslims and Jews are equally likely to commit acts of terror against Israelis, you will be wasting time and resources.

Al-Qaeda fails to recognize one of its greatest allies. By Colum Lynch for the Washington Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

UNITED NATIONS -- The suicide bombings that ripped apart the U.N. headquarters building in Algiers on Dec. 11 and killed at least 37 people, including 17 U.N. employees, provided a bloody demonstration of the United Nations' emergence as a key target in al-Qaeda's global war against the West.

This year, al-Qaeda and its affiliates have threatened or targeted U.N. officials and peacekeepers in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and southern Lebanon, where six U.N. peacekeepers were killed in a bombing in June. Even before the Algiers attack, the United Nations was already investing millions of dollars in fortifying its facilities and convoys in response to threats in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the Algiers attack -- the deadliest for the United Nations since insurgents bombed its Baghdad headquarters in August 2003 -- provided a blunt reminder of how vulnerable the international organization is, even in relatively peaceful locales. It also raised concerns that more than a decade of efforts by the U.N. Security Council to check the influence of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic movements has exposed U.N. humanitarian agencies to new dangers.

"Al-Qaeda certainly regards the United Nations as inimical to its own interests," said Richard Barrett, head of a U.N. team that monitors the effectiveness of U.N. sanctions against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "The more the United States and other countries protect themselves, the more the battle goes to the softest target, and the U.N. is always going to be a softer target."

While the United Nations is often accused in Washington of being anti-American and anti-Israeli, its image in the Middle East -- where it serves as the chief caregiver for Palestinian refugees -- has also been tattered. U.N. sanctions against Islamic countries, including Iraq and Iran, and the agency's refusal to engage in talks with elected Hamas officials have played into the hands of those who say the global body is an agent of U.S. and Israeli interests.

No, the Israelis gave it away -- didn't they? Sure. But they did so after relentless jihad terror attacks against civilians, combined with a fascination with the oft-discredited notion that land concessions would bring peace, convinced them that it was better to give it up than to try to keep up. And now Saraa Barhoum, a Palestinian child, crows that terrorism pays.

"TV Host on Hamas TV, Child Saraa Barhoum, Sings: 'We Liberated Gaza by Force,'" from MEMRITV (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Following are excerpts from a song performed by child TV host Saraa Barhoum, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on December 20, 2007:

Saraa Barhoum: We liberated Gaza by force, not by Oslo or by Taba -

but with my steadfast people, and with its blazing fire.

We liberated Gaza by force, not by Oslo or by Taba -

but with my steadfast people, and with its blazing fire.

Rafah sings, and the Kalashnikov replies.

Rafah sings, and the Kalashnikov replies.

We, who know no fear, are the lions of the jungle.

Look how beautiful our Gaza is. We crowned it with a laurel wreath.

Sharia Alert from IndianExpress (thanks to all who sent this in):

Little girls in the militancy-hit Swat Valley in northwestern Pakistan hate a diktat issued by pro-Taliban rebels to attend school in burqas.

Burqas are the only option some girls' schools in northwestern Pakistan have against being shut down or worse, being bombed.

"I want to study, but not in a burqa," said Shah Rukh, a 12-year-old girl enrolled at a primary school at Saidu Sharif in Swat.

Shah Rukh is just one of many girls who have learnt to speak out against the burqa diktat in the picturesque Valley.

"My 11-year-old daughter cries every morning when she has to wear the burqa," Mohammad Roshan, who teaches history at Jahanzeb College in Saidu Sharif, one of the main towns of Swat, told Newsline magazine.

In a private school in Mingora, the headquarters of Swat district, students were enraged when their principal received a letter from militants saying they would shut down the school.

"It is our right to get education," one of the girls in the school said.

A parent said his daughter "is constantly told by her teachers to attend school in a head-to-toe veil ever since the principal of the school received a letter of threat".

In "Never Mind the Bomb, Beware of Islamofascism," Amil Imani discusses the belief-system that sets many Muslims against the rest of the world today:

The National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iran’s bomb project has stirred a great deal of controversy. Some say that there is now reason to abandon the war posturing and start negotiating a live-and-let-live deal with the Mullahs, since they have “abandoned” their quest for the bomb. At least that is what the not-so-reliable report seems to imply. Others, with good reason, remain skeptical of both the validity of the report and the ever-cheating, conniving Mullahs.

This controversy aside, the irrefutable fact is that the Jihadist belief of Islam itself poses existential danger to the world. Beliefs energize and direct actions. Beliefs are as indispensable as the air we breathe. Even an atheist is a believer, with his own system of disbelief. Not believing in anything is mental breakdown. There is something about humans that demands a belief. A belief can be anything or a combination of many things; it can be well-defined and even rigid, or a loosely put together hodge-podge with considerable latitude. It can be magnificent or the most abhorrent. But, it has to be there. Beliefs steer our vehicles in the journey of life.

[...]

Islamofascism is a pandemic fiercely-promoted belief system that enjoys a huge advantage over the competition. Some of the reasons for Islamofascism longevity and success are listed below.

* It is a crusading belief. Early on, it forced itself by the sword and as time went on it employed any and all schemes to promote itself while destroying the competition.

* It mandates prolific procreation on the faithful. It allows a man to have as many as four wives concurrently, in part to cater to the lust of the men and in part to produce more children who would, in turn, swell its ranks.

* It gets the first crack at imprinting its dogma on the blank slate of the child’s mind from the very first day of birth. The imprinting is usually deeply engrained and makes it difficult for the person to fully erase it, or replace it altogether. Even when successful, an ex-Muslim, or a “cultural” Muslim retains on his slate some traces of the early imprints. It may take more than one generation to fully erase the Islamic imprints.

* It does not allow anyone the choice of leaving its fold at the penalty of death for apostasy.

* It holds that the earth is Allah’s and no non-Muslim is entitled to the same rights and privileges reserved for its own members. Even the “people of the book,” Jews and Christians, must pay the religious tax of jazyyeh to be allowed a subservient place under the Islamic rule.

* It campaigns ceaselessly at propagating itself by any and all means, while banning other religions from so doing. Islamic proselytizers invade the lands of the unbelievers and work relentlessly to convert others while non-Muslim faiths are even barred from having a place of worship in lands such as the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia.

* It is anathema to many of civilized humanity’s values, such as those enshrined in the first amendment of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights.

* It is a caste system where the male believer enjoys valued privileges denied to all minorities, women and slaves. This discriminatory provision guarantees generation after generation of avowed in-power adherents who would shirk at nothing to maintain their privileged status granted to them by Allah.

* It is a powerful carrot-and-stick system of belief. It maintains its stranglehold on its obedient followers by promising them unimaginable compensations, if not in this world, then assuredly in the next, while anyone who strays from the mandated path is threatened with a raft of unending horrid torture from a vengeful Allah.

* The extortion-high oil prices that oil-rich Muslims extract from the addicted and oblivious non-Muslim world fuel the Islamic jihad throughout the world. Muslim kings, emirs and sheiks enjoy opulent life and aim to have it the same in Allah’s next world by funneling a portion of their huge parasitic income to madresehs (religious indoctrinating schools), mosques, storefront recruiting centers and charitable outlets that would enlist and hold masses of choiceless and fanatical believers. By funding these activities in the service of the jihadist Islam, these in-power Muslims believe that they can have it both ways: a material existence of great enjoyment here and an eternal life of hedonism in Allah’s promised paradise. In the bargain, these ringleader menaces of the world, aim to assuage their guilt feeling resulting from oppressing the impoverished exploited masses of Muslims with the delusion they are furthering Allah’s cause.

The danger of the bomb in the hands of the Mullahs has not disappeared, in spite of what the mainstream media and the Useful Idiots claim by misrepresenting the NIE report. The NIE guesses that the Mullahs seem to have ceased the construction of the warhead in 2003. How can the CIA be sure that this is the case and that the Mullahs are not secretly constructing it? Yet, the IRI, by its own admission, is on a crash program to develop long range missiles and operates cascades of centrifuges to make enriched weapon-grade uranium needed for the bomb.

The handwriting is on the wall. Huge numbers of Muslims, overwhelmingly poor, under-educated, and deeply indoctrinated in the jihadist belief are invading the world. It is this human bomb that must be diffused as well as keeping a vigilant eye on the other one that Iran’s Mullahs are relentlessly pursuing.

In short, never mind the nuclear bomb, if you like. But, we must do all we can to erase the suicide-homicide belief-vest that Islamofascists straps on their masses of the poor, the undereducated, and their deluded followers.

“Think globally, act locally,” is the rallying cry of the environmentalist movement. The same exhortation even more urgently applies to the fight against the deadly spread and menace of Islamofascism.

In "Blair, the Muslim?" in The Guardian (thanks to LGF), Ajmal Masroor wonders why former British Prime Minister Tony Blair converted to Catholicism when he could have backed a much stronger horse: Islam. In the course of making his case, Masroor sounds all the usual Islamic apologetic notes: the Crusades, Christianity's alleged incompatibility with science, Christianity's alleged intolerance, etc. And he throws Blair's pro-Islam statements back at him:

Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism does not come as a surprise to anyone but I would have liked him to turn to Islam instead. Blair has claimed on many occasions that he has read the Quran and has said he found its teachings "progressive". He is right that the Quran is progressive and as a revealed book of God, it is the latest testament. Why would Blair turn to the older versions of God's testament when there is the Quran? His conversion sounds rather regressive to me.

[...]

In an article published by Foreign Affairs early this year, Blair spoke of the Quran as being inclusive. His new Church has been the most exclusive and in the name of its own version of Christianity has murdered and destroyed the lives and properties of many fellow Christians over the years. In his role as a Middle East envoy he would have won the hearts and minds of the Muslim world if he had come to Islam. He might have found redemption for his crimes against Iraq and its innocent people. His conversion to Catholicism would no doubt remind the Muslim world, especially the Arab world of the history of the Crusades. The blood of millions of people still stain the cobblestones of the Holy Land from the cold-blooded murders committed in the name of Christianity and was blessed by the then Papacy in Rome.

According to Blair, Islam "extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition". I agree, but why has he embraced Catholicism with its history of hostility towards science and is embedded with superstition? If Jesus (may peace be on him) was to descend today and walk into a church he would not recognise anything that Christians are practising in his name. So why then convert to Catholicism?

Blair was very clear in his words when he said Islam "is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance". If Islam is a religion that values family and respects women why has he converted to a church that prohibits its priests from getting married, whose holy man are dogged by accusations of homosexuality and paedophilia?

Blair certainly admires Islam. He said "under its guidance, the spread of Islam and its dominance over previously Christian or pagan lands were breathtaking. Over centuries, Islam founded an empire and led the world in discovery, art, and culture." If I admired a faith so much I would convert to it. So I am baffled to know why he has converted to Catholicism and not embraced Islam.

Islam certainly stands for tolerance and demonstrates this by giving a special status to the Christians and Jews calling them people of the Book - Ahl al-Kitab. Christianity does not do the same. Blair reminded us that "the standard-bearers of tolerance in the early Middle Ages were far more likely to be found in Muslim lands than in Christian ones". Yes, but why has Mr Blair converted to Catholicism? Surely he stands for tolerance, progress and good governance.

And finally I have one last question for Blair. Did you not say "the faith of Islam is very peaceful and a very beautiful faith"? Why have you not tried Islam? I do not want to dismiss your journey to spirituality, but it is not too late to try Islam - you may like it.

Of course, this magnificent vision of a peaceful and tolerant Islam is completely at odds with the actual historical record of jihad warfare against non-Muslims and the oppression of the dhimmis, but the really noteworthy thing is that this bit of Islamic apologetic propaganda appears in The Guardian.

It's no surprise, really: after all, The Guardian publishes Ali Eteraz, Karen Armstrong, Ed Husain, Inayat Bunglawala, and others. But do you think that The Guardian would publish a piece touting Christianity and criticizing Islam? Do you think that if I wrote a detailed rebuttal to this piece by Ajmal Masroor, that The Guardian would print it?

I think you know the answer to both of those questions. And so here's another question: why has The Guardian allowed itself to become a mouthpiece for Islamic proselytizing?

Here is my piece on Christmas plots and threats, in today's Human Events:

Last Friday Belgian police arrested fourteen Islamic jihadists, and the U.S. Embassy warned of “a heightened risk of terrorist attack in Brussels,” while the Belgian Interior Ministry, according to Associated Press, “called on citizens to be vigilant through Christmas.”

Also last week, police in the Philippines arrested an Egyptian Muslim, Mohamad Sayed, who was allegedly planning to explode a bomb in a southern Philippine city on Christmas Day.

And Abu Dujana, who identifies himself as the “military commander” of the jihadist group responsible for the 2002 bombings in Bali, warned last week that “there are other cadres out there” and that “it is their obligation” to attack non-Muslims.

"Even as the police stopped people from converging, many thousands joined the funeral prayers of the militants who were buried in the local grave yard."

Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert, and an update on this story. "Thousands stage protest against mosque siege," by Shujaat Bukhari for The Hindu:

SRINAGAR: A day after five civilians were rescued and three militants killed in a 35-hour stand-off in Palnoo village of Kulgam district, thousands of people on Tuesday staged protest demonstrations in the area against the damage caused to the mosque and alleged atrocities by the security forces.

As the midnight offensive launched by 62 Rashtriya Rifles and Jammu and Kashmir Police’s Special Operations Group ended with the killing of three top Hizbul Mujahideen and the safe return of five civilians taken hostage by them, the people went on the rampage on learning that the mosque in which the militants were hiding had been damaged in the fight. They locals alleged that the security forces had “let loose a reign of terror against the population.”

A complete shutdown was observed in the area. The authorities, fearing a strong reaction, had sealed all the roads leading to Palnoo. The entry points from Bijbehara, Yaripora and Balsoo were sealed and the people were not even allowed to walk on the road.

As the crowd demanding a “honourable burial” for the militants surged and sought to reach Palnoo, it led to a clash with the police. The security forces then resorted to lathi-charge and later used tear smoke shells to disperse the crowd. Pitched battles continued and at least 15 civilians were injured.

A group of photo-journalists complained that they were prevented by the police from discharging their duties and were attacked by the SOG personnel. The injured were identified as Tassaduq Rashid, Zahoor Sodagar, Fida Hussain, Javed Shah and Basharat Ahmad. A local, Murtaza Ahmad, said the SOG personnel looted their houses and beat up people ruthlessly. Even as the police stopped people from converging, many thousands joined the funeral prayers of the militants who were buried in the local grave yard.

DIG South Kashmir H.K. Lohia refuted the locals’ allegations and said some vested interests, including Hurriyat leaders, were trying instigating the people. No major damage was caused to the mosque, he said and added that that the people should also realise that the militants had kept the civilians hostage for two days and made them human shields.

A Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman, in a statement, paid tributes to the slain militants and said “they preferred martyrdom to surrender and that speaks about the devotion of the Mujahideen to the cause.”

"The laws mandate three years' imprisonment for Ahmadis who dare to call themselves Muslims, call their places of worship mosques, recite the Koran or announce the azan, the call to prayer."

Such is the degree of offense these clerics take at the Ahmadiyya community's belief in the existence of valid revelations after Muhammad. If only they were half so repulsed instead by the idea of open-ended jihad warfare, the draconian punishments of Sharia law, and the persecution of non-believers. Of course, since those come from the Qur'an and the example of Muhammad himself, attempts at reform would leave them vulnerable to charges of bid'a, or innovation, something for which they now persecute the Ahmadis.

"Pakistan clerics persecute 'non Muslims'," by Isambard Wilkinson for The Telegraph:

Hardline clerics are using Pakistan's blasphemy laws to persecute members of a small Islamic splinter group they say are not proper Muslims.

The two million-strong Ahmadiyya community, based in Rabwah in the Punjab, risks charges of "impersonating Muslims" under the country's controversial religious laws.

Shameen Ahmad Khalid, a community leader, said: "We have people serving long jail sentences for blasphemy or for 'posing as Muslims'."

The laws mandate three years' imprisonment for Ahmadis who dare to call themselves Muslims, call their places of worship mosques, recite the Koran or announce the azan, the call to prayer.

Twenty years ago, the people of Rabwah were charged with impersonating Muslims.

Since the charges are still outstanding, the town's 50,000 inhabitants have to hide their Islamic habits, keep their beards trimmed and avoid using Muslim invocations.

The word "Muslim" has been erased, on the orders of a magistrate, from an epitaph engraved on the tomb of Pakistan's most distinguished scientist, Dr Abdus Salam.

It used to read "the First Muslim Nobel Laureate".

The religious laws are used by hardline clerics to persecute minority groups.

Despite recent improvements in voting rights for Christians and Hindus, Ahmadis are effectively still disenfranchised as they are permitted to vote only as "non-Muslims".

Pakistani popular rhymes defame Ahmadis in lurid terms and militants have stamped thousands of rupee notes imploring believers to "put them to death".

[...]

Several months ago, a police officer killed Mohammed Ashraf, an Ahmadi, as he ate his breakfast in a hotel. As he opened fire the officer shouted: "You are an infidel and preaching the infidel creed."

The Ahmadis' reverence for a prophet who lived in the 19th century offends the principle orthodox Muslim tenet that the Prophet Mohammed was the final prophet.

...and a belated Happy Hanukkah.

Christmas greetings are on-topic, for Christmas is on the jihadists' to-do list of manifestations of jahiliyya -- un-Islamic ignorance -- to be eliminated once they get the chance. So, if you are so inclined, you can strike a blow for Western civilization by openly celebrating Christmas today.

Happy New Year, also. May we all continue to strive in 2008 to defend the civilization built by those who throughout history have celebrated these holy days, and to convince those who have forgotten or who have never recognized its value that this civilization indeed worth defending.

And now for a little more haram festivity. Jihad Watcher Isabella the Crusader sends along these Christmas gems:

Karen Carpenter’s Little Altar Boy

The Holly and the Ivy

AcaBella – Coventry Carol

Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella – Instrumental by Gregg Miner

Oh Holy Night –Swedish version

Ave Maria

Adeste Fideles – Il Divo

Mary did you know?

Hugh, meanwhile, has a few of his own:

Cantique De Noel (Georges Thill)

Holy Night (Jussi Bjorling)

Holy Night (Luciano Pavarotti)

Adeste Fideles (Jan Peerce)

Adeste Fideles (Luciano Pavarotti)

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (Giorgio Tozzi)

Angels We Have Heard On High (Westminster Cathedral Chorus)

Silent Night (Mahalia Jackson)

White Christmas (Bing Crosby)

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (Gene Autry)

And here, finally, from me:

Blue Christmas (Elvis Presley)

The Christmas Waltz (Frank Sinatra)

And finally, if you're more inclined to think it all humbug:

So What (Miles Davis and John Coltrane)

"According to a 2005 federal indictment, [Kevin Lamar] James directed the plotters from his cell."

More on this story, and the consequences of prison dawa in southern California. "Turning to US jails to recruit for the jihad," by Peter Huck for the New Zealand Herald:

It all started with a mobile phone, dropped at a petrol station robbery in Torrance, California, in July 2005.

"Through the phone we came up with a name, a residence and the location of the suspects," says Torrance police officer Dave Crespin.

"We arrested the suspects and conducted a search warrant on an apartment in South Los Angeles."

There had been a string of robberies in the area, mostly with the same MO; a getaway driver and another with a shotgun. But once on the premises detectives realised this was far bigger than a robbery and contacted the FBI.

The apartment, rented by suspects Levar Hanley Washington, a prison parolee, and Gregory Patterson, who had no criminal record, contained a trove of incriminating material that allegedly suggested the hapless robbers aspired to become terrorists.

Among material used to charge the men and two accomplices was a handwritten document called "Blueprint 2005", which cited eight tasks, such as obtaining silencers for pistols and bombs that can be activated from a distance. Another document, "Modes of Attack", listed local targets.

The investigation led to California's New Folsom Prison and the cell of Kevin Lamar James, where investigators found the draft of a sinister press release.

Titled "Notoriety Moves", it outlined violent jihad in Southern California, and was allegedly due to be disseminated after the attacks began.

"This incident is the first in a series of incidents to come in a plight to defend and propagate traditional Islam in its purity," it read. "Sincere Muslims" were advised to avoid targets, including Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of an Israeli state.

Possible targets included a military recruitment office and National Guard facilities, synagogues, the Israeli consulate, the El Al desk at Los Angeles International Airport, and a mysterious "Campsite of Zion".

"Their plans were to enter either a recruiting facility or a synagogue and shoot as many people as possible before fleeing," says US attorney Gregory Staples, who helped to prosecute the case.

Last week James, 30, and Washington, 29, pleaded guilty in a Californian court to conspiring "to wage war against the Government of the United States through terrorism".

[...]

The plot allegedly started with the creation of JIS.

In 103 pages of handwritten text, some of it in Arabic, James set out the JIS protocols for followers. They are advised to demonstrate "obedience to established authority" and to be "esoteric or clandestine" in their activities. They also had a duty to attack infidels, including Israel and the US.

Washington, serving time in Folsom for assault and robbery, was recruited to JIS by James, his cellmate, in 2004.

Patterson was also a convert. According to a 2005 federal indictment, James directed the plotters from his cell. Their plans began to heat up in 2004 after Washington was paroled.

He subsequently recruited Patterson, with whom he attended a LA mosque, and Samana, making them swear allegiance to JIS. Authorities say Washington planned to finance the plot by robbing gas stations. Ten were hit. Samana allegedly researched the Modes of Attack targets.

[...]

"At the time of their arrest, it appeared they were on the verge of staging an attack here in Los Angeles," said Thomas O'Brien, the US Attorney in Los Angeles. "An untold number of lives may have been saved when this terrorist cell was dismantled."

An update on this story. "Mosque besieged in Kashmir," from CNN:

SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- A standoff at a mosque in the disputed territory of Kashmir is continuing with three militants holding a pair of hostages, police told CNN.

Indian security forces are outside the mosque in the southern Kashmir village of Palnu, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Kashmir has long been an object of dispute between nuclear rivals and neighbors India and Pakistan, and militants fighting for Kashmir's separation from India have been carrying out attacks against the Indian security forces in Kashmir for 18 years.

This siege began Sunday, when Indian army and police surrounded the mosque after receiving a tip that militants from a Kashmiri militant group were hiding inside.

Security forces were fired upon as they worked to cordon the area, and a trooper and a civilian were injured.

Five civilians who took shelter inside the mosque to escape the crossfire were seized by the holed-up militants. Three of the five eventually managed to leave the mosque.

"Two of the civilians held hostage by the holed-up militants were allowed by them to leave the mosque to hold talks with officials and carry back some food into the mosque for the hostages," a senior police officer told CNN.

"The third hostage managed to escape by running away from the mosque. The three holed-up militants belonging to Hizbul Mujaheedin group are still holding two hostages inside the mosque with them."

Military operations have been suspended until Tuesday and police say the first priority is to secure the freedom of the remaining two hostages.

Militants have been taking shelter inside mosques and shrines in Kashmir throughout the past 18 years of armed violence.

An update on this story. "Lady MP under fire in headscarf row," from Gulf Daily News:

KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti Islamist MP presented a request yesterday to question the Gulf state's only woman minister, a liberal who has been under hardline fire for refusing to wear a head scarf.

Nouriya Al Subeeh had stirred the anger of Islamist MPs when she took the oath in parliament in April without wearing a head cover in line with strict Muslim laws. Since then she has been under scrutiny by Islamist MPs and could be dismissed if the grilling leads to a parliamentary no-confidence motion against her.

Saad Al Sharie said in the request that financial and administrative irregularities at the education ministry had raised questions about Subeeh's ability to head the ministry. He also accused Education Minister breaching the law in connection with several high profile appointments and dismissals.

He said she was responsible for 'serious deterioration' in education standards and blamed her over an incident in which four Asian workers stand accused of molesting three Kuwaiti boys at a primary school.

A decade ago Kuwait's elected parliament passed a law enforcing total segregation of male and female students.

Liberal MPs have dismissed the attacks against her as politically-motivated. "She is a strong woman with clear plans to reform the educational system. Islamists don't like this," said Nabila Al Anjeri, women rights activist.

When Nouriya Al Subeeh first took office, sans headscarf, an article noted that "When MPs passed a law granting women full political rights in May 2005, they attached a precondition requiring women to abide by Islamic Sharia regulations, which have never been detailed." Legislators like Al Sharie may now be looking to exploit this vague provision, concerning either gender segregation in schools, the issue of the hijab, or both.

Political analyst Ali Al Baghli, agreed, "The grilling is personal because she wears no veil. But she's one of the most capable ministers and if she resigns it would be a setback for the reform plans."

As the West continues to acquiesce to Islamic mores, we will see this kind of thing closer to home.

"Woman caught with bomb under burqa: official," from AFP (thanks to Sr. Soph):

ASADABAD, Afghanistan - Afghan intelligence agents said Monday they had detained a woman hiding a bomb-filled waistcoat of the type used in Taleban suicide attacks under her all-covering burqa.

The 55-year-old woman was followed from the eastern province of Kunar after a tip-off and arrested in the town of Jalalabad, an official in Kunar’s intelligence department told AFP.

“She was carrying the suicide waistcoat for the Taleban. We had intelligence reports that she was working for the Taleban,” said the official, who asked not to be identified by name.

The woman was being questioned “to find out more about her network,” he said.

Most Afghan women still wear the burqa, which was mandatory under the 1996-2001 Taleban government, and cannot be searched by men at security checkposts.

Big surprise! "Media's two-faced Christmas coverage," by Aaron Klein for YnetNews (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Ah, Christmas in Bethlehem. Manger Square is ablaze with colorful lights. The weather is usually a bit chilly. Aggressive merchants bombard passersby with “special sales” on all kinds of cedar wood statues and religious carvings.

And like clockwork, the mainstream media descend upon this city every year to ignore rampant Muslim intimidation of Christians and instead blast Israel - often with completely inaccurate information - for ruining Christmas and for the drastic decline of Christianity in one of the holiest cities for that religion.

Take a widely circulated piece by McClatchy Newspapers writers Dion Nissenbaum and Cliff Churgin.

The piece, published last week, cites Bethlehem's dwindling Christian population and paints a picture that squarely blames Israel.

"For generations, the Holy Land Arts Museum (in Bethlehem) has been selling olivewood manger scenes to thousands of pilgrims wanting souvenirs from the biblical birthplace of Jesus," starts the piece.

"Gone is the olivewood stable shielding the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In its place, looming over the angelic family, are an Israeli watchtower and three towering sections of an adjoining wall."

Outright lying, the McClatchy Newspapers piece stated Bethlehem "remains largely isolated from the outside world by Israel’s 25-foot-tall concrete walls, part of Israel’s separation barrier."

The piece implied the wall caused the crash of Bethlehem's economy and prompted Christians to flee. Similar articles were churned out by Reuters, the BBC online and scores of local newspapers.

ABC News, for example, chimes in: "The (Israeli) wall has cast a shadow over this famous West Bank town."

Now let's get our facts straight. Bethlehem is not surrounded by any wall.

Israel in 2002 built a fence in the area where northern Bethlehem interfaces with Jerusalem. A tiny segment of that barrier, facing a major Israeli roadway, is a concrete wall, which Israel says is meant to prevent gunmen from shooting at Israeli motorists.

The fence was constructed after the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifada, or terror war, launched in 2000 after late PLO Leader Yasser Arafat turned down an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state, returning to the Middle East to liberate Palestine with violence.

Read it all.

But no strings can be attached to it. Oh, no. How dare you even suggest such a thing, you insolent infidel!

"U.S. Officials See Waste in Pakistan Aid," by David Rohde, Carlotta Gall, Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”

Indeed not. But it is we who are ungrateful, doncha know:

Pakistani officials say they are incensed at what they see as American ingratitude for Pakistani counterterrorism efforts that have left about 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers dead. They deny that any overcharging has occurred.

The $5 billion was provided through a program known as Coalition Support Funds, which reimburses Pakistan for conducting military operations to fight terrorism. Under a separate program, Pakistan receives $300 million per year in traditional American military financing that pays for equipment and training.

Civilian opponents of President Pervez Musharraf say he used the reimbursements to prop up his government. One European diplomat in Islamabad said the United States should have been more cautious with its aid.

“I wonder if the Americans have not been taken for a ride,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They of course have been.

Here, courtesy Ron Paul and John Stossel, is a Christmas Eve repast of common but false assumptions about the global jihad and what we can do about it: "Ron Paul on War," by John Stossel.

Stossel starts us off by asking Paul:

Some people say that if we don't attack the enemy there, they'll attack us here.

This is, of course, the Bush Administration's famous and oft-repeated rationale for the Iraqi democracy project. The primary problem with it is that they're already over here, as the JFK Airport plot, the Fort Dix plot, and numerous other plots indicate, and our being over there is doing nothing to prevent their being here.

But while law enforcement officials have so far done a terrific job heading off these plots, little or nothing is being done to deal with the national security aspect of the immigration question, or to challenge the spread of the jihad ideology among Muslims in the U.S. Instead, we are all fiercely exhorted to assume, on pain of being read out of polite society, that Islam is a religion of peace and all U.S. Muslims abhor Osama bin Laden and today's global jihad.

Anyway, here is how Ron Paul answers the question:

Ron Paul: I think the opposite is true. The radicals were able to use our bases in Saudi Arabia and the bombing of Iraq (from 1991 to 2001) as a reason to come over here. If China were to do the same thing to us, and they had troops in our land, We would resent it. We'd probably do some shooting.

In other words, they're just fighting back against an unjustified invasion. They're fighting us over here because we're fighting them over there. And certainly, from the standpoint of Islamic theology, there is something to this. Jihad in Islam is usually fard kifaya, a general obligation upon the community as a whole but not upon each individual in particular; it becomes fard ayn, or obligatory on each individual, if a Muslim land is attacked. So much jihadist recruitment today calls peaceful Muslims to wage jihad by loudly proclaiming that Islamic lands have been attacked, and thus all Muslims are obligated to rush to their defense.

However, it is a false assumption that if we just leave them alone, by leaving Iraq and Afghanistan and presumably also by abandoning Israel, then there will be peace. Muhammad's expansionist imperative is open-ended: "I have been commanded," he said, "to fight against people so long as they do not declare that there is no god but Allah, and he who professed it was guaranteed the protection of his property and life on my behalf except for the right affairs rest with Allah."

Do any Muslims take this seriously today? Well, just the other day a jihadist leader in Uzbekistan declared: "The goal of this campaign is not only Kabul, Kandahar, or Baghdad. The eyes of the nation of Muhammad are set on Washington, London, Moscow, Paris, Delhi, Beijing, and other countries. This is our goal and, Allah willing, we will get there." Will people who think that way drop this goal if American troops leave their countries? Considering the fact that Muslims were conquering nations on the basis of the jihad ideology long before there even was a United States of America, that seems unlikely in the extremely.

After that, Stossel asks Paul:

Is this case not different? Religious fanatics hate us and want to kill us because of our culture.

This question shows the damaging influence of Dinesh D'Souza's silly and stupid book, The Enemy At Home, in which D'Souza contends that jihadists hate us because of popular culture. It also demonstrates ignorance of the fact that jihadists are killing plenty of people who have nothing to do with Western culture. As I asked in my review of D'Souza's book here, are Buddhist schoolteachers in Thailand the exponents of American pop culture? Are Christian schoolgirls beheaded in Indonesia on their way to school the vanguard of an invasion by Eve Ensler? Are churches torched in Nigeria because they are showing blue movies during off hours?

Paul answers:

I don't think that's true. It is not Muslim fanaticism that is the culprit. The litmus test is whether we are actually occupying a territory. In the case of Saudi Arabia, that was holy land.

Yes, indeed it was. But here Paul is just making a blanket assertion, again without taking into account the expansionist and supremacist imperative within Islam.

Stossel and Paul go on to joust about the Iraqi democracy project and the idea of America as the world's policeman. I agree that it is impractical, naive, and foolish to think that the United States can plant in Iraq a political system that Iraqis don't appreciate or want, and that the idea that American military force should be used against any and all tyranny, if followed through, would ultimately bleed this nation dry in service of an unattainable goal.

However, all that is really beside the point in this global conflict. As Paul himself says, "If you're attacked, you have a right and an obligation to defend (your) country." Indeed. And more than just our country is being threatened today by the global jihadists, and virtually no one in power understands the nature and the magnitude of the threat any more than do John Stossel or Ron Paul.

Expect American Muslim spokesmen such as Ibrahim Hooper and Salam Al-Marayati to condemn forthwith this abuse of a holy place. Gentlemen? "Pakistani militant among 3 killed in J&K," from Rediff (thanks to Twostellas):

A Pakistani militant belonging to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba outfit was among three killed in two separate encounters on Sunday in Jammu and Kashmir, where three militants remain holed up in a mosque.

The militants were holed up inside a mosque at Palnoo village in Kulgam district after army troops launched a search operation in the village following specific information about the presence of miltants, a defence spokesman said.

He said two persons, including a jawan, were injured in the initial firing by militants from inside the mosque.

However, the troops exercised restraint and did not return fire keeping in mind the sanctity of the place of worship and safety of the people.

Omar Bakri is at it again, fighting against pernicious jahiliyya. Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Hate cleric Omar Bakri calls for 'ban' on Christmas," from the Daily Mail (thanks to WriterMom):

Hate preacher Omar Bakri, who is barred from Britain, is calling on Brits to boycott Christmas.

Using the internet to post a rant against the festive season, Bakri claims Christmas should be "completely forbidden".

In another chilling post the radical cleric said Christmas Day would be the perfect day to launch a terror attack on the UK.

He said: "To have Christmas tree, visit so-called Christmas Father - that is completely forbidden.

"Make sure you do not watch TV. Do not let them hear jingle bells. Do not send your children on Christmas trip."

Un-neighborly, yes. In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon wrote that if the Muslims had won the Battle of Poitiers, "the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet." Well, this may come to pass after all, before too long.

From the Daily Mail (thanks to all who sent this in):

Muslim plans to broadcast a loudspeaker call to prayer from a city centre mosque have been attacked by local residents who say it would turn the area into a "Muslim ghetto".

Dozens of people packed out a council meeting to express their concerns over the plans for a two-minute long call to prayer to be issued three times a day, saying that it could drown out the traditional sound of church bells.

But a spokesman for the Central Mosque said that Muslim's also have the right to summon worshippers.

Dr Mark Huckster, who lives in Stanton Road and works at East Oxford hospice Helen House, told the Oxford Mail: "The proposal to issue a prayer call is very un-neighbourly, especially in a crowded urban space such as Oxford.

"I have lived in the Middle East and a prayer call has a very different feel to church bells and I personally found the noise extremely unpleasant, rather disturbing and very alien to the western mindset."

He added: "If an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry.

"There could be a sense of ghettoisation of East Oxford. Cowley Road would have a Muslim flavour and could become a Muslim ghetto which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society."

The remaining Christians in Turkey celebrate Christmas while suffering from increasing persecution. From AKI (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Istanbul, 24 Dec. (AKI) - Turkey's 100,000-strong Christian community was on Monday hoping that Christmas this year would pass uneventfully without further sectarian attacks such as that earlier this month against an Italian Catholic priest - the latest of several in little over a year.

As schools and offices in the overwhelmingly Muslim majority country will be open on Tuesday, 25 December will simply be a day that comes between Eid al-Adha (the Islamic festival of sacrifice) and the New Year celebrations.

Christmas trees decked in glass baubles and Christmas lights have been put up in some streets and shop windows. "These are signs of a blending of Christian and Muslim cultures that have nothing to do with the substance of Christmas," Monsignor Luigi Padovese, apostolic vicar in Turkey, told Adnkronos International (AKI)

The knife attack by a Muslim youth last Sunday against an Italian Catholic priest, Adriano Franchini, in the Turkish port city of Izmir, has undoubtedly marred the festivities for Christians and left many in a sombre mood.

Undoubtedly.

British Jihad Update. "British man appears in court charged with preparing terrorist attack," from the Associated Press:

A 38-year-old man appeared in court Monday charged with preparing a terrorist attack.

Hassan Muhammed Sabri al Tabbakh, of Birmingham in central England, is accused of compiling a document with instructions on how to make a bomb and stockpiling chemicals for the device.

He was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged Saturday under Britain's Terrorism Act.

Al Tabbakh spoke only to confirm his name, age and address during a hearing at City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London. He was ordered detained until his next court appearance on January 4.

Barry Rubin takes a look back at a year in the seeds were sown for a great deal of future trouble:

While 2007 didn't greatly change the Middle East compared to some of its predecessors, here are some of its significant trends which will continue to dominate the year to come.

1. Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. This is the most important single Middle East event of 2007 because it is a clear, probably irreversible, shift in the balance of power. Four decades of a movement dominated by nationalists has come to an end. Given Fatah's continuing weaknesses it is conceivable that Hamas will take over the West Bank within a few years and marginalize its rival. To Islamists, this is a great victory. In fact, it is a disaster for Palestinians and Arabs. It deepens divisions and destroys any real (as opposed to the silly superficial events that take up governments' time and media space) diplomatic option for them. A negotiated resolution of the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and with it prospects for a Palestinian state, has been set back for decades. Much Western sympathy has been lost. In years to come, struggles between Arab nationalists and Islamists, as well as between Sunnis and Shias, will dwarf the Arab-Israeli conflict. During 2008 we will have to assess whether the Palestinian Authority still ruling the West Bank can meet the Hamas challenge. (We already know it won't meet the diplomatic challenge but it will take all year for most Western politicians and much of the media to discover that.)

2. The military success of the U.S. surge in Iraq. U.S. forces showed that pessimistic assessments were wrong and they were able to reduce the power of anti-government insurgents and lower the death toll in Iraq. However, this is a long way from winning the war. During 2008 the two key questions will be whether U.S. troop withdrawals start in earnest and whether there is any political progress in bringing together Sunni and Shia communities in that country. It is hard to imagine what might change to bring about such an agreement. And even if the insurgents can kill fewer people they are likely to do enough damage to intimidate Sunnis from making peace. Still, the Iraqi government and society could grow strong enough to dispense with U.S. combat troops.

3. The Western failure to tighten sanctions substantially against Iran. It was clear in 2007 that negotiations with Tehran would fail to deter Iran from its campaign to obtain nuclear weapons. Certainly, France, Britain and Germany were more willing to take--or at least to talk about taking--action but due to their own hesitations, plus resistance from Russia and China, very little happened. The reaction to these events in Iran was mixed. On one hand, there was more worry about the pressures facing that country plus its own economic woes. On the other hand, the regime expressed more confidence that the West was chicken and that time and tide was on Iran's side. In 2008 we will be able to see if Tehran's drive for nuclear weapons continues without serious hindrance. Equally, it will be possible to assess whether President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is being weakened by his factional opponents--especially in the March parliamentary elections--or tightening his hold on power and holding to his reckless course.

4. U.S. policy returns to traditional stance. Whatever innovations, for better or worse, President George Bush introduced into American regional policy have vanished in 2007. He is largely back to the traditional approach as carried out by both his father and predecessor. The administration has given up on reform or backing democracy. In 2008, a new president will be chosen but real policy shifts will take until the following year of course.

5. Israel prospers. Despite outdated talk of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's weakness, he used 2007 to rebuild his authority. Especially interesting, Israel's economic growth has been impressive; unemployment fallen to all-time lows. Revolutionary enthusiasm and paper victories still thrill the Arab world and Iran but material gains continue to be what is important.

6. The demoralization of Lebanon. Worried that it is being abandoned by the West, forces supporting the moderate Lebanese government began to wonder if in fact Iran, Syria, and Hizballah would be able to reestablish their control over the country. A key element is the identity of the country's next president. In 2008, it will be important to watch how power shifts in Beirut and whether the investigation of Syrian involvement in terrorism against Lebanese opposition figures leads to an international tribunal.

7. France changes course. President Francois Sarkozy has moved France away from the nationalistic effort to undercut the United States and appease radical regimes. Sarkozy, however, has played footsie with Syria and Libya. The question for 2008: Will he implement pledges to get tougher and will French institutions follow him in changing course?

Verses 50-80 of Sura 9, “Repentance,” excoriate the Hypocrites — those who claim to be Muslims but aren’t really believers. In fact, they grieve at the Muslims’ good fortune and rejoice when they suffer (v. 50). But Allah tells the Muslims to ask them, “Can you expect for us (any fate) other than one of two glorious things?” (v. 52). The two things are martyrdom or victory, according to Ibn Abbas, Mujahid, Qatadah, and others. In other words, the Muslims will either defeat the Hypocrites or be killed by them, in which case they will enter Paradise – a win/win situation.

The Hypocrites, meanwhile, may “spend (for the cause) willingly or unwillingly” (v. 53); in either case, Allah will not accept it from them, “for ye are indeed a people rebellious and wicked.” According to the Ruhul Ma’ani, this verse was revealed in reference to one of the Hypocrites, Jadd bin Qais, who was willing to donate money to Muhammad’s expedition to Tabuk, but not to join the caravan and fight himself. His hypocrisy, and that of others like him, renders their contributions unacceptable (v. 54). But Muhammad should not be impressed with their wealth or the number of their sons, for “Allah’s plan is to punish them with these things in this life, and that their souls may perish in their (very) denial of Allah” (v. 55). According to Al-Hasan Al-Basri, Allah will accomplish this plan “by taking the Zakah due on their money from them and spending it in Allah’s cause.” For these are not true Muslims, and they even dare to question Muhammad’s integrity over how he distributes alms (vv. 56-60). It was at this point that the incident to which I referred here took place: one of the Hypocrites said to Muhammad, “Be fair, Muhammad! You have not been fair.” Muhammad replied: “Bother you! If I am not fair, who will be fair?”

"An explosive device fashioned from a 60-millimetre mortar round and ball bearings attached to a timing device were recovered from his room."

Of course, Al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi insists this is all a mistake. (Getting caught usually is.) An update on this story. "Philippines 'bomb plotter' Islamic envoy: Egypt cleric," from Agence France-Presse:

CAIRO (AFP) - An Egyptian man held in the Philippines for allegedly plotting a Christmas bomb attack is an envoy of Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning who was arrested by mistake, the insitution's grand imam said on Sunday.

Al-Azhar's Sheikh Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi told Egypt's official MENA news agency that he was personally following up the case of Sheikh Mohammed al-Sayyid Ahmed Mussa who was arrested by police in the Philippines on Tuesday.

Tantawi aide Sheikh Abdel Fattah Allam said he expected Sheikh Mussa to be released on bail "in the next few hours".

"The envoys of Al-Azhar abroad are chosen according to strict criteria to encourage moderation in Islam and the renunciation of violence and terrorism," he added.

The religious affairs ministry issued a statement saying that Sheikh Mussa was being well treated but that there were contacts at the highest level between the two governments to try to secure his release.

"Sheikh Mussa is a man of faith who represents a prestigious religious institution," the ministry said.

"There are 29 Al-Azhar envoys in the Philippines teaching Arabic language and Islamic religion in accordance with an agreement between Cairo and Manila," he added.

Mussa, identified by Philippine police as Mohamad Sayed, was arrested during a raid on a flat in the Majad Islamic School in the southern city of Cotabato.

An explosive device fashioned from a 60-millimetre mortar round and ball bearings attached to a timing device were recovered from his room.

Philippine police said the Egyptian was captured after surveillance and that intelligence reports suggested he planned to detonate the bomb at an undisclosed location in the city on Christmas Day.

Among the items they said were recovered from his room was a booklet on the organisation of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a rebel group that has been fighting to set up an Islamic state in the southern Philippines.

Tantawi said he hoped Mussa would be released "within the coming couple of days" and that the arrest was a mistake.

"U.S. counterterrorism officials say [Jamaat ud-Dawa's] status as a legal organization in Pakistan makes it difficult to oppose. It has thousands of loyal supporters and close ties to a government that has done little to rein it in."

Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert. "Extremist group's offshoot seen as threat in Pakistan," by Josh Meyer for the Los Angeles Times:

LAHORE, Pakistan - While the war against Islamic militancy has focused on shadowy underground organizations such as al-Qaeda, counterterrorism officials say there is a growing worldwide threat from an extremist group operating in plain sight in Pakistan.

The group, formerly named Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, was formed in the late 1980s. With the support of the Pakistan government, it has launched attacksagainst India in the dispute over the Kashmir region.

In recent years, the camps that Lashkar once used primarily to train Pakistanis to fight for Kashmir have increasingly become a training ground for other extremists who come from around the world to learn guerrilla warfare, according to current and former U.S. and allied counterterrorism officials.

Another problem for those who would attempt to explain away the global jihad as a series of unrelated local disputes is the fact that local groups widen the scope of their involvement so easily. This is because the rationale for fighting those supposedly local battles comes from an imperative for global domination: Think globally, wage jihad locally.

As growing anti-U.S. sentiment has swelled its ranks, there is evidence the group is working more closely with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups and may be getting directly involved in jihadist activities against the West, the officials say.

They cite evidence in recent years of fund-raising or recruiting efforts in Canada, Britain, Australia and the United States, including current probes in Massachusetts and Lodi, Calif.

Lashkar-e-Taiba was designated a terrorist organization by the United States in December 2001 and was soon outlawed by Pakistan. It disbanded, and its founders created another group, named Jamaat ud-Dawa, which functions openly in Pakistan as an officially recognized humanitarian organization.

U.S. authorities consider it the same as Lashkar-e-Taiba and say it has continued to operate camps that train militants. The Treasury Department put the terrorist label on Jamaat ud-Dawa in April 2006, saying, "LET renamed itself JUD in order to evade sanctions. The same leaders that form the core of LET remain in charge of JUD."

U.S. counterterrorism officials say the group's status as a legal organization in Pakistan makes it difficult to oppose. It has thousands of loyal supporters and close ties to a government that has done little to rein it in.

"The U.S. government . . . has voiced its concerns" about Jamaat ud-Dawa to the Pakistan government, said Daniel Markey, who oversaw South Asia policy at the State Department until February.

Pakistani officials said that Jamaat ud-Dawa is "under watch," but that the group was legal and separate from Lashkar-e-Taiba, which they insisted they have shut down.

Representatives of Jamaat ud-Dawa say they are running a legitimate charity, citing the group's campaign to help Pakistanis recover from a massive earthquake in 2005 and its efforts to provide social services, food, water, medical care and education.

Of course, Hizballah and Hamas also provide similar services along with waging jihad. We have seen many times before that one activity does not exclude the other.

Jamaat ud-Dawa spokesman Abdullah Muntazir said it did not participate in jihadist activities or run military training camps.

"No political party in Pakistan has as many offices as Jamaat ud-Dawa," he said. "So how can the government of Pakistan ban a group that has such deep roots throughout Pakistani society?"

U.S. officials say that Pakistan has closed down some of the training camps, but that the camps pop up again in secret locations along the borders with India and Afghanistan.

A major concern for U.S. officials now is that the Pakistani government of President Pervez Musharraf, contending with its own crises, does not have the ability to control the group.

Arrests like this demonstrate how Muslims do themselves a disservice when they ignore or refuse to discuss the issue of jihad in Islamic texts and teachings: Even they are not immune to becoming targets of it. And insisting only the proper authorities can call for jihad affords no protection when there is violent disagreement over whose authority is legitimate in the first place. "Saudi says arrests 28 al Qaeda militants," from Reuters:

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi security forces have arrested 28 al Qaeda militants suspected of planning "criminal acts" in the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Sunday.

The suspects were arrested in Mecca, Madina, Riyadh and in an area near the country's northern borders, said SPA quoting an official source at the Ministry of Interior.

One of those arrested is a foreign resident while the rest are Saudi nationals, it said without giving further details. "The (public) interest requires that further details be withheld for the time being," it said.

The synchronized operations leading to the arrests began in mid-December, SPA said.

Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Friday security forces had arrested an unspecified number of al Qaeda militants suspected of planning attacks in the country during the Muslim haj pilgrimage.

It was not immediately clear if the latest report referred to the same arrests.

"Several local Christians, speaking on condition of anonymity, charged the Muslim vendors set up their stations without required permits after paying what were described as 'special commissions' to the Palestinian Authority security forces."

"Muslims hijack Jesus' birthplace," by Aaron Klein for World Net Daily:

BETHLEHEM – Muslim street peddlers here bombarded tourists with discounted souvenirs in Manger Square – the hub of Bethlehem's holiday activity – setting up shop in front of Christian stores some of whose owners complained their businesses were being hijacked.

"Tourism is up this year. Christians are visiting from all over. They come out of the Church of the Nativity and before they arrive at my store they've already been approached by a half-dozen Muslim vendors selling the same stuff but cheaper," said the manager of one shop situated across from the Church of the Nativity alongside Manger Square.

The church is the believed birthplace of Jesus. It has seen an increase in the number of visitors since last year, according to locals. Directly outside the church begins the Manger Square thoroughfare, site of religious activity, Christmas decorations and mostly Christian-owned stores.

But the thoroughfare has been packed with Muslim vendors selling souvenirs and religious items such as crosses and cedarwood carvings – much the same objects found in the surrounding Christian stores.

Church visitors cannot exit the large structure without passing through the swarms of vendors.

Several local Christians, speaking on condition of anonymity, charged the Muslim vendors set up their stations without required permits after paying what were described as "special commissions" to the Palestinian Authority security forces that control the city.

WND asked three vendors if they had obtained permits, but they refused to respond.

Upon observing the scene for an afternoon, it was clear during that time the Muslim vendors were raking in the majority of business. According to local shopworkers, this has been the situation for the past two weeks.

The scene was the latest episode of Bethlehem's dwindling Christian population, which has reportedly been the target of rampant Islamic intimidation and persecution.

Bethlehem consisted of up to 80 percent Christians when Israel was founded in 1948, but immediately after the Palestinian Authority took over in 1995 in line with the U.S.-backed Oslo Accords, the Christian population quickly declined to about 23 percent, with a large majority of Muslims. The 23 percent Christian statistic is considered generous since it includes the satellite towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. Some estimates place Bethlehem's actual Christian population as low as 12 percent, with hundreds of Christians emigrating every year.

Christian leaders and residents, most of whom spoke to WND on condition of anonymity during recent interviews, said they face an atmosphere of regular hostility. They said Palestinian armed groups stir tension by holding militant demonstrations and marches in the streets. They spoke of instances in which Christian shopkeepers' stores were ransacked and Christian homes attacked.

They said in the past, Palestinian gunmen fired at Israelis from Christian hilltop communities, drawing Israeli anti-terror raids to their towns.

Read it all.

Christopher Hitchens likes to think of himself as a brave iconoclast, speaking-truth-to-power and all that I'm-George-Orwell-of-this-age-and-I-take-no-prisoners sort of thing. I've mocked him before at this site, many times, quand il fait son petit Orwell. But the longest whack at him, with Hitchens providing the evidence against himself, is the piece "Hitchens and Said." It appeared on February 21, 2007, and is here re-presented, lightly edited for clarity:

There are many examples that one can find on-line of the work of this "good egg" who "writes like a dream." [These were phrases used about Hitchens by someone who objected to some previous mocking of Hitchens by me].

A great friend and unctuous admirer of Edward Said, and though his tribute to Said does not reach the bathetic depths, or yawning heights, of Hamid Dabashi's tribute (google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said" -- you won't regret it), Hitchens own tribute to Said is memorable, for the same reasons, on a slightly different scale:

"The Israelis now living in the territories of the future Palestinian state should return to living within the borders of the state of Israel. No Jew in the world, now or in the future, as a result of this document, will have the right to return, to live, or to demand to live in Hebron, in East Jerusalem, or anywhere in the Palestinian state." --Sari Nusseibeh

What makes this outrageous but perfectly believable remark, by a so-called "Palestinian," of such note is that the utterer is one Sari Nusseibeh. Nusseibeh is supposedly the most "moderate" and "reasonable" of “Palestinians” -- because he is "Oxford-educated" (the epithet is Homeric, in Nusseibeh's case) and scion of one of those Arab families of Jerusalem. Left-wing Israelis, Peace-Nowists, and so on, have always loved Sari Nusseibeh.

His declaration that part of the original territory specifically allocated to Mandatory Palestine, which was specifically set up for the creation of the Jewish National Home, will someday soon be off-limits to Jews, is unacceptable. But will those Israelis and American Jews who fell all over themselves singing the praises of Sari Nusseibeh now see that all such hopes were false, that in the end (just as in Iraq) whenever Infidels put their hopes on this or that individual those hopes will be dashed? It is Islam that matters. Nusseibeh is simply being a good and dutiful Muslim. And thank god he has fully revealed himself right now, and not after the idiotic Israelis (surely there is a limit, even for Olmert, Livni, and the unbelievable Haim Ramon) give away more and more of what they have no right to give away.

After not showing it for a year, Palestinian Authority TV has resumed regular broadcasts of the video above, showing a young woman being cruelly shot down by wicked Zionist soldiers, being transformed into a heavenly maiden in the company of other equally beautiful young women, and ultimately greeting a new shahid after he, too, is shot down by the vicious Israelis. Now, why would they be showing this so often these days?

"Virgins of Paradise - music video returns to PA TV," by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook for Palestinian Media Watch (thanks to Yitzhak):

A music video depicting a Shahid (Martyr for Allah) being greeted in Paradise by the Dark Eyed Maidens (Virgins) has returned to Palestinian Authority (PA) television. The return of this of Shahada (Death for Allah) promotion comes at a time the PA leadership may be interested in increasing the motivation of its fighters. The PA fears an Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in response to the continuous firing of rockets at Israeli cities.

The clip portrays a woman being shot in the back by Israeli soldiers. She is immediately transported to Paradise, where she joins other Maidens wearing identical long white gowns, all joyously dancing, waiting to marry their Shahid. The next scenes depict her male friend visiting her grave, after which he is also shot by Israeli soldiers. His Shahada- Death for Allah is immediately rewarded, and he is transported to heaven, where all the "Maidens" -- including his lover -- turn to greet him.

Click to view Martyr with Maidens of Paradise video on YouTube or PMW website

This is one of the longest-running music videos on PA TV. It was broadcast incessantly for years, often several times a day during the PA terror war (2000-2005) and returned for a month in September 2006. This recurring image of the Martyr being rewarded by receiving the Maidens was part of the multifaceted PA campaign glorifying and encouraging terror, and promoting suicide terror as idyllic Shahada (Martyrdom for Allah).

After an absence of more than a year, PA TV has been broadcasting this video clip regularly for the past month. It is possible that PA TV is attempting to increase the motivation for battle, and especially death in battle, among its men should a ground war develop in the Gaza Strip.

The belief that man is rewarded with beautiful women in Paradise is based on Islamic traditions in the Quran [Suras 42, 44, 52, 56, and others] and the Hadith (traditions attributed to Muhammad), and is expressed regularly in many parts of PA society..

Read it all.

My article, "Somalia: The Rise and Fall of an Islamist Regime" in the September 2007 edition of the Journal of International Security Affairs, is now online here.

And soon, from the looks of things, it may be time for a sequel: "Somalia: The Rise and Fall and Second Coming of an Islamist Regime."

Defend Canadian freedom of speech.

Background: my article "Stand By Steyn," from Human Events.

Here is a brilliant column by Diana West, touching on recent stories we discussed here, here and here.

Christmas came early to the Palestinian Authority when the "international community" decided not only to meet PA President Mahmoud Abbas' request for $5.6 billion in aid, but to throw in almost $2 billion more. Why? Did the PA end its terrorist ways? Stop state-sanctioned incitement against Israel and the West? Change Fatah's charter (forget about Hamas) calling for Israel's destruction?

Alas, no, no and no. We are heaping riches on the PA for other reasons, one of which I discuss below.

But first, a digression: Christmas, obviously, doesn't come to the PA, even if Western billions do. Despite a tiny (and decreasing) number of Christians, the PA is a land of Islam-Dar al-Islam. That makes Israel, the object of the PA's destructive animus, Dar al-Harb, land of war, right?

Right. But not according to the PC script of the "international community." We never, ever discuss the Islamic context of "Arab-Israeli" conflicts. But how else can we hope to understand them? Jihad ideology inspires the Arab struggle against Israel. It also explains it. As the only non-Muslim country amid Middle Eastern Dar-al Islam, as the only "dhimmi" nation to reclaim its land once conquered by Islam, Israel's very existence is a religious offense to the "umma," or Islamic community. In this same context, what we call "foreign aid" to the PA may be understood as a form of "jizya," the protection money paid to Muslims by non-Muslims.

But the non-Muslim world prefers not to think like that. We avert our collective eye from the goals of jihad, from the history and teachings of Islam. Instead, we see ourselves as villains — Israel for its existence, and Israel's supporters for, well, their support for Israel's existence.

In so doing, we create a sinkhole of Western guilt and responsibility for suffering Muslims, in this case in the PA. They suffer not as a consequence of their religio-political bloodlust to destroy the Jews in Israel (the nearest infidels), but because there are Jews in Israel. In other words, it's everyone else's fault but their own. Islam — particularly, jihadist ideology — is not to blame. Throw more money down the hole.

Of course, this works only until we stop misreading such ideology. And how long will that take? Probably forever-so long as we continue leaning on the same authorities who got us into this mental mess in the first place.

As it happens, I began the calendar year thinking about this subject — exonerating Islam — while discussing a PBS documentary on anti-semitism in the Islamic world. The show's conclusion: What isn't Israel's fault is that of the West.

Well, you can't expect much more from (lefty) PBS. What was startling about the message, however, was one of the messenger's: none other than the eminent historian Bernard Lewis. He declared that anti-semitism didn't even exist in the Middle East until European Christian colonizers brought it. You don't need to be a scholar of Mr. Lewis' stature to know that European colonization of the Middle East didn't begin until some 1,100 years after Islamic anti-semitism got going in the Koran, the canonical commentaries on the Koran and in a long and painful (for Christians also) historical record.

Because Mr. Lewis is probably the most influential voice on Islam in our time — particularly for the U.S. foreign policy establishment — this pronouncements are more than significant. Right or, in this case, wrong, they become the conventional wisdom, or reinforce it.

This comes to mind because Mr. Lewis has done it again — holding Europe responsible for unpalatable traditions of Islam. Writing at The American Thinker blog, Andrew Bostom, author of "The Legacy of Jihad" and, forthcoming, "The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism," quotes a recent speech in which Mr. Lewis said: "The authoritarianism present in the Middle East region is not part of the Arab and Muslim traditions, but it has been imported from Europe."

Mr. Bostom goes on to cite copious chapter and verse — including earlier writings by Mr. Lewis himself — demonstrating that "the Arab and Muslim tradition" needed no lessons from Europe on authoritarianism.

Why is Mr. Lewis making statements contradicted by the historical record? If European Christendom truly is the source of Islamic evil-e.g., anti-semitism and authoritarianism-Islam is let off the hook, and blame falls on the West. Whether that is Lewis' point, it is certainly Lewis' effect.

And it is certainly the conventional wisdom. Not very wise, though, when it helps feed the kind of guilt assuaged only by giving billions of dollars to murderers and thieves.

We have posted several stories here over the years of Christians in Pakistan being victimized by that country's blasphemy laws. Here is some general background on the situation of Christians there. "Pakistan: Minority Christians prepare to celebrate Christmas," by Syed Saleem Shahzad for AKI (thanks to Insubria):

Karachi, 21 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - The minority Christian community in Pakistan has begun preparations for Christmas.

Although there are reports of Christians facing threats and discrimination in the overwhelmingly Muslim country, members of the community in the southern port city of Karachi are out in force to celebrate the festival.

"We do celebrate Christmas like the Muslims in Pakistan celebrate their Eids," said Herbert Fernandas, president of the Catholic Association of Pakistan in an interview with AKI.

[...]

"The Christians are very happy and have no problem living in Pakistan," a member of the Goan Roman Catholic Community in Karachi, Ralph D'Cruz, told AKI.

"The problems related to militancy and some laws concerning minorities are of some concern but this is for all Pakistanis and nothing specific to Christians or other minorities," said D' Cruz who works as a crime reporter with a government-owned news agency.

"These extremist jihadis are Pakistani establishment's ploy and nothing to do with Pakistani society," said D'Cruz.

"I never faced any problem being a Christian while covering criminal cases or the police department," he added.

D'Cruz's wife, even referred to the positive discrimination her community sometimes faces.

"We are sometimes given preference for jobs as English is our lingua franca," she said.

Despite being a long established community, Christians in other parts of Pakistan have faced problems. There have been reports of Christians in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) facing death threats if they did not convert to Islam.

Christians, like other religious minorities in Pakistan also have to deal with the country's blasphemy laws, which give the death penalty for defiling the Koran or insulting the Prophet, a sweeping definition that can be widely interpreted.

Muslim extremists have been known to use Pakistan's blasphemy laws as an excuse to attack Christians.

Although no Christian in Pakistan has ever been executed under the blasphemy laws, members of the minority community say that they have been victimised under the legislation.

Aftab Alexander Mughal, a Christian and a publisher of a magazine on minority communities, told AKI of a Christian woman named Martha Bibi, who this year was accused and convicted of making derogatory remarks against the Koran and of defiling the Prophet Mohammad.

Bibi has been in jail since January and the High Court in Lahore recently turned down her appeal to have the charges quashed.

It is estimated that it takes about seven to ten years for those convicted in such cases to be freed once the case reaches the Supreme Court.

Mughal said that although, no one found guilty of blasphemy has been hanged so far, some of those charged under the legislation have been killed while in police custody.

Many of those convicted of blasphemy are believed to be Christian.

The other "roadmap"

"The poster, which has been endorsed by the Fatah leadership, has already been posted on a number of Fatah-affiliated Web sites."

A rare moment of truth in advertising in the "land for peace" scheme. "In Fatah map all of Israel is Palestine," by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Jerusalem Post:

Fatah is planning to mark its 43rd anniversary this year with a new poster that presents all of Israel as Palestine.

Designed specifically for the occasion by Abdel Mun'em Ibrahim, the poster features a map of Israel that is entirely draped with a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf.

It also carries a drawing of a rifle as a symbol of the "armed struggle" against Israel.

The poster, which has been endorsed by the Fatah leadership, has already been posted on a number of Fatah-affiliated Web sites.

The underlying message of the poster is that Fatah, like Hamas, does not recognize Israel's existence.

The emblem is in violation of Fatah's declared policy, which envisions an independent Palestinian state alongside, and not instead of, Israel.

But Fatah must be made to answer whether it envisions that state as a final goal, or a means to an end. That should happen before the next jizya check is signed, but it won't.

By including a rifle in the poster, Fatah is sending a message to the Palestinian public that it has not abandoned the option of "armed resistance," despite current peace talks with Israel.

Founded in 1965, Fatah has celebrated its anniversary over the past 14 years with major rallies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But it's not clear at this stage if Hamas would allow Fatah to hold a big rally in the Gaza Strip.

Last week, Fatah banned Hamas from holding rallies in the West Bank to mark the 20th anniversary of the Islamist movement. Hamas officials have threatened to retaliate by barring Fatah rallies in the Gaza Strip.

Hizballah did this in Lebanon against Israel. Here is one reason why they may feel free to do this.

"Philippines: Muslim rebels use villagers as shields, say officials," from AFP (thanks to Twostellas):

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (AFP) - Muslim insurgents used villagers as shields to evade pursuing Philippine soldiers on Saturday, leaving one dead and five wounded, military officials said.

The gunmen, consisting of members of Abu Sayyaf and rogue elements of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) also suffered a number of casualties as they were seen dragging away their dead and wounded from the site, the officials added.

The fighting in the southern island of Jolo broke out after residents of Kalingalang Caluang town reported the presence of the rebels to the military, regional commander Major General Nelson Allaga said.

When the troops arrived "the rogue rebels and the Abu Sayyaf used the civilians as shields in their retreat", Allaga added.

One soldier was killed and one soldier and four civilians were wounded in the fighting. The wounded civilians were immediately airlifted to a hospital, said Major General Reuben Rafael, head of a special anti-terror task force.

The gunmen later released their hostages, allowing the military to pursue them with helicopter gunships, said Allaga.

This post could be entitled Why Can't Muslims Debate? Part II -- perhaps this should be an ongoing series. In Why Can't Muslims Debate? Part I I noted the tendency of self-proclaimed moderate Muslim spokesmen to engage in ad hominem attacks, not just as a secondary feature of their presentation, but as the entirety of their argument. And I suggested: "I am beginning to suspect that all the abuse they delight in is not just a manifestation of their abysmal intellectual bankruptcy, although it is that also; it is at the same time a demonstration of their Islamic supremacist assumptions. The filthy kaffir is not to be respected, much less his arguments answered; rather, he is to be rebuked for his insolence and put in his place."

There is as a companion to this also a tendency toward projection, as manifested by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here; this is also found among those of his coreligionists who profess to reject his Islamic supremacism and hatred.

And so it is that an associate of the raving spitblogger Dean Esmay, Ali Eteraz, with whom I have had several exchanges in the past, attacks this site today in a comment at his own site (thanks to James). After a commenter named Susan recommends Jihad Watch, Eteraz writes:

Let the record reflect that while many pro-Steyn people do not uphold such xenophobic views, a great many of those defending him are quite happily, under the guise of being defenders of pluralism, people of acute bigotry and supremacist tendencies themselves, as evidenced by the website Susan references.

"Acute bigotry and supremacist tendencies"? Really? Is resisting Islamic supremacism in the name of the equality of dignity of women and men, the equality of rights of all people before the law, and the freedom of conscience really "acute bigotry"? It is, of course, in the eyes of American Muslim advocacy groups that seem determined to stamp out all anti-jihad resistance, and which have numerous questionable ties and activities themselves (here is the most notorious example). But shouldn't someone like Ali Eteraz, who claims to abjure Islamic supremacism, see us as an ally?

Maybe so, but instead, he accuses us in turn of "supremacist tendencies" -- and that's where the projection comes in. It isn't that he himself is necessarily an Islamic supremacist, but that he would see in us exactly what we are fighting is an extremely odd charge that I think is illuminated by something Eteraz wrote a few months ago (thanks to Admiral Adama). After a commenter on one of his articles referred back to this piece under the heading, "Ali Eteraz torn up by Robert Spencer," Eteraz responded:

Projection Alert. And which American Muslim group met with the Thug-In-Chief? Do they subscribe to his view that "accomplishment of a world without America and Israel is both possible and feasible"?

"Ahmadinejad backs from Saudi Arabia," (yes, that's the real headline), from the Iranian Students News Agency (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

TEHRAN, Dec. 22 (ISNA)-Iran's president stepped into Tehran after a five-day trip to Saudi Arabia where he performed Hajj pilgrimage....

In a meeting with the United States Muslims' community board emphasizing on the necessity of introducing Islam's truth and logic he noted that "the arrogant" have always projected their problems on the world of Islam.

Before Iraq was occupied all religions and groups were living next to each other in peace but now there are great attempts to divide them into parts, he added "the disparity between Shiites and Sunnis is an imported issue because Islam has only one simple truth."

Wherever the arrogant occupied within the territory of Islam's world they have formed a constitution based on making disparities and divisions between different religions and groups, he said.

While saying that the entity of Islam's foes is mingled with Zionists he illustrated Zionism is the common point of all Islam's enemies but "we must distinguish between Zionists and Jews."

Meanwhile the U.S. Muslims' community board presenting a report on the condition of Muslims in that country underlined Islam's role in global peace, security and justice.

Apparently he wanted to make sure that he would kill, and thereby increase his chances to gaining the place in Paradise that Allah guarantees to those who "kill and are killed" (Qur'an 9:111).

From AFP (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

PESHAWAR - The suicide bomber who killed 54 people in a Pakistan mosque had packed his explosives vest with ball bearings to inflict maximum casualties, a hospital official said on Saturday.

With security agencies hunting for clues to Friday’s attack, which targeted but missed a close ally of President Pervez Musharraf, a doctor said many of the victims suffered severe shrapnel wounds.

“Many were hit by ball bearings packed into the bomber’s suicide jacket,” said Manzoor Khan of the main state-run hospital in the northwest town of Charshadda, where the attack occurred.

“It seems most of the victims died from excessive bleeding,” he told AFP.

I wrote my book Religion of Peace? to try to make a case for Western civilization as worth defending. The fundamentally most misunderstood and overlooked aspect of the defense against the global jihad is the challenge that the jihadists make to Western values, which are in large part Judeo-Christian. This is combined with a historical critique which relentlessly portrays the West as the aggressors against the rest of the world, and as uniquely responsible for its evils -- thus sapping our will to defend something as rotten as Western civilization. This myopia about slavery is just part of this problem.

From "Bad Faith Bestseller," Jeremy Lott's review of Christopher Hitchens' book god is Not Great in The American Spectator:

It's not a rhetorical question. Some assumption of good faith by the author is an important part of how critics operate, but Hitchens simply cannot be this stupid.

Exhibit A: In his discussion of slavery, Hitchens focuses entirely on the American experience so that he can damn Christianity for the peculiar institution. He overlooks the role of the Catholic Church in abolishing slavery in Europe and gives scant attention to the role of the Muslim slave trade in starting it up again in the new world, and he manages to gloss over the fact that slavery predates organized religion.

One of the most common criticisms of Christianity centers on its posture toward slavery. Taken at face value, the Bible condones the practice. The Apostle Paul says flatly: “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ” (Ephesians 6:5). In his time, he wasn’t saying anything remotely controversial (and of course has been criticized for apparently accepting the cultural status quo instead of challenging it). No culture on earth, Christian or otherwise, ever questioned the morality of slavery until relatively recent times.

But Hitchens reflects the popular view, which is that the onus for slavery is squarely on the West. When Britain commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of its abolition of the slave trade in March 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair called it “an opportunity for the United Kingdom to express our deep sorrow and regret for our nation’s role in the slave trade and for the unbearable suffering, individually and collectively, it caused.”

Britain’s role in the slave trade? Some Americans might be surprised to learn that the British, or anyone besides American southerners, ever owned slaves, since after coming through American schools as they stand today many people no doubt have the impression that slavery was invented in Charleston and Mobile. “The American education system,” observes Mark Steyn, “teaches it as such -- as a kind of wicked perversion the Atlantic settlers had conjured out of their own ambition.”

However, as Steyn details, it was a cross-cultural fact of life for centuries: “In reality, it was more like the common cold -- a fact of life. The institution predates the word’s etymology, from the Slavs brought from eastern Europe to the glittering metropolis of Rome. It predates by some millennia the earliest laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia. The first legally recognized slave in the American colonies was owned by a black man who had himself arrived as an indentured servant. The first slave owners on the North American continent were hunter-gatherers. As Metaxas puts it, ‘Slavery was as accepted as birth and marriage and death, was so woven into the tapestry of human history that you could barely see its threads, much less pull them out. Everywhere on the globe, for 5,000 years, the idea of human civilization without slavery was unimaginable.’”

Likewise unacknowledged has been the role that Christian principles played in the abolition of slavery in the West, which was an enterprise unprecedented in the annals of human history. The roots of abolitionism can be traced to the Church’s practice of baptizing slaves and treating them as human beings equal in dignity to all others. St. Isidore of Seville (560-636) declared that “God has made no difference between the soul of the slave and that of the freedman.” His statement was rooted in what St. Paul told the slaveowner Onesimus about his runaway slave Philemon: “Perhaps this was why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, as a beloved brother” (Philemon 15-16).

That is, martyrdom in the Islamic sense: gaining Paradise by killing and being killed, per Qur'an 9:111. And this is in service of a supremacist and expansionist vision: "A seventh-grade textbook encourages students to "not cease until the redeeming message of 'there is no god but Allah' is realized throughout the whole world."

"Iran Educates Children to 'Seek Martyrdom,'" by Erick Stakelbeck for CBN News (thanks to all who sent this in):

CBNNews.com - During Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini sent thousands of Iranian children directly into minefields.

He promised that they'd see heaven as their reward.

Today's Iranian leadership is quite unpopular with its growing younger generation -- the Mullahs are attempting to reclaim this group one textbook at at a time.

This is becoming a common scene in Iran. Pro-democracy Protests against the ruling regime. Just last weekend Tehran University students waved signs that said "live free or die."

In some ways, this is the new face of Iran-- 70 percent of the population is under the age of 30. Many of these Iranians are hungry for the kind of freedoms Americans enjoy. But the Iranian government has other ideas.

"Imagine 225,000, 250,000 even 100,000 kids who have been taught to hate America, hate the West, get ready for martyrdom," Shayan Arya said.

Shayan Arya's family left Iran when he was a teenager. He says the government's educational curriculum teaches children as young as first grade to prepare for war and seek martyrdom.

"You are responsible for learning it--you get tested on it, you have to study it, you have to write papers on it, you have to answer to your teachers, he said.

The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance recently gave CBN News an exclusive look at some Iranian textbooks. All non-Muslims are portrayed as evil -- especially the U.S. and Israel.

A seventh-grade textbook encourages students to "not cease.until the redeeming message of 'there is no god but Allah' is realized throughout the whole world."

"Unlike some other European nations, Belgium does not have anti-terrorist laws which allow suspects to be held for longer than 24 hours without charge," but Belgian authorities are still investigating and gathering evidence. The article makes no mention of what sort of limitations, if any, have been placed on the suspects' movement and activity in the meantime.

An update on this story. " Belgium releases 14 terror suspects," by Paul Ames for the Associated Press:

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Belgian authorities on Saturday released 14 suspects detained over an alleged plot to free an al-Qaida prisoner after a court decided there was insufficient evidence to hold them for more than 24 hours, the Federal Prosecutor's office said.

The government's Crisis Center said the investigation was not over. And Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office, said tightened anti-terrorism measures triggered by the arrest of the suspected Islamic militants on Friday would remain in place over the holidays.

"We think there is still a threat," Pellens said in a telephone interview.

Police picked up the 14 suspects in a series of early morning raids Friday. Earlier reports indicated that explosives and arms were also seized, but Pellens said Saturday that searches of the suspects' homes had found no explosives, weapons or other evidence to persuade the court to charge them with any offense or keep them in jail.

Unlike some other European nations, Belgium does not have anti-terrorist laws which allow suspects to be held for longer than 24 hours without charge, Pellens said.

The 14 were expected to remain under police surveillance and could be detained again if more evidence is uncovered. The authorities did not release the suspects' identities.

Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and the prosecutor's office alleged the suspects planned to use explosives and weapons to free Nizar Trabelsi. The 37-year-old Tunisian was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of a Belgian air base where about 100 American military personnel are stationed.

The U.S. Embassy had warned Americans "there is currently a heightened risk of terrorist attack in Brussels," although it said it had no indication of specific targets.

The government's Crisis Center said the investigation was continuing into other material found in the searches.

"The release of the 14 does not mean the investigation is finished, all the material that was found is being examined," said Alain Lefevre, a director of the center. "Depending on the results, our measures will be adapted."

Authorities tightened security, warning of a heightened threat of attacks despite the arrests. Police stepped up patrols at Brussels airport, subway stations and the downtown Christmas market, which draws large crowds of holiday shoppers.

"Other acts of violence are not to be excluded," warned Verhofstadt.

Lefevre said army bomb disposal units were called in overnight to investigate a car parked near the U.S. Embassy and a rucksack left at a Brussels pizzeria, but both were false alarms.

Pellens said intelligence that an attack could be imminent meant the security forces had to act without waiting to gather the evidence.

"We could not treat this as we would a normal criminal case," Pellens said.

"According to our investigation there were sufficient indications pointing to a terrorist threat; that is why we did not wait to detain the suspects," she said. "But the suspects have not been formally charged and, unfortunately, their release does not come as a surprise to us."

Jihad chic.

By Philip Johnston for the Telegraph (thanks to all who sent this in):

Two suspected al-Qa'eda operatives released from Guantanamo Bay have walked free from court although they are still wanted in Spain on terrorism-related offences.

One of the men, who is accused of distributing extremist propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden, had half of his £50,000 bail surety met by the actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Jamil el-Banna, 45, who was said during a brief court hearing to have helped run a cell called the Islamic Alliance, recruiting people to fight jihad in Afghanistan and Indonesia, returned to his London home tonight.

The other man, Omar Deghayes, 38, a Libyan national freed from Guantanamo and allowed into the UK because he once lived here, is said to have had links to the same al-Qa'eda cell. He was also released on bail.

Spain issued European arrest warrants for both men within hours of their arrival in Britain last night from the Cuban detention centre. Miss Redgrave said: "It is a profound honour and I am glad to be alive to be able to do this.''

She added: "Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp. It is a disgrace that these men have been kept there all these years."

But the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court heard of their alleged links to al-Qa'eda, which raised fresh questions over why the British government interceded on their behalf to allow their return here from Guantanamo....

Arabic-speaking Christians generally use the word "Allah" for God -- with the notable exception of the Copts. But they are not referring, of course, to the God of the Qur'an, but to the God of the Bible. And one notable dhimmi bishop in the West has called for Christians to use the word "Allah" for God in order to show good will toward Muslims.

If both groups were in Malaysia, however, it would be a different story. Muslim spokesmen in the West endlessly tell us that Muslims, Jews, and Christians all worship the same God -- in accord with Qur'an 29:46. And when I and others point out that the Muslim view of God is quite different from the view of God of Jews and Christians, and that it is therefore hard to sustain a case that all worship the same God, we're vilified and dismissed. But this decision in Malaysia indicates that it is not we who have originated such ideas; they're held by many Muslims as well.

From The Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: A Catholic weekly newspaper in Malaysia has been told to drop the use of the word "Allah" in its Malay language section if it wants to renew its publishing permit, a senior government official said Friday.

The Herald, the organ of Malaysia's Catholic Church, has translated the word God as "Allah" but it is erroneous because Allah refers to the Muslim God, said Che Din Yusoff, a senior official at the Internal Security Ministry's publications control unit.

"Christians cannot use the word Allah. It is only applicable to Muslims. Allah is only for the Muslim god. This is a design to confuse the Muslim people," Che Din told The Associated Press.

The weekly should instead, use the word "Tuhan" which is the general term for God, he said.

Website postings like the ones quoted in this article are obnoxious and wrong. When I see the like here, I take them down. But Ezra Levant is right: "...when someone hurts your feelings, you can respond, write a letter to the editor, call a talk radio show, start a political campaign. But you don't go running to the government."

Or at least he was right. Now that the magazine has apologized, Kathy Shaidle explains exactly what is wrong with such a gesture: "Here we see the difference between shame-based and honor-based cultures at work -- the imam and other Muslims will view this magnanimous gesture as a sign of weakness and more complaints will follow, each one even stupider than the last."

"Anti-Muslim web postings spark rights complaint," by Sean Myers in the Calgary Herald (thanks to Five Feet of Fury):

A local Muslim leader has launched a human rights complaint against the website of a defunct magazine, claiming a recent string of user comments on its blog promote hatred against followers of Islam.

Calgary police are also investigating allegations levelled by Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, that comments on the Shotgun Blog of the Western Standard website advocating violence against Muslims could constitute a hate crime.

The entry, dated Dec. 5 and written by a user named Templar, said, "there is no such thing as innocent Muslims." Templar goes on to write "They must all be killed. All of them."

Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada says comments on the Western Standard website constitute hate-mongering and are "against Canadian values."

Another user, OBC, responds by saying Muslims should be deported from western countries, adding that he'd be "in favour of their eradication" if they "don't behave back there."

"This is absolutely pure hate- mongering," said Soharwardy. "It's an abuse of freedom of speech. It's against Canadian (hate) laws."

Nagah Hage, chairman of the Muslim Council of Calgary which represents the majority of Muslims in the city, said the website should be forced to take down the offensive comments.

"The police have to do something about this," said Hage. "This is racism. This is filling the minds of people with hatred. Who knows what it might lead to down the road."

The original Dec. 2 posting that sparked the user comments was written by former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant. He was discussing complaints by the Canadian Islamic Congress against Maclean's magazine.

It's the anonymous responses to Levant's posting that have angered Muslim leaders.

Levant, who no longer owns the website or the Western Standard name, said he doesn't personally agree with the comments, but argued they should be protected as free speech.

"In Canada, when someone hurts your feelings, you can respond, write a letter to the editor, call a talk radio show, start a political campaign. But you don't go running to the government," said Levant. "Mr. Soharwardy has to realize he is in a free country now."

But maybe he isn't.

"Magazine apologizes for 'hateful' blog comments," from CBC News (thanks again to Five Feet of Fury):

The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada cancelled a protest planned for Friday in Calgary over anti-Muslim comments made on a Western Standard blog site, after receiving an apology from the magazine's owner.

"Mr. Matthew Johnston, who is the new owner of the Western Standard, he called me last night and he apologized on the phone," Imam Syed Soharwardy, president of the Islamic council, said Friday.

[...]

The imam said Johnston told him the statements were hateful and offended not only Muslims but also the management and readers of the Western Standard, and that the magazine would try to better monitor what's posted on its site.

"They will have responsible journalism and editing and monitoring of their blog," Soharwardy said. "I thank him for his recognition of the problem and doing exactly what we wanted him to do, is to apologize and make sure it does not happen again."

The human rights complaints have now been withdrawn, he said.

America's Truth Forum
in association with Basics Project
present

Exposing the Threat of Islamist Terrorism

America's Original Symposium Series on the Threat of Islamist Terrorism

Click here to read the Terms & Conditions

Saturday February 2, 2008
Ranch of the Lonesome Dove in Southlake, Texas
9am Start (7:45am arrival time to satisfy security check-in)
(Texas Bar-B-Que lunch included)
Website Directions

VIP Dinner & Cocktail Pre-Symposium Reception
Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center, Grapevine, TX
Friday, February 1, 2008
7pm Start (6pm arrival time to satisfy security check-in)

Symposium Tickets: $149.00 per person
VIP Dinner Reception Tickets: $119.00 per person

Ticket purchase and reservation deadline: January 4, 2008
Click here to purchase tickets and to reserve your seat
Click here for information on hotels in the immediate area

Confirmed Speakers:

Frank Gaffney
Founder and President Center for Security Policy
Subject: The Infiltration of Middle Eastern Influence into Washington DC Institutions. Mr. Gaffney will examine the increasing Middle Eastern within some of our countries most important institutions including our government.

Caroline Glick
Deputy Managing Editor, Jerusalem Post & Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy
Subject: Assessing the Iranian Threat to Global Security

David Harris
President of Democracy House &
Former Chief of Strategic Planning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
Subject: Threat of terrorist infiltration.

Roger Hedgecock
From his days as a San Diego elected official to his 14 years as host of "The Roger Hedgecock Show," Mr. Hedgecock has reached out to influence millions of Americans with his message of citizen empowerment. Mr. Hedgecock has guest hosted the number one ranked Rush Limbaugh radio program. He can be heard on his own nationally syndicated radio program on his flagship station AM600 KOGO, in San Diego, CA .
Subject: Emcee

Dr. Harvey Kushner
Chairman of Criminal Justice Dept. of Long Island University, best-selling author, advisor to the FBI and FAA
Subject: Radical Islam's Infiltration of America. The original introduction to his book Holy War in 2004 included this warning: “In my thirty years in counterterrorism, I have never been more worried about my country.” What’s changed? Make it thirty-eight. Kushner will show how the United States continues to be infiltration by terrorist meaning to pull triggers, plant bombs, and blast holes in the New York City skyline.

Laura Mansfield
Middle Eastern linguistic expert and investigative reporter specializing in jihadi activity both domestic and foreign
Subject: To Be Announced

Atty. David Schippers
Former Chief Investigative Counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee, author, counter-terrorism expert
Subject: Domestic Terrorism and Associated Threat. Mr. Schippers will discuss past terrorist attacks no our nation and the probabilities of additional attacks on our homeland.

Robert Spencer
Director of Jihad Watch, best-selling author and expert on radical Islam
Subject: Sharia Law and The West. Mr. Spencer will discuss the nature of the Sharia imperative and the elements of Western civilization that it challenges. His talk will examine why the United States - and the West - ignore this at our own peril.

Dr. Wafa Sultan
Syrian-American Psychologist and internationally known critic of militant Islam
Subject: The Necessity of Educating the American Public About Islam. Dr. Sultan will explain why tough questions should be posed to Muslims about Islamic teachings as well as defining the concept of Al Taqqiya, the need to monitor the Saudi money trail into American Universities, Mosques and Maddrassas and the need to effectively infiltrate Muslim communities to monitor and investigate radicalization.

Dr. Bruce Tefft
Founding member of CIA’s Counterterrorism Task Force
Subject: The Islamist Ideological Conflict - Loyalty to Country vs. Loyalty to Religion. Dr. Tefft will examine the issues surrounding the complex dilemma facing Islamist ideology with regard to the religions ability to assimilate into their host nation societies. He will examine the tenets of the Koran regarding national assimilation, the ideology surrounding jihad today and throughout history and Islamophobia.

Dr. Paul Williams
Former FBI consultant, best-selling author and investigative journalist
Subject: The American Hiroshima & Domestic Jihadi Training Camps. Dr. Williams will discuss the vulnerability of the United States to "The American Hiroshima," Osama bin Laden's quest to deploy and detonate nuclear weapons within US borders. He will also discuss his recent examination of jihadi training facilities located within the United States.

'Tis the season: Tariq Ramadan... Tariq Ramadan... Tariq Ramadan, prospero año y felicidad

An update on this story. "Islamic Scholar’s Suit for a Visa Is Rejected," by Alan Feuer for the New York Times:

Saying the government had acted properly and for “bona fide” reasons, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit on Thursday that was brought last year by an Islamic scholar who claimed that a portion of the Patriot Act had been used to deny him a work visa to enter the United States.