May 2008 Archives

The man was just joking about AK-47s, you see. And he happened to take a pleasure trip to...Pakistan's northwest frontier...to go shooting with his family (you know, that skeet shortage in England and all). Nothing to see here. How dare anyone think that suspicious! It must be yet another attack of Islamophobia!

"Muslim leader’s protest at police 'spy tactics,'" by John Bynorth for the Sunday Herald, June 1 (thanks to D.L.):

STRATHCLYDE POLICE are facing accusations that it operates a covert intelligence monitoring unit which is infringing the rights of Muslims, after the force launched an investigation into claims that a group of Asians on a clay pigeon shoot had behaved "like terrorists".

Osama Saeed, chief executive of the Scottish Islamic Foundation, has written to Strathclyde's chief constable, Stephen House, expressing concern at the way Special Branch officers are questioning Asians about their lifestyles, religious and political beliefs and internet activities. He added that the continued use of the tactics would lead to "further marginalisation of Muslims", and is already leading some to think twice about practising their beliefs for fear that police will disrupt their lives.

His comments came as one solicitor claimed police have also been secretly "recruiting" Muslims to provide information about their community in return for payments.

The 10-strong shooting party were questioned informally at their homes and businesses by two policemen a year after their November 2006 trip to Kypeside Farm, an activity centre near Lesmahagow in Lanarkshire. The officers, believed to be from Special Branch, were reacting to a tip-off from a member of the public who claimed the group had been overheard discussing "shooting AK-47 rifles in Pakistan".

The 29-year-old trip organiser, who declined to be identified, said: "They wanted the names of my family and friends and my thoughts on Afghanistan, Iraq and what I would do if I encountered an extremist at my mosque. I replied that I didn't think I would go to them because they were so ignorant, but would speak to the imam.

"I had my solicitor present, who told me that it was no coincidence several men were standing trial for involvement in a terror camp in the Lake District. It hadn't even crossed my mind what we did could be seen as terrorist activity and I found it very sinister."

Glasgow businessman Saheed Sadiq, 44, another member of the party, told officers he was behind the AK-47 remarks, as he had visited Pakistan's northwest frontier to take part in the shooting activity with his family. He believes the fact that the comment was reported and investigated is evidence of the problems Asians face.

Sadiq added: "I have a beard because of my faith, but it doesn't make me want to commit a 9/11. The police treated me decently, but I couldn't understand why we were being investigated over a year later. It's made me uneasy, and I look at everything I do and say now in case it is picked up wrongly. I won't be going clay pigeon shooting again."

In his letter, Saeed urged House to be more open about police activities and added: "There is much hesitation in joining in with civic religious activity for fear of crossing the police radar. I hope you will agree that, from a counter-terror perspective, if someone is angry about foreign policy, that it is better for them to join with democratic public work than to be left to whatever devices may be on the internet. It makes our job of engaging young Muslims harder."...

But Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's centre for intelligence and security strategy, said: "A whole string of recent convictions, involving young Muslims, many of whom have pleaded guilty, shows the police and MI5 are doing well at the moment in very difficult circumstances."

Strathclyde Police said they were "duty-bound" to examine the concerns raised and, although no action was taken, would "continue to encourage members of the public to contact police on any matter of suspicious activity."

Good.

They want to join in the fight to impose a system that would give their husband the right to beat them and have multiple wives, give them half the inheritance of a male relative, and make their testimony in court worth half that of a man. But to restrict them from waging armed jihad to that end -- well, that's just too much!

"Al Qaeda to Muslim Extremist Women: Stay Home, Raise Kids," from the Associated Press, May 31:

CAIRO, Egypt — Muslim extremist women are challenging Al Qaeda's refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

In response to a female questioner, Al Qaeda No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of Al Qaeda fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of Al Qaeda.

A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahiri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri said there are no women in Al Qaeda, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."

And you're just noticing that now.

Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.

However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues — the Internet — for rights within a feudal version of Islam.

"Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahiri said is not what's happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. "Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad." [...]

Al-Zawahiri's comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by Al Qaeda sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should "be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her," but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian. [...]

Indeed, would they be safe among the supposedly pious male mujahedin?

The Internet is the only "breathing space" for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, "Ossama2001" wrote. She said al-Zawahiri's words "opened old wounds" and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa" — named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle — has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women's information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women's terrorist training camps, according to SITE.

Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article "Biography of the Female Mujahedeen."

The article read:

"We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna [sayings] of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us."

The message is obvious, but one can't help but wonder: How can you stand with your children in your lap?

Unindicted co-conspirator CAIR teaches a class, with the school principal defying orders not to let it happen.

"Islam-promoting principal defied order to protect kids: Students required to attend CAIR indoctrination event," by Bob Unruh for WorldNetDaily (thanks to all who sent this in):

A public school principal in Texas who arranged for an Islamic instruction presentation for students by an organization whose leaders have been linked to terror groups apparently arranged for that indoctrination after being told not to by her district's superintendent, parents have told WND.

The issue developed this week when public school students at Friendswood Junior High in the Houston area were herded into an assembly scheduled by Principal Robin Lowe that suddenly replaced a scheduled physical education class, according to reports.

There, two women from the Houston division of the Council on American-Islamic Relations instructed students that Adam, Noah and Jesus are prophets, announced "there is one god, his name is Allah," taught the five pillars of Islam, told students how to pray five times a day, and instructed what Islamic religious rules require for dress.

Pastor Dave Welch, spokesman for the Houston Area Pastor Council, confirmed the indoctrination had taken place and called it "unacceptable."

"The failure of the principal of Friendswood Junior High to respect simple procedures requiring parental notification for such a potentially controversial subject, to not only approve but participate personally in a religious indoctrination session led by representatives of a group with well-known links to terrorist organizations and her cavalier response when confronted, raises serious questions about her fitness to serve in that role," the pastors' organization said in a statement.

A parent, whose name was withheld, reported the presentation was 30 to 40 minutes long and handled by Muslims from CAIR, which, as WND has reported, is a spinoff of the defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, launched by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and former university professor Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad....

Read it all.

In accord with the new guidelines. Or actually, since he is in Britain, it probably said, "Join our anti-Islamic activity."

"Dad denies jihad call," from the Manchester Evening News, May 31 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

A FATHER-of-one has denied publishing a pamphlet encouraging terrorism.

Amjad Mahmood, 29, and his wife Shella Roma, 27, of Chester Road, Oldham, are accused of circulating a document telling others to go abroad and fight a jihad.

Mahmood denied two charges - dissemination of a terrorist publication and encouragement of terrorism - at Manchester Crown Court.

The offences were allegedly committed between October 10 and January 31. The couple, who have a six-month-old baby, were arrested two months ago....

What is always striking about stories like this is the eagerness with which proponents of Sharia-approved practices regarded as unacceptable in the West attempt to invoke Western human rights laws to defend their behavior, while in countries enforcing Sharia law, Western standards of human rights are disregarded out of hand, or even deemed licentious.

The demands boil down to this: In the name of Western human rights, let us implement practices from Sharia law that are wholly incompatible with Western human rights. And the case cited in the editorial below demonstrates that Islamic polygamy results in the same oppression and deceit in North America as anywhere else.

"Sharia by stealth — Ontario turns a blind eye to polygamy" by John Turley Ewart for the National Post, May 29:

It’s an issue the Liberal govenrment of Ontario, led by Premier Dalton McGuinty, doesn’t want to deal with — polygamy in the Muslim community. Last week the Toronto Star told the story of Safa Rigby, a 35-year-old mother of five children who recently learned her husband of 14 years had two other wives. Ms. Rigby’s life is in tatters. She followed her husband’s advice that she leave Toronto and live in Egypt for a year on the grounds that it would be better for their children to spend more time in a Muslim country. Now she knows it was a ruse. He used her time there to marry two other women.

Ms. Rigby does not support polygamy, which has been illegal in Canada for more than a century. But Toronto Imam Aly Hindy, who runs the Toronto Salahuddin Islamic Centre, does. He married Ms. Rigby’s husband knowing he already had a wife and counselled him to keep the marriage secret from Ms. Rigby for as long as possible. Hindy has by his own admission performed 30 ceremonies in which men were married who already had wives. When Ms. Rigby confronted Hindy his response was reportedly cold and unsympathetic: “You will have to stand beside him in these difficult times,” Hindy told her. “You should stop causing problems to (sic) him. You will not get anything by divorce except destroying your life” he went on to say.

For Hindy this is not about Ms. Rigby or her husband’s desire to marry another woman — but making a broader political point.

Hindy is using polygamy as a proxy for his fundamentalist version of Islam, something he wants to see legitimized in Canadian society as a whole. It is part of an attempt at empire building, a bid that if successful will enhance his influence within the Muslim and demonstrate that Ontario and Canada is too ignorant and too afraid of Islam to uphold its own laws. He has admitted as much, challenging Ontario’s government to dare stop him. “If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that,” he told the Star. Interviewed after the Star story appeared on the John Oakley Show on AM 640Toronto, Hindy was not apologetic and argued that freedom of religion in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms trumped prohibitions against polygamous marriages.

When he and another Imam from Toronto, Steve Rockwell, were challenged on the appropriateness of polygamy by a Muslim caller to the Oakley Show, the caller was immediately attacked and his identity as a true Muslim questioned because he did not follow Hindy’s view that polygamy is a foundational pillar of Islam that grows out of Sharia Law. This speaks to a troubling absolutist interpretation of Islamic law, which runs against the reality that Sharia law is much more flexible that Hindy allows for, a fact well documented by Anver Emon, a specialist in Islamic law at the University of Toronto. Moreover, as noted in the Star article on Ms. Rigby, there is grave doubt that the Charter protects Islamic polygamy, as Hindy believes. Nik Bala, who teaches family law at Queen’s University, points out that “Islam permits polygamy, but doesn’t require it to be a practising Muslim.” This is key, and may mean Hindy’s attempt to find shelter behind the Charter will fail. Moreover, the impact polygamy has on women's equality and children could also sway the courts to uphold Canada's ban on polygamy.

But there is little chance at the moment that this will become a Charter issue down the road. Dalton McGuinty’s government has responded to the revelations about polygamy in the Muslim community by denying its existence. On Wednesday Liberal MPP Ted McMeekin responded to a question on the issue in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario saying:

“Polygamy is a serious crime in Ontario . It’s not something that’s tolerated. As you know, the best advice I can give the honourable member opposite is that if she has any evidence that someone is engaging in multiple marriages, she should report it, because our Registrar General and our official reporting mechanisms have no evidence that that’s happening. As you know, Mr. Speaker, marriage is a contract. A contract require a licence, and once a marriage occurs, it has to be registered. There are no multiple marriages being registered in the province of Ontario.”

Mr. McMeekin’s response is a shameful twisting of the law. The criminal code is clear. Section 293. (1) reads: “Every one who (a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into (i) any form of polygamy, or (ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or (b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii), is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.”

There is no provision in the law, contrary to Mr. McMeekin’s assertion in the Ontario Legislature, that a polygamous marriage has to be registered before the government can act. The opposite is in fact true.

By turning a blind eye to polygamy, Premier McGuinty is giving licence to Sharia by stealth.

Exactly. Read it all.

Again, we see the argument that using those terms somehow "legitimizes" or "aggrandizes" the jihadist movement. But honestly, is the public deflection of the Islamic aspect of Islamic jihad going to hinder jihadists from making the connection, or will it hinder ordinary citizens seeking information? Obviously, it will be the latter. And when the public is discouraged from understanding the jihadist enemy's ideology, whom does that ultimately help?

An update on the new governmental lexicon of acceptable terms for talking about... you know. And that was a story that we broke here, by the way. "Agency urges caution with terrorist language," from CNN, May 31:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Government officials should depict terrorists "as the dangerous cult leaders they are" and avoid words that aggrandize them, like "jihadists," "Islamic terrorists," "Islamists" and "holy warriors," the Department of Homeland Security says in a paper released Friday.

"Words matter," the agency says in the paper, which also suggests avoiding the term "moderate Muslims," a characterization that annoys many Muslims because it implies that they are tepid in the practice of their faith.

"Mainstream," "ordinary" and "traditional" better reflect the broader Muslim American community, it says.

Dan Sutherland, head of the agency's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and author of the paper, said the paper is a recognition that words can help the government achieve its strategic goals.

Sutherland said he is starting to see results, with government officials using the term "mainstream Muslims" in meetings.

Sutherland's nine-page paper says the government should be careful not to demonize all Muslims or the Islamic faith or depict the United States as being at war with Islam.

"The terminology the [government] uses should convey the magnitude of the threat we face, but also avoid inflating the religious bases and glamorous appeal of the extremists' ideology," the paper says.

The paper emphasizes that the recommendations do not constitute official government policy. Instead, they represent guidance from influential Muslim leaders who met with Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff in May 2007 to discuss ways that the Muslim community can help the department prevent the violent radicalization of Muslims.

The paper suggests that government officials may want to avoid using theological terminology altogether.

"Islamic law and terms come with a particular context, which may not always be apparent," the paper says. "It is one thing for a Muslim leader to use a particular term; an American official may simply not have the religious authority to be taken seriously, even when using terms appropriately."

The paper, titled "Terminology to Define the Terrorists: Recommendations from American Muslims," was designated "For Official Use Only" and distributed internally in January.

Sutherland said the paper was not released publicly because the Department of Homeland Security did not want Muslim leaders to believe their meeting was an attempt to garner publicity. But the document was widely distributed in government and was published in late April by The Associated Press, "The Investigative Project on Terrorism" and others.

Now, this is interesting:

A story about the terminology concerns on the "Jihad Watch" Web site was followed by dozens of comments, most critical of the suggestions.

There will be more of that.

"Every day, I read another story which angers me. This whitewash of Islam, by our highest-ranking officials is unacceptable!" one commenter said.

Some argue that "war" is too grandiose and adds legitimacy to the other side, because there are two legitimate sides to wars.

"There are two legitimate sides to wars?" Baloney. The Nazis didn't have a legitimate cause in World War II. Recognizing a threat is not an endorsement of its existence.

"We really face a legitimate threat and we need to guard against complacency," Sutherland said, explaining the rationale supporting the use of the term.

For those who would attempt to explain away worldwide jihadist activity as a series of unrelated regional disputes, networking like this poses an obvious problem, by pointing to common motives and a common goal: fighting non-Muslims in order to impose Sharia law.

As Iraq is listed as one possible destination for Indonesian jihadists, some may also claim that grievances about the Iraq war must have "radicalized" them. But these groups and that mindset certainly predate the Iraq war; the prospect of killing Indonesians -- particularly Indonesian Muslims -- has become a serious political liability. As noted below, "They see Iraq as a more clear-cut case for jihad than Indonesia."

And it wouldn't be the first time going abroad has occurred to Indonesian jihadist leadership: in the summer of 2006, JI leader Abu Bakar Bashir said Indonesia should send jihadists to Israel.

"AP Exclusive: Police arrest reports give picture of Indonesia's international terror links," by Chris Brummitt for the Associated Press, May 30:

JAKARTA, Indonesia - After months on the run, two alleged leaders in a Southeast Asian militant group were holed up in a cheap Malaysian hotel, ready to fly to the Middle East to link up with other Islamic extremists, possibly in Iraq.

The pair had bribed Indonesian immigration officials to smooth their way out of the airport in Jakarta, where they started their journey. An Algerian gave them fake passports, airline tickets and militant contacts in Syria.

But they never made it farther than Kuala Lumpur. It is unclear what led police in the Malaysian capital to their room early this year, but _ befuddled by sleep _ they did not resist arrest.

The foiled flight of Abu Husna and Agus Purwantoro, who were sent back to Indonesia in late March, is just part of the story outlined in police investigation reports obtained by The Associated Press.

The documents detail how the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah has maintained the ability and desire to forge international links despite a crackdown that most experts believed left it severely weakened and isolated, with hundreds of its members behind bars.

Therein lies a cautionary tale against complacency.

The papers also provide rare details on the inner workings of the network, showing how Husna and Purwantoro were able to travel around Indonesia, using passwords to meet up with other wanted men at mosques, bus stations and cheap restaurants before fleeing the country.

Members and associates of Jemaah Islamiyah are blamed for a string of suicide bombings in Southeast Asia _ which have together killed more than 240 people, most of them Western tourists _ as well as a number of failed terror plots. The group had ties with al-Qaida and other foreign extremists before 2002, but most experts have thought the links had been broken since then.

"If there is a North African in Jakarta assisting the Jemaah Islamiyah network, then that is not a good thing," Sidney Jones, a leading authority on Southeast Asian militants, said about the Algerian sympathizer that the captured pair identified as "Jafar." [...]

Nasir Abbas, a former Jemaah Islamiyah commander in Sulawesi who knew Purwantoro well, said he thought it likely the men were traveling to Iraq because they believed Indonesia was no longer a suitable venue for jihad, or holy war.

"They see Iraq as a more clear-cut case for jihad than Indonesia," said Abbas, who now works closely with police. "Even if they get arrested on the way, they believe that every step they take to that goal gets them reward in heaven."

According to the police documents' accounts of their interrogations, Husna and Purwantoro allegedly met with Jafar in both Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.

"It suggests an international network with a base in Jakarta and raises all sorts of questions about who else might be here," Jones said....

Friend and Ally Update. "U.S. questions Pakistan force's allegiance, funding," by Kristin Roberts for Reuters, May 30:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S.-backed paramilitary force in Pakistan's lawless border area may be aiding Taliban fighters, according to American officials who say the support may cause Congress to freeze some security funds for Islamabad.

Congress should feel a much greater sense of urgency about holding Islamabad accountable for the sake of national security, not to mention the matter of squandering taxpayer money.

Signs that Pakistan's Frontier Corps is helping Taliban and al Qaeda-linked groups cross into Afghanistan only exacerbates U.S. frustration over Pakistan's plans to secure peace deals with fighters in that region, where Osama bin Laden is thought to hide.

"We cannot rely on Pakistan to stop the traffic of terrorists crossing that border despite the strong statements of its leaders," said Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the U.S. Senate's committee on armed forces.

Levin and some U.S. defense officials said Taliban fighters may also be getting assistance from Pakistan's army.

"If that's our intelligence assessment, then there's a real question as to whether or not we should be putting money into strengthening the Frontier Corps on the Pakistan side because if anything there's some evidence that the Pakistan army is providing support to the Taliban," Levin told reporters after visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan this week.

The United States set up a program last year to train and equip the paramilitary Frontier Corps, which is recruited from the tribal areas to counter Islamist militants.

Under the program, Washington planned to supply equipment like helmets and flak vests to the Frontier Corps, but would not provide weapons or ammunition, the Pentagon said last year.

U.S. Army trainers would instruct the paramilitary force and Washington allocated $52.6 million for the program last year.

A defense spending authorization bill for the 2009 fiscal year, which starts October 1, includes $75 million for Frontier Corps training, but Levin said questions about the force could lead him to reconsider those funds. [...]

Uncertainty about the Frontier Corps' allegiances and the security impact of peace deals Pakistan strikes with al Qaeda-linked groups in its tribal areas is raising worry among U.S. commanders and defense officials.

They say a permissive environment in that region, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, has a direct effect on the number of attacks against Afghan, NATO and U.S. forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Despite concerns about stability in that area and the allegiances of Frontier Corps members, the Pentagon has moved forward with its training program for the force.

It has chosen two sites for training, one in the Peshawar area and one farther south, according to Michael Vickers, the Pentagon's assistant secretary for special operations.

And therein lies an inadvertent admission of the presence and number of "very extreme imams or religious teachers" in Australia. Whoops.

An update on this story. "Islamic school imbroglio takes new turn in Australia," by Neena Bhandari for New Kerala:

A new dimension has been added to the ongoing furore over the rejection of a plan to build an Islamic school on Sydney's south-western fringes by some muslims warning that it would lead to extremist Islamic teaching.

Australian Federation of Islamic Councils president Ikebal Patel told the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) that Islamic schools monitored by the State Government should be encouraged "or else Muslim children will be given their religious education in backyards and garages by... teachers whose credentials no one could vet. You may have some very extreme imams or religious teachers getting through to the children."

Meanwhile, the developers of the A$19 million 1,200-student school, the Quranic Society, will be appealing to the Land and Environment Court against Camden Council's rejection of its proposal on planning, which includes increased traffic and lack of public transport, and environmental grounds.

"We have complied with the law, we have done everything right, we hired master planners. There was no reason for it to be rejected. Even the council could not say what was wrong with the plan," Quranic Society board member Fouad Chami told The Australian.

When asked if he believed the decision was racist, Chami told Channel Ten: "Of course, there is no reason to say no if you're complying 100 per cent with the rules.''

Five years ago, the Baulkham Hills Shire Council in Sydney's north had rejected a businessman's plans for building a Muslim prayer hall on the grounds that it did not fit with community characteristics. The decision was overturned by the Land and Environment Court.

The project's consultant, former Mayor of Sydney and lawyer, Jeremy Bingham told the SMH from London: "There's a vocal group of local residents who are very opposed to this school because of the religious beliefs of the Australian citizens who want to establish the school. That's not the Australian way and it's not the Australian law."

The Quranic Society has said the school - for primary and secondary students on a 15-acre block - would cater to both Muslim and non-Muslim children and would follow the New South Wales State curriculum.

The unanimous decision by the Camden Council is being seen as motivated by prejudice and fuelled by racial and religious passion.

"[The decision] is hysteria based on fear and misunderstanding. If it was a Catholic, Anglican or Jewish school there would be no objection," Bingham told SMH. [...]

Camden is a historic town, located less than an hour's drive from the Sydney Central Business District, and is the birthplace of the Australian wool, wheat and wine industries. It has a semi-rural feel with sandstone buildings and jacaranda trees. According to census figures, it has about 150 Muslim families.

"Camden is only the latest venue in a list of planning setbacks for mosques, Islamic centres and schools, all denied on planning grounds. This is despite the fact that almost half of Australia's Muslim population lives in Sydney," writes Laura Beth Bugg, a postgraduate student researching multiculturalism and urban planning in the faculty of architecture at the University of Sydney, in the SMH....

It bears repeating that Camden is on the outer edges of the Sydney metropolitan area, and, as noted above, only has 150 Muslim families.

Almost seven years have passed since 9/11, and we're hearing the same thing from our leaders that we've heard since 9/12. It is a reminder that, at the highest level of government, policy decisions are driven -- hijacked, if you will -- by willful blindness to the roots of the ideology that motivates not only al-Qaeda, but is also common to Hizballah, Hamas, and other jihadist groups. Does anyone at the State Department, Homeland Security, or elsewhere, ever puzzle at how ingrained and widespread jihadist activity is, even outside of the Wahhabi sphere of influence, if it's supposedly all just a big misunderstanding and "hijacking" of an otherwise peaceful belief system?

"'Islam has been hijacked by ideologues'," from the Associated Press, May 29:

US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said Thursday that progress is being made in the war on terror but it is being sabotaged by critics of American foreign policy in the West.

Chertoff was speaking at a security conference in Jerusalem with counterparts from around the world, aimed at sharing information and techniques to fight terrorism.

He said that the US was making inroads in the "battle for hearts and minds" in the Muslim world, but that the effort was being undermined by "sources of cynicism in our society that cannot distinguish between our actions and the actions of terrorists, that treat everything as equivalent, that view appeasement as the best course of dealing with the enemy."

He said Muslim communities "have seen their religion hijacked by a group of ideologues." But he noted that there was a new trend of Muslim clerics in the Middle East and the US that have begun to speak out, preaching that "the ideology of bin Laden and others is at odds with what Islam is about," he said.

Specific examples of such clerics would be nice, of course, especially if they denounce something more substantive than the usual, vague terms like "terrorism," "extremism," and the killing of "innocents."

"There was no reason why a country would need to possess such a document unless they wanted to produce uranium hemispheres for a nuclear weapon."

Alarming, yes. Surprising, no. "US: Strong reasons to suspect Iran was working covertly to build atomic bomb," from Agence France-Presse, May 29:

Inspectors from the UN atomic watchdog are "alarmed" that Iran has in its possession a document describing the process for making what could be the core of a nuclear weapon, a western diplomat said Thursday.

And at a closed-door meeting with diplomats, the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief for inspections, Olli Heinonen, revealed that the agency had gathered intelligence from around 10 countries suggesting Iran was engaged in weaponization studies in the past, the diplomat said.

Tehran has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence as "fabricated," and the allegations that it was seeking to build a bomb as "baseless".

At a briefing to prepare IAEA board members for a meeting of the full board next week, Heinonen talked about the so-called uranium metal document, the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The 15-page document describes the process of machining uranium metal into two hemispheres of the kind used in nuclear warheads.

"And the term he used for this document was 'alarming'. He essentially said there was no reason why a country would need to possess such a document unless they wanted to produce uranium hemispheres for a nuclear weapon," the diplomat said.

Iran has told the IAEA that it received the document back in 1987 along with design information for the so-called P1 centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

Tehran insists it did not request the uranium metal document.

But the IAEA said in its latest report that it needed to understand the precise role of the document so that it could determine the true nature of Iran's disputed nuclear program.

When contacted by AFP, Heinonen declined to comment on what he had said at the briefing, which he described as an "informal technical meeting".

But another diplomat close to the Vienna-based IAEA confirmed that Heinonen, who is the agency's deputy director general, had used the term "alarming" in the context of the uranium metal document.

In a sternly-worded report released on Monday, the IAEA expressed "serious concern" that Iran is hiding information about the alleged weaponization studies, as well as defying UN demands to suspend uranium enrichment.

'Intelligence forged and fabricated'

Experts and observers detected a tougher tone in the language of the report, suggesting that the IAEA was becoming frustrated by Iran's persistent stonewalling of its investigations.

"It's one of the toughest I've seen," a western diplomat said Thursday.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, said the IAEA was "of the view that Iran may have additional information" regarding intelligence that suggested it may have looked into high explosives of the sort used in implosion-type nuclear bombs, and explored modifications to missiles consistent with making them capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, speaking to reporters after the briefing Thursday, again dismissed the intelligence as "lousy" and "fake" and accused the United States was trying to influence the IAEA inspectors for its own political ends.

This roundup comes in the wake of a great deal of negative press about Yemen's counter-terrorism efforts, which have been so half-hearted that even al-Qaeda has discouraged attacks on Yemeni authorities since they haven't been "tools in the hands of the crusaders."

But now that they have those eleven suspects, will the track record on prosecutions and detentions actually improve?

"Yemen arrests 11 suspected Al-Qaeda members," from Agence France-Presse, May 30:

SANAA: Yemeni security forces have broken up an 11-member Al-Qaeda cell in the capital Sanaa, the Defense Ministry's online newspaper reported on Thursday. The suspects, who were arrested over the past few days, revealed during their interrogation "important information regarding terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda," the September 26 Web site reported. Al-Qaeda's wing in Yemen has carried out a series of attacks in recent months targeting the US and Italian embassies and a residential complex which is home to US oil workers. "Six Saudi Arabians and three Chadians are among the people arrested," a source close to the inquiry said. "The Saudis are jihadists who originally wanted to go to Iraq but ended up coming to Yemen because of the strict measures taken by authorities in their country for monitoring the border with Iraq."

Somalia Jihad Update. "Somali Islamist group claims responsibility for deadly bomb attack in Ethiopia," from the Associated Press, May 29:

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - A little-known Somali Islamist group claimed responsibility on Thursday for a bomb attack that killed three people in Ethiopia on the eve of national celebrations to mark the 17th anniversary of the current government's ascent to power.

"We will keep on fighting until we liberate our country from the Ethiopian invaders,"

said Haji Abukar, a spokesman for the Islamic Guerrillas, after claiming responsibility for Tuesday's bombing in Nagele, 560 kilometers (347 miles) south of the capital, Addis Ababa. "Our fighters will continue their holy war against the enemy of Somalia and we will target them everywhere."

The Guerillas are a relatively little known group in Somalia and Ethiopia, and only began making public statements three months ago.

It was not possible to independently verify their claim.

"We are an Islamic group that stands for the liberation of Somalia and have a good relationship with the rest of the insurgents in Somalia," Abukar said.

Ethiopian troops have been supporting the shaky Somali government since December 2006, when they helped drive out an Islamic group from Mogadishu, the capital, and much of the rest of southern Somalia. The Islamists vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency and thousands of Somalis have been killed in the subsequent fighting....

Updates on the separate cases of six men and one woman detained for activities that could "shake the faith of Muslims." As one of the defendants asked: "How can six people shake the faith of 40 million unless the court is convinced that the faith of the 40 million is not based on strong foundations?"

"Algeria - Prosecutor demands 2-year sentence for converts," from Compass Direct News, May 28:

ISTANBUL, May 28 (Compass Direct News) – A state prosecutor in western Algeria demanded two-year jail sentences and large fines for six Muslim converts to Christianity yesterday in one of two trials against Christians that have caught the north African nation’s attention in the past week.

The same court in Tiaret city yesterday delayed the verdict of a Christian woman facing three years in prison for “practicing non-Muslim religious rites without a license.”

Under intense scrutiny from Algerian and international observers, the Tiaret judge delayed Habiba Kouider’s ruling to ask for further investigation. The case gained notoriety last week when Algerian newspapers reported that court officials in the agricultural town mocked the Christian for her conversion and pressured her to return to Islam.

France’s State Secretary for human rights, Rama Yade, spoke out in support of Kouider on Sunday (May 25), calling the charges against her “sad and shocking,” Agence France-Presse reported.

Speaking to Algerian daily El Watan following yesterday’s hearing, Kouider’s defense lawyer said that international attention had caused the verdict to be delayed.

“The court wants to buy time and remove the pressure exerted on it,” said Khelloudja Khalfoun.

Plucking her off an inter-city bus outside of her home town of Tiaret on March 29, police found several Bibles and books on Christianity in Kouider’s hand bag that she said were for her personal use. Officials held the Christian woman for 24 hours and then brought her before a state prosecutor, who offered to drop charges if she reconverted to Islam. She refused.

At last week’s hearing, the state prosecutor claimed that Kouider had been carrying a dozen copies of the same Christian book, proof that she had been planning to distribute them.

Under Ordinance 06-03 passed in February 2006, distributing, printing or even storing materials with the purpose of “shaking the faith” of a Muslim is punishable with up to five years in prison.

But Khalfoun, Kouider’s defense lawyer, argued that accusations of proselytism had nothing to do with the initial charge of “practicing non-Muslim religious rites without a license,” a charge that she claimed had no legal base.

Speaking to El Watan, Boudjemaa Ghechir of the Arab League of Human Rights agreed with the defense lawyer’s assessment and called for Kouider’s case to be dropped.

“There is absolutely no legal text which requires such an authorization [to practice religion],” Ghechir said in the May 25 article.

A New Charge

Khalfoun, a Tizi Ouzou-based human rights lawyer, is also representing six Muslim converts to Christianity on trial in Tiaret for proselytism and holding an illegal religious gathering.

A large contingent of journalists, as well as Islamists, attended their initial court hearing yesterday, one eyewitness told Compass.

Detained on May 9 while leaving a prayer meeting at the home of one of the men in Tiaret, the six converts were held for 24 hours and initially charged with “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims.” At yesterday’s hearing, the state prosecutor raised a second charge of illegally practicing non-Muslim worship and demanded two-year jail sentences and 500,000 dinar (US$8,145) fines for each suspect.

Ordinance 06-03 requires that religious services be held in specific locations intended exclusively for worship.

“How can six people shake the faith of 40 million unless the court is convinced that the faith of the 40 million is not based on strong foundations?” said Djillali Saibi, one of the Christians on trial, referring to Algeria’s majority-Muslim population. Christians, mostly converts, make up less than 1 percent of the country’s people.

Testifying before the Tiaret court yesterday, all six men denied that they had been distributing any religious materials.

“I had nothing on me except a CD of [U.S. cartoon] Tom and Jerry that I had bought for my daughter and a book on faith, a personal book,” one of the men told the court according to El Watan today. “If one accuses us of distributing documents they must have proof.” ...

Andy McCarthy wonders, since "war" and "terror" are no good, if it's okay if we call this present conflict the "On" -- "or would that offend all the moderate prepositions?"

"War on terror" has always been a stupid and misleading term. But this recommendation to abandon it is even more stupid and misleading.

New adventures in Washington's absurd flight from reality: "Security chief decries ‘war on terror,’" by Demetri Sevastopulo in the Financial Times, May 28 (thanks to Jed Babbin):

The west needs a more comprehensive strategy to counter al-Qaeda propaganda and the US should stop using the term “war on terror”, according to a top intelligence official.

Charles Allen, the senior intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, says the phrase is counter-productive because it creates “animus” in Islamic countries.

“[It] has nothing to do with political correctness,” Mr Allen said in an interview. “It is interpreted in the Muslim world as a war on Islam and we don’t need this.”...

It has everything to do with political correctness, Mr. Allen. The jihadists say they are fighting an Islamic jihad. Understanding the jihad theology gives us unique insight into the motives and goals of the jihadists. If the Muslim world sees our resistance to these people as a war on Islam, maybe they aren't all that reliable as friends of the United States in the first place. But if they're really upset about this, they ought to be directing their ire against the Muslims who use Islam in this way -- which they are not doing -- instead of against non-Muslims who merely take note of the usage.

Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security secretary, does not agree with suggestions that the phrase is equated with a war on Islam, says Russ Knocke, his spokesman.

“We are at war with terrorism, and its underlying ideology – not Islam – and we’ve gone out of our way to make that point,” says Mr Knocke. “In truth, war has been declared upon us.”

Indeed you have gone out of your way to make that point, Mr. Knocke -- even to the point of dealing in half-truths and comforting falsehoods and avoiding unpleasant truths. But in truth, war has been declared upon us -- by Muslims, in the name of Islam. No amount of denial or sugarcoating this fact will make it go away.

Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, in an interview said the phrase ”war on terror” was the “dumbest term…you could use”. The Michigan lawmaker, who criticises the Bush administration for using an overly aggressive tone, says he has urged Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, not to use the expression.

It is indeed a "dumb" term. It is war on a tactic, not on a foe. But this foe we are afraid to name.

Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for Mr Hadley, said the White House recognises that “the use of the word ‘Islamic’ before the word terrorist can be heard by Muslims…as lacking nuance, which may incorrectly suggest that all Muslims are terrorists or that we are at war with Islam”.

"Islamic terrorists" suggests neither, although the fear of using it suggests knee-knocking abject dhimmitude in the White House. "Islamic terrorists" no more suggests that all Muslims are terrorists than the phrase "Italian fascists" suggests that all Italians are fascists, or than the phrase "courageous intelligence analysts" suggests that all intelligence analysts are courageous. And it doesn't suggest we are at war with Islam, either, unless all Muslims are terrorists -- which is the very point that these politically correct mau-mauers would strenuously deny.

“While we want to be mindful to the way our messages are heard by Muslim audiences, we also think war on terror accurately describes the fight we are in,” he added.

Well, think again. It no more accurately describes this fight than "war on bombs" or "war on hijacked airplanes that crash into skyscrapers" would.

While the military in general tends to echo the langauge [sic!] of the president, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs who recently met with moderate Muslim leaders to hear their concerns, tries to ensure his language does not create the perception of a war against Islam, Captain John Kirby, his spokesman, said.

“The chairman is aware of the concerns voiced by many in the Muslim community about the phrase ‘war on terror’,” Captain Kirby said.

“He is committed – when speaking of it – to focusing his language and efforts on the violent extremists we are fighting. This is not a war on Islam. It’s a war against lethal enemies who are using a warped view of that faith to justify killing innocent civilians.”

And part of their warped view is that they present themselves to peaceful Muslims as the true and pure Muslims, as we have seen again and again -- and they get recruits that way. But that is too politically incorrect a fact for us to notice, much less try to counter. We are to swallow the dogma that the jihadists' Islam is warped, and that virtually all Muslims see it as such, no matter what the evidence to the contrary.

That is part of the message that Mr Allen would like the US to emphasise in countering al-Qaeda propaganda around the globe. He says the west needs to orchestrate a “very structured”, almost cold war-style communications strategy to accomplish this....

In the Cold War we were against Communism. There was not this politically correct word-mincing going on at high levels.

Frank Cilluffo, a terrorism expert at George Washington University and former special assistant to Mr Bush for homeland security, says the US government can take a series of steps to help counter al-Qaeda. He agrees that the US should abandon the concept of a “war on terror” – which “fuels the adversaries narrative” – and “decouple religion from ideology”.

Cilluffo is terminally naive if he thinks the U.S. can accomplish this and have any credibility among Muslims in doing so. He is also apparently unaware (although he has heard a couple of presentations by me, and I was in there pitching, folks) that Islam traditionally has had a political and social, i.e., an ideological component. This aspect of Islam wasn't invented by bin Laden, or Khomeini. It is as old as Muhammad, and central to Islam. Does he really think that the U.S, by playing word games, can eliminate or "decouple" it from Islamic piety? Good luck with that.

In the long term, however, Mr Cilluffo says the solution will have to come from within the Muslim community, partly by imams and Islamic scholars stressing that al-Qaeda has deliberately misinterpreted the Koran to justify violence, which he adds will help “take the jihadi cool out of the narrative”.

Here again is that ever-elusive unicorn, the interpretation of the Qur'an that rejects violence. Frank Cilluffo and everyone else in Washington fervently believe it exists, and are ready to buy all kinds of snake oil in search of it. Unfortunately, there is no such traditional or mainstream understanding of the Qur'an that fits this bill. One could conceivably be invented, although then it will be denounced in Islamic communities as bid'a -- innovation.

One would think that it would be worthwhile to understand all this, so as to formulate a realistic strategy based on genuine reality. But instead, official Washington is retreating farther and farther into Fantasy Based Policymaking.

Dr. Foroud Fouladvand

This message comes from an Iranian ex-Muslim and lover of freedom in London:

Urgent Attention
Another free thinker is to be executed in Iran in the coming days

It is with great regret that I inform all freedom loving people of the world that the Mullahs' terrorist regime is about to execute one of Iran's finest thinkers, a true patriot, scholar and historian.

Dr. Foroud Fouladvand is a dedicated monarchist, a Ferdousi expert as well as expert on the history of Iran and Islam.

A confirmed report sent to the office of Dr. Fouladvand in London from inside Iran suggests that Dr. Fouladvand and two of his compatriots are going to be executed on Saturday, May 31, 2008 or possibly even sooner.

The two men to be executed alongside Dr. Fouladvand are Mr. Nazem Schmidtt, an Iranian/American citizen, aka Simorgh, and Mr. Alexander Valizadeh, an Iranian/ German citizen, aka Koroush Lor.

Dr. Fouladvand, a British citizen, was known throughout the Iranian community for his open criticism of Islam and the Mullah's tyranny.

Dr. Fouladvand, who is an expert on Islam, openly challenged the Qur'an in his daily television broadcasts for listeners both inside and outside Iran. His Television discussions were offensive to the Mullahs. On March 10, 2006, in a preplanned action, about 65 of his supporters refused to leave a Lufthansa plane in protest of the European Union's policy of appeasement of the Mullahs' regime.

Dr. Fouladvand was led to believe by an agent of the Mullahs' regime posing as a monarchist activist from within Iran that there were many Iranian patriots inside Iran who believed in him, and that a meeting with them would be fruitful in organizing and uniting people inside Iran to oppose the Mullahs. On October 13, 2006, Dr. Fouladvand and a number of his friends, including the above-named men, left London for the Turkish/Iranian border. The last news of Dr. Fouladvand's whereabouts was on January
17, 2007, when he was expected to meet the supposedly Iranian activists in the Kurdish province of Hakkary in Iraq, which is close to the Iranian border.

In January 2007, the agents of the Mullahs' secret police arrested and smuggled these three men into Iran, where they were imprisoned and were subjected to torture.

Please contact anyone you can. Alert government officials, the press, the Amnesty International and the human rights organizations in your country of residence.

Since there is so much high hopes put on these calls for "dialogue," such as the letter from the 138 scholars to the Pope, it is useful to remember some of the core assumptions involved.

Note also that the idea that the Jews and Christians altered their holy books is one of the foundations of the jihad imperative. The Jews and Christians are renegades who have rejected the truth about Muhammad. Consequently, they must be fought and subdued, per Qur'an 9:29. However, this claim has no basis in fact. This alteration had to have happened after Muhammad came, since Allah refers Muhammad to those who received the Scriptures before him in order to assuage his doubts (Qur’an 10:94-95). That assumes that the real Torah and real Gospel existed as of around 620 AD, and that the corruption happened after that or around that time — which is historically preposterous for both Torah and Gospel.

Also, what the heck is this guy talking about -- what "attack on the White House"?

"Former Saudi Minister of Information Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: We Tell Christians and Jews in Interfaith Dialogue That Their Holy Books Are Distorted and That We Want to Bring Them Back to the Original Religion," from MEMRI, May 25 (thanks to B.):

Following are excerpts from an interview with former Saudi information minister Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani, which aired on Iqra TV on May 25, 2008.

Interviewer: How come calls for dialogue with [the West] were only made following 9/11?

Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: The main reason is that we have inadvertently given in to this accusation, and accepted the fact that 9/11 was pinned on us, as if Islam calls for such a thing, but when acts worse than 9/11 were perpetrated by Christians and Jews...

Interviewer: Such as?

Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: Attacks within America itself... Why wasn’t the attack on the White House labeled a “Christian” or “Jewish” attack? We’ve been dragged into accepting that 9/11 was an Islamic attack. This group [Al-Qaeda] carried it out, and unlike this group, we do not sanction the killing of any human being, because according to the Koran and the guidance of the Prophet, we are not allowed to harm any dhimmi [non-Muslim living under Muslim rule], as long as there is a covenant between us. We have accepted the blame...

Interviewer: Who has?

Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: The Islamic world has accepted the blame, and apologized by saying: “We are sorry for what Islam did.” Islam did not do this! Why don’t you say that it was carried out by a group that made a mistake, like the men and women among you who make mistakes every day? Why do you pin this on Islam, as if the religion of Islam calls for terrorism, which is absolutely untrue. We were dragged into this, and then they began attacking us, people with vested interests started maligning Islam, and we’ve begun to give in. So we had no choice but to declare a “Jihad” that includes dialogue with the other side, and to explain the facts accurately, so they would know what Islam is all about, what the Koran is, and who the Prophet is.

Now, I'm all for explaining the facts about the Qur'an and Muhammad accurately.

The [Judeo-Christian] religion is monotheistic. They did not create it. This religion was sent down to Jesus and Moses...

Interviewer: But Islam got rid of it, in order to remain all on its own.

Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: It was not Islam that got rid of it. It was caused by the contamination that occurred in this religion. They changed, altered, and distorted their holy books, and Islam came to rectify this. Islam has not changed a thing in the teachings of Moses.

Interviewer: So one of the basic principles of this dialogue is to accept that the [Jews and Christians] have a religion.

Muhammad Abduh Al-Yamani: Yes, and we respect this religion, but we say to them: “You’ve changed it, and you know that the books you have are not the divine gospel and the divine Torah. You have changed them. You yourselves admit that your books were written by priests and others who altered them. We want to bring you back to the original religion.”

1938 Alert. "Search Is Urged for Syrian Nuclear Sites," by Joby Warrick and Robin Wright for the Washington Post, May 29:

The Bush administration is pressing U.N. inspectors to broaden their search for possible secret nuclear facilities in Syria, hinting that Damascus's nuclear program might be bigger than the single alleged reactor destroyed by Israeli warplanes last year.

At least three sites have been identified by U.S. officials and passed along to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is negotiating with Syria for permission to conduct inspections in the country, according to U.S. government officials and Western diplomats. U.S. officials want to know if the suspect sites may have been support facilities for the alleged Al Kibar reactor destroyed in an Israeli air raid Sept. 6, the sources said.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, which has been seeking access to the Al Kibar site since shortly after the bombing, has acknowledged receiving requests to expand the scope of its inspections, but provided no details.

U.S. government officials declined to describe the specific sites that have drawn interest, or to discuss how they were identified. However, the United States and other Western governments have long been interested in identifying possible locations for a facility in Syria that might have supplied nuclear fuel rods for a Syrian reactor. Although the Al Kibar site was described as nearly operational at the time of the Sept. 6 bombing, it had no clear source of the uranium fuel necessary for operation, according to U.S. intelligence officials and diplomats familiar with the site.

Syria, which has denied having a nuclear weapons program, has not yet responded to IAEA requests for a firm date for inspections.

U.S. intelligence officials contend that the Al Kibar facility was built with North Korean assistance, to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview that the intelligence community's insight into Syria's nuclear ambitions has deepened since the Israeli raid.

"Do not assume that Al Kibar exhausted our knowledge of Syrian efforts with regard to nuclear weapons," Hayden said. "I am very comfortable -- certainly with Al Kibar and what was there, and what the intent was. It was the highest confidence level. And nothing since the attack last September has changed our mind. In fact, events since the attack give us even greater confidence as to what it was."

He predicted that Syria would "almost certainly attempt to delay and deceive" the IAEA. But he added: "We know what they did."...

Will Syria claim the facilities in question are part of Iranian-style projects toward the "peaceful generation of electricity?" Or will the Syrians also suddenly embark on a "space program?"

"Missile-related shipment to Syria stopped, U.S. says," by Arshad Mohammed for Reuters, May 29:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four countries last year prevented Syria from receiving equipment that could be used to test ballistic missile components, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley described the previously undisclosed incident in a speech to members of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a network of countries that seeks to stop illicit weapons of mass destruction shipments.

The Bush administration has portrayed the PSI effort, which was launched five years ago and has more than 90 nations as members, as a significant success in its drive to prevent biological, chemical or nuclear terrorism.

Analysts say it is hard to judge its effectiveness because members are reluctant to disclose successes to avoid betraying sources that provide intelligence needed to stop shipments.

"One example of its success occurred in February 2007, when four nations represented in this room worked together to interdict equipment bound for Syria -- equipment that could have been used to test ballistic missile components," Hadley said at a conference to mark PSI's fifth anniversary.

"Interdictions like this one have been successful all over the world -- and have stopped many shipments of sensitive materials destined for Iran, North Korea, and Syria," he said, providing no further details...

Uh oh, he said "Islamic." Will Condi call him on the carpet?

"Bush likens war against Islamic extremism to fight against fascism," from AFP, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Wednesday likened America's efforts to quell Islamic extremism in Iraq and Afghanistan to the US fight against fascism during World War II.

During the Second World War, "our nation faced evil men with territorial ambitions and totalitarian aims, who murdered the innocent to achieve their political objectives," Bush said at a commencement speech for new graduates of the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs....

"Now, in the 21st century, our nation is once again contending with an ideology that seeks to sow anger and hatred and despair -- the ideology of Islamic extremism," said Bush, who earlier this month asked the US Congress for 70 billion dollars to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into early next year, when his successor takes over....

"In today's struggle, we are once again facing evil men who despise freedom, and despise America, and aim to subject millions to their violent rule. And once again, our nation is called to defeat these adversaries -- and secure the peace for millions across the world.

"And once again, our enemies will be no match for the men and women of the United States Air Force," the US leader said.

"After World War II we helped Germany and Japan build free societies and strong economies," he told the freshly-minted air force officers.

"These efforts took time and patience, and as a result Germany and Japan grew in freedom and prosperity. Germany and Japan once were our enemies and are now allies of the United States," he added....

But of course, after World War II the ideologies that had fueled German and Japanese militarism were discredited. The jihad ideology and Islamic supremacism have not been discredited. In fact, Bush isn't even challenging them as such.

Today marks the anniversary of the real Nakba, or perhaps more precisely the καταστροφή -- the Catastrophe: on this day in 1453, the armies of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II entered Constantinople, marking the end of the Eastern Roman Empire, more commonly known as the Byzantine Empire.

If anything deserves to be called an occupation, and a nakba, it is this, although it has, like so many other bloody conquests in human history, been legitimized by time. Still, if the descendants of the Christian inhabitants of Constantinople and Anatolia were to demand, and receive, a right of return, rapidly-Islamizing Turkey would look vastly different from how it looks now.

On this day in 1453, the conquerers were extraordinarily brutal. Historian Steven Runciman notes that the Muslim soldiers "slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit." (The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.)

Some jihadists "made for the small but splendid churches by the walls, Saint George by the Charisian Gate, Saint John in Petra, and the lovely church of the monastery of the Holy Saviour in Chora, to strip them of their stores of plate and their vestments and everything else that could be torn from them. In the Chora they left the mosaics and frescoes, but they destroyed the icon of the Mother of God, the Hodigitria, the holiest picture in all Byzantium, painted, so men said, by Saint Luke himself. It had been taken there from its own church beside the Palace at the beginning of the siege, that its beneficient presence might be at hand to inspire the defenders on the walls. It was taken from its setting and hacked into four pieces." (P. 146.)

The jihadists also entered the Hagia Sophia, which for nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The faithful had gathered within its hallowed walls to pray during the city’s last agony. The Muslims, according to Runciman, halted the celebration of Orthros (morning prayer); the priests, according to legend, took the sacred vessels and disappeared into the cathedral’s eastern wall, through which they shall return to complete the divine service one day. Muslim men then killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into slavery.

Once the Muslims had thoroughly subdued Constantinople, they set out to Islamize it. According to the Muslim chronicler Hoca Sa’deddin, tutor of the sixteenth-century Sultans Murad III and Mehmed III, "churches which were within the city were emptied of their vile idols and cleansed from the filthy and idolatrous impurities and by the defacement of their images and the erection of Islamic prayer niches and pulpits many monasteries and chapels became the envy of the gardens of Paradise."

It has come to be known as Black Tuesday, the Last Day of the World. Tuesday has been regarded as unlucky by superstitious Greeks ever since. But they're about the only ones who remember. The world has forgotten what happened on Black Tuesday, and on so many other days like it from India to Spain, and persists in the fantasy that Islam does not contain an imperialist impulse and that Muslims can be admitted without limit into Western countries without any attempt to determine how many would like ultimately to subjugate and Islamize their new countries, the way their forefathers did to Constantinople so long ago.

Oh, and there are a few others who remember as well. Sheik Ali Al-Faqir, former Jordanian minister of religious endowment, said this on Al-Aqsa TV on May 2, 2008: "We proclaim that we will conquer Rome, like Constantinople was conquered once..." Hamas MP and Islamic cleric Yunis Al-Astal said this, also on Al-Aqsa TV, on April 11, 2008: "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our Prophet Muhammad."

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi remembers also. In writing about "signs of the victory of Islam," he referred to a hadith: "The Prophet Muhammad was asked: 'What city will be conquered first, Constantinople or Romiyya?' He answered: 'The city of Hirqil [i.e. the Byzantine emperor Heraclius] will be conquered first' - that is, Constantinople… Romiyya is the city called today 'Rome,' the capital of Italy. The city of Hirqil [that is, Constantinople] was conquered by the young 23-year-old Ottoman Muhammad bin Morad, known in history as Muhammad the Conqueror, in 1453. The other city, Romiyya, remains, and we hope and believe [that it too will be conquered]. This means that Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice - once from the South, from Andalusia, and a second time from the East, when it knocked several times on the door of Athens."

Mehmet the Conqueror was motivated by exactly the same religious ideology that motivates the Islamic warriors of the contemporary era. Historian Halil Inalcik says of the Ottomans that their "culture was dominated by the Islamic conception of Holy War or ghaza." Ghaza refers to warfare to expand the land under the hegemony of Islam -- and thus it is not identical to jihad, but is one of the chief means of jihad. Inalcik continues: "By God's command the ghaza had to be fought against the infidels' dominions, dar al-harb (the abode of war), ceaselessly and relentlessly until they submitted." (The Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1A, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 269)

And Mehmet himself explained as he argued for the necessity of conquering Constantinople: "The ghaza is our basic duty, as it was in the case of our fathers." (The Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1A, p. 295)

He was pursuing offensive jihad against the infidels, in accord with the mandates of the Qur'an and Sunnah. If anything today's jihadists are less radical than he was: because there is no caliphate today, they do not consider themselves authorized to wage offensive jihad, since that is the prerogative of the caliph only. They characterize all their jihad activity as defensive.

May 29, Black Tuesday, the Last Day of the World, the true Nakba: today should be a day for all those threatened by Islamic jihad supremacism to redouble our efforts to resist, so that more such catastrophes may never again destroy the lives of free people.

CAIR's Corey Saylor asks: "Has faith moved from a personal choice to probable cause?" He asks this, mind you, about apparent surveillance of The Islamic Center of San Diego, where, according to the article, "two of the 9/11 hijackers worshiped in early 2000."

He asks this, mind you, as a member of a "civil rights" group that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas jihad terror funding case in 2007, and which has had several of its officials arrested and convicted on various terror-related charges.

He asks this, mind you, in the context of protesting against the surveillance of several Southern California mosques, suggesting that there is no probable cause here despite the testimony of the Muslim Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, as far back as 1999, that 80% of American mosques were controlled by "extremists," and the findings of the Center for Religious Freedom in 2005, that hatred of Jews and Christians and Islamic supremacism were widely taught in American mosques.

"Reports concern Muslims: Alleged checks on San Diego, L.A. mosques spark calls for hearings," by H.G. Reza for the Los Angeles Times, May 29 (thanks to Twostellas):

A report that mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego are under federal surveillance has resurrected fears in the Muslim community about government monitoring and led two civil rights groups Wednesday to call for congressional hearings.

The request for public hearings followed a newspaper article last week that cited FBI and Defense Department files pertaining to surveillance of mosques and Muslims in Southern California.

Corey Saylor, Washington spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the article in the San Diego Union-Tribune "has again raised concerns that our community is being watched."

"We've heard about this in the past, but this article appears to be the first confirmation that surveillance is taking place," Saylor said. "Has faith moved from a personal choice to probable cause?"

Council chapters in Anaheim and San Diego joined the American Civil Liberties Union and Islamic Shura Council of Southern California in asking the U.S. House and Senate judiciary committees and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for hearings. In a letter to the committee chairmen and ranking minority members, the groups said hearings are needed to determine the extent of the surveillance and whether people are being monitored because they are Muslim.

[...]

The civil rights groups also want the hearings to determine if the U.S. military has engaged in domestic surveillance in violation of federal law. The Islamic Center of San Diego, where two of the 9/11 hijackers worshiped in early 2000, was the only mosque mentioned in the San Diego Union-Tribune article. The report did not specify which other mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego were allegedly under surveillance. But Saylor said it would not be surprising if mosques in Orange County were also monitored.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, members of the Islamic Center of Irvine and other local mosques have complained about FBI agents questioning them about imams' sermons and how often they attend services. In 2006, J. Stephen Tidwell, then-FBI assistant director in Los Angeles, met at the Irvine mosque with about 200 people who questioned him about government monitoring.

The meeting was prompted by media reports that the FBI was monitoring Muslim students at UC Irvine and USC. Tidwell denied that monitoring was taking place, telling the audience that "we still play by the rules."

Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the congressional hearings would compel the government "to say why they're amassing this information." "There's a lot of suspicion of the Muslim community," she said.

ACLU lawyers regularly go to mosques to advise worshipers that they do not have to answer questions from FBI agents about how long they have been in the United States, how often they attend services and what they get out of the sermons, Ripston said.

Why can't they answer questions like that? Which side is the ACLU on? As if we didn't know already.

"Reform in UNRWA"?

UNRWA is at this point a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PLO, or the "Palestinian" Authority, or of the Arab League, or of the two slightly-diverging branches of the PLO, the Fast Jihadists of Hamas and the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, who share the same ultimate goals but differ only on tactics and timing. Those goals are an end to a non-Muslim nation-state called Israel, with its Jews being forced to cry "give me dhimmitude or give me death."

The personnel of UNRWA, save for a camouflaging handful at the top, are all Arabs -- all "Palestinian" Arabs, adept at promoting the Arab cause, and in misusing funds, and demanding still more, as those funds are used to promote that cause. The cause is not of Arab well-being, but of Arab rage, and Arab propaganda, against the scarcely-to-be-discerned-on-a-world-map tiny Infidel nation-state of Israel.

The clear subtext here is that Christians will assimilate better into Germany than Muslims will. The addition of Mandaeans and Yazidis also suggests that there is a tacit recognition, among the CDU at least, that Muslim refugees bring with them a program of supremacism and a challenge to non-Muslim societal structures.

This statement, then, is a small hint that the stranglehold of the multiculturalist orthodoxy that threatens to destroy Europe may be loosening.

"Germany's CDU Interested in Accepting Refugees from Iraq," from Spiegel, May 28 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats on Wednesday said they would like to see Germany take on thousands of refugees from Iraq. The hitch? They only want the Christians.

For months, ethnic violence has been on the ebb in war-torn Iraq. But that has done little to ease the pressure of over 2 million refugees seeking shelter in neighboring Syria and Jordan. Indeed, for many of them -- particularly those once part of Iraq's Christian minority -- going back may never be an option.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party said it would like to see Germany do its part to help out. At a press conference in Berlin, parliamentarian Erika Steinbach, the CDU's human rights spokeswoman, said her party wanted to see Germany accept thousands of Iraqi refugees. In particular, she said, the CDU wants to extend its welcoming hand to Iraqis who have suffered religious persecution in Iraq. In particular, that means the Christians.

"One would be doing a good thing were a long-term solution to be found," Steinbach said.

According to Steinbach, the CDU envisions bringing a large group (possibly as many as 10,000) of non-Muslim refugees to Germany with the understanding that they would not be treated as asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are not allowed to work in Germany, and Steinbach said that it is unrealistic to think that Christian refugees from Iraq would ever be able to return. For this reason, their ultimate integration in Germany should be supported.

Members of Yazidis and Mandaean religious minorities would also be among those allowed in, according to the party's proposal. The CDU argues that, in contrast to Muslim refugees from Iraq, religious persecution makes it unlikely that Christians, Yazidis and Mandaeans would ever by able to return....

The Cardinal's point is well-taken, and one we have made many times here: violent jihad and Islamic supremacism are deeply rooted in the Qur'an, so the only way Muslims could possibly reject them would be to reject Qur'anic literalism -- and that is extremely unlikely. And unfortunately, when he says, "There is no worldwide authority who can interpret the Qur'an, so it depends on the person you have in front of you," he is perhaps unaware that there is a broad consensus (ijma, إجماع, which is a very important concept in Islamic theology) among the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that it is part of the responsibility of the Islamic umma to wage war against and subjugate unbelievers.

"Cardinal urges Muslim leaders to oppose violent jihad," by Riazat Butt for The Guardian, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Muslim leaders must be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion, a senior Vatican official urged yesterday.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Pope's principal adviser on Islam, said that while the majority of Muslim clerics condemned acts of terrorism, they needed to be more vocal about jihad, especially because of its frequent appearances in the Qur'an.

The cardinal made the remarks after a lecture, given in London to an audience of students, Catholic clerics and figures from other religions. It was one of several public appearances during a rare visit to the UK.

He said: "In the Qur'an you have several interpretations of jihad - violent and holy. Most Muslims are condemning war made in the name of religion. The problem is that in the Qur'an you have good and bad jihad, so you choose.

"There is no worldwide authority who can interpret the Qur'an, so it depends on the person you have in front of you. Sometimes you should like religious authorities to be more outspoken about violence in the name of religion. But Muslims believe the Qur'an is the divine word of God, so it is a problem."

Indeed it is.

A fearless Christian cleric makes a series of extraordinary and enormously important observations. "Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali: Radical Islam is filling void left by collapse of Christianity in UK," by Martin Beckford for the Telegraph, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The decline of Christian values is destroying Britishness and has created a "moral vacuum" which radical Islam is filling, one of the Church of England's leading bishops has warned.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, claimed the "social and sexual" revolution of the 1960s had led to a steep decline in the influence of Christianity over society which church leaders had failed to resist.

He said that in its place, Britain had become gripped by the doctrine of "endless self-indulgence" which had led to the destruction of family life, rising levels of drug abuse and drunkenness and mindless violence on the streets.

The bishop warns that the modern politicians' catchphrases of respect and tolerance will not be strong enough to prevent this collapse of traditional virtues, and said radical Islam is now moving in to fill the void created by the decline of Christianity.

His claims, in an article published in the new political magazine Standpoint, come just days after he accused the Church of England of failing in its duty to convert British Muslims to Christianity.

Dr Nazir-Ali claims in the new article that Britain, previously a "rabble of mutually hostile tribes", would never have become a global empire without the arrival of Christianity.

But he said the Church's influence began to wane during the 1960s, and quotes an academic who blames the loss of "faith and piety among women" for the steep decline in Christian worship.

He says Marxist students encouraged a "social and sexual revolution" to which liberal theologians and Church leaders "all but capitulated".

"It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place."

The bishop, who faced death threats earlier this year when he said some parts of Britain had become "no-go areas" for non-Muslims, said Marxism has been exposed as a nonsense but went on: "We are now confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope."

Asking what weapons are available to fight this new "ideological battle", the bishop said the values trumpeted by modern politicians such as "respect, tolerance and good behaviour" are "hardly adequate for the task before us".

"The consequences of the loss of this discourse are there for all to see: the destruction of the family because of the alleged parity of different forms of life together; the loss of a father figure, especially for boys, because the role of fathers is deemed otiose; the abuse of substances (including alcohol); the loss of respect for the human person leading to horrendous and mindless attacks on people."

The bishop added that Christian hospitality has been replaced by the "newfangled and insecurely founded" doctrine of multiculturalism, which has led to immigrants creating "segregated communities and parallel lives".

He said many values respected by society, such as the dignity of human life, equality and freedom, are based on Christian ones. But he warned that without their Christian backbone they cannot exist for ever, and that new belief systems may be based on different values.

"Radical Islamism, for example, will emphasise the solidarity of the umma (worldwide community of the Muslim faithful) against the freedom of the individual.

"Instead of the Christian virtues of humility, service and sacrifice, there may be honour, piety and the importance of 'saving face'."

In an implicit criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent claim that the adoption of some parts of Islamic law is unavoidable, Dr Nazir-Ali said: "Recognising its jurisdiction in terms of public law is fraught with difficulties precisely because it arises from a different set of assumptions from the tradition of law here."...

Recently Pamela Geller, Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin pointed out that a new Dunkin' Donuts ad featured Rachael Ray wearing a Palestinian kaffiyeh.

What's wrong with that? People in the Middle East, including Arabic-speaking Christians, wore it long before the establishment of the State of Israel and the invention of the "Palestinian" nationality. But there is no doubt that it has become a symbol of the Palestinian jihad. Charles posts a piece explaining the kaffiyeh as a "symbol of resistance and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle." Michelle Malkin accordingly asks, "It’s just a scarf, the clueless keffiyeh-wearers scoff. Would they say the same of fashion designers who marketed modified Klan-style hoods in Burberry plaid as the next big thing?"

Dunkin' Donuts pulled the ad, causing the company to be named "Worst Persons in the World" by Keith Olbermann. In the course of his fulmination in the video above (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist), he says this:

They pulled the ad? Because of the possibility of misperception? By the right-wing equivalents of jihadists -- the people in this country who most closely share the mentalities of the terrorists. Who act the most like Middle Eastern nutjobs. Who rail against diversity, try to murder dissent, and care more about flags than about people. You know, the Michelle Malkins of the world....How about the rest of us boycott Dunkin' Donuts, for giving in to fascists like Michelle Malkin? And for giving weight to perhaps the most absurd idea the lunatic fringers have ever belched forth: that there are terrorist scarves! Terrorist scarves!

This is another example of the witless moral equivalence that I devoted a book to refuting last year. It's just stupid rhetorical overheating, but it is worth noting because it distracts from the reality of the global jihad, and that keeps us from defending ourselves against it. If American conservatives really were the "equivalents of jihadists," Keith Olbermann's head would some time ago have been separated from his body. But the obverse is even worse: if jihadists are just like American conservatives, why, then they're just "nutjobs" who "rail against diversity" -- worthy of mockery, but not of serious concern.

And so meanwhile, they continue to advance.

"Staff appear reluctant to challenge inappropriate behaviour ... for fear of doing the wrong thing."

"Muslim prison gangs 'taking control'," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, May 27:

Muslim gangs are threatening to take control of one of Britain's top security prisons where inmates include al-Qa'eda terrorists, a report reveals.

Staff at Whitemoor jail, Cambs, believe a "serious incident is imminent" as several wings become dominated by Muslim prisoners.

There is an on-going theme of fear and instability among employees, says the Prison Service's Directorate of High Security report.

"There is much talk around the establishment about 'the Muslims'," it says.

Some staff believe the situation has resulted in Muslim prisoners becoming more of a gang than a religious group.

"The sheer numbers, coupled with a lack of awareness among staff, appear to be engendering fear and handing control to the prisoners," the report says.

The situation has become so bad that white prisoners are warned about the Muslim gangs by staff on arrival.

The concern about Muslim prisoners is in danger of leading to hostility and Islamophobia, the report warns.

What a strangely worded and ultimately meaningless sentence: Whose concern? The guards? They're duty-bound to enforce regulations professionally and equitably, and to keep prisoners safe from one another.

If anything, when they do take action to reduce the level of tension and the eroded sense of control, they certainly will be accused of hostility and Islamophobia.

"Staff appear reluctant to challenge inappropriate behaviour, in particular among black and ethnic minority prisoners, for fear of doing the wrong thing," the report adds.

"This is leading to a general feeling of a lack of control and shifting the power dynamic towards prisoners."

"This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims."

"Religious trends and our religious future," from the Church of England News (thanks to LGF):

If recent reports of trends in religious observance prove to be correct, then in some 30 years the mosque will be able to claim that, religiously speaking, the UK is an Islamic nation, and therefore needs a share in any religious establishment to reflect this. The progress of conservative Islam in the UK has been amazing, and it has come at a time of prolonged decline in church attendance that seems likely to continue.

This progress has been enthusiastically assisted by this government in particular with its hard-line multi-cultural dogma and willingness to concede to virtually every demand made by Muslims. Perhaps most importantly the government has chosen to allow hard-liners to act as representing all Muslims, and more liberal Muslims have almost completely failed to produce any leadership voices to compete, leading many Britons to wonder if there are indeed many liberal Muslims at all, surely a mistake.

Surely!

At all levels of national life Islam has gained state funding, protection from any criticism, and the insertion of advisors and experts in government departs national and local. A Muslim Home Office adviser, for example, was responsible for Baroness Scotland’s aborting of the legislation against honour killings, arguing that informal methods would be better. In the police we hear of girls under police protection having the addresses of their safe houses disclosed to their parents by Muslim officers who think they are doing their religious duty.

While men-only gentlemen’s clubs are now being dubbed unlawful, we hear of municipal swimming baths encouraging ‘Muslim women only’ sessions and in Dewsbury Hospitals staff waste time by turning beds to face Mecca five times a day — a Monty Pythonesque scenario of lunacy, but astonishingly true. Prisons are replete with imams who are keen to inculcate conservative Islam in any inmates who are deemed to be culturally ‘Muslim’: the Prison service in effect treats such prisoners as a cultural block to be preached to by imams at will. Would the Prison service send all those with ‘C of E’ on their papers to confirmation classes with the chaplain?! We could go on.

The point is that Islam is being institutionalised, incarnated, into national structures amazingly fast, at the same time as demography is showing very high birthrates. Charles Taylor’s new and classic work on the Secular Age charts the rise of the secular mindset and what he calls the ‘excarnation’ of Christianity as it is levered out of state policy and structures. Christianity is now regarded as bad news, the liberal elite’s attack developed in the 1960s took root in the educationalist empire, and to some extent even in areas of the church.

Today the Christian story is fading from public imagination, while Islam grows apace. There needs to be some fresh thinking in this area where the claims of Christ are sensitively explained. Our church leaders must develop ways of explaining this, as our feature on mission and evangelism this week demonstrates.

There is a great deal of whining victimology in this article. I have not reproduced below the material about the disproportionate percentage of Muslims in European prisons. There is in the article, of course, no consideration at all of the possibility that they might commit crimes at a higher rate than the general population, out of their contempt for non-Muslims and non-Muslim society and law.

But note below Parvez Ahmed's wild claims that the PC American establishment, for all its fear of talking about jihad and its tiptoeing around the ideology that motivates the jihadists, is actually at war with Islam, and his relativistic "terrorism is in the eye of the beholder" nonsense. And then remember: this guy is, in the eyes of the government and media establishments, a leading American "moderate."

"War on terror is war on Islam, says advocate," by Nisa Islam Muhammad in Farrakhan's The Final Call, May 28 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

WASHINGTON (FinalCall.com) - The global war on terror has become a thinly veiled excuse to wage a global war on Islam with increased arrests of Muslims, calls for regime change in Muslim countries and racial profiling, according to a leader with a national Islamic organization.

“The tactic of terrorism—and yes it is a tactic, not an ideology—has been deployed by a multitude of groups of different religions, ethnicities and ideologies and yet the Islamic faith, unlike any other, is erroneously and incessantly associated with terrorism,” said Dr. Parvez Ahmed, a national board member of the Council on American Islamic Relations. “The association of a faith practiced by 1.2 billion people worldwide to terrorism creates the perception that the GWOT is a war against Islam.”

Around the world since 2001 there have been increases in the arrest and detention of Muslims.

Dr. Ahmed explained that right after 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, the federal government subjected 80,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants to fingerprinting and registration, sought out 8,000 Arab and Muslim men for FBI interviews and imprisoned over 5,000 foreign nationals in anti-terrorism preventive detention compounds.

“These arrests and detentions did not result in the conviction of a single person for a terrorist crime. Thus the U.S. government’s record for the largest ethnic profiling campaign stood at 0 for 93,000,” he said.

[...]

“Between 1980 and 2003, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan, a group that recruits from the predominantly Hindu Tamil population in Sri Lanka and whose ideology is intertwined with Marxism, was the world’s leader in suicide terrorism. Despite this, Islamic groups receive the most attention in the Western media,” said Dr. Ahmed.

“Suicide bombings are the product of modern political violence. Suicide bombings by Muslims are not the result of any Islamic ideology, but rather they are the result of the sociopolitical conditions of occupations (such as Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq) and the outcome of proxy wars fought in Afghanistan, where America not only armed the mujihadeen, but also enabled a culture of drugs and violence,” he said.

Dr. Ahmed also noted that terrorism is a word generally applied to “one’s enemies or those with whom one disagrees.”

“Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization ‘terrorist’ becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned,” he said.

“If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or worst, an ambivalent) light; and is not terrorism,” Dr. Ahmed said....

UPDATE: Patrick Poole kindly points out that Parvez Ahmed is simply parroting Osama bin Laden.

Eliot Engel speaks truth to power. "US congressmen demand UNRWA reform," by Etgar Lefkovits for the Jerusalem Post, May 27 (thanks to Louis):

A group of bipartisan US congressmen is urging reform in UNRWA, the UN body that deals exclusively with Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and calling for alternative solutions to the containment of refugees in squalid camps.

"The Palestinian refugees have been used as political pawns for the past 60 years by people who don't want peace in the Middle East," said Congressman Eliot Engel (D-New York) at a meeting of international parliamentarians hosted last week by the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus, a bipartisan pro-Israel parliamentary group.

"The UN has been part and parcel of this conspiracy," he said.

Engel, who co-chairs the parliamentary group - established as a sister-caucus to the Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus - said that UNRWA, which was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1949 to carry out relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees, was actually designed to perpetuate the festering sore of the refugee problem.

"Instead of resettling them, UNRWA keeps them in refugee camps," Engel said. "The Palestinians are in the refugee camps because the Arab nations want them in refugee camps in order to perpetuate political hatred against Israel."...

That'll do it, all right. Here is yet another update from our bulging "Not Just Al-Qaeda" files: "Jamaat-e-Islami Leader: We Are Fighting For Islamic Revolution In Pakistan," from the MEMRI Blog, May 27 :

Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami leader Muhammad Hussain Mehnati has said that his party is fighting for an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. The Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Jang quoted Mehnati as saying that the purpose of creating Pakistan was the establishment of an Islamic system in the country.

According to the report, the Jamaat-e-Islami leader said: ‘‘Jamaat-e-Islami is fighting for an Islamic revolution in Pakistan so that people can be liberated from their problems and difficulties.’’

Islamic Tolerance Alert from the Islamic Republic.

"Iran: Ten Christian converts arrested," from AKI, May 28 (thanks to Religion of Peace):

Tehran, 28 May (AKI) - Ten Iranians who converted from Islam to Christianity in recent months have been arrested in the southern city of Shiraz.

According to Goodarz, a spokesperson for the Iranian converts, more than 35 of them have been arrested since the beginning of the year. Goodarz himself has taken refuge in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The new Majlis or Iranian parliament which met for the first time on Tuesday will be discussing in the coming weeks proposed laws presented by the government to reform the penal code.

Under the new law, anyone born to a Muslim father who decides to renounce Islam and convert to another faith, faces the death penalty.

The punishment is currently absent from the Iranian penal code even though in the past, dozens of Christian converts and followers of the Bahai faith have been hanged.

It is, of course, the traditional Islamic legal penalty for apostasy.

The New Republic shares this naivete with many, many analysts in the West. From "Dangerous naivety" in The Spectator, May 28 (thanks to Mick):

The New Republic has published an article by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank which claims that al Qaeda is unravelling because former supporters are turning against it, and that as a result Muslim moderates are on the march against the jihadis. While there is undoubtedly some truth in their argument, in that – as we can see in Iraq – the mass killings of Muslims by al Qaeda are clearly turning increasing numbers of Muslims against it, the authors’ apparent naivety and ignorance have nevertheless led them to some dangerously wrong conclusions, particularly in their analysis of what is happening in Britain.

They have fallen into the trap of believing that the only extremists are al Qaeda and others who support terrorism in Britain. They thus extol as moderates those who oppose al Qaeda and terrorism in Britain. But this view – which is shared by many in British security circles, alas -- presents an entirely false and indeed lethal dichotomy. For there are Islamists who oppose al Qaeda and terrorist action in the UK as a tactical mistake but nevertheless subscribe to the same strategic goal – to restore the medieval Caliphate, overturn British and western society and institute the rule of Islam instead.

Precisely.

Guess who

Belgian authorities ought to see this as sedition, for Malika El Aroud would certainly want to see Sharia come to Belgium, and non-Muslims and women subjugated. And she is working for that end by agitating for jihad.

"Al Qaeda Warrior Uses Internet to Rally Women," by Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet for the New York Times, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

BRUSSELS — On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes.

In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY.

Powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY are the ordinary look of middle age?

But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe.

She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she bullies Muslim men to go and fight and rallies women to join the cause.

“It’s not my role to set off bombs — that’s ridiculous,” she said in a rare interview. “I have a weapon. It’s to write. It’s to speak out. That’s my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb.”

Ms. El Aroud has not only made a name for herself among devotees of radical forums where she broadcasts her message of hatred toward the West. She also is well known to intelligence officials throughout Europe as simply “Malika” — an Islamist who is at the forefront of the movement by women to take a larger role in the male-dominated global jihad....

“Vietnam is nothing compared to what awaits you on our lands,” she wrote to a supposed Western audience in March about wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Ask your mothers, your wives to order your coffins.” To her followers she added: “Victory is appearing on the horizon, my brothers and sisters. Let’s intensify our prayers.”

Her prolific writing and presence in chat rooms, coupled with her background, makes her a magnet for praise and sympathy. “Sister Oum Obeyda is virtuous among the virtuous; her life is dedicated to the good on this earth,” a man named Juba wrote late last year.

[...]

Ms. El Aroud reflects that trend. “Normally in Islam the men are stronger than the women, but I prove that it is important to fear God — and no one else,” she said. “It is important that I am a woman. There are men who don’t want to speak out because they are afraid of getting into trouble. Even when I get into trouble, I speak out.”

After all, she said, she knows the rules. “I write in a legal way,” she said. “I know what I’m doing. I’m Belgian. I know the system.”

I'm sure she does.

Al-Sistani, who doesn’t want jihad against the Americans for the “time being,” was, some will recall, "nominated" in print by excitable Tom Friedman, always-ready-to-declare-his-latest-enthusiasm Tom Friedman, grand-simplifier Tom Friedman, as a suitable candidate for a Nobel Prize for Peace. That neither latest, nor greatest, of a long succession of friedmanian ludicrous remarks (not too ludicrous apparently for him to continue to ask for, and receive, $45,000 per public appearance, for a collection of shallow plongitudes and endless platitudes, but so eager-beaverly presented, that some may come away complacently thinking that they have actually "learned something") was mocked here. Al-Sistani's listing of "najis" (unclean) things at his website -- you know, blood, sputum, sperm, feces, Infidels, dogs, that sort of thing -- must have gotten to Friedman somehow, for he promptly put a lid on his exploding enthusiasm for Al-Sistani, and we never heard from him again on the matter.

But Al-Sistani was also deeply impressive to The Man Who Never Mentions Islam, Fouad Ajami. His The Foreigner's Gift, it has been noted here, should have been called The Infidel's Gift. But Islam, any hint of discussing how Islam forms the Arab mind, the Arab polity, the Arab everything and anything, is never even hint-glinted at in the pseudo-poetic, and comically annoying prose (described by one amazonian review as "luscious") in which Ajami presents his works. These works apparently meet with favor, for he has been much-rewarded in this country, possibly for Services Rendered Against Edward Said, with prizes, foundation grants, all the conceivable Recognitions that academic flesh is heir to.

But the wedding guests fought back.

"7 killed in Thai south: police," from AFP, May 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

YALA (Thailand) - THREE Thai soldiers and four suspected separatist rebels have been killed in a series of incidents across Thailand's far south, including a shootout at a wedding party, police said on Wednesday.

One soldier was killed and two of his colleagues injured in a blast in Pattani province late on Tuesday, police there said....

Later on Wednesday, in Yala, a group of militants ambushed a wedding convoy, but some of the villagers headed to the celebration were armed and fought their attackers, killing one suspected rebel, police said.

Ten members of the wedding party were injured.

Thai security forces also shot dead three suspected militants during a search of a village in Yala on Wednesday, police said.

Note also AFP's casual placing of blame for the conflict on the non-Muslim Thais who imperialistically annexed the Malay Sultanate, thus provoking tension. AFP does not mention, of course, that the Malay Sultanate was making war against the Siamese during the war between Siam and Burma, and Thailand conquered it in that context -- making it Thai by a right of conquest that has been universally recognized throughout human history -- except, of course, when it comes to Israel and to any Muslim land that is conquered by non-Muslims.

More than 3,000 people have been killed since separatist unrest broke out in January 2004 in the south, which was an autonomous Malay Muslim sultanate until mainly Buddhist Thailand annexed it in 1902, provoking decades of tension.

Have you ever noticed how many of these things happen in Minneapolis? The Sharia cab controversy, the Target checkout personnel refusing to handle pork, the publicly-funded Islamic school, and now this. The Muslim Brotherhood -- the Muslim American Society -- was behind the cab controversy. Might it be behind these other things as well?

"Muslim workers file complaint with EEOC over firings for refusal to wear uniforms," by Chris Serres for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 27 (thanks to Twostellas):

MINNEAPOLIS - A group of Muslim workers allege they were fired by a New Brighton, Minn., tortilla factory for refusing to wear uniforms that they say were immodest by Islamic standards.

Six Somali women claim they were ordered by a manager to wear pants and shirts to work instead of their traditional Islamic clothing of loose-fitting skirts and scarves, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil liberties group that is representing the women.

The women have filed a religious discrimination complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

''For these women, wearing tight-fitting pants is like being naked,'' said Valerie Shirley, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota chapter of CAIR. ''It's simply not an option.''

CAIR issued a press release calling on Mission Foods to reinstate the women in their jobs. However, the group declined to disclose the names of the women and would not make them available for interviews Tuesday.

Gruma Corporation, the Irving, Texas-based parent company of Mission Foods, released a written statement Tuesday denying that any employees were terminated or disciplined at the New Brighton plant. However, the company made clear the six women have been relieved of their responsibilities for the time being, and may ultimately lose their jobs if they don't wear uniforms.

''Should these employees choose to adhere to the current Mission Foods uniform policy, they may return to their positions with the company,'' the company statement said. ''However, these positions will need to be filled as soon as possible and cannot be held indefinitely.''...

Last year, some Muslim cashiers at Target Corp. were shifted to other positions inside stores after they refused to scan pork products because doing so would violate their religious beliefs. And in 2005, a group of 26 workers were either fired or suspended by an Arden Hills electronics manufacturer for violating the company's prayer rules, which set limits on the times they could break for prayers.

These women could just find jobs that don't require them to violate their standards of modesty. But instead, non-Muslims must adapt and accommodate Muslim demands. It is all part of the stealth jihad.

A couple gazillion people sent me the story yesterday about the Australian council's refusal to allow an Islamic school. I didn't put it up, since council officials insisted that the refusal had nothing to do with resisting Islamic supremacism or preserving Australian culture. "The proposed development was flawed on environmental and planning grounds" -- surmountable problems, no?

But now the Muslims behind the mosque are claiming, predictably enough, that the refusal was motivated by "racism." What race is Islam again?

Both sides are talking past each other. One is talking about planning problems and the other about racism, when the real issue is, What are the intentions of Muslims in Australia regarding the eventual imposition of Sharia? But no one dares talk about that.

"Australian Muslim group says school refusal is 'racist,'" from AFP, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian Muslim group charged Wednesday that a Sydney council's refusal to allow an Islamic school to be set up in its area was a "victory for racism".

Camden Council, on Sydney's south-western outskirts, unanimously rejected the application for a 1,200-pupil school on Tuesday night, prompting cheers from hundreds of residents who attended the meeting to oppose the plan.

While the council said the decision was based on planning issues, the proposal sparked ugly protests, including two pigs' heads impaled on spikes at the school site last November with an Australian flag draped between them.

Muslim community organisation Forum on Australia's Islamic Relations (FAIR) said it did not accept the council's explanation.

"Planning grounds is only a smokescreen for the real issues which were related to community tensions and potential social upheavals if the school was approved," executive director Kuranda Seyit said.

"I see this as a victory for racism."

Yeah, sure, Seyit. Maybe if you and your coreligionists addressed the question of "potential social upheavals" honestly, you wouldn't encounter so much "racism."

She wanted to live like a German, as did Hatin Sürücü. And so again, the same question that was asked when Hatin Sürücü was murdered: "How many more women have to die before this society wakes up?"

"Honor Killing Victim Wanted to Live Like other German Girls," from Spiegel (thanks to all who sent this in):

At age 16, all Morsal Obeidi wanted was to live the way other girls in Germany do. She paid dearly: Obeidi's brother stabbed her 20 times. Her murder has sparked a renewed debate in Germany about the failure of many immigrant families to integrate into Western society.

[...]

Morsal met with Mohammed, her cousin, on the evening of May 15, a Thursday. They were sitting in a McDonald's restaurant. Morsal had only been back in the city for a few months, after a prolonged visit with relatives in Afghanistan. It was spring in Hamburg. As they ate, Mohammed thought about the plan that he was keeping a secret from Morsal. It seemed harmless enough. Mohammed said later that Ahmad, Morsal's brother, had asked him to bring his sister to the Berliner Tor train station. "He said to me: 'I want you to meet Morsal today. Then walk to the Berliner Tor with her. But don't tell her anything. I just want to talk to her."

It seemed harmless enough.

Morsal and Mohammed arrived at the suburban railway station shortly after 11 p.m. They walked around the corner to a small parking lot next to an apartment building, where they sat down to smoke a cigarette. At 11:20 p.m., Ahmad suddenly appeared out of the darkness. Morsal recognized him -- and froze. Ahmad approached his sister and then, without saying a word, began stabbing her. He stabbed her a few times. "I think he must've taken something first. Drugs. Or maybe he got drunk. I tried to stop him, but he pushed me away," says Mohammed.

Ahmad Obeidi, 23, is a strong, athletic young man. Morsal tried to run away, but she stumbled and fell. Ahmad stood over her and continued to stab her, five times, ten times, still silent as he swung his right arm up and down over his sister's body. He seemed intoxicated. The police counted 20 stab wounds, inflicted with such force that Ahmad would later wear a bandage on his right forearm.

Morsal screamed, waking up the residents of the apartment building. Passersby called the police. Ahmad fled to a nearby subway station, and Mohammed followed him. The two cousins boarded a train, where they sat silently across from each other, a killer and his accomplice.

Morsal died.

[...]

In the days following the crime, it was frequently referred to as an "honor killing." A murder for the sake of honor? Is this even possible? Doesn't a man who cold-bloodedly kills his own sister, a girl seven years his junior, little more than a child, in fact lose all honor?

A Criminal for Whom Germany Was Foreign

The family was certainly not without its problems. But there was a critical difference between Morsal, who wanted nothing more than to be free, and Ahmad, who was a criminal to whom Germany had always been a foreign place. He staggered through life, unstable, a failure in life. He killed his sister for having become too comfortable in the ways of the West. He resented her for her uncovered hair, her makeup and her short skirts.

[...]

Morsal, unlike her older sister, was obstinate. She was 14 when she began to resist her parents' authority. She was tired of being complacent, of living according to the old Afghan rules, which seemed irrelevant to her life in Hamburg. She argued with her parents about her appearance and her behavior, her uncovered hair, her makeup, her tight jeans and about smoking and drinking. They argued about her friends and acquaintances. For former fighter pilot Ghulam-Mohammed Obeidi, the family's reputation was at stake. It was the only thing he had left to lose.

A Father and Son Turned Violent

The police say that he became violent, and so did his son Ahmad. They were losing control over Morsal, and losing their self-control in the process. "You are bringing shame to the family," they said to her.

[...]

A number of attacks on Morsal are also noted in his police file. But most of the attacks were never reported -- or documented. According to police records, Ahmad beat up his sister on Nov. 1, 2006. The older sister, the report reads, scratched Morsal in the face as she was lying on the ground. There were more blows on Nov. 8, 2006. This time Ahmad threatened her with a knife, but without using it. He shouted at Morsal, accusing her of violating the family honor. Morsal filed a complaint against her brother, and she was returned to the KNJD. On Jan. 19, 2007, Ahmad allegedly beat her up again, this time in the office of the family's used car and bus dealership. His sister dressed like a slut, Ahmad told the police.

[...]

The Obeidis are not a noticeably conservative family. Nevertheless, it valued traditions, and one of them was to defend the family's property: zar (gold), zamin (property) and zan (women). In their traditional world, it was set in stone that these things are the property of the man....

Read it all.

"Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that a minority of Muslims take second wives, and that Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States." He didn't say anything about obeying American law.

Sharia Alert: "Some Muslims in U.S. Quietly Engage in Polygamy," by Barbara Bradley Hagerty for NPR, May 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

All Things Considered, May 27, 2008 · Although polygamy is illegal in the U.S. and most mosques try to discourage plural marriages, some Muslim men in America have quietly married multiple wives.

No one knows how many Muslims in the U.S. live in polygamous families. But according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.

[...]

Group member Sarah says that in her native Guinea, the husband springs it on his wife that he's going to marry someone else. Sarah, like the others interviewed for this story, would give only her first name.

"Sometimes he say, 'OK, I am going to be married tomorrow,' or 'I'm going to be married today.' He's going ask you like that. It happened to me," she says.

Sarah begins to cry. Others nod in sympathy. These women are all Muslim. The Koran states that men may marry up to four women. The Prophet Mohammad had multiple wives.

But there's a restriction, says Sally, another group member. The husband cannot favor one woman over another – with his wealth or his heart.

"You have to love them the same way, share everything the same way, equally," says Sally. "Nobody can do that. It's impossible."

Indeed. But that doesn't stop it.

Still, Muslims practice polygamy in the U.S., despite state laws prohibiting it.

Here's how a man gets around the laws: He marries one woman under civil law, and then marries one, two or three others in religious ceremonies that are not recognized by the state. In other cases, men marry women in both America and abroad.

Many women keep quiet for fear of retribution or deportation.

For example, Sally's husband moved to the United States from the Ivory Coast before she did. When Sally joined him, she found he had married someone else in America. But without legal immigration papers, she didn't dare come forward and report him to the authorities.

She said when she arrived in the U.S., her husband and his new wife put her in the basement.

"They told me to cook, clean, do everything. I didn't speak English. And he told me, 'Don't say nothing. You say something, she's going make you deported. And me, I'm going to be in jail.'"

Eventually, Sally left the house with her children, and now works at a hair braiding salon. But that fear of deportation prevents many from leaving their polygamous relationships.

"Legally, they're invisible," says Julie Dinnerstein, a senior attorney for Sanctuary for Families. "If you are the second or third or fourth wife, that marital relationship is not going to be recognized for immigration purposes. It means if your husband is a citizen or green card holder, he can't sponsor you. It means if your husband gets asylum, you don't get asylum at the same time. The man is always going to be in a position of greater power."

Secret Ceremonies

In the past decade, Muslim clerics began to notice that some men who wanted a religious wedding were already married to someone else.

According to Daisy Khan, who heads the American Society for Muslim Advancement and is married to an imam, polygamy is more common among conservative, less educated immigrants from Africa and Asia. It is rarer among middle-class Muslims from the Middle East. She adds that nowadays, imams do background checks on the grooms to make sure they're not already married in their home countries.

Some clerics in the U.S. perform second marriage ceremonies in secret....

They ought to be prosecuted for that, when discovered.

Read it all.

Sounds a lot like university students stateside.

"Afghanistan: Secret Taleban cells spread lessons of jihad in Kabul University," by Jeremy Page for the Times, May 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

To his professors and peers at Kabul University, Abdul is the epitome of a model student.

The 21-year-old law undergraduate takes copious notes in class, always finishes assignments on time and hopes to become a teacher when he graduates.

What they do not know is that when class is over he spends his time on less wholesome activities - watching videos of bomb attacks on American troops and plotting to overthrow the Afghan Government.

Abdul is not just a Taleban sympathiser: he is a member of a secret Taleban cell at Kabul University that claims several hundred members and is a worrying new sign of the movement’s expanding influence. [...]

“I’ll fight until I die but I won’t do suicide because it’s forbidden in Islam,” said Abdul, who claims to have recruited nine other students.

It's interesting that other Taliban members don't hesitate in the same way.

The university cell illustrates how the influence of the Taleban has spread beyond its traditional support base in the south - and right to the heart of Afghanistan’s most prestigious educational institution and its largest with 12,000 students. It also shows how the movement appeals to educated young Afghans as well as the poor, illiterate farmers who make up the bulk of its fighting force.

At the same time it suggests that the Taleban is divided between extremists, who target civilians and reject all forms of modernity, and relative moderates, who want development but oppose foreign troops. [...]

The pair also said that their leaders, while wanting to introduce Sharia, tolerated music, films, men without beards and women’s education.

They said that there was nothing moderate about their hatred of President Karzai and the international community, which they said had brought nothing but corruption to Afghanistan. “They haven’t done anything in seven years,” Javed said. “The international community isn’t here to bring peace and security, but to destroy our country and to kill Muslims.”

Let me list some of them:

1. The correct definition of "victory" in Iraq should be an outcome that weakens Islam -- the Camp of Islam and Jihad -- not only in Iraq but elsewhere. There is no other justification for spending two trillion dollars, and enduring 4,300 deaths and tens of thousands of wounded.

2. The Administration -- Bush, Rice, et al. -- and everyone who defends the policy of remaining in Iraq, never explains exactly how what is being attempted in Iraq, that is, the attempt to make the Shi'a government and the recently-dislodged-from-power Sunnis come to some accommodation, will make Infidels safer.

I'm sure he only wanted the nuclear information in order to generate electricity. "Iranian engineer guilty in Arizona nuclear plant software case," from The Associated Press, May 27 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

PHOENIX: An Iranian engineer has been convicted of illegally accessing a protected computer to use software he obtained at a former job at the largest U.S. nuclear plant.

Mohammad Reza Alavi faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 (€158,600) fine after being convicted Tuesday of illegally accessing a computer. A sentencing hearing has not yet been set.

The jury deadlocked on two other charges of stealing protected software from Phoenix's Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station and illegally exporting it in violation of the U.S. trade embargo with Iran....

The horror, the horror? Nah

Is Osama bin Laden dead? Yet? Still? More importantly, does it really matter? It does not. The jihad, as Joe Biden and almost everyone else doesn't realize, is not a movement organized around a charismatic figure. It is an ideologically driven movement, and that movement will not die with Osama.

"Osama Bin Laden is not in Pakistan he is dead says Taliban leader," from the Pakistan Daily, May 26 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

A top Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud has rejected reports that al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and other leaders are hiding in his region.

"The al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden is dead, and the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, are not in our territory," he said in an interview broadcast by a satellite television network.

Funeral prayers have been said for Osama bin Laden over the years with one reported by a Pakistani news organisation, and another in an Egyptian newspaper as far back as December 2001.

This report quoted an official of the Taliban saying that he had suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death.

The news has been reported that he died of heart and kidney disorders. Americans and Pakistani leaders have suggested that he was one, killed in the US bombing of Afghanistan, died of illness later, or just died....

Buds

In case Hamas can't seize enough American-made weapons from Fatah, they can always fall back on Iran. The pretext here is the Israel-Syria talks, which makes this even more of a cruel joke, since -- as always -- the only ones who will be called upon to make any significant concessions will be Israel.

"Arab paper: Iran to give Hamas more arms, funds," from the Jerusalem Post, May 25 (thanks to Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi):

Iran has promised Hamas new rockets and more funds, an expression of the Islamic Republic's displeasure with recent news of renewed Israeli-Syrian peace talks, the London-based newspaper, Asharq Alawsat reported on Sunday.

According to the report, Syria-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who held a press conference in Teheran with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki Saturday, expressed his concern over statements issued simultaneously by Jerusalem, Damascus and Ankara last Wednesday in which a renewal of talks between Syria and Israel under Turkish mediation was declared.

Mashaal reportedly told his Iranian hosts that despite commitments he was given by Damascus that peace with Israel would not come at the expense of Syria's ties with Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas, he was still aware of the fact that Syria would have to make some concessions.

He emphasized that he understood that Syria could not sign a peace agreement with Israel, exchange ambassadors, end the state of war and make the Golan Heights demilitarized and at the same time continue to allow Iran to use its territory to transfer weapons to Hizbullah, train Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and help in the financing of those groups....

Labeling Syria a strategic ally of Iran, Defense Minister Mustafa Mohammed Nejad called on "Islamic states to strengthen their relations in order to defend themselves against the dangers which threaten the region."

Rebels with a cause

Al-Qaeda forms a youth group, but campfires and archery are not quite what they have in mind. "Iraq: Al-Qaeda creates teenage terror cell, says report," from AKI, May 27 :

Baghdad, 27 May (AKI) - A new al-Qaeda cell has been created for Iraqis under 16 years old, according to a report in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

Known as the "Youths of Heaven", the report said that the cell has been active for some days in various suburbs of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

In an interview with Al-Hayat, Sayd Aziz Salman, the head of the Awakening Council in Taji, north of Baghdad, said that the cell was the latest danger in the country....

"It was a member of this new cell of attackers who hit one of our councils on Monday in Tarimiya," said Salman.

"The bomber was in a car when he detonated the explosives killing six people and wounding 18. A large number of the suicide attacks that hit our offices are now carried out by al-Qaeda through these young people who have recently been recruited," he said.

Last week, the military stopped six adolescents who were allegedly part of the "Youths of Heaven".

"After interrogation, we discovered that the head of the group, who gave them the economic and logistical support, was 16 years-old," said Salman.

"We found out that they used certain camps outside Taji and Tarimiya for training, with the help of some local farmers.

"Every cell in this new group has five members. In some of these groups, the young people are between 11 and 13 years old," he said.

As the last paragraph shows, this is a reaction to the recent return of alcohol to Basra. A What-Are-We-Fighting-For Sharia Alert from Iraq: "Iraq: Alcohol banned in southern city of Basra," from AKI, May 22 (thanks to Stlreader):

Baghdad, 22 May (AKI) - Alcohol has been banned in the southern Iraqi province of Basra.

The provincial Basra Council has approved a new law enforcing the ban in the territory, the Voices of Iraq news agency cited Council president Nasif al-Ibadi as saying.

The alcohol in the province was approved late on Wednesday, al-Ibadi said.

"You will not be able to cross the borders between Iraq and other neighbouring countries carrying loads of alcohol to other parts of the country," he stated.

The local administration applied the change under Article 2 of the Iraqi constitution that includes the application of Sharia law.

The alcohol ban appears to be one of several changes in the area following an offensive by Iraqi security forces against the Shia militias of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr a month ago.

Several local bars reopened in Basra recently after being closed for four years. They began serving alcohol after soldiers arrived from Baghdad to carry out the military offensive.

To avoid offending Poles? Come on. It is clear which immigrant group, and the only immigrant group, that this hyper-PC police officer had in mind.

"Motorist told flag could be racist," by Charley Morgan for This Is Wiltshire, May 23 (thanks to The Omega Man):

A TEENAGE motorist was told to remove an England flag from his car by a police officer because it could be offensive to immigrants.

Ben Smith, 18, was driving back home to Ingram Road in Melksham on Thursday evening after filling up with petrol, when the officer stopped him on a routine patrol.

He checked the tax disc and tyres on his Vauxhall Corsa but when he noticed the flag of St George on the parcel shelf he told Mr Smith to take it down.

Mr Smith, who works for G Plan Upholsterers on Hampton Park West, said: "He saw the flag and said it was racist towards immigrants and if I refused to take it down I would get a £30 fine.

"I laughed because I thought he was joking, but then I realised he was serious so I had to take it down straight away. I thought it was silly - it's my country and I want to show my support for my country."

Mr Smith had recently installed new speakers in the parcel shelf of his car and wanted to cover them up so they did not get stolen.

He used the flag and laid it out flat on the shelf so it was not obscuring his view out of the rear window.

But it was only there a couple of days before he was stopped by the officer at about 9.30pm close to Melksham Enterprise Park and made to take it down.

He said he is used to getting stopped by the police because he is a young male driver and is often mistaken for a boy racer'.

But he thought it was "a bit strange" to be asked to take down the England flag when the officer found nothing else wrong with his car.

PC Dave Cooper, of Chippenham Road Policing Unit, said he had never come across an officer asking someone to remove an England flag from their car because it could be racist.

He added: "It all depends on the context of a stop. If they are going past a lot of Polish people, for instance, and abusing them, then we possibly would ask them to take the flag down."...

A noble aspiration for "whores," or anyone. "Iran: Cleric 'calls all feminists whores and foreign spies,'" from AKI, May 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Tehran, 27 May (AKI) - A top Iranian cleric from the northeast, Ayatollah Ahmad Elmalhoda, has reportedly called feminists "whores and foreign spies".

"These whores, clutching a piece of paper in their hands to gather signatures, are working for foreign powers and want to destabilise the Islamic Republic," said Elmalhoda.

He is the highly influential prayer leader in the northeastern holy Shia city of Mashad.

Elmalhoda has called on the government to "intervene decisively against these whores, because it is improper to leave them to act with impunity."

A few weeks ago, Elmalhoda said women who do not wear the Islamic veil as instructed "turned men into animals."...

I am all for non-Muslim officials reading the Qur'an in order to gain more insight into Islam, but I doubt that any genuine insight that they get from reading it will be encouraged by Amsterdam police authorities.

Also, I get the impression that this new translation is a whitewash. If any Dutch readers have any insight into that, please let me know.

From Expatica, May 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

AMSTERDAM - Police officers in Amsterdam are to get a special deal if they buy Dutch writer Kader Abdolah's new translation of the Qur'an. The capital's police authority reckons that the new version, designed to be more accessible to the Dutch public, will give officers more insight into Islam.

It is subsidising police purchases of the book by 50 percent. A police spokesman explained that while many officers have some knowledge of the Bible, the Qur'an is often unknown territory.

Right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV) MPs are outraged by the plan, with Sietse Fritsma calling it "Islamic propaganda" and saying that public money should not be spent on it.

On Tuesday, the PVV will demand the government intervene to scrap the plan.

As a great philosopher once told me, "Well, duh."

"Iran: Tehran pursuing its nuclear programme, says UN," from AKI, May 27 (thanks to Twostellas):

Tehran, 27 May (AKI) - Iran is ignoring United Nations' demands that it suspend its uranium enrichment programme, according to the organisation's nuclear watchdog.

"Contrary to the decisions of the (UN) Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency wrote in its latest report released on Monday.

The IAEA said Tehran had 3,500 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear facility, slightly more than earlier this year.

The organisation has been pressing Tehran for a response to western intelligence claims that Iran has covertly studied nuclear bombs.

Iran has denied that its uranium enrichment programme is being used for a nuclear weapon, insisting it is only for generating electricity.

Yeah, sure, that's it.

Jihad Watch reader Vince has alerted me to a review of my book The Truth About Muhammad by the respected blogger Gay Patriot. Vince has been kind enough to post my response there, but this review by "Average Gay Joe" was so curiously far from what the book actually says that I thought I'd post my response here also.

This reviewer seems to have read the book through thick lenses of his expectations. This is in no conceivable sense a work of “religious apologetics.” I do not argue for the falsehood of Islam or the truth of Christianity in it. I merely present the picture of Muhammad that is presented in the earliest Islamic sources about him, and show how modern-day terrorists invoke Muhammad to justify their actions. In the last chapter I advocate various measures to defend ourselves against and limit the power of political Islam, which threatens to overwhelm free and pluralistic societies in the West. To see this as some kind of call to return to medieval Christendom is to disregard entirely the words I actually wrote and to enter the realm of sheer fantasy. If “Average Gay Joe” would like to review what I actually wrote in The Truth About Muhammad, I would welcome that, but he does not do so here.

I might add that this book has been denounced by Hamas and Al-Arabiya, was banned in Pakistan, and got me numerous death threats. But amid all that none of those denouncing it ever took it to be a work of Christian apologetics. It took "Average Gay Joe" to imagine that.

Is it a coded message? An attempt to "strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah" (Qur'an 8:60)? Or something more?

"Terrorism: New al-Qaeda video calls for nuclear strike," by Hamza Boccolini for AKI, May 27 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Dubai, 27 May (AKI ) -- A new video called "Nuclear Terrorism" has been posted on the worldwide web calling for jihadists to use nuclear or chemical weapons to strike the west....

"Strike civilians in the west without mercy using weapons of mass destruction" is one of the calls made in the 39-minute video.

The question now being asked is whether the video is presenting a coded message or signalling an imminent terrorist attack.

Before the video was posted on the Arab internet forum Ekhlas a banner headline appeared on the website that said: "Pray, pray, Allah is great. America is destroyed by a fatal jihadist nuclear strike."

Clicking on the banner gives the viewer access to a documentary which shows diverse images - from al-Qaeda speeches to western documentaries and other Islamist videos.

The objective appears to be to incite followers of al-Qaeda to use weapons of mass destruction to strike the west, but there may be more to it.

The video opens with two verses of the Koran that emphasise "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". It then says "Fight them until there is no more persecution and Allah is the only object of worship. If they desist, there will be no hostility, except against those who are dishonest."

"Attack those who attack you. Fear Allah and know that Allah is with those who fear Him."

Not that this has anything to do with Islam. Read it all.

The way to divide the Camp of Islam and Jihad is to first identify those pre-existing fissures, large and small, that exist, and to figure out what should, or should not be done, to widen them.

I have written many times about what I think are the three main divisions or fissures:

1) The sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shi'a that may not be of great significance worldwide, given that the Shi'a constitute only about 15% of the world's Muslims.

However, those 15% are concentrated, are to be found mostly around the Gulf: in Iran, a Shi'a state, and in Iraq (65-70% Shi'a, especially in the south where the major oilfields are located), and in the oil-bearing Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and in various Gulf sheikdoms -- Bahrain (70% of the population), Kuwait (25%), and in two places that do not possess oil but are significant for local stability. The first is Lebanon, where the overbreeding by Shi'a now makes them the largest group in that country, and in Yemen, which, though without oil wealth, is populous and a potential threat to stability in both Saudi Arabia and in the Horn of Africa -- and with a population that is almost evenly divided between Sunnis and Shi'a.

A poster here at Jihad Watch recently made a series of statements in attempted rebuttal of my position, long available here, at the "Articles by Hugh Fitzgerald" link, from early 2004 -- a position from which I have not wavered, and which the news that arrives with each passing day convinces me, ever more deeply, that I have nothing to regret or to change.

I will number those statements, and answer them in turn.

#1. "So you are going to weaken the hold of Islam by directly telling the people who believe in it that it's a cult? And by insulting them? What's next - an inquisition? Convert of die?"

Infidels are not, in the West, fully aware of what Islam is all about. We cannot refrain from learning, ourselves or, still worse, refrain from disseminating to others, what Islam is all about, for fear that this will offend Muslims who in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere will eavesdrop on our own, internal discussions of what Islam is all about.

There are two different audiences. You apparently care more about the sensibilities of Muslims. I care about the understanding of non-Muslims, especially in Western Europe and North America. If one is too solicitous of the former, one does great harm to the latter.

Furthermore, you misunderstood me. I did not say that I think Americans or other Infidels should go out of our way to tell the inhabitants of Dar al-Islam that Islam bears all the hallmarks of what we would consider a cult, with its collectivism, and the fierce punishment it imposes on those who dare to decide for themselves what beliefs they wish to accept, and what to reject. We are the ones who should take Islam's measure, and be sure of it. Whether Muslims overhear us or not, as we start to learn more, should not inhibit us in the slightest.

You then write the following, like a fanatical civil libertarian who claims, as if it is an argument, that the slightest enlargement of investigative powers will inevitably lead to the Gestapo knocking on all our doors at night and that sort of thing: "What's next -- an inquisition? Convert or die?" This is too absurd to warrant a reply. I do hope that others will not have failed to notice it, and will, as I did, draw the appropriate conclusions.

In Human Events today I discuss the strange circumstances surrounding the departure of Ahmed Bedier from CAIR, and what it all may and may not mean. Joe Kaufman has a better piece on the same issue today at FrontPage, but meanwhile here is mine (links in the original):

Some mysterious dealings at the Tampa chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) highlight some of the peculiarities of that unsavory group. As terror expert Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project has noted, Ahmed Bedier, up until recently a rising star in the organization, has left his position as the executive director of CAIR-Tampa, and no one is saying why. Since Bedier has espoused numerous questionable positions in the past, could this parting of the ways could herald a new attempt by CAIR to leave behind some of its more radical positions?

CAIR has for years presented two faces to the American people. It says that its mission is “to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.” And it is a high-profile, active, successful organization. Law-enforcement officials all over the country have received sensitivity training from CAIR. The mainstream media routinely seeks it out for a moderate Muslim perspective.

“In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands with which we shall no doubt be invited to comply. Those demands may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty. I foresee and foretell that the policy of submission will carry with it restrictions upon the freedom of speech and debate in Parliament, on public platforms, and discussions in the press, for it will be said--indeed, I hear it said sometimes now - that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians. Then, with a press under control, in part direct but more potently indirect, with every organ of public opinion doped and chloroformed into acquiescence, we shall be conducted along further stages of our journey.” -- Winston Churchill

No kidding. "Al-Qaeda urges attacks on US interests in Yemen," from Deutsche Presse Agentur, May 26:

Sanaa (Yemen), May 26 (DPA) The Al Qaeda terrorist network asked Monday its supporters in Yemen to limit their attacks to “effective” operations against US and foreign interests in the Arab country. In a statement posted on the Islamic al-Ikhlas network website, Al Qaeda has purportedly urged its loyalists to “bring back the days of attacks, such as the one on the USS destroyer Cole and the French ship.”

“Those operations are bound to have an effect on people now,” the network said in the statement.

Al Qaeda was behind attacks on the USS destroyer Cole in 2000 while it was harboured in the Yemeni port of Aden and the French tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen in 2002.

The network advised its supporters to focus on US targets and to avoid attacks on other targets for the time being.

“Targeting a house of (President) Ali Salih will not serve the purpose. Neither will the killing of a Yemeni soldier in a Yemeni village,” al-Qaeda said.

It's bad for business. Stick to infidel targets.

The Yemeni and Iraqi police forces are not similar because the Iraqi police serve as tools in the hands of the crusaders, the network said.

Al Qaeda sanctions attacks on Iraq’s security forces and members of government and administration, saying they serve US occupation forces.

Last March, scarcely a day after Geert Wilders's film Fitna was released on LiveLeak, LiveLeak pulled it, explaining:

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else....

We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

LiveLeak restored the film shortly thereafter. Apparently they made security arrangements that made them think they could take the risk. But in their announcement, they enunciated a principle that could fittingly serve as the epitaph of the West: In the end the price was too high.

That is exactly the opposite of the great principles of those whom we remember today, who fought and died so that we could today live free.

It is the polar opposite of John Stark's "Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."

It is the mortal enemy of Patrick Henry's "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Ελευθερια η Θανατος!

Libertad o muerte!

Today, we remember and honor those who made the supreme sacrifice for us. Let us not let them down by choosing the chains and slavery of dhimmitude because in the end the price -- the price they paid -- was too high.

Why is this controversial? Christianity, like Islam, is a missionary faith. Muslims, as Mohammed Rasheed/Nicky Reilly newly reminds us, are energetically proselytizing among Christians. But no, say the dhimmi bishops, it is not a two-way street.

If no coercion is involved, why should anyone object to proselytizing appeals? Close the front door if you don't want to talk to the Mormons. But they haven't hurt you by knocking. Islam is the only faith that carries an earthly penalty for those who reject the invitation to convert -- and that is what ought to be a matter of concern for these bishops, but of course it isn't.

"Church of England row over Muslim conversion," by George Pitcher in the Telegraph, May 26 (thanks to Christopher):

A row has erupted within the Church of England over calls for British Muslims to be converted to Christianity.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, accused the Church of failing in its duty to "welcome people of other faiths" ahead of a motion at July's General Synod in York urging a strategy for evangelising Muslims.

However, his comments were condemned by senior figures within the Church. The Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, the former Bishop of Hulme and the newly appointed Bishop of Urban Life and Faith, said: "Both the Bishop of Rochester's reported comments and the synod private members' motion show no sensitivity to the need for good inter-faith relations. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs are learning to respect one another's paths to God and to live in harmony. This demand for the evangelisation of people of other faiths contributes nothing to our communities."

A Church of England spokesman added: "We have a mission-focused Christian presence in every community, including those where there are a large number of Muslims. That engagement is based on the provisions of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides for freedom of thought, conscience and religion."

The spokesman played down the likelihood of the synod agenda being hijacked by those whose priority was a perceived threat from Islam: "The agenda has not yet been confirmed."

Pakistan-born Dr Nazir-Ali told the Mail on Sunday that, while Church leaders had rightly shown sensitivity to British Muslims, "I think it may have gone too far."

He added: "Our nation is rooted in the Christian faith and that is the basis of welcoming people of other faiths. You cannot have an honest conversation on the basis of fudge."...

“And the Poets, it is those straying in Evil who follow them…”

This is a Meccan sura; its name comes from v. 224, which tells us that only those who are going astray follow the poets. The import of this is that Muhammad, of course, is not a poet, and the Qur’an not merely a poetical work, but a divine revelation, although the pagans of Mecca persistently refuse to accept this.

And that refusal causes Muhammad constant distress (verses 2-9). Allah worries that Muhammad will fret himself to death over their unbelief (v. 3), and assures him that if he willed, he could send down a sign that would make them all believe (v. 4). However, there no sooner comes a new message from Allah than they reject it (v. 5) – but soon they will discover that it really is true (v. 6). Haven’t they even seen on earth the many signs of Allah’s power (vv. 7-8)?

In February, Hussain and 24 other Muslims joined a statewide lawsuit against Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI for what they called unusually lengthy delays in processing their citizenship applications. Some waited as long as five years.

''The lawsuit helped my application. I have been waiting so long,'' said Hussain, an Orlando machinist from Iraq. -- from this article

Why is Hussain, a "machinist from Iraq," here in the United States? If he were ever a "refugee" he is a refugee no longer. He has no special skills that are desperately needed in this country. Why isn't he back home, working hard to build the new Iraq? If he is a Shi'a Arab, then Shi'a Arabs have, thanks to the American invasion, inherited Iraq, or at least Baghdad and all points south, including the major oilfields. If he is a Sunni (not everyone named "Hussain" need be a Shi'a) he has all of the area west and north of Baghdad, save where the Kurds now run things.

Why is he here? Is he here because he must be here to avoid persecution? From Muslim countries, the only justified immigration should be that of non-Muslims. They are the ones who have a legitimate case to be here to avoid persecution. Does Hussain, the machinist from Iraq, fully support the American Constitution? Does he even understand its contents? Or is such understanding no longer necessary in order to obtain American citizenship?

The Alawite despotism may seem to be calling the shots in Lebanon, but it is Hizballah that, by enraging the Sunnis in Lebanon, may cause all kinds of problems for the Alawites of Syria.

The Alawites who rule Syria constitute 12% of the population. Though they make up the officer corps, still -- there are those pesky non-Alawites among the men to worry about. Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood started to attack the Alawites in force. They murdered 82 Alawite cadets -- the entire graduating class -- of Syria's military academy, as part of an anti-regime, anti-Alawite campaign. They attacked police and other symbols of government authority.

"In a statement to ABC News about Parsley's comments, McCain's campaign said the senator 'obviously strongly rejects such statements.'” -- from this article

Senator McCain both "obviously" and "strongly" rejects "such statements"?

Why "obviously"?

And why "strongly"?

If he wishes to object to "such statements," he should not fall back on the word "obviously," but tell us what about those statements he objects to. For it is not "obvious" at all what about them is objectionable.

In the Times a few days ago Ethan Bonner notes that most Israeli "strategists and generals" have "said that giving up the strategic advantage of the Heights in exchange for promises or even written treaties makes no sense."

And he quotes Dore Gold: "In a world in which Iran is on the march and extending its influence from Lebanon to Iraq, for Israel to consider giving up the Golan barrier would be a strategic error of the highest order."

But, having given that side its due, he gives more weight to those who think what Olmert is doing is just the ticket:

"On the other hand, many other [how many other?] Israeli officials and analysts see great benefits for Israel. Syria is a prime sponsor of Hezbollah and provides it with rockets and arms, many from Iran. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have headquarters in Damascus, and Israel will seek, in these negotiations, to have them closed.”

And he ends with this, that is not attributed to the beliefs of "many others" but stated, as if it were a fact of which we have all taken judicial notice:

What would Israel get for giving up the Golan Heights, a tangible and, many generals think, an indispensable asset?

Oh, it would get a promise, by the trustworthy Syrian government, to end its support of Hizballah. But how likely is it that that promise would be kept? Doesn’t the Syrian elite depend for its wellbeing on what it can milk from cash-cow Lebanon? And isn’t Hizballah the best, or by now the only way, that Syria can continue to hold onto its role, and that moo-cow milking, in Lebanon? Besides, given how Hizballah has managed to arm and re-arm again and again, and given that Hamas itself, without any Syria to trans-ship Iranian arms, is threat enough, why would one give up such a tangible asset for the sake of a promise when, if the Syrian Alawites are to stay in power, they must always try to placate the real Muslims by being plus royalists que le roi, and the currency of that is always, for Muslim Arabs, how fervent one is in anti-Israeli activities?

The Golem of Hebrew legend is a creature who is formed of inanimate clay, but is wonder-working and beneficent. However, in modern Hebrew slang the word “golem” is used, presumably because only the “made from inanimate clay” part is implicated, to refer to someone who is stupid, who is a fool.

It is hard to believe that at this moment Olmert, the current Prime Minister of Israel, whose popularity level is below 10%, who is widely seen has having been responsible for unnecessary Israeli casualties toward the end of the 2006 war against Hezbollah, who is now under investigation -- as he has been so often in his life -- for suspected corruption, and who is, therefore, pulling a Sharon, attempting to divert attention from his legal troubles, is trying to win at least some temporary popularity for his putative peace-making by agreeing to discuss the possibility of handing back the Golan Heights to Syria.

Earlier today I posted denials from the Iraqi press, via Gateway Pundit, that Ayatollah Sistani was issuing anti-American fatwas. I did not, however, look closely at what the denials actually said. The ever-perceptive Diana West did, however, and she kindly sent in the following comments on the Iraqi announcement:

This is from a source close to the Office of the religious authority, Mr. Ali al-Sistani in Najaf today, Friday, blasted some news sites and denied that op-Sistani "is preparing to issue a fatwa calling for armed resistance against occupation".

West: "The AP reported he was issuing fatwas privately, not preparing to make a general announcement."

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, in an interview with "Newsmatik", "There is no truth to this irresponsible rumors in whole or even in part."

Source added that from the beginning of religious authority from the outset is that "Iraq is not ready for jihad or a military confrontation for the time being, after the devastation left by the great wars of the former regime."

West: "Iraq is not ready for jihad ... for the time being???"

The source said that Sistani "supports the resistance to the occupation, but not by military means, for the time being."

West: "'Occupation'? Not by 'military' means? Great. 'For the time being'? This is not exactly an overwhelming endorsement of US efforts!"

Indeed not. Sistani is, as his infamous list of unclean things shows, an orthodox Shi'ite, and these statements make it clear that he is also an orthodox believer in jihad, and as such supports Sharia and opposes the American presence in Iraq. In other words, he is about as far as anyone can get from the moderate supporter of democracy that American analysts have made him out to be.

More evidence of this comes from Juan Cole (thanks again to Diana West). Now, the only thing that Juan Cole and I have in common is that we are both carbon-based life forms, and I have never known him to be particularly fair or accurate in dealing with the realities of the jihad ideology, but I have no reason to believe he is fabricating this material. If anyone has any such information, please send it to me and I will post it. But this is in character with Sistani as we have always seen him and reported about him here at Jihad Watch:

Fars News reproduces in Persian on May 24, 2008, another anti-American fatwa by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf. It says that its correspondent in Najaf reports that an Iraqi Shiite submitted the following to Sistani:

'I sell foodstuffs. Sometimes the Occupying Powers or their associates come to my establishment. May I sell them foodstuffs?'

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani replied:

' Selling foodstuffs to the Occupying Powers is not permitted.'

Last I knew, the US military in Iraq does not buy its food from Iraqis but rather imports it, for fear that Iraqi nationalists might poison it. But I'm told US soldiers do buy food and snacks from Shiite shops in Baghdad when out on patrol. So the fatwa would affect the latter but not the former. But if Sistani is laying the grounds for a Gandhi-style non-cooperation movement, he certainly could put a crimp in the American military's style in Iraq. I can't imagine US troops could function in the Shiite south or much of Baghdad without Shiite cooperation. Sistani still has a great deal of moral authority, and would be backed by less cautious clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Jawad al-Khalisi.

This fatwa is significant in light of the reports that Sistani has been orally permitting attacks on US troops by Shiite militiamen loyal to the Shiite religious authorities in Najaf.

Then an Iranian news service reported yesterday that Sistani is also coming out against the proposed mutual security agreement between the United States and Iraq that is intended to serve as a Status of Forces Agreement after the United Nations Security Council authorization for US troops to be in Iraq expires in December.

See also Diana's post at her blog about Sistani's reaction to the Qur'an-shooting.

What the Mohammed Rasheed (Nicky Reilly) case tells us.

"MI5 fears jihadis will use mentally ill as suicide bombers," by David Leppard and Abul Taher for the Sunday Times, May 25 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

Islamic terrorists may be targeting mentally disturbed or disabled people in Britain in a bid to form a new “brigade” of home-grown suicide bombers, security officials fear.

MI5 and police say the case of Nicky Reilly, who is being held over a nailbomb attack last week in Exeter, may indicate a new strategy of targeting vulnerable people with mental health problems to carry out attacks.

A counterterrorism official said MI5 was investigating the extent to which Reilly had been manipulated by a “charismatic” Al-Qaeda recruiter.

“It is a grotesque concept but they are using people who are clearly mentally subnormal,” the official said. “We know they have clever radicalisers who will take advantage of anyone they think they can manipulate, whether they have an IQ of 60 or 140,” he said.

Reilly, 22, is a Muslim convert who has spent time detained in a mental health hospital. He has been described as a shambling introvert with the mental age of a 10-year-old. He is believed to have Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, and may also suffer from schizophrenia.

Security officials say Al-Qaeda appears to have exported the tactic from Iraq, where disabled “foot soldiers” have been used to devastating effect....

Devon and Cornwall Deputy Chief Constable Tony Melville said Reilly appeared to be a "vulnerable" individual who had been "preyed upon" and "radicalised".

He said: “Our investigations so far indicate that Reilly, who has a history of mental illness, had adopted the Islamic faith.

We believe that he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of."

Reilly was arrested by police at the scene of the explosion. He suffered lacerations to his eye and some facial burning after one device exploded. -- from this story

Mohammed Rasheed, aka Nicky Reilly, is said to be a half-wit -- not a half-wit in the Garaudy or Galloway or Chomsky sense, each quite capable of low cunning, but a half-wit in the literal sense. And it is a quite plausible claim. For Muslim "activists" (fine word, activists -- its awfulness reflecting the awfulness of all "activists") are good at identifying, for the purposes of Da'wa, target populations of the economically and psychically marginal.

The explosive Mr. Reilly of Exeter turns out, unsurprisingly, to be a man with a history of mental illness, who was "preyed upon and radicalised" by Muslims.

At Jihad Watch we have never shared in the general enthusiasm for the Ayatollah Sistani, with his classification of unbelievers as "unclean" on a par with blood, urine, and feces, but there is no doubt about which side the mainstream media is on in Iraq, and it appears that the AP story we posted here on May 22 is inaccurate.

Gateway Pundit (thanks to Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi) has details from the Iraqi press, including a denial from Sistani's office.

This instance of media irresponsibility and dishonesty illustrates yet again the "Good News is No News" dictum about which the estimable David Chavarria writes at Outside the Wire: "It is an interesting look at how news from Iraq is 'made.' As I watched and listened to this interview, I couldn't help asking myself, 'Is this the way all / most reporters are? If it is, how much does that skew the news we get?'"

A great deal, my friend. A great deal, and not just in relation to Iraq, either.

UPDATE: Not so fast.

In "UC Irvine Still Enforcing Sharia Law" by Jonathan Constantine Movroydis and Reut Cohen at Pajamas Media, May 22, we see how dhimmi university administrators allow Muslim students to enforce Sharia provisions (no filming of the "sisters") on the campus of a public university:

...The featured speaker last Thursday, May 15, was Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, a radical imam from Oakland who is all too familiar to UCI students. Malik-Ali frequently engages in anti-Western rhetoric and is a vocal supporter of terrorist groups. Not only has he praised Hamas, Hezbollah, and the mujahadeen in Afghanistan as “Islamic resistance” movements struggling against Western “oppressors,” he has called any scrutiny of these terror groups mere “propaganda.” Following Ali’s speeches to UCI’s MSU, the audiences of keffiyah-wearing Muslim students always repetitively recite the battle cry “Takbir! Allahu Akbar!” This year’s audience was no different.

While his rhetoric is lurid and apocalyptic, Malik-Ali’s speech is protected under the First Amendment. What’s alarming is the administration’s willingness to enforce the MSU’s prerogatives on other students who attend their events — hence the application of Sharia law where the Bill of Rights is applicable. For example, while videotaping Malik-Ali’s speech, we were confronted by a school administrator. Dean of Student Services Sally Peterson told us that, on behalf of the male students, we would have to stop filming the female activists, or as she called them “the sisters.” Aware of our rights, we refused her orders and continued covering the event.

As we continued our coverage of the festivities, members of the MSU ultimately decided to enforce what appears to be their own principle of just retribution. After Thursday’s event, the MSU walked up and down the main campus road chanting anti-Israel slogans and blocking off the entire walkway for several minutes while police and administrators stood by idly.

A male individual, who was filming the hateful procession, had at least three Muslim males charge at him for daring to film as the females from the group walked past. One of the males, a student named Yasser Ahmed who purportedly threw a cinderblock at an FBI vehicle last year, said to the cameraman: “You wanna get jacked! We can go get jacked right now! C’mon Emanuel, we’ve learned a lot about you let’s go! Lets go get jacked, Lets go get jacked!”

The UCI police department treated this incident unprofessionally and took no action. The student journalist gave his statement to a UCI police officer and explained how he was assaulted. The officer then went to take statements from the males MSU members. The police would not, however, take statements from those who witnessed the assault against the student journalist. After the police officer took statements, he told the student journalist that one of the males who charged at him had apologized and that nothing more could be done.

A Christian preacher on campus, Michael Venyah, also had his rights violated last Thursday. This preacher, who believes that all people must accept Jesus in order to get into heaven, began preaching about the prophet Mohammad and his crimes. Evidently, MSU members didn’t like hearing what he had to say and opted for charging and running into him. This was clearly an incident of assault. The cops present did nothing, and Dean of Judicial Affairs Edgar Dormitorio suggested that Mr. Venyah should leave.

Another case of MSU’s vigilantism occurred when a young Jewish female was followed back to her car and surrounded by six members of the MSU. A community member who witnessed the harassment also had her civil rights violated when the Muslim students noticed her. As UC Irvine police offers stood idly by, the Muslim students proceeded to situate themselves on the hood of her car in order to photograph her face, her vehicle identification number, and her license plate. When she later called the police department for answers, they justified the criminal behavior as the culmination of a tit for tat ethnic squabble. Put simply, they justified the need for Muslim students to “vent,” as they were just getting back at the Jews.

One group at UC Irvine has monopolized freedom of speech and expression. MSU organizers have taken it upon themselves to restrict the freedoms of others on the university campus and have managed to avoid significant criticism from the administration. Conversely, those who voice concern over MSU’s actions are depicted as stirring up trouble....

Read it all.

$300 a month. "Iran 'paid Iraq insurgents to kill UK soldiers,'" by Sean Rayment for the Telegraph, May 25 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Iran has secretly paid Iraqi insurgents hundreds of thousands of American dollars to kill British soldiers, according to a leaked government document obtained by The Telegraph.

The allegations are contained in a confidential "field report" written by a British officer who served in Basra during one of the most dangerous periods of the conflict. The report, which has never been made public, shows the full level of Iran's involvement in the insurgency for the first time.

The document states that the Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) – also known as the Mahdi Army – one of the most violent insurgent groups operating in Basra, used money from Iran to recruit and pay young unemployed men up to $300 (£150) a month to carry out attacks against the British. The findings have been passed to the highest levels in the military....

The unindicted co-conspirator CAIR tries to stop a police training course that sounds more realistic than most. "But Solomon Bradman, CEO of Security Solutions International, which is conducting the program, said, 'I can't take the responsibility of my course linking their religion to terrorism. I think their religion got linked to terrorism a long time ago.'"

Solomon Bradman is a clear-sighted and honest man.

"Does course on Islam give law enforcers wrong idea?," by Janet I. Tu for the Seattle Times, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Some local Muslim community members are upset about a training course for local law enforcement, saying it could promote stereotypes and ethnic and religious profiling.

The program, called "The Threat of Islamic Jihadists to the World" and conducted by a Miami-based company, began Thursday and continues today at the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission campus in Burien.

It is billed as providing insight into the formative phases of Islam, the religion's different branches, radical Islam and how to respond to terrorist acts.

But Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said the program appears to be linking an entire religion to terrorism.

"Most police officers don't have a basic grounding in Islam, so before you teach them about Islam, how can you teach them about radical Islam?" he asked. "It just makes you nervous because when a law-enforcement person pulls someone over, when they see a Muslim person or someone who appears Muslim to them — all this information they just learned kicks in."

See? If you inform police about the violent teachings of Islam, they will end up victimizing innocent people!

It's a canny charge. He is trying to push the victim buttons that have always worked so well for CAIR. But on what is it based? Absolutely nothing.

Bukhari believes the need for police training on issues of profiling and bias was highlighted by an incident last summer in which the FBI launched an international search for two men who took photos below deck on a Washington state ferry. The FBI announced earlier this month that the men were tourists, not terrorists.

Even if that is true, it has nothing to do with what they have learned or not learned about Islam. According to reports at the time, these two men "had more than the average interest in the working parts of the ferry, the layout of the ferry, the size of it -- more than you would see in normal passenger."

If Islam is a religion of peace, are we supposed to be not concerned about Muslims acting suspiciously, even if an investigation shows that there was nothing untoward going on?

Bukhari said law-enforcement agencies need to learn about Islam, but not just in the context of terrorism.

But Solomon Bradman, CEO of Security Solutions International, which is conducting the program, said, "I can't take the responsibility of my course linking their religion to terrorism. I think their religion got linked to terrorism a long time ago."

The purpose of the course, Bradman said, is to teach officers how to protect people from terrorism. His company has provided training to hundreds of agencies, including the FBI, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security.

The two-day program covers some of the history of Islam to provide an "understanding of the terror mind-set and reasons for global jihad," Bradman said. It's not intended to be an all-inclusive course on Islam.

There are other organizations, such as CAIR, that have worked with law-enforcement agencies to provide that broader training, he said....

Quite so.

"Islam does not recognise boundaries and jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan will continue," said Mehsud, as we noted earlier. This kind of talk has made the Karzai government nervous, and for very good reason.

"Afghanistan urges Pakistan to stop attacks," from AFP, May 24 (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

KABUL (AFP) — Pakistan must not allow its soil to be used to launch attacks in Afghanistan, the government said Saturday after a Pakistani militant vowed to continue "jihad" while pursuing peace talks with Islamabad.

The statement by Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud Saturday was "naked interference" in Afghanistan's affairs, defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.

"Our hope from the Pakistan government is to prevent its soil being used against our country," Azimi said.

One would hope, but it may not even be able to do so even if it wanted to.

Last December, this article noted: "Families in predominantly Kurdish southeast Turkey are pressing young daughters or wives to take their own lives to spare the men of the family from serving time." Given the prevalence of honor killings in the region, one can't help but wonder if the surge in suicides is more of the same.

"Surge in violence against women in Iraqi Kurdistan," by Shwan Mohammad for Agence France-Presse, May 24:

Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called "honour" killings and female suicides on the increase.

"At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone," a doctor told AFP in the region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.

"Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances" -- apparently the victims of "honour" killings.

"Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves," the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

According to Kurdish regional government figures, in Sulaimaniyah province alone more than 50 women attempted suicide by burning in the first four months of the year and another eight tried to hang themselves.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq has regularly highlighted "honour" killings of Kurdish women as being among the country's most severe human rights abuses.

Most such crimes are reported as deaths caused by accidental fires in the home.

Aso Kamal, a 42-year-old British Kurdish Iraqi campaigner, says that between 1991 and 2007, 12,500 women were murdered for "honour" reasons or committed suicide in the country's three Kurdish provinces.

The Kurdish autonomous region runs its own affairs and has enjoyed relative peace and growing prosperity since the US-led invasion of 2003, while Arab areas of Iraq have been plunged into sectarian warfare.

But crimes against women continue despite campaigns by human rights activists and repeated condemnation by women members of the regional government and parliament.

Most of the attacks are carried out by close relatives who believe the victims' behaviour to have been immoral. Desperate to escape the cycle of domestic violence, many women turn to suicide.

The Kurdish region's first centre dedicated to tackling domestic violence against women opened in Sulaimaniyah last October, and provides psychological support and legal advice to victims in complete confidentiality.

"Even if the phenomenon is deeply embedded in the historical roots of our region, it has become alarmingly commonplace in recent months," Layla Abdullah, president of the separate Kurdish women's rights group the Aram Shelter, said.

"In 2004, 48 female victims of domestic violence found refuge at the association in order to escape death," Abdullah said.

"The number rose to 71 in 2007, and now it stands at 25 for the first four months of this year," she added.

In 2002 the Kurdish government abolished a law which reduced the penalties for those convicted of "honour" crimes, but this has still not eradicated the violence, according to those fighting to protect Kurdish women's rights.

In November 2007, Kurdish human rights minister Aziz Mohammed acknowledged that domestic violence occurred in northern Iraq.

"Domestic violence, sexual abuse, death threats, insults, forced marriages, kidnapping, being forced to leave school... these are the problems which confront the women of Kurdistan," a ministry report said, adding that most victims were between 13 and 18 years old.

Paradoxically, Kurdish women are deeply involved in the region's political process with 28 in the 111-seat parliament and three holding ministerial positions.

"Suicide attempts by traumatised women are on the increase," said Bakhshan Zangana, who heads the parliamentary women's group.

"We must discuss and find a solution to this situation. Suicide is clearly one of the consequences of domestic violence and cruelty."

Islamic Tolerance Alert. "Algeria: Court pressures woman to renounce Christ," from Compass Direct News, May 23:

ISTANBUL, May 23 (Compass Direct News) – An Algerian public prosecutor has demanded a three-year sentence for a convert to Christianity in western Algeria for practicing her faith “without license.”

Habiba Kouider, 35, was plucked off an inter-city bus outside of her home town of Tiaret on March 29 when police found several Bibles and books on Christianity in her hand bag. Held for 24 hours and interrogated by police regarding her conversion, Kouider was eventually brought before a state prosecutor.

“You reinstate Islam and I will [drop the case]; if you persist in sin you will undergo the lightning of justice,” the prosecutor told her, according to French daily Le Figaro.

Algerian daily el Watan reported on Wednesday (May 21) that Kouider “refused to give up her new faith under the pressure,” prompting the prosecutor to bring charges against her. She is accused of “practicing non-Muslims religious rites without a license,” according to a copy of the written charge obtained by Compass.

“It’s as if they are saying that if someone becomes a Christian they have to get permission,” said one Christian from Tiaret.

A Tiaret city court judge reportedly mocked Kouider for her conversion four years prior.

“The priests made you drink the water which leads to paradise?” asked the judge, according to a May 20 article in Le Figaro.

Mocking and conflating baptism and John 4:4-26. We're told Islam respects all monotheistic religions and prophets, but clearly all bets are off once one tries to convert to from Islam to one of those faiths.

At the hearing, Kouider’s defense lawyer told the court that the charge against her client did not exist in the law.

“There is no trace of a possible reason to try individuals for the ‘practice of non-Muslim worship without authorization,’” Khelloudja Khalfoun said, according to el Watan. She added, “Which authority, moral or administrative, is entitled to authorize the practice of this or that religion?”

Baseless Charge

A well known human rights lawyer and a native of Tizi Ouzou, 200 miles west of Tiaret, Khalfoun agreed to take Kouider’s case after local lawyers refused to represent the Christian.

Passed in February 2006, a law governing non-Muslim worship has been cited in a number of arrests and trials of Algerian Christians this year. The law, known as Ordinance 06-03, outlaws proselytism of Muslims, as well as the distribution, production and storing of material used for this purpose.

Khalfoun said she believed there was no evidence with which to try her client for proselytism, outlawed under Article 11 of Ordinance 06-03.

“When my client was stopped, she was not preaching,” the lawyer told the court. “She did not distribute Bibles. She was alone on a bus.”

The public prosecutor countered with arguments that Kouider’s Christian literature was meant for more than personal use, based on the fact that she was carrying several copies of the same book.

“What were you doing with a dozen copies of the same book?” he asked, according to el Watan. “You planned to distribute them, to preach the Christian word.”

Algerian human rights defenders said that charges against Kouider were baseless.

“Having Bibles in one’s possession is not an offense,” Mustapha Bouchachi of the Algerian League of Human Rights told el Watan. “Absolutely no legal text exists that requires such an authorization [to practice non-Muslim religious rites].”

The Tiaret court is scheduled to deliver Kouider’s verdict on Tuesday (May 27), the same day as the first hearing in the trial of six other Tiaret Christians detained this month. Picked up on May 9 while leaving a prayer meeting and released 24 hours later, the converts are charged with “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims.”

‘Witch Hunt’

A total of 10 Christians visiting or residing in Tiaret have been detained or tried on religious grounds since January. More than half of the country’s 50 Protestant churches, many of which meet in homes, have been ordered to close down.

In addition, a barrage of news articles has warned of sinister plans by Christians to evangelize Algeria.

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, explains why May 21, 2008 is a date that should live in infamy.

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now…. Oh, what a fall was there… Then I, and you, and all of us fell down.” .--William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar,” Act 3, Scene 1 May 21, 2008, is a date—like December 7 (1941) and September 11 (2001)—that should now live in infamy. Yet who will notice, mourn, or act the wiser for it?

On that day, the Beirut spring was buried under the reign of Hizballah.

Speaking on October 5, 1938, after Britain and France effectively turned Czechoslovakia over to Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill said, “What everybody would like to ignore or forget must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat….”[i]

In contrast, Assistant Secretary of State David Welch said that the agreement over Lebanon was, "A necessary and positive step." At least when one sells out a country one should recognize this has happened rather than pretend otherwise. But this is precisely what took place at Munich, when the deal made was proclaimed as a concession that brought peace and resolved Germany’s last territorial demand in the region.

Churchill knew better and his words perfectly suit the situation in Lebanon today:

“The utmost [Western diplomacy] has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia…has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching the victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.”

Yes, that’s it exactly. On every point, Hizballah, Iran, and Syria, got all they wanted from Lebanon’s government: its surrender of sovereignty. They have veto power over the government; one-third of the cabinet; election changes to ensure victory in the next balloting; and they will have their candidate installed as president.

This is the fruit, of course, of talking about terrorism rather than jihad. In "Republicans and Our Enemies" in the Wall Street Journal, May 23 (thanks to George), Senator Joe Biden shows that he, like almost everyone else, still has no idea of the ideology motivating jihad terrorists:

The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

"If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win." That is true. But if Biden can't see the ideology unifying significant numbers of Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, people in Iraq and Iran, and al Qaeda and Shiite militias, he is just as clueless as those he is criticizing.

Here, Senator, is a good recent capsule description of that ideology.

We're still waiting for a government to say, "Grow up." An update on this story.

"Japan says Muslim offense at cartoon 'regrettable,'" from Japan Today, May 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

TOKYO — The government said in a statement Friday that it is ‘‘regrettable’’ that a section of a Japanese cartoon has sparked an outcry in the Muslim world and stressed the need to foster understanding to prevent similar incidents in the future. ‘‘While it resulted from carelessness, the Japanese government considers it regrettable that Muslims’ feelings were hurt by the content of some of the cartoon,’’ Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Kazuo Kodama said. ‘‘In any case, we think it is important to prevent a recurrence by fostering understanding and respect for other religions and cultures.’’

The statement came a day after Japanese publisher Shueisha Inc and Another Push Pin Planning Co, which created the animated images, apologized for offending Muslims but insisted the detail had simply been overlooked and there was no intention of showing any disrespect for the Quran. At issue is a 90-second segment from ‘‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure,’’ which depicts Dio Brando, a villain, picking up a Quran from a bookshelf and apparently examining it as he orders the execution of the hero and his friends.

Oh, that never happens!

I thought they were just nationalists fighting against American imperialism. What are you, al-Libi, some kind of Islamophobe?

"Terrorism: Al-Qaeda halts spread of the church in Arab world, claims leader," from AKI, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Dubai, 23 May (AKI) - A senior al-Qaeda leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, claims that the terror organisation has stopped the expansion of the church in the Arab world.

"If it wasn't for our heroes, today we would have many churches in the Arabian Peninsula, as we have already seen with the opening of one in Qatar," said al-Libi in a video message posted to Islamist websites.

He was referring to the Catholic church inaugurated in the Qatari capital, Doha, in March this year.

Al-Libi also talked about the "danger" posed by inter-religious dialogue between the Arab Ulema or Muslim religious leaders and their Christian counterparts.

The 40-minute message entitled, "The moderation of Islam and the moderation of defeat", seeks to refute the notion of a moderate Islam.

"At this moment there is a crusader campaign against Islam and that has succeeded in corrupting the personalities in our religion," al-Libi said.

"Changes in Islamic thought are happening in particular in the most important Arab countries. With the excuse of moderation, they are corrupting our faith."

Here again we see the jihadist claim to represent Islamic purity.

"Neighborhood Bully," 1983:

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man,
His enemies say he's on their land.
They got him outnumbered about a million to one,
He got no place to escape to, no place to run.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive,
He's criticized and condemned for being alive.
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin,
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in.
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land,
He's wandered the earth an exiled man.
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn,
He's always on trial for just being born.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized,
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad.
The bombs were meant for him.
He was supposed to feel bad.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him,
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac.
He's the neighborhood bully.

He got no allies to really speak of.
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love.
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone,
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon.
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand,
In bed with nobody, under no one's command.
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon,
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on.
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth,
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill,
Running out the clock, time standing still,
Neighborhood bully.

Mehsud affirms the traditional supranational unity of the Islamic umma, and portrays himself as a "true Muslim," which is always and everywhere the substance of the jihadist appeal in the Islamic world. "Pakistani Taliban vows jihad in Afghanistan," from Reuters, May 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

KOTKAI, Pakistan - The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed on Saturday to carry on fighting NATO and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan regardless of negotiations for a peace deal with the government of Pakistan.

The Taliban leader told a group of journalists, invited to his stronghold in the tribal lands of South Waziristan, that he wanted to stop fighting the Pakistan army.

"Fighting between the Taliban and Pakistan is harming Islam and Pakistan. This fighting should come to an end immediately," the black-bearded, short, muscular Mehsud said.

But he made no commitment about halting attacks in Afghanistan, and said the jihad, or holy war, would carry on.

"Islam does not recognise frontiers and boundaries. Jihad in Afghanistan will continue," Mehsud said, as guards carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles looked on.

Mehsud emerged as a notorious militant commander over the past year, having been linked to a string of suicide attacks, including one that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto last December....

Mehsud said he had never met al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden or Taliban chief Mullah Omar.

"But, like every true Muslim, I wish to have a glimpse of these two great leaders," he added....

Imagine my surprise, after Benazir Bhutto attacked me from the grave, when I received this email from Bilawal Zardari. This one immediately lays claim to being the second-best money-scam spam ever:

Hello,

I want to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation to you for your support during the hour of need. The enemy gave us a huge blow when they took the life of my dear mother. As a matter of fact, I do not know you personally except your contact details I got from her address book but I just have to pass on my sincere appreciation, also for the feat we were able to record at the last elections despite her absence as she was the party leader until her brutal assassination. The victory was to all Pakistanis as it clearly demonstrated their commitment to the course she stood and died for.

Losing her is the hardest thing I've been through all my life, but knowing that she was a hero to many people does comfort me. I know she would appreciate what everyone did for her. All we just crave for now is for her killing be probed by an international team under the United Nations. It is the only hope we have of getting the possible plotters of her murder properly investigated. Only this would help us convince our supporters that there was some element of collusion between her murderers and agents of President Musharaf who were determined to get rid of her.

While acknowledging receipt of this correspondence please do advise if you are capable of taking custody of some funds she deposited with a private vault in the Netherlands till I find a safe way to receive it here.

Very sincerely,

Bilawal Zardari.
(Co-Chairman, PPP)
www.ppp.org.pk

What? No "hate" here! This Mohammed Rasheed (Nicky Reilly) character, he had trouble pronouncing his T's, and so he must have been mentally ill, and so he must have been led into "extremism" that way.

UK Nail Bombing Update. "Islamic Friend Of Reilly 'Stunned' At Bomb Plot," from thisisplymouth.co.uk, May 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

An Islamic friend of terror suspect Nick Reilly says he is stunned at his suspected bomb plot.

Reilly, aged 22, converted to Islam about six years ago and worshipped with him at Plymouth University and the Islamic Centre at Greenbank Avenue.

He became friends with Omar Siddiqui, aged 22, who is president of the Islamic Society at the university.

Omar knew him by his adopted name of Mohammed Rasheed and says he is amazed at what he is alleged to have attempted.

He says the 3,500 strong Muslim community in Plymouth are moderate and he knows of no groups which would have preached hate.

Of course not! Never mind that the Channel 4 documentary uncovering jihadist preaching in British mosques has been vindicated. Nope, no jihadists here!

Fellow worshippers at the mosque at a former Labour Party office in Plymouth said they were shocked at the arrest.

Shocked!

Reilly stood out among the congregation because he is 14 stone, 6 ft 3 inches and white.

He had grown a long beard in the past but in recent months has been clean shaven.
Neighbours say Reilly had become increasingly extreme in his religion and had images of the Twin Towers attack as the screensaver on his computer.

Devon and Cornwall deputy chief constable Tony Melville named Reilly as the suspected bomber and said:"He has a history of mental illness and had adopted the Islamic faith.

"We believe that despite his vulnerable state he has been preyed upon, radicalized and taken advantage of."

Omar, who plays cricket for Plymouth University where he is the racial equality officer at the student union, says he cannot believe Reilly was radicalized in the city.

Omar said: "The Islamic community in Plymouth is very peaceful and we have never had any problems her at the mosque or the university.

"We get a lot of racial abuse in Plymouth, especially females, but we have always encouraged everyone to integrate with the local community.

"I absolutely hate terrorism. Islam does not condone it. It says if you kill someone you are destroying a creation of God which is a major sin.

"Terrorism is not an entry to paradise, it is to be punished and is an entry to hell.
"We do not go out to convert anyone to Islam or force our views on anyone but if someone wants to learn we can teach them.

"I cannot imagine anyone being radicalised in Plymouth and if anyone has taken advantage of this guy it is quite sick.

"I don't know of anyone who would do such things and our community works well with the police's diversity unit.

"If it is the same guy I knew him as Mohammed Rasheed and he prayed at the University sometimes or here at the Islamic Centre.

"He had converted himself a couple of years before I first met him which was when I came to Plymouth four years ago.

"He always struck me as being not quite well in the head but he seemed a nice guy. He was always polite and greeted me nicely.

"I just cannot understand why someone like him would carry weapons. He did seem to be extremely religious after his conversion.

"I don't know where the sort of thing he has been accused of comes from. I don't think there are any other groups in Plymouth he could have been involved in.

"He seemed to be a student but was not at the university so I thought he was at college.

"I asked him why he converted and he said the whole beauty of Islam attracted him to the religion and when he converted he felt a lot more at one with God.

"We never discussed how he practiced his religion because I felt that was a personal matter. He studied Islam very hard for many years.

"I have no idea if he was acting alone. I believe the Islamic community will be stunned by what he is alleged to have done because he always seemed so calm and nice.

"The people who knew him from prayers will be quite broken by the news.

"I guessed he had some mental problems because he spoke very slowly and had a problem pronouncing his Ts.

"I hope he gets help and learns from this and nothing bad happens to him and he never does anything like this again."...

Jihad Watch reader James sends me this from Digby's Hullabaloo:

In response to my question about how the new Muslim Apostate meme got started, Gavin at Sadly No emailed with this link to Jihad Watch from David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine. This makes sense. After all, David Horowitz has made his career out of being an apostate so it figures his project would be behind the propagation of this nonsense. It's his thing.

We're dealing with some very, very deep thinkers here. A few observations:

1. I wrote the piece linked at Jihad Watch. David Horowitz did not. JW is a Horowitz Center operation, but I am solely and wholly responsible for its content.

2. In the post in question, I explained that Obama would not be considered an apostate according to Islamic law if he left Islam before puberty, as it appears he did. I have never claimed that Obama was an apostate from Islam -- in fact, I have argued just the opposite -- and these geniuses keep attributing just the opposite position to me.

3. Can't Leftists read? Perry Bacon, Washington Post "journalist," made the same mistake.

UPDATE: Welcome, geniuses from Sadly, No! It's tough when your only intellectual weapon is scorn, isn't it? As for the Is-Obama-An-Apostate rumors, is this clear enough for you? This is what I said about them in March 2007:

This is it for CAIR wannabe Omer Subhani: he has had eleven tries to produce even one error on my part, and like so many other Islamic spokesmen in the West when confronted with the teachings of Islam that jihadists use to justify violence and supremacism, all he has come up with are eleven forays into desperate logic-chopping and brazen falsehood. In this, the last part of his series, he concludes by accusing me of either "ignorance or dishonesty," and so we finish this exercise with another example of the projection that we often see from jihadists, their allies, and their dupes. Palestinian and Muslim propaganda accuses Israel of genocidal intentions and plots to control the world, when actually it is Islamic leaders who have expressed genocidal designs on Israel, and aspirations to impose Islam upon the world. And so in a much smaller arena we see here one of the most ignorant and dishonest of commentators accusing his target of just those things.

Here are Parts I, II, III, IV, V VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X.

And finally we come to the end, "Exposing Robert Spencer Part XI: Gender Issues":

More gibberish from the world's leading example on how not to be a scholar on Islam. I respond to Spencer 's comments below.

Islamic spokesmen in the West routinely claim that non-Muslims are only suspicious of Muslim intentions out of “ignorance” of the true, peaceful Islam. This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the idea that it is not Muslims, but non-Muslims (like Geert Wilders in Fitna), who are responsible for linking Islam with violence. This approach deftly shifts the focus away from acts of violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, and onto the alleged “Islamophobes” who are supposedly victimizing Muslims by connecting Islam with violence.

Actually, non-Muslims are probably suspicious of Muslims because people like Spencer routinely attempt to connect Islam and violence through the guise of simply reporting on the activities of radicals, while continuously mentioning that such actions and ideology are actually part of pure Islam. If you mean misunderstandings about the faith, such as the garbage you write in this piece, then maybe that qualifies. There's a very simple way to solve the dilemma Spencer is faced with. "Islamophobes" do not simply connect Islam with violence. They are saying that Islam is violent. It's a political movement, as Pat Robertson comments, and one bent on world domination. While it is true that there are Muslims committing crimes and justifying them by using Islamic texts that does not mean that Islam, per se, is violent in of in itself. Those "Islamophobes" then are in fact "victimizing" the great majority of Muslims because they are saying that the Muslims who commit violent actions are simply following "Islam" when in fact those criminals have distorted Islamic teachings to justify their own criminal actions.

Let's unpack that. I say, in the paragraph Subhani quotes above, that it is not non-Muslims like Geert Wilders who are guilty of linking Islam with violence. Rather, it is Muslims like Osama bin Laden and others, who quote Qur'an and Hadith to justify their actions, who are guilty of linking Islam with violence.

In response, Subhani says no, it is people like Pat Robertson and me who make this link, for the fact that Muslims commit crimes and justify them by using Islamic texts does not mean that Islam, per se, is violent in of in itself. The jihadists are distorting Islamic teachings, you see.

Very well. So when the Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal said on Al-Aqsa TV on April 11, 2008 that Islam would, "thorough da'wa and military conquests," conquer Europe and the Americas, Subhani would have us believe that he was distorting Islam, and that I have done something wrong by reporting on this because it gives some impression that there is some idea in Islam that Muslims should bring non-Muslims under the rule of Islam by preaching ("da'wa"), causing some to convert, and by military conquest and the subjugation of those who do not convert.

All right. I think it's entirely reasonable for people like Pat Robertson or anyone to get the impression that, as Subhani puts it, "Islam is violent" and is a "political movement...bent on world domination," when Muslims say things like this. For it isn't just Yunis Al-Astal, of course; Ahmadinejad has said much the same thing. So has Qaradawi, and many others also.

My question to Omer Subhani here is, if he really opposes this expansionist program, what is he doing to counter it? Is he working on some program at CAIR-South Florida to teach against Islamic supremacism and the ideology of conquest expressed by Ahmadinejad, Al-Astal, and the rest?

Or is his ire directed only at me?

What do you think?

Subhani then goes on to quote some statements I've made about the mistreatment of women in Islam, and begins playing tu-quoque games about Christianity and women. He even says some good things about how it would be wrong to force a woman to cover her hair, although here again I doubt he is actually doing anything to counter that impulse within the Islamic community, since his emphasis, like that of so many others, is solely on finger-pointing at outsiders.

Then, speaking of women being oppressed in the Islamic world, he says this:

The right to inherit, the choice to accept or decline a marriage proposal, to speak out politically, and the right to learn were all included in the Qur'an and in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and prayers be upon him. Now to say that "any oppression of women in the Islamic world is simply a remnant of pre-Islamic culture" is obviously a false claim. Many people use religion to justify their actions - like beating up their wife or blowing people up. A justification is only that, a justification. It does not mean one's justification is in accordance with the facts.

True. But it then remains to be established that the justification is indeed not in accord with the facts. Subhani then attempts to do this:

Rather than regarding women as human beings equal to men, the Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223).

This verse has nothing to do with men using women in whatever way they want or that the Qur'an thinks of women as less equal than men. It has to do with sexual relations between man and wife - specifically about positions couples can use when having sex as long as it is vaginal intercourse. The "tilth" reference is a metaphor for the woman's vagina, as Imam al-Qurtabi relates: "The ayat uses the word "harth" (fields) and so this must apply to the vagina, because that entails fertility (Tafsir Al-Qurtubi, translated by Aisha Bewley, p. 569). This verse does not mean that a husband can do whatever he wants to his wife, as Spencer portrays it. Nor does it imply that women are just sex slaves for men. From the Tafsir al-Jalalayn: "Your women are a tillage [tilth or field] for you, that is, the place where you sow [the seeds of] your children; so come to your tillage, that is, the specified place, the front part, as, in whichever way, you wish, whether standing up, sitting down, lying down, from the front or the back: this was revealed in response to the Jews saying that if a person had vaginal intercourse with his wife from behind, the child would be born cross-eyed... " The commentators also say this verse was revealed about Ansari women who were not comfortable with having intercourse in different positions, as Qurayshi men were accustomed to. Qurayshi men who married Ansari women were told through this verse, and all Muslim couples afterward, that having sex in different positions is perfectly fine, as long as it is vaginal intercourse, sodomy being prohibited of course.

Here again Subhani assumes I don't know something I wrote about months ago, but anyway, gee, that all sounds great! Women are equal to men, and aren't sex slaves. Logged and noted. The whole tilth thing is just about different positions. It doesn't mean that men can use women, no, not at all. Islam teaches gender equality! That hadith in which Muhammad says, "When a man invites his wife to his bed and she does not come, and he (the husband) spends the night being angry with her, the angels curse her until morning"? Just ignore it! Nothing to see there!

This verse has something to do with gender equality though: "If any do deeds of righteousness, be they male or female, and have faith, they will enter Heaven, and not the least injustice will be done to them" [4:124]. It is abundantly clear from this verse that the Qur'an looks upon males and females as equals.

No, it is abundantly clear from that verse that the Qur'an says that faithful Muslims will enter Paradise, whether they are male or female. It doesn't say anything about equality. Qur'an 4:34, however, says, according to Abdullah Yusuf Ali, "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other." N. J. Dawood translates this passage as "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other."

The Qur’an also declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).

Dr. Said Ramadan al-Buti says: "The reason for which the Qur'an lays the condition of two women to testify in place of one man in financial case has nothing to do with the woman's femininity as some people imagine. It springs from a basic condition in the testimony itself, represented in the witness's being highly related to the subject to which he testifies no matter whether the testifier be a man or a woman." What this means is that a Muslim woman's testimony is not regarded as reliable if she is not familiar with what is being arranged, but if she is then her testimony is equal to that of a man. Some Muslim scholars went further and said that if the woman was competent and known to be intelligent then her testimony was sufficient without the need to bring another woman. This is not a modern interpretation either, but this opinion was held by notable Muslims scholars like ibn al-Qasim, ibn Taymiyya, and ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya as well as by Imam al-Tabari, the dean of Qur'anic commentators. Spencer's words are nothing more than miserable propaganda.

It's true: 2:282 refers specifically to financial matters, and Ibn Taymiyya and his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya argued that in other cases testimony should be admissible from both men and women, rejecting the two-women-equal-one-man rule. However, most Islamic scholars have agreed that in hudud cases, the serious crimes for which punishment is dictated by Allah (such as theft, Qur'an 5:38), women's testimony is completely inadmissible. Islamic authorities disagree over whether a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man in general, or just in financial cases, but in any case, the view advanced by Ibn Taymiyya and his student is certainly not dominant. The Shafi'is allow two women to testify as the equivalent of one man in cases concerning property; in cases that do not involve property, i.e., marriage cases, only men can testify, although the Hanafis allow two women as the equivalent of one man to testify in marriage cases also.

It's also interesting to note that Ibn Taymiyya is quite popular with the jihadists today, because of his fierce statements about jihad warfare against unbelievers. Noting this, Islamic apologists in the West have frequently been eager to throw him under the bus. But as we see here, they'll happily drag him out from under the bus when he becomes useful in other contexts.

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).

Yes, a man can marry four women in Islam. So? If a man decides to do so he must treat them all equally in regards to taking care of them financially. Didn't Abraham have two wives? But no Christian gets bent out of shape over that. As far as having "sex with slave girls" this was allowed under Islamic law with conditions, such as the slave women could only be given over to men by the state authority, and it is not as if the men could just treat these women as garbage either. This legal area is essentially a dead letter though.

Is it really? Yet as long as these provisions remain part of the Qur'an and Islamic law, they can be revived when the conditions are right, can't they? And what about continuing instances of slavery in the Islamic world today?

As far as polygamy goes, it reduces women to the status of commodities. No orthodox Christian sect allows it or has ever allowed it, and none consider the Old Testament polygamists normative as examples for contemporary behavior.

On Qur'an 4:11 Subhani agrees with me, although he argues that the fact that sons receive double the inheritance of daughters is just dandy, so let's move along to the infamous wife-beating verse, 4:34:

It's amazing what happens when you don't use tafsir (Qur'anic commentary) to discuss a verse. I've already addressed this issue in detail here. Spencer either deliberately or mistakenly did not use a commentary when discussing this issue. Translations only lead to the mistaken understanding that Muslim men can "beat up" their wives when in reality they are allowed a light tapping or patting if their wife indulges in inappropriate activities, which was defined by the Prophet Muhammad himself during his final sermon where he told the Muslim men their right over their wives: "And it is your right that they do not make friends with any one of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be unchaste." So, can a Muslim man beat up his wife? Absolutely not. The tapping or patting is only allowed when a very, very serious issue like adultery comes up. And that is only after the other means in the verse are taken (admonishing, banishing, etc.). Even this "beating" is only allowed as a rukhsa or dispensation, not as something that is recommended.

I'm sure Spencer owns a copy of the Reliance of the Traveler, the Shafi'i fiqh manual that he routinely brings up. It was written by ibn Naqib al-Misri in the fourteenth century and he described the "beating" as such: "His hitting her may not be in a way that injures her, and is his last recourse to save the family" (Reliance, section m11.0, p. 542). How do you beat someone without injuring them? Obviously the meaning is that some form of physical encouragement is needed only when such a situation between man and wife is on a seriously bad level, and should only be used when a husband believes it will help the situation.

We've already been down this road here. "Physical encourgement"! That's rich. All this "tapping and patting" nonsense is absurd, because tapping and patting doesn't constitute any kind of warning, or punishment, or inducement to correct one's behavior. We are to believe that a woman must obey a man, and that if a man finds his woman disobedient, he is to tap her lightly and invite her to be obedient. I can't imagine that Subhani finds any infidels gullible enough to swallow this, but I'm sure he does. I, however, will not join them. The whole idea of 4:34 is that a man is authorized to administer corporal punishment to a disobedient woman. He is, in other words, to cause her pain in order to demonstrate to her that disobedience is profitless. Then the Islamic apologists come and say, Oh, no, he isn't to cause her pain. In that case, the entire substance of the verse is voided. 4:34 contains a three-step trajectory: a man is first to warn the disobedient woman, then send her to a separate bed (depriving her of the bliss of her man's companionship), and then beat her. Subhani would have us believe that this means warn her first, then send her to a separate bed, then tap her lightly as a...warning. So we're back to step one.

In any case, Subhani is so tangled up in apologetic nonsense that he doesn't even notice when he contradicts himself. He says that "the tapping or patting is only allowed when a very, very serious issue like adultery comes up. And that is only after the other means in the verse are taken (admonishing, banishing, etc.). Even this 'beating' is only allowed as a rukhsa or dispensation, not as something that is recommended." If the Qur'an is really only talking about a light tap or pat, why is it such a serious thing that it is only allowed as a dispensation and a last resort, and only for a very, very serious issue? One would think a light tap or pat would not need to be so restricted!

Anyway, back in the real world, as I've said before, one man's light tap is another man's brutal beating.

Toward the end of his windy piece, Subhani says: "It's more important and relevant to ask to what end are you, Robert Spencer, retailing these half-truths and distortions?"

Well, Mr. Subhani, I haven't distorted anything. As I've shown in these eleven replies, I have reported accurately on the texts and teachings of Islam, as Subhani has not. I have not misrepresented their contents, as Subhani has. I have not claimed he has not read or does not own books that he has read and does own, as Subhani has done with me. I have not ignored, denied, or downplayed unpleasant realities, as Subhani has repeatedly.

And so I ask him in turn: to what end, Mr. Subhani? Why are you retailing these half-truths and distortions, and defaming me instead of working within the Islamic community to reform the elements of Islam you profess to oppose?

So evidently Mohammed Rasheed (Nicky Reilly) wasn't a freelance jihadist or a random fellow acting out his random mental illness at all. He seems to have been part of a jihadist group. And two more men have been arrested in connection with the attack.

"Exeter explosion: 'bomber' Nicky Reilly was sent text of encouragement," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, May 23 (thanks to John):

A Muslim convert accused of trying to set off three homemade nail bombs in a packed shopping centre in Exeter received a text message of encouragement on the day of the attacks, the Daily Telegraph has learned.

Investigating officers suspect Nicky Reilly, 22, who has learning difficulties, planned to commit suicide but do not think he could have constructed the bombs without help.

He received a message on his mobile phone on the day of the attacks which officers believe amounted to a "message of encouragement."

“He has a very low IQ and has received treatment on more than one occasion for mental illness. He would be very easily led," a police source said.

“This really does mark a low point for Muslim extremists. We are all horrified by what has happened here."

The comments came as armed police investigating the bombing arrested two men outside a cafe today....

Reilly had allegedly been using a type of rudimentary bomb not employed by Muslims [sic] extremists in Britain before which was constructed from sodium hydroxide, aluminium foil strips and an essential oil, combined with kerosene.

The source confirmed that there were nails in the bag containing the devices, one of which partially detonated in the toilets of a restaurant in the Princesshay centre. The other two failed to go off....

"If it had gone up it would certainly have caused a huge fireball and the idea he was doing that in a family restaurant packed with children is awful."

Special Branch officers were monitoring a group of alleged radicals in Plymouth, where Reilly lives with his mother, which was based at a local mosque but Reilly was on the fringes of the group.

The source said: "As part of our operations to monitor the activities of radical groups across the country we were aware of this group and of Reilly himself but he was right on the fringes of a group that did not appear to be planning any attacks....

Local people claim Reilly, who changed his name to Mohammed Rasheed, was "brainwashed" by a group that met at a fish and chip shop.

"Do not think this is a defeat for us, but it will create enthusiasm to stand up more for this religion."

"Sunni preachers denounce Quran shooting by sniper," by Hamid Ahmed for the Associated Press, May 23 (thanks to JCB):

BAGHDAD - Sunni preachers on Friday denounced the shooting of a Quran, Islam's holy book, by a U.S. sniper in Iraq following a series of apologies by American commanders and President Bush.

The use of Islam's holy book for target practice has triggered an angry response in Iraq and protests in Afghanistan as U.S.-led forces work to maintain their alliance with Sunni Arabs who have turned against al-Qaida in Iraq.

"The enemies of Islam have launched their campaign against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and recently against the holy Quran," said Sheik Omar Mohammed during his sermon at a Sunni mosque in Baghdad.

"A bullet that might have shot at an Iraqi believer, was directed toward the holy Quran instead," Mohammed said. "Do not think this is a defeat for us, but it will create enthusiasm to stand up more for this religion."

The U.S. military said Sunday it had disciplined the sniper and removed him from Iraq after he was found to have used the Quran for target practice May 9. Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled book two days later on the field of a firing range in a predominantly Sunni area west of Baghdad.

Bush apologized to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for the incident after several U.S. military officials tried to soothe anger over the shooting, particularly among Sunni Arabs who have become key allies in the fight against insurgents.

A NATO soldier and two civilians were killed Thursday during a violent demonstration in western Afghanistan over the incident. But there has been relatively little protest in Muslim countries despite fears of a repeat of the worldwide violence sparked by similar perceived insults against Islam, including Prophet Muhammad cartoons published in Denmark.

The imam of Abu Hanifa, the main Sunni mosque in Baghdad, also condemned the shooting and criticized the leaders of fellow Muslim states for not speaking out against it.

"We Muslims condemn the act committed by this malicious person and at the same time we express our regret that Muslim leaders all over the world did not condemn this crime ... it indicates their weakness and cowardliness," Sheik Dawood al-Alusi said....

Still more evidence of how the Palestinians try to provoke civilian casualties which they can then use for propaganda purposes. "Gaza Schoolyard Missile Launchers Discovered," by Hana Levi Julian for Israel National News, May 23 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

(IsraelNN.com) IDF soldiers uncovered missiles and anti-tank rocket launchers in a Gaza schoolyard in late Thursday. The anti-tank missile launcher and a stack of missiles were found at a school in Sajaiya, in northern Gaza, during routine counter-terrorism operations....

''The lawsuits say: Listen this is ridiculous and prejudicial. 'They force the FBI to finish the background check and immigration to act.'' Horror of horrors! The FBI has to finish a background check before Muslims can become citizens? Why, it's...racism!

"Muslim immigrants sue CIS for delays in citizenship process," by Babita Persaud for The Orlando Sentinel, May 22

ORLANDO, Fla. - For three years and three months, Ali Hussain has waited to become a U.S. Citizen.

On Thursday, his wait was over - but not before he sued the federal government.

In February, Hussain and 24 other Muslims joined a statewide lawsuit against Citizenship and Immigration Services and the FBI for what they called unusually lengthy delays in processing their citizenship applications. Some waited as long as five years.

''The lawsuit helped my application. I have been waiting so long,'' said Hussain, an Orlando machinist from Iraq.

In a post Sept. 11 era of fingerprinting and thorough background checks, legal action is also becoming part of the naturalization process, say some area attorneys.

''These lawsuits bring attention to the government that (processing delays) is a big problem,'' said Shahzad Ahmed, an Orlando attorney who represents several Muslim clients.

Of the seven Central Florida plaintiffs in the statewide lawsuit, five have since become U.S. Citizens.

Four plaintiffs were sworn in as citizens Thursday at the Orange County Convention Center, including Hussain and his brother, Aso Hussain, a graphic art student at Valencia Community College.

''We are so happy for this day,'' said Aso Hussain, 25, waving a miniature American flag and citizenship certificate.

Nationally, lawsuits against the immigration agency are becoming more common, especially in places with large Muslim populations. Central Florida has an estimated 40,000 followers of Islam.

''The lawsuits say: Listen this is ridiculous and prejudicial,'' said Lisa Krueger Khan, Orlando liaison for the American Immigration Lawyer Association Central Florida chapter. ''They force the FBI to finish the background check and immigration to act.''

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that processes citizenship applications, does not comment on pending lawsuits, but Ana Santiago, an agency spokesperson in Miami, said the delays are not targeted toward any one group of people.

''Religion isn't asked on the form,'' said Santiago.

[...]

For Muslims, it is often the FBI name check - a security screening tool - that holds up the application. Nearly 200 databases and offices are checked before a name is cleared.

According to a 2007 report from Homeland Security, 64 percent of the FBI name check cases had been pending more than 90 days; 32 percent were pending more than a year.

Muslim names are often singled out, advocates say.

''You are at the mercy of the FBI checks,'' said Gail S. Seeram, an Orlando attorney who also represents Muslims.

Some of her clients have even changed their name.

''They drop the 'Muhammad,''' she said.

[...]

When Hussain, 34, approached the Orlando office of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which is helping the plaintiffs, he was unsure if he wanted to add his name.

''He said, 'Am I going to go against the government?''' recalled Danette Zaghari-Mask, Orlando executive director.

But he had tried every avenue to speed up his citizenship application, including calling and visiting immigration offices in Orlando. The holdup, he was eventually told, was his name....

More mental illness, no doubt. From the Daily Mail, May 23 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

A Muslim English teacher today pleaded guilty to threatening to blow up the giant Bluewater shopping centre.

Saeed Ghafoor said he was going to bomb Europe's largest shopping complex using three limousines with gas canister explosives.

But when questioned further, the former English teacher said Bluewater was in Exeter, the Old Bailey heard.

When told it was near the Dartford tunnel in Kent, Ghafoor said he had not 'finalised' his plans, the Old Bailey was told.

Ghafoor, 33, of Southampton, pleaded guilty to threatening to cause criminal damage.

He was remanded in custody for reports before sentencing next month.

The Bluewater centre was the target for a gang of terrorists led by Omar Khyam who were jailed for a fertiliser bomb plot last year....

It was a long descent from the Rubaiyat.

Yet more on the UK restaurant nail-bomber: they're already playing the ever-present "mental illness" card, as we have often seen in freelance jihad cases. Why "mental illness" seems again and again to play itself out in this way when found among Muslims is never explained. "Police question 'vulnerable' Islam convert over Exeter bomb," by Haroon Siddique in The Guardian, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Police will today question a "weak and vulnerable" Islamic convert suspected of attempting to explode a homemade bomb in a restaurant in Exeter.

Nicky Reilly, 22, who officials believe has a history of mental illness, was arrested at the scene of the explosion at the city centre branch of the Giraffe restaurant chain.

No one was hurt in the incident apart from Reilly. He suffered serious injuries to his face, but they are not thought to be life threatening. Another unexploded device was found close by.

Toby Melville, the deputy chief constable of Devon and Cornwall police, said: "We believe, despite his weak and vulnerable state, he was preyed upon, radicalised and taken advantage of."...

Neighbours described him as an introvert with few friends.

Scott Allen, 19, who lives in the flat below, said Reilly had been teased and probably "felt rejected by local people". He said people he believed were Muslims had been gathering in the area "in increasing numbers".

Aly Turner, 17, who lives two floors above Reilly, said he thought his neighbour had been "brainwashed."

He said he had been in Reilly's flat and had seen his computer screen saver, which was an image of the burning World Trade Centre in New York.

"He was a bit of a recluse; he did not have many friends locally," said Turner.

Officials believe an attempt was recently made to radicalise another vulnerable man in the West Country, an area thought unlikely to become a terrorist target....

More on this story. "Man arrested over Exeter blast a 'radicalised' convert to Islam," by Vikram Dodd and Matthew Weaver in The Guardian, May 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A man arrested in connection with a city centre explosion was tonight named by police as 22-year-old Nicky Reilly - who police believe had adopted the Islamic faith.

Reilly was arrested by police at the scene of the lunchtime explosion in the Giraffe restaurant in the £230 million Princesshay shopping complex in Exeter, Devon.

He suffered lacerations to his eye and some facial burning after a device he had on him partially exploded.

Another device found in the vicinity of the restaurant did not explode.

Deputy chief constable Tony Melville said: "Witnesses described how a male entered a toilet in the restaurant shortly before an explosion was heard."

He said police and other emergency services went to the scene and the man was arrested in connection with the explosion.

"This male, who we now know is called Nicky Reilly, suffered serious facial injuries but these are not life threatening. He is currently in police custody undergoing treatment at a hospital."

Melville said police investigations had indicated Reilly, who had a history of mental illness, had adopted the Islamic faith and "was preyed upon and radicalised".

Note that the Indian Mujahideen have accused Khalid Rasheed and his colleagues of apostasy. This is the jihadists' consistent line: that they represent the truth and purity of Islam, and those Muslims who reject their perspective are, in effect, rejecting Islam. It is a potent appeal in the Islamic world, and one it would behoove us to understand -- but instead, the PC straitjacket has both liberals and conservatives ignoring, denying, or downplaying it, and pretending that the battle within Islam has already been won by the "moderates" -- who in reality haven't even articulated an Islamically consistent position that has won any widespread acceptance among Muslims.

Nor do they do so here -- just once again the flat and unsupported assertion that "Islam is a religion of peace."

"Indian Muslim clerics reject terror despite threats," from Reuters, May 22 (thanks to GM):

LUCKNOW: Senior Muslim clerics in India rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic on Wednesday.

Khalid Rasheed, the head of the oldest madrasa in the northern city of Lucknow, said the militant group Indian Mujahideen had accused him and his colleagues of apostasy over their pacifist stance.

Indian Mujahideen threatened Rasheed last week in an email sent to local media channels in which they also claimed responsibility for last week's blasts in Jaipur that killed 63 people.

"The reaction of terrorists to our stand against terror has shown that we are moving in the right direction," Rasheed told reporters. "We will continue not only to raise our voice against terror but also educate Muslim masses about the grossly un-Islamic practices adopted by terrorist bodies."Rasheed said they had received support from the influential radical Darool-Uloom Deoband madrasa in northern India. "Islam is a religion of peace," madrasa vice chancellor Ahmad Khazir Shah said in a statement on Wednesday.

As we come close to the end of CAIR minor leaguer Omer Subhani's eleven-part attempt to "expose" me, we find our hero scraping the bottom of the barrel, tossing kitchen sinks, trying anything he can to prove me wrong -- except, of course, doing what he hasn't yet managed to do in nine attempts: actually showing what I say about Islamic supremacism, the jihad ideology, etc. is false.

And I am answering here to show the all-too-common mudslinging method of argumentation that Islamic spokesmen in the West use, and the hollowness of their arguments. Here are Parts I, II, III, IV, V VI, VII, VIII, and IX.

His Part X is called, with an admirable flair for numeration that he hasn't displayed before, "Exposing Robert Spencer Part X."

Blissfully unaware, or hoping you haven't noticed, that the arguments he has made have veered from the absurd (Muhammad was made victorious through "terror," not "terrorism"!) to the fictional (Spencer doesn't have books that were photographed on my shelf a year earlier), Subhani begins this one with a bit of chest-beating that is, once again, all too common. The Muslim Debater's Handbook must contain a passage that says something like, When Victorious, Claim Victory. When Defeated, Claim Victory. When Utterly Shredded and Humiliated, Claim Victory. Just as they will never, ever admit that any Muslim at any time or any place did anything that could ever be deserving of any kind of criticism whatsoever, so they will never, ever admit that they could possibly have been bested. So Subhani keeps on offering up his ad hominems, knowing that the hopelessly blinkered and the ideological die-hards will back up his claim to victory no matter what.

I recently added my refutations of Robert Spencer to the side of my blog for quick and easy reference for those interested in the continual blunders of a demonstrated anti-Muslim moron. When Spencer replied to my article on Juvenile Hadith Interpretations he demonstrated that he clearly could not counter a single point I raised against him. But more importantly for this thread he made more errors of scholarship in his rebuttal, errors that actually had me laughing out loud. Among them were:

1. He stated that when the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, said he was given the most concise words he was referring to the Qur'an. As I showed in my reply to Spencer, the Prophet Muhammad was speaking about his own speech contained in ahadith and not about the Qur'an, which are considered God's words.

In this Subhani refers to this passage from his Part VIII, which I passed over when I replied, since it is so utterly insignificant. But since he has brought it up again, let us let Subhani grasp at his straws. Here is the bit from his Part VIII:

...Spencer makes two mistakes there as well. The first isn't on the topic we are discussing, but I will mention it anyway. When the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, said he was give the most concise words he was speaking about his own speech - the hadiths that were collected. He was not speaking about the Qur'an, as Spencer mistakenly says in his book. The evidence is in many books, but the most famous is the book entitled Al-Shifa by Qadi Iyaq al-Yahsubi, the great Maliki faqhi and muhaddith. Iyad says about the Prophet "He learned the dialects of the Arabs, and would speak to each of their communities in their own dialect and converse with them in their own idiom. He answered their arguments in their own style of rhetoric so that, more than once, a large number of his Companions had to ask him to explain what he had said. Whoever studies his hadiths and biography will know and verify that" (Ash-Shifa of Qadi Iyad translated by Aisha Bewley, 39). One can read this section of the book under the title of "His eloquence and sound Arabic" in Chapter 2, Section 5 of Bewley's translation.

This all sounds impressive, but there are just a few problems.

1. Muhammad said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings," or, as Subhani explains it above, "the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, said he was given the most concise words." According to the traditional Islamic understanding, Muhammad was not given the Hadith, he was given the Qur'an. He was not sent with the Hadith, he was sent with the Qur'an. Subhani says the Qur'an is not Muhammad's words but God's words, but one is not "given" one's own words. One might be "given" God's words. Thus even as Subhani explains the statement itself, he shows that my interpretation is more likely than his.

2. When Subhani quotes Qadi Iyaq al-Yahsubi to support his claim, he gives us no indication that Qadi Iyaq al-Yahsubi is actually referring to this statement of Muhammad.

3. What possible difference does this make to the larger question of whether Islam teaches violence against and the subjugation of unbelievers? None. It's just a diversion, a red herring.

2. Spencer said the Muslims attacked the "workers of Khaybar" at the Battle of Khaybar. That's either a blatant lie by Spencer or another mistake he made. His own citation proves him otherwise. For him to come to such a conclusion is a total disregard for the very source he uses where it said clearly that the workers turn and fled away.

One of the best ways to tell when guys like this are lying is when they start saying that their opponent is lying. Here again is the passage from Ibn Ishaq, a pious Muslim who in the 8th century wrote the first biography of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq is quoting one of the Muslims who was at Khaybar with Muhammad:

“When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer, so he rode and we rode with him….We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets. When they saw the apostle and the army they cried, ‘Muhammad with his force,’ and turned tail and fled. The apostle said, ‘Allah Akbar! Khaybar is destroyed. When we arrive in a people’s square it is a bad morning for those who have been warned.’”

Let's break that down:

Subhani: "Spencer said the Muslims attacked the 'workers of Khaybar' at the Battle of Khaybar. That's either a blatant lie by Spencer or another mistake he made."

Jihad warrior who was actually at Khaybar: "We met the workers of Khaybar coming out in the morning with their spades and baskets."

Who's lying, Subhani?

Let's be even clearer: they didn't just "meet" the workers of Khaybar. They attacked Khaybar. The Muslim advance was inexorable. “The apostle,” according to Ibn Ishaq, “seized the property piece by piece and conquered the forts one by one as he came to them.” Ibn Sa‘d reports that the battle was fierce: the “polytheists…killed a large number of [Muhammad’s] Companions and he also put to death a very large number of them….He killed ninety-three men of the Jews…” Muhammad and his men offered the fajr prayer, the Islamic dawn prayer, before it was light, and then entered Khaybar itself. The Muslims immediately set out to locate the inhabitants’ wealth. Kinana bin al-Rabi, a Jewish leader of Khaybar who was supposed to have been entrusted with the treasure of the Banu Nadir, was brought before Muhammad. Kinana denied knowing where this treasure was, but Muhammad pressed him: “Do you know that if we find you have it I shall kill you?” Kinana said yes.

Some of the treasure was found. To find the rest, Muhammad gave orders concerning Kinana: “Torture him until you extract what he has.” One of the Muslims built a fire on Kinana’s chest, but Kinana would not give up his secret. When he was at the point of death, Muhammad bin Maslama, killer of the poet Ka’b bin Al-Ashraf, beheaded him.

Muhammad agreed to let the people of Khaybar go into exile, allowing them, as he had the Banu Nadir, to keep as much of their property as they could carry. However, he commanded them to leave behind all their gold and silver. He had intended to expel all