October 2008 Archives

February 12, 2009: New addendum added below. Charles Johnson is libeling me outrageously, ultimately because of a couple of weblinks. The whole absurd and tedious story of his descent into madness follows.

NOTE, November 10, 2008: The controversy between Charles Johnson and me began when I linked to Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna, although he has never shown similar anger toward others he counts as allies who also link to those sites. He assumes that to link to these sites implies agreement with everything they say, which it doesn't. He and his followers insist that to link to these sites means one endorses the Belgian party Vlaams Belang. He says they're fascists, although they support Israel; they say they're not, which for him makes them crypto-fascists. I say I don't endorse them (or any party); he says I do, which I guess for him makes me a crypto-crypto-fascist. He says I'm encouraging genocide (because of a comment someone unknown to me left at his site), I say I'm not, and he says that my defending myself constitutes a "vicious attack" against him.

These serpentine and Orwellian absurdities unfolded over the course of several days, beginning on Halloween. I have now written two posts about Charles Johnson, entitled "Excommunicated" (October 31) and "Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs (part 2)" (November 6). It has been brought to my attention this morning that the second of these has mysteriously disappeared from Google's Search tool, although it still appears on this site.

I have written to Google about this. But meanwhile, for the ease of readers who may be searching, and for anyone offended by juvenile thuggery, I decided to create this new post and place it in the archives. It contains the content of both posts about Charles Johnson. And if this one also disappears from the Google Search, I will create another, because there should be a place where people of good will can hear the truth amid the increasingly shrill libels that Charles Johnson and his followers are directing my way.

EXCOMMUNICATED
October 31, 2008

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has denounced me and he and his followers are slinging wild accusations against me because I have linked -- under a disclaimer saying that I don't necessarily agree with everything at every linked site -- to two sites he doesn't like.

To read the whole story of his unprovoked attack, and this petty and needless conflict, read on.

I'm sorry to say that my old friend Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has written this:

I'm done with Robert Spencer. And very, very disappointed in him.

And:

Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch are out of our RSS feeds. I'm not going to support people who link to vile sites like Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal.

He also wrote me, asking me to take down the "Designed by Little Green Footballs" logo that had been up on this site.

What heinous crime have I committed? Last month I restored the links here to Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal, after speaking with Baron Bodissey, Paul Belien, and Geert Wilders in Washington, and wrote that I doubted that Fjordman was a neofascist or race supremacist.

Of course, for many, many months my list of links has carried this disclaimer: "Note: Listing here does not imply endorsement of every view expressed at every linked site." One might have thought that my linking to both LGF and Gates of Vienna was indicative of an openness to perspectives even from people who disagreed with one another and also with whom I might disagree, and not a blanket endorsement of either one or any other site. That, however, was too subtle for some LGF commenters, who dressed me up in jackboots right away, accusing me of an "apparent embrace of the neo-Nazi movement" and claiming that I support genocide.

So apparently my doubting that Fjordman et al are racist neofascists who support genocide makes me a racist neofascist who supports genocide. Linking to groups that are accused of being neofascist, although they deny it, makes me one who embraces neo-Nazis. Unfortunately Charles himself has endorsed this loopy leap of logic in the past. Richard Miniter and Diana West both disagreed with him that several European parties, especially Vlaams Belang, were fascist. In response Charles wrote this:

I've learned recently that neo-fascists are much more prominent in conservative circles than I had previously realized. There are other well-known pundits who are sympathetic to the fascists, too -- I've drastically revised my opinion of more than a few people, e.g. Diane West, Richard Miniter, and several others.

Whatever one thinks of Vlaams Belang, that just makes no sense. West and Miniter don't think Vlaams Belang is fascist, and Charles is representing that as meaning that they are "sympathetic to the fascists."

Charles did this also to Andrew Bostom:

I'm now getting hate mail from Andrew Bostom, who believes we should all be joining forces with European white nationalists, calling me all kinds of names and insults.

It's an eye-opener about Bostom.

Andy is less than diplomatic, but in one of his emails to Charles he was making a point that I think was compelling. In speaking this way about West, Miniter, and Bostom, Charles seems to have been assuming that anyone speaking favorably about European individuals or groups who are accused of being neofascist, or accepting their denials that they are neofascist, must himself be a fascist sympathizer, or one who believes we should ally with white nationalists. Andy accordingly noted that Roger Kimball had commented favorably on a Diana West piece on people in Europe who are accused of being neofascist, and that National Review Online had also linked to the piece. He called upon Charles to be consistent and label NRO and Kimball as neofascists also. There are others also, besides Kimball and NRO. At LGF I put it this way:

The statement that I have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement" is false, and libelous. Charles, you and your friends here are now in the position of saying that everyone who doesn't believe these people (Fjordman, Belien, etc.) are neo-Nazis must themselves be neo-Nazis. Well, Ian Buruma recently published an article in the LA Times saying that the European anti-immigration parties were not neo-Nazis. Diana West has written the same thing in articles that have been picked up at the National Review and quoted favorably by Roger Kimball at Pajamas Media.

Unless you all are prepared to say that Buruma, the LA Times, West, Kimball, and National Review have "embraced the neo-Nazi movement," you can't logically say it about me.

I forgot to mention John Rosenthal, who also wrote a piece doubting that some of the European parties accused of being neo-Nazi are actually neo-Nazi.

Also, when we start playing guilt by association games, how much guilt do you incur for how much association? If one who links to the Brussels Journal has thereby become someone who "apparently embraces the neo-Nazi movement," or at least someone who has done something so "disappointing" as to warrant being removed from RSS feeds, etc., then why does Charles still link to Pajamas Media? For on PJM's blogroll you will find...Brussels Journal. Has Charles, by linking to PJM and appearing on PJTV, become one with whom we should be "very, very disappointed"? Has he become one who is "sympathetic to the fascists"? Why is PJM's link to Brussels Journal not something that makes him "very, very disappointed," but mine is?

Is that not absurd? I have gone on record many, many times explaining why I reject race-based approaches to the jihad threat -- most recently in connection with the Cologne conference. Hugh and I have been clear here in our rejection of LePen, the BNP, and all those who traffic in such approaches. We have been consistent in maintaining that anyone who advocates genocide in comments here will be banned and find his comment deleted. The controversy here is over whether or not some other individuals and groups belong in that category, not over whether one should support race supremacism and genocide or not. Charles has done a grave disservice by acting as if those who reject his judgments about these groups and individuals, or who even -- like me -- are willing to entertain differing points of view on these matters, are ipso facto neo-Nazi or white supremacist sympathizers. He is in this behaving much like the Islamic supremacist bullies of East Tennessee, who are convinced that anyone who says something they don't like must be a liar, a bigot, a racist hater.

I'm done with Charles Johnson. And very, very disappointed in him.

UPDATE: The links to LGF above no longer work; click on them and you'll get a "Forbidden" notice. Well, Charles, old friend, you stay classy -- this only confirms the impression that what we are dealing with here is the bully's fear of actually having to answer for what he said. But his comments are still at LGF; you can go there and see them, or copy the link location from here and paste it into the address bar -- it will become visible that way.

Meanwhile, I note also with sorrow that the mendacious Kejda Gjermani ("medaura") is spreading her libelous attacks on me at LGF yet again, as she has been allowed to do for months. It is telling.

SECOND UPDATE: The comments over at LGF are getting really vile -- accusing me of actually posting pro-genocidal material there, or sending someone to do so, or inspiring someone to do so apparently by what I post here. As well as all the accusations of race supremacism, fascism, etc., that he has for months allowed to become standard over there when my name comes up.

Bear in mind that all of these attacks are based on guilt by association. None of them are based on anything I have actually ever said or written. And the case against those whose association so taints me is, contrary to Charles's repeated and strident assumption, unproven.

Charles ought to be ashamed of himself, both for his bullying and inconsistency, and for his allowing this to go on. In any case, he has rendered himself irrelevant (at best) in the struggle to defend the principles of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of all people before the law, and Constitutional pluralism against the jihad and Islamic supremacism. His demand of an absolute ideological lockstep is ultimately at variance with those principles of freedom anyway.

THIRD UPDATE: As you can see from my comment here, Charles himself has now begun defaming me with hints that I support genocide -- because of a comment that some idiot who has nothing to do with me put up at LGF. Probably he will block the link again, but you can paste it into a new window and it will work.

1023 Charles 10/31/2008 7:28:22 pm PDT

Unbelievable.

If I were you, Robert, I'd ask myself some serious questions about what I was doing to encourage the open support for genocide expressed by jdow.

Good luck indeed.

The background of this is that this "jdow" character posted a pro-genocide comment there, and this is supposed to be my fault. The evidence? Well, apparently "jdow" has commented here too.

Do I know who "jdow" is? No, I do not. Is he any different from anyone else who posts here whom I don't know? Is he any different from Abdullah Mackay, who posts here often, and sharply disagrees with everything I write, or from any other commenter here?

The only possible way that I could be responsible for someone promoting genocide is if I promote it myself. So: can Charles Johnson or anyone else produce a scrap of evidence from my writings to show that I have encouraged open support, covert support, or any support for genocide? Charles should either produce evidence that I do, which he cannot do, or he should retract his libelous insinuation. That he will almost certainly do neither is evidence that he has become a deeply dishonest and untrustworthy man.

But that he would stoop to this defamation shows what he really is, and what he is about. It makes me sorry that I ever counted him as a friend or ally.

FOURTH UPDATE: Paste in this link:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/25/6143272

It reads thusly:

25 Charles 11/01/2008 10:18:32 am PDT

Note: please use the report button if you see anyone posting ugly comments related to Robert Spencer's vicious attack on me this morning. I expect some meltdowns.

And Charles knows meltdowns! Note well: falsely accusing me of encouraging genocide -- that's not a "vicious attack." Asking for supporting evidence for the charge or a retraction, and doubting I will get either (and I won't) -- that's a "vicious attack."

Charles seems to be working from the playbook of the jihad enablers who have nothing to say about jihad attacks but are quick to label the reporting of jihad attacks as "Islamophobia."

Charles, have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

FIFTH UPDATE: I want to emphasize that I have not endorsed the Vlaams Belang. This whole controversy is not about the Vlaams Belang, but about whether or not one can disagree with Charles Johnson and not be defamed as a result. I have merely recognized that people of good will, who are not "seriously deluded" (as someone calls them below) and are not racists or neofascists, have mounted a case opposing Charles Johnson's assessment of the Vlaams Belang. In other words, the question is not whether or not we should support neofascists, but whether or not Vlaams Belang is neofascist. That question is hotly disputed, and those who think that Johnson has not made his case are not evil just for thinking that.

If Vlaams Belang were openly neo-Nazi, it would be an open-and-shut case, and no one should support them. But this is a search for crypto-fascists, and people assess the evidence differently. It is an issue warranting further study. And until Charles demanded that his link be removed from here, I had both sides represented in my links.

All this has eluded them, however, such that over in his LGF echo chamber they say -- and even Charles suggests -- that I have embraced the neo-Nazis and encourage genocide. He ought to be monumentally ashamed of himself for this defamation.

SIXTH UPDATE: Heartfelt thanks to all those who have expressed their support and appreciation of my work. I am grateful to each one of you.

As far as the ongoing discussion of the BNP goes, it is their race-based membership requirement and race-based emphasis that makes me unable to support them. I have explained why elsewhere, more than once.

The libels and misrepresentations of my positions at LGF, and the fascist/Stalinist snap-to of instantly excoriating someone who had been a valued friend as an evil and dangerous foe, should be illuminating to anyone who wonders what is going on. And remember, this all happened not because of anything I said or did, but because of a couple of blog links under a disclaimer.

The LGF commenters, however, have begun -- here again in true Stalinist fashion -- searching for previous signs of my ideological deviation.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1145/6142955

In that comment someone quotes something from my 2003 book Onward Muslim Soldiers: "Begin to regard Muslim immigration as a national security issue, and take steps to limit it and end it if possible. (And of course all illegal aliens should be made to leave immediately.)" This is evidence of my secret wickedness.

So apparently Muslim immigration is not a national security issue: the stealth jihad, the sleeper cells, the jihad plots are all chimeras. And illegal aliens should make themselves at home.

Then there is this:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/1146/6144662

This links to a Gates of Vienna post about the honor killing of the Said sisters in Texas. I am not sure what the point is here -- perhaps it is that it is terrible and neo-Nazi to suggest that there could have been an honor killing in Texas. Unfortunately, the facts demonstrate otherwise.

With comments like these going unchallenged, it is hard to argue against the proposition that LGF has ceased to be concerned about the spread of Islamic supremacism in the U.S.

Those who exhort both Charles Johnson and I to cut the crap should recall that Charles Johnson is entirely, wholly, and solely responsible for provoking this rift, and for the overheated rhetoric of support for genocide, fascism, etc.

I see also that Charles Johnson is also charging me with personally betraying him by "embracing" people who have attacked him.

It is odd that he would make this charge after allowing his comments fields to become the arenas for repeated libels of me and my work by Kejda Gjermani ("medaura"), Michael Hussey ("mph"), "Killgore Trout" and others.

And even if he had not done that, his charge would only make sense if I had dropped the link to LGF while restoring the link to Brussels Journal etc. In fact, I had links to all sides here, which I had hoped would become the foundation for a gradual reconciliation of people who, let us not forget, had once been friends. That Charles would get so angry about a couple of blog links is reminiscent of a second-grade lunchtable where one kid gets angry with another kid for inviting other kids to sit at the table also.

It was Charles who chose to see these links as a repudiation and betrayal, when there was no necessary reason for him to have done so. Gates of Vienna has criticized me in the past, so I could have followed Charles' path and considered that anyone who even suggested they were not evil was no longer my friend. I have links to other people I don't always agree with and have had public disputes with -- such as "Allahpundit" at Hot Air. Yet no one at LGF is insisting that I must share all of Allahpundit's views because I link to Hot Air. They only insist that I share all of GoV's views because of the link here to them. Why is that? Because insisting on the latter is consistent with the picture of me as a neofascist that they want to paint.

In any case, LGF commenters are now saying I have restored "VB" to my links, when Vlaams Belang was never there, and I have stated above that I have not endorsed VB. And they're saying that soon I will be bringing white supremacists to speak at anti-jihad conferences in the U.S. This is arrant, libelous nonsense, and it illustrates that the commenters there simply aren't interested in the truth, but are here again falling into Stalinist lockstep.

Charles also has stated that he did thousands of dollars of work for this site, for which I never paid him. In reality, he did a great deal of work for which he was duly paid. Then he did some work here and there for which I repeatedly asked him to bill me. (I just found half a dozen requests from me, asking him to bill me, in a moment's search of one email box.) He never did. Ultimately, it seemed clear at the time that he considered the unbilled items minor tweaks, but to imply that I ripped him off his, to put it mildly, untrue. That he would attempt to use against me something over which I had no control and that was against my repeatedly expressed wishes is a measure of the man. He is essentially saying, "Hey, I tried to buy Robert Spencer's friendship, and he betrayed me by not being for sale."

And finally, Charles has referred repeatedly to my "vicious attack" upon him, yet he has never answered the points I made in the "vicious attack," which could only refer to the above post. For instance, why is it OK for LGF to link to Pajamas Media, which links to Brussels Journal, and Pajamas Media is not fascist, but if I link to Brussels Journal, LGF must delink from me and call me a fascist? Charles Johnson doesn't answer that question, and he can't answer it, because in fact when it comes to a "vicious attack" and a "stab in the back" he has been the perpetrator, not the victim.

Charles Johnson, let us remember, initiated this whole thing and wrote he was "done" with me, etc.

I responded, defending myself, and have added updates responding to his increasingly shrill attacks, most notably that I am encouraging genocide.

This is what constitutes in his eyes a "vicious attack."

Apparently the only way I could have avoided "viciously attacking" Charles Johnson would have been to roll over and allow him to defame me without response.

Call this one "Charles Johnson Hits Bottom, Digs."

SEVENTH UPDATE: Charles Johnson is going CAIR one better by blaming me not for unmoderated comments made here at Jihad Watch, but for comments left at LGF and emails he has received that oppose the lunatic course he has taken. So for the record I am stating here now that I have never asked anyone to write to Charles Johnson or to comment at LGF in my defense, and have no responsibility for anything anyone says while doing so. And I ask those who support me not to write to this man, or to comment at his site. Thank you.

UPDATE, November 10, 2008: A later post on this, "Charles Johnson hits bottom, digs (part 2)" has mysteriously disappeared from Google's Search tool, although it still appears on this site. (I have written to Google about this.) Thus for the ease of readers who may be searching, and for anyone offended by thuggery, I decided to paste that page into this one. Here it is:

I had not intended to write about Charles Johnson anymore, but tonight he has posted a video of two antisemitic idiots singing a song making fun of Holocaust victims. One of them turns out to have been a member of the Belgian Vlaams Belang party, although apparently he has been expelled from it due to this video. Anyway, this has become the occasion for Charles and his sycophants to renew their libels -- and since one person encouraged people to contact me, as if I have something to do with these people, I thought this occasioned another statement.

Anyway, whatever the relationship of these people is or was with the VB, as I said here: "I want to emphasize that I have not endorsed the Vlaams Belang. This whole controversy is not about the Vlaams Belang, but about whether or not one can disagree with Charles Johnson and not be defamed as a result." It was occasioned not by my linking to Vlaams Belang, as someone at LGF falsely claimed, but because I restored links to Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal. I did this not because I agree with everything written there, any more than I agree with everything written at any site to which I link. In fact, Dymphna of Gates of Vienna has been sharply critical of me in the past. But there are some noteworthy things being written there. In fact, yesterday I was told that Gateway Pundit and Michelle Malkin linked to a Gates of Vienna post. Will Charles Johnson denounce them as neofascist sympathizers?

Charles Johnson says of me in this LGF thread, "I won't have anything to do with him. He's behaving despicably." You can see that here -- he has classily blocked links from this site, so you can't just click and go, but you can paste this link into your address bar and see it: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/287/6184151. He has also fabricated out of whole cloth the claim that "if you believe what Spencer has written, Geert Wilders has apparently softened his opposition to groups like the Vlaams Belang too." That one is here: http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/555/6184555. In reality, I have never written a single thing about what Geert Wilders thinks of Vlaams Belang, and I have no idea what Geert Wilders thinks about Vlaams Belang.

In fact, it is Charles who is behaving despicably, and not only because he is lying and being completely inconsistent in his denunciations. In the first place, I have a disclaimer above my links -- he has completely ignored that. In the second place, he blamed me for a genocidal comment left at LGF, with no evidence that I had anything to do with it -- and I didn't. This is the sort of thing that is outstandingly despicable, as I can remember times when his opponents blamed him for unmoderated comments at his site, and he rightfully took exception. And in this case, mind you, he blamed me not for a comment left here, but for a comment left at his site.

Third, he is again inconsistent, linking to others who link to Brussels Journal, and not denouncing others who don't share his views of the situation in Europe. Even the Wall Street Journal links to Brussels Journal. Is the Wall Street Journal a genocide-encouraging, fascist-sympathizing rag, Charles?

Charles Johnson continues to defame me without just cause or provocation. He is encouraging in his followers the idea that my work is worthless and I am evil, and providing a platform for their Orwellian Two-Minutes' Hate, because of a couple of weblinks. He ostensibly champions liberty and free speech, but in reality LGF has little to do with either and everything to do with its owner's singular narrative, featuring his moves to quash all dissent and demonize all dissenters. This is ironic at best and fatuously and pathetically hypocritical at worst. Charles Johnson is, therefore, hardly the kind of ally one needs in the struggle that looms before us, the defense of free speech.

ADDENDUM, November 9: Family Values' comment below, at November 9, 2008 12:55 AM, makes reference to this LGF comment:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/73/6197660

I was sent the text of this comment. In it, the man who wrote me, Walter L. Newton, claims that I am monitoring LGF closely. In fact, I only see what people send me from there. This was sent to me, and I went over there to check it out -- the first time I had been there in awhile, and the last time I hope to go there.

Anyway, for the record: Walter L. Newton asked me about my intention to "investigate" the groups that Charles Johnson says are neofascist. I wrote this:

Actually, I am fighting jihad, and have no interest in or intention to investigate these groups. Insofar as they are fighting jihad, I applaud them. Insofar as they are doing anything else, my endorsement is not implied.

Walter L. Newton, perhaps unsurprisingly, takes this to mean that I don't care if they are Nazis, as long as they are fighting jihad. In fact, as I have said many times, I will not make common cause with neofascists, white supremacists, or neo-Nazis. Just weeks before Charles Johnson and his frenzied hordes decided I was "embracing the neo-Nazi movement" and encouraging genocide, I wrote here that I could not endorse the Cologne anti-jihad meeting because of the involvement of LePen and Jorg Haider. I retract nothing in that post, which you can find here.

What is at issue here is whether Vlaams Belang is indeed a neofascist, white supremacist, neo-Nazi party. That is indeed a matter that requires investigation, since they are not openly or obviously any of those things. Charles Johnson believes he has marshaled a great deal of evidence that shows that they are. Sensible and well-informed people (in fact, much better informed about Europe than is Johnson himself) believe Johnson has not made his case. As I have remarked several times, Johnson himself has become so manichaean and paranoid that he appears to believe that those who doubt that he has made his case are white supremacist neofascists themselves. He has defamed Andrew Bostom, Diana West, Richard Miniter and others on this basis - which in itself doesn't say much for Charles' credibility. He has now even defamed Ilana Mercer, the daughter of an anti-apartheid crusader, as a white nationalist - apparently basing his case on false statements from Wikipedia linking her to a white nationalist organization with which she has no connection. Ilana Mercer wrote to him, asking him to take down the defamatory post, and he actually complied -- the first time I know of that he has shown any compunction for his erratic leaps of logic and rushes to judgment. Meanwhile, Charles Johnson's paranoia increases, and credibility decreases, with every new denunciation.

Anyway, if determining VB's true nature requires investigation, why did I tell this Walter L. Newton that I wasn't going to investigate? Actually, I had just told him in a previous email that I was still looking into this matter - which the LGF commenters, true to form, took as a contradiction. It was only a statement of priority. I am going to keep fighting jihad. I will never make common cause with neofascists. I am going to continue examining the situation in Europe in general, and VB, and sifting the evidence. But I am not going to turn Jihad Watch, as Charles Johnson has turned LGF, into a site devoted almost entirely to this question - and certainly not into the witch-hunting hatefest that LGF has become.

But yes, I am going to continue to monitor the situation in Europe. In fact, as far as Vlaams Belang goes, I asked a Dutch speaker to examine the video Charles Johnson posted, of VB leader Filip Dewinter supposedly visiting a neofascist book fair. This is the information he sent me:

In fact, it does seem to be some book fair of student organizations. The title of the video says:

Livres sur le nazisme et le Voorpost (milice nazi du Vlaams Belang) en vente pendant les conférences du Vlaams Belang - Vlaams Choc de Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8

(Books about Nazism and Voorpost (the Nazi militia of Vlaams Belang) for sale during conferences of Vlaams Belang -- Vlaams Choc of Peter Boeckx (2005) 2/8)

"Vlaams Choc" was an anti-Flemish television program on Walloon (=Belgian French-language) television. This apparently is from the program shown on August 2, 2005.
Belgium is dominated by the French-speaking Walloons. VB wants the independence of Flanders and wants to free the Flemings from Walloon domination.

The book fair is definitely NOT from 2005. Mark the orange logo of Vlaams Blok, visible on the background during the video (on the ribbon against the wall: you see the Flemish lion flag (yellow with black lion) and the Vlaams Blok logo). The Vlaams Blok was officially disbanded in 2004. The logo was no longer in use afterwards. Hence, this video is NOT from 2005 and has to be older. Vlaams Belang was founded in November 2004. It has an entirely different logo.

Here is what the video shows:

0:1 VB members with poster saying "Geen stemrecht voor vreemdelingen" ("no voting rights for foreigners") and the Vlaams Blok logo
0:2 a student of KVHV putting out posters and books for display on a table.
KVHV = Katholiek Vlaams Hoogstudenten Verbond (Catholic Flemish University-Student Association)
KVHV is a conservative Catholic organisation. Good guys, anti-Socialist, very Catholic (support the Pope). Their enemies call them "fascists", which they are not, just traditional Catholics.
0:9 Display of "Ons Verbond" (Our Association), the magazine of KVHV. There is also a poster with a stop sign over a communist hammer and sickle.
0:12 Dewinter entering and asking "Where is the president?" (= the KVHV president?)
He shakes hands with a man. Not a student, hence not KVHV.
0:19 Mark the Vlaams BLOK logo on the ribbon against the wall.
0:23 display of booklets, magazines about Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front during WWII.
0:28 book about Joris van Severen (see below. JvS was a Belgian fascist, pro-Belgium, anti-Flemish independence in the 1930s. He was an admirer of Mussolini, but an opponent of Hitler. JvS was murdered in May 1940 by French soldiers.) There is also a booklet marked "Voorpost". Voorpost is a small right-wing Flemish organization. They are very anti-American. Voorpost is independent from VB, but many of its members vote VB. They often speak aggressive language and seek confrontation with enemies such as leftists and Walloons. I think they are infiltrated by the Belgian state security and deliberately provoke incidents in order to give VB bad press.
0:30 book display of Hitler: une fatalite allemande by Ernst Niekisch, a Communist opponent of Hitler. http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Ernst-Niekisch Niekisch was imprisoned by Nazis from 1937 to 1945. Also there is the anti-immigration novel Camp des Saints of Raspail, and "The Fenian Movement" (the Fenians were 19th century Irish nationalists fighting the British domination of Ireland).

It is not clear whether this is the KVHV bookstand (I doubt it since the books are in French). It is not clear either whether these are the books that Dewinter is looking at.

0:36 an open book with a picture of Joris van Severen.
0:40 picture of German soldiers.
0:42 Dewinter at a book stand (PS Not clear whether it is the book stand shown before).
0:50 Dewinter grabs a book. I cannot see which one. He says "Vu de Droite" (The Right-wing View). Vu de Droite is a book by French philosopher Alain de Benoist. De Benoist is anti-American, anti-Christian, and calls himself a "neo-Pagan." (Btw: Benoist opposes Le Pen and called on his followers to vote Communist. He also admires Muslims for their fighting spirit. For Benoist and his followers Christianity has caused the weakness of the Europeans. They Europeans have to rediscover their pagan fighting spirit.)
1:00 Dewinter asks a KVHV member (recognisable by his red-brown student cap and the ribbon with the KVHV arms) whether he has already read this book. The student says he has not read it because he is "illiterate". (If the book is. indeed, Benoist's book, the Catholic student does not seem very impressed with it. It is possible that Dewinter is joking: showing the anti-Catholic book to the Catholic student).
1:08 Dewinter asks whether the magazine (on the table) is the KVHV magazine. The students say he is allowed to take some copies.
1:18 Dewinter at another book stand. Apparently with literature from the independence movement in Brittany (a Celtic-speaking region in the West of France).
He asks the man: "You are a Breton?"
1:20 The man says he is indeed a Breton and tells Dewinter "You are an example for us. Your party is a model for us."
1:32 Dewinter says: "If we can help you we will do so."
PS Dewinter is no longer carrying the Benoist book, but has a glass in his hand, the other hand is free (as we can see when he is shaking hands with the Breton).

Here is what Charles Johnson says about Dewinter's conversation with Andries, the Catholic student:

Filip deWinter: "Have you read this, Andries?" (asks as he points to book)

Bookseller : "No I am illiterate." (Sarcasm... meaning he actually read it)

Filip deWinter: "Is this a good book?" (asks about another Nazi book on display)

Bookseller: "It served my beliefs."

In reality Dewinter showed the anti-Catholic book to Andries, who answered he had not read it because he is "illiterate." I do not hear Andries and Dewinter talk about another book that "served his beliefs." Andries says he is illiterate. Then Dewinter asks whether the magazine on display is their (KVHV) magazine. They say it is, and tell him he can take some copies. I do not hear Dewinter asking "Is this a good book?" Nor do I hear anyone saying "It served my beliefs."

I do not know where Charles Johnson gets this from.

On the table there are a lot of books on Flemish volunteers to the Eastern Front and the Verdinaso movement of the Belgian fascist Joris van Severen. Van Severen began his political career as an MP for the Flemish nationalists (and a democrat) in the 1920s, but later became pro-Belgian and founded a Belgian-nationalist fascist party 'Verdinaso,' modeled on Mussolini's party.

He admired Mussolini, but loathed Hitler, and called on his followers to fight the Nazis in the event of an invasion of Belgium. Nevertheless, he was arrested by the Belgians in the beginning of the war and murdered by French soldiers on May 20, 1940, together with a group of Belgian communists and Hungarian and Czech Jews, who had also been arrested by the Belgian authorities.

After his assassination his party fell apart. Some of his followers joined the resistance, others collaborated with the Germans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joris_Van_Severen says this:

Joris Van Severen ideological thinking was also influenced by Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, whilst failing to come to any accommodation with the Rexists or the Flemish National Union. Van Severen was equally opposed to Adolf Hitler and on the outbreak of World War II he banned his followers from producing any material in support of Nazism.

Execution

When Germany began executing Fall Gelb (the invasion of the Low Countries by Germany) in 1940 the Belgian government arrested him, together with many other Flemish-nationalist en communist politicians, and thousands of foreigners, and transported him to France for lack of space in Belgium. Van Severen belonged to a group of prisoners who was imprisoned in Abbeville, where, during havy German air attacks at May 20, he was shot with 20 other prisoners by French soldiers who thought they were dangerous spies.

The death of its leader left the Verdinaso without a leader and it soon began falling apart. Some Verdinaso-members joined forces with the Germans, others joined the (now almost completely unknown) resistance group Dietse Eenheid and others just stopped involving themselves in politics.

But aren't the book fair operators wearing neo-Nazi uniform caps? No: "the caps are student caps. Flemish student organisations have caps (cfr German student organizations). You can recognize the organization by the cap's colour. The KVHV color is brown-red with a black and yellow (colors of Flanders) ribbon beneath it."

So we have a book fair selling one book by a fascist, another by a Communist, and an anti-Catholic book. This is a neo-Nazi book fair? Dewinter is a neo-Nazi for going in and glad-handing people there?

Even if Vlaams Belang were everything Charles Johnson says it is (and it clearly isn't), nothing about it is established from this video. Nor is anything established by the activities of people who were expelled from the party for those very activities. Charles Johnson will no doubt keep witch-hunting, and I will keep approaching all the groups in Europe, without exception, with open-eyed reserve. But no one should be under the impression that Charles Johnson is fairly or dispassionately presenting evidence about them.

SECOND ADDENDUM, 7PM PST, November 9:

Charles Johnson is a liar, and even the Lizards -- some of them -- are beginning to wake up to it. I was just sent this comment from someone who is braving the stench and reading LGF:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/608/6201404

In this one Johnson brushes aside the fact that he had posted a tissue of fabrications regarding this book fair jaunt by Dewinter:

608 Charles 11/09/2008 5:33:00 pm PST

re: #601 brotherofchronos

I'm not defending that. I'm simply saying that the video was badly translated, which could be used to cast doubt on your other evidence. I don't understand why you would want to take that risk.

At this point, it's far beyond any nitpicking that comes from those people. Let them go ahead and "cast doubt" all they like - it's all they have left.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/showc/616/6201420

Then the commenter "BrotherofChronos" dares to respond to The Master by reminding him that truth and integrity are, well, important:

Nevertheless, the translation was wrong. It's not right, charles. I realise it's your site and you can do what you like with it but I can't see any moral justification in using what is effectively manufactured evidence to prove this. The video says one thing. The translation you were provided with says something completely different. If you're not careful it could bounce back at you.

Oh, it's bouncing! Bouncing just like a...little green football...

And so honest readers are bouncing right out of the defamation and lie factory that is Little Green Footballs.

UPDATE November 12: I have been informed that Charles Johnson has completely revised his presentation of this book fair, removing without explanation (in the main post, anyway) the false translation he earlier posted. Now, apparently, the big problem is the book Dewinter picks up, Vu de droite by Alain de Benoist.

I'm not sure how Johnson and his Little Green Moonbats can rationalize the idea that picking up a book means that one endorses it, but of course rationality has nothing to do with this. The book that Charles Johnson called a "Nazi book," and that his sycophants at LGF are apparently calling a "fascist book," actually received the Grand Prix de l'Essai from the Académie Française in 1978. The Académie Française did not in 1978 and does not now award prizes to "Nazi books." The neofascist rag known as the New York Review of Books reviewed the book in 1980 and said that de Benoist condemns "fascism of the left and right." His book Vu de droite, in Charles's world so unforgivably handled by the demonic Dewinter, according to this actually won praise from that noted fascist...François Mitterrand.

Little Green Moonbats now devotes a considerable amount of time wringing its hands over the horrors of Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Human Events, and the Conservative Book Club. I would rather fight Osama bin Laden, Omar Bakri, Anjem Choudary, Abu Bakar Bashir, and people who share their ideology -- people who are much less of a concern at LGF than they used to be.

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And here is the original post:

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Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has denounced me and he and his followers are slinging wild accusations against me because I have linked -- under a disclaimer saying that I don't necessarily agree with everything at every linked site -- to two sites he doesn't like.

To read the whole story of his unprovoked attack, and this petty and needless conflict, read on.

I received this email this morning from Paul Kamolnick, a professor at East Tennessee State University who was instrumental in bringing me to the campus. He kindly gave me permission to publish it.

Dear Robert,

I want to sincerely thank you for your presentation. I also very much enjoyed the time we were able to spend before the talk talking about these questions more generally. My thoughts on the evening's events.

1. I felt that your presentation was excellent, eloquent, and your argument, very well substantiated. I was very impressed with your public speaking skills and found you a delight to be with.

2. The Muslim leadership of the mosque obviously took this opportunity to organize a forceful Da'wa event for themselves; treat you with hateful disrespect; and as you have pointed out in your writings and in our earlier conversation, did not challenge the facts upon which your case rests. I consider it a personal insult that Taneem Aziz misrepresented the Muslim presence to me. His last communication to me suggested that some members of the Muslim community might attend, but it is obvious that this was a leadership-organized affair.

3. I was asked by several persons how the event went, and my response has been: It was extremely unpleasant, and not at all what I had hoped for. When I went home I began pondering the evening's events and thinking seriously about what you had said about the limits of engaging the 'modernist' apologetic, and why it is not enough.

4. I apologize to you Robert, for the rudeness and hate you experienced. I am deeply impressed with you as a human being, and student, and speaker.

5. The lessons learned by me were enormously productive, and I think at least a few persons in attendance got to witness something that will lead them to research for themselves, the 'peaceableness' of this faith, when confronted with the prospect of its own imperialist past.

I wish you the best Robert, and hope that sometime our paths cross again.

Sincerely yours,
Paul

Over the last year, during three different Islamo-Fascism Awareness Weeks, I've spoken at seventeen university campuses all across the country. I've never been shouted off the stage, as have some other speakers. I have, however, been threatened, heckled, protested, and made the subject of libelous hate-sheets passed out to people attending my talks, but I have never encountered a bolder or more brazen display of Islamic supremacist denial, obfuscation, lies, slander, intimidation, apologetics for mass murder and open hostility to reasoned discourse than I did Wednesday night at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.

East Tennessee State, of course, is that bastion of free inquiry and open debate that denied funding for my address for fear that my speaking there would make Muslim students feel "ostracized." Through a donation from the Middle East Forum, supplementing the David Horowitz Freedom Center's covering of the costs of travel, lodging and a bodyguard (all of which should have been paid for by the University, whose students evidently can't be expected to behave civilly), I was able to go anyway, and university officials need not have worried: Muslim students had no reason to go away feeling ostracized. Indeed, they were anything but ostracized: along with some Muslim leaders from the area, they were responsible for an evening strongly reminiscent of the denunciation sessions once held in the Soviet Union and Communist China for those who deviated from the ideological line of those who held power. The same furious hatred, the same frenzied personal attacks, the same emotionalism and defiance of reason and fact -- it was all on display in spades, and it was all directed at me.

Boo!

Trick-or-treaters to the Jihad Watch offices in Secure Undisclosed Locationville will be given a free copy of Islam: What the West Needs to Know. Fewer calories than a Milky Way, and more informative!

I'm working now on my report on my speech at East Tennessee State University Wednesday night, and thought this deserved a separate post. The tone for the evening was set by a folder that Muslim students were handing out at the door to everyone who entered the hall. A sticker on the front read "ISLAM: Religion of Peace" -- the topic for the evening was "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"

Inside the folder was a piece libeling me; a flier, "30 Facts About Islam," laden with taqiyya and detours; and two handsomely printed cards headed "Find Your...Bridge to Faith," and breathlessly announcing, "THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR: Find Out The Truth About The Fastest Growing Religion From An Ex-Preacher!" These cards announced six appearances between November 6 and 9 of Sheikh Yusuf Estes, a convert from Christianity to Islam, in Johnson City and Knoxville. "Sheik Yusuf," it read in part, "helps many new people to Islam using straight talk & funny jokes, while answering harsh attacks against Islam & the Muslims. He makes it fun & easy for all of us to understand."

I am sure that at these events Yusuf Estes will present a sugar-coated version of Islam, shorn of jihad violence and supremacism, in line with the directives of the book Methodology of Dawah by Shamim A. Siddiqi. This is a guide written by a Muslim for a Muslim audience on how to make American (particularly black American) converts, and it specifically tells Muslim proselytizers not to tell prospective converts the whole truth about Islam. On pages 48 and 49 of that book (corresponding to pages 70 and 71 of the pdf here) you will find this:

Through their Dawah activities, these communities approach the Afro- American people, who are already depressed and deprived, and are in quest of their true 'identity'. Islam is presented to them. The concept of Tawheed (Oneness of God) is explained to them in an academic fashion without telling what this Kalimah [declaration of faith] demands from a Muslim. Aqidah [Islamic belief] is explained without giving the details of the impact of Iman Billah [faith in Allah] and Iman Bil- Akhirah [faith in the afterlife], and without telling what revolution it must bring in the life of an individual and the society in which he lives.

Some rituals of religion and traditions of the Muslim Community are explained. A short account of the Prophet's (S) life is presented, without the revolutionary aspect. When Islam is acceptable to the new entrants in this concocted or abbreviated form, the ceremony of Shahadah [the profession of Islamic faith] is performed with great reverence. A non-Muslim thus becomes a Muslim, obedient to Allah (SWT) alone. The revolutionary aspect of Islam is rarely brought before the new converts, himself is not conversant with it. [Emphasis added.]

Yet while Estes is certain to present, in line with this, a "concocted or abbreviated" form of Islam, shorn of its "revolutionary aspect," he is clearly quite conversant with the "revolution" that Islam "must bring in the life of an individual and the society in which he lives." Sure, Yusuf Estes is always laughin', havin' fun, and here he is making the Islamic death penalty for apostasy fun and easy for all of us to understand:

[...] Yet another example that occurred at the time of our blessed prophet, peace be upon him, was that of some who pretended they wanted to be Muslims only to take advantage of the believers, gain some worldly benefits and then abused and slaughtered an entire group of shepherds that memorized the entire Quran, who were caring for them.

They killed them in cold blood and took everything for themselves. The prophet, peace be upon him, was very disturbed over this and ordered them to be severely punished and left to die without any food or water.

3. The proper punishment

From this example we learn how to deal with traitors and terrorists who have no intention of doing anything except evil and spreading fitnah (evil and terror) throughout the land.

Qur'an 5:33 mandates crucifixion or amputation of a hand and a foot on opposite sides for those guilty of fasad, which is similar to fitnah.

Over the centuries since the inception of Islam, we can find cases of people leaving Islam and what was their example and what the prevailing jurists decided in their particular situation.

Most all of these were not punished except in the cases of treason, other acts of violence or for propagating corruption, dissention and promoting evil along with their apostasy. [...]

Now let us consider the realities of balance in Islam in light of today's world.
There is no existing Islamic state with a khilafah. This means the hudud (punishment according to Islam) of the Shar'iah (Islamic Law) cannot be appropriately applied.
Additionally, anyone not being a citizen living in an Islamic state could hardly be tried and convicted by the state in a proper manner.

In other words, of course Islam has a death penalty for apostasy, but it can only be fully enforced within the caliphate, and the caliphate doesn't exist today, so the punishment cannot be applied.

[...] To conclude, Islam comes from Allah, the actual Creator and Sustainer of the universe. [...]

If a person wants to accept this belief and way of life, then they should be free to do so. If another person would reject this even though the evidence is clearly in favor of Islam, they are free to make this choice but would live in the society still receiving the benefits and services available, such as food, shelter, clothing, protection and charity.

However, they would pay a larger tax on their wealth due to their not being conscripted to serve in the military and so on.

In other words, they would be made to "pay the jizya [poll tax] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" (Qur'an 9:29).

Conditions are really what bring about the different rulings on dealing with those who enter Islam and then leave it, with the clear intention of bringing about dissention and unrest amongst the people.

Also, those who seek to convert people away from Islam into other faiths or to destroy the Islamic government would naturally be considered as traitors and then dealt with as such.

So in other words, Yusuf Estes teaches that missionaries should be killed, in line with Muhammad's example in brutally killing people he considered to be traitors.

What a fun guy!

Mass wedding celebration, courtesy Hamas

According to Hamas, marriage is like jihad not (necessarily) because it is full of "struggle," violence, and perpetual animosity between the Dar al-Husband and the Dar al-Wife, but rather because it begets children, who become jihadis and "martyrs." Hamas: always pragmatic.

"For war widows, Hamas recruits army of husbands," by Taghreed El-Khodary for the International Herald Tribune, October 31, 2008 :

GAZA: The grooms were resplendent in white shirts while the brides all wore black. At a sports stadium one recent October evening, thousands of Palestinians — 300 newly married couples along with relatives and friends — gathered for a mass wedding celebration, the 10th here this year courtesy of Hamas.

Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, has been observing a truce with Israel since June, allowing its underground fighters to resurface but leaving them without much to do. At the same time, hundreds of the group's women have been recently widowed, their husbands having been killed either in confrontations with Israel or in the fighting last year between Hamas and its secular rival, Fatah.

Taking advantage of the pause in violence, the Hamas leaders have turned to matchmaking, bringing together single fighters and widows, and providing dowries and wedding parties for the many here who cannot afford such trappings of matrimony.

"Marriage is the same as jihad," or holy war, said Muhammad Yousef, one recently married member of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas underground. "With marriage, you are producing another generation that believes in resistance."...

Such "intolerance" towards the Taliban. What, just because they threatened to hurl acid on the faces of unveiled women?

"Afghan women decry Taleban talks," by Martin Vennard for the BBC, October 29 :

Representatives of women from across Afghanistan have called on President Hamid Karzai not to undermine their position by talking to the Taleban.

The president's brother recently sat with former Taleban leaders at a religious meal hosted by the Saudis.

The meeting was regarded as a possible prelude to talks between the Afghan government and the Islamist movement.

Mr Karzai told a conference of about 400 women that any talks with the Taleban would respect the constitution.

'No compromises'

The women fear that the talks could lead to a reversal of the gains they have made since the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001.

They called on President Karzai to make sure their rights are guaranteed.

The president reassured the women that their position was safe

The Minister for Women's Affairs, Hasan Bano Ghazanfar, said that women were against "any political compromises" that did not take into consideration their constitutional values and human rights.

President Karzai said nothing would be agreed with the Taleban which threatened the rights of women.

"All our efforts are for peace. Those Taleban who aren't against this country are welcome to take part. My sisters, you should not be worried: they are not against you. Those who want to usurp your rights are the enemies of this land and we should defeat them."

But President Karzai rejected calls from some delegates for public hangings for those convicted of rape and abductions of women.

On Tuesday political and tribal leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan agreed to establish high-level contact with the Taleban in an attempt to end the insurgencies in both countries.

A meeting between Afghan officials and former Taleban members took place in Saudi Arabia last month.

The women's conference is the biggest of its kind in Afghanistan since 2001. Under the Taleban women were banned from working and girls could not attend school.

The situation of Afghan women has undoubtedly improved since then. Around one and a half million girls have returned to school, while women sit in parliament and the government.

But there are still major problems. The delegates have also called for more to be done to improve women's security, health, education and employment and to combat domestic violence.

One would've thought that, if more needs to be done, the last thing to do is get cozy with the Taliban.

If you go to the BBC link, you'll see two pictures: one of a mosque in Germany which is about to be drastically enlarged by the largely Turkish population; the other of a church in Turkey which is run as a museum, you know, like the Hagia Sophia. So:

"Do Christians and Muslims have equal rights?" from the BBC, October 31:

Catholic and Muslim leaders are meeting from 4th-6th November to launch a new Catholic-Muslim forum.

It is an unprecedented initiative by the Vatican to improve relations between the two faiths.

The BBC's Christopher Landau has been looking at the state of Catholic-Muslim relations.

In the first of two reports, he travelled to the German city of Cologne, where the largely Turkish Muslim community plans to build one of Europe's largest mosques.

Civic and Christian leaders have backed the right of Muslims to worship freely, but they are also calling for increased religious freedom for Christians in Turkey.

While they're at it, they can also start "calling for increased religious freedom for Christians" in the entire Muslim world. Throw in a couple of churches in Saudi Arabia as well.

Muslim apostate to Christianity, Magdi Allam, who was recently baptized by the Pope asks the latter to "make a pronouncement in 'a clear and binding way' on the question of whether Islam is a valid religion." In olden days, no Christian, let alone pope, would've had any difficulties answering this question -- just as no Muslim today would have any problems answering this question if directed at Christianity. At any rate, how does the Pope see Islam? Better yet, how does the typical Christian, or follower of any other faith, see Islam? How do atheists and secularists see it? If all such people (the vast majority of humanity, i.e., the non-Islamic world) believe Muhammad was not a "prophet," what was he? If the Koran was not revealed from Gabriel, based on the verbatim words of Allah, what is it? Honest answers to oneself regarding such otherwise taboo questions will in and of themselves go a long way in explaining the state of affairs of the Islamic world.

"Muslim convert to Catholicism tells pope Islam is not inherently good," by Cindy Wooden for the Catholic News, October 29:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI at Easter asked the pope to tell his top aide for relations with Muslims that Islam is not an intrinsically good religion and that Islamic terrorism is not the result of a minority gone astray.

As the Vatican was preparing to host the first meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Forum Nov. 4-6, Magdi Allam, a longtime critic of the Muslim faith of his parents, issued an open letter to Pope Benedict that included criticism of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

In the letter, posted on his Web site Oct. 20, Allam said he wanted to tell the pope of his concern for "the serious religious and ethical straying that has infiltrated and spread within the heart of the church."

He told the pope that it "is vital for the common good of the Catholic Church, the general interest of Christianity and of Western civilization itself" that the pope make a pronouncement in "a clear and binding way" on the question of whether Islam is a valid religion.

The Catholic Church's dialogue with Islam is based on the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions ("Nostra Aetate"), which urged esteem for Muslims because "they adore the one God," strive to follow his will, recognize Jesus as a prophet, honor his mother, Mary, "value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting."

The council called on Catholics and Muslims "to work sincerely for mutual understanding" and for social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.

Allam told Pope Benedict he specifically objected to Cardinal Tauran telling a conference in August that Islam itself promotes peace but that "'some believers' have 'betrayed their faith,'" using it as a pretext for violence.

"The objective reality, I tell you with all sincerity and animated by a constructive intent, is exactly the opposite of what Cardinal Tauran imagines," Allam told the pope. "Islamic extremism and terrorism are the mature fruit" of following "the sayings of the Quran and the thought and action of Mohammed."...

"The Iranian people hate the US." But surely if we just sit down and chat we can hash things out and reach an understanding.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattling steps up in intensity: "Iran threatens US with suicide bombers," from the Media Line News Agency, October 30 (thanks to James):

Only a few days ahead of the American presidential election, Iranian parliamentary speaker 'Ali Larijani and Supreme Leader Ayatollah 'Ali Khamanai have launched harsh verbal attacks against the United States.

Referring to the US army's attacks in Pakistan and Syria, Larijani said they would not be answered with diplomatic protests.

"The US method and conduct, expressed by this aggression, will only be stopped by a clear-cut and unexpected response, whose grounds were set by the martyr Hussein Fahmida," Larijani said during a parliamentary session on Wednesday.

Fahmida was 13 when he detonated an explosive device he carried on him, destroying an Iraqi tank during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

"America should be aware not to put its huge body on top of the suicide bombers' explosive devices," Larijani said.

On the same day, Khamanai said the differences between Iran and the US were far beyond differences of opinion.

"The Iranian people hate the US… [because of] the various plots the US government has hatched against Iran and the Iranian nation for the past five decades," Khamanai said.

The Supreme Leader added that any nation that would not honor Iran's identity and independence would have its "hands cut off."...

Wednesday evening I spoke at East Tennessee State University in the most virulently hostile atmosphere I've encountered on any campus in the country, courtesy the school's Muslim students and Muslim leaders from the local community. By tomorrow I hope to have completed my own report, but I just noticed this comment by an ETSU student named Ryan, and thought it worth putting up as a separate post both so that you don't have only my word on how these things go, but also as a witness to, and a protest against, the atmosphere of thuggery and propaganda, and hostility to reasoned discourse, that increasingly prevails in American universities.

Succinct questions, intellectual honesty, and good manners somehow eluded the audience at East Tennessee State University on Wednesday night. I was appalled at the crass grandstanding of the attendees, who seemed to have had an immutable opinion and came only to heckle. Though perhaps understandably aggrieved by the information, the mob chose to flog the messenger instead of reevaluating the documents Mr. Spencer was referring to.

Any information coming to light that injures one’s understanding of one’s religious faith is going to trigger an emotional reflex in the innermost of one’s sense of existence. The factual accuracy of this new information to the believer is inconsequential in many cases; the only permissible behavior or interpretation is the one a person has been socialized and taught to accept as correct.

Mr. Spencer’s faux pas with this audience occurred precisely at the moment they noticed he was challenging their orthodoxy with their own texts. Instead of asking questions related to the lecture, the degenerates began frothing at the mouth with excitement and elected to respond without even a modicum of tact and assassinate Spencer’s character in the most insidious ways, referring to him as a “liar” while not offering even so much as an iota of textual substantiation. After a few schmucks gave ten to fifteen minute rambles on their personal lives, I began wondering whether those audience members venerated themselves or Allah to a greater degree, or if I should attribute the behavior to some inebriate condition.

The courtesy of letting Mr. Spencer address a certain point was thrown out the window as some inquirers opted for raising their voices, interrupting the speaker, and were apparently trying to goad those who did not agree with them into a shouting match. While the school may be a refuge for the area’s young, immature, and often harmless pinkos, the behavior of this audience was beyond the pale and was some of the worst mob mentality I’ve unfortunately had to experience anywhere.

In all fairness, this isn’t an issue relating to Islam; it is simply amazingly poor manners by an intolerant group of people. I am a student at East Tennessee State University and attended this lecture, and apologize to Mr. Spencer, the readers of JihadWatch, and all present who witnessed the thuggery. There are reasonable people everywhere, but a professional attitude and scholarly detachment are often drowned by de facto censures by the ideological public that is unwilling to delve into an issue beyond a stale talking point.

The "Ramadan gift" that this law was intended to be came a little late, but in the end, creeping sharia took a significant step forward. "The Indonesian parliament adopts anti-pornography bill," by Mathias Hariyadi for AsiaNews, October 30:

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – With opposition MPs absent, Indonesia’s parliament approved an anti-porn bill that was welcomed by supporters who loudly rejoiced with prayers to Allah. In online newspaper forums many ordinary citizens reacted angrily however, slamming what they consider a step backward for Indonesia and an “obscurantist” decision.

Today the lower house in Indonesia’s parliament approved the controversial anti-pornography bill, known in Bahasa Indonesia as Undang-undang Pornografi, Uu App. Since it was tabled it has been at the centre of intense discussions because it is seen as a step towards introducing Sharia law into the country’s legal system along the lines of Saudi Arabia.

In recent weeks human rights activists and representatives of political and religious minorities, including the Catholic Church, have strenuously objected to the law.

According to its critics, the law eliminates “cultural” differences and undermines “national unity”. As it stands it is all but an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists to introduce Islamic law into the country’s legal system.

The anti-porn law was approved almost unanimously but MPs for the Indonesian Democracy Struggle Party (PDIP) and the Christian-based Prosperous Peace Party (PDS) were not in the house in protest against the bill.

A supporter of the new law named Lasmiantini, a member of a group called Salima or Muslim Sisters, felt great about it.

“Inshallah, God willing, Indonesia shall finally see the rebirth of morality,” she said.

“We are happy,” she added, “because we won the battle to defend our children and it [the law] will also protect women.”

“Educational TV programmes” will be promoted “to improve moral values as the basis of society.

Pro-law activists said that the legislation can be improved to “avoid excesses”, denying at the same time that negative views were expressed “against the bill in some provinces.”

Meuthia Hatta, daughter of Mohammad Hatta, one of Indonesia’s founding fathers, noted that the law “does not violate the principles of freedom of expression” but instead protects people from the harm done by pornography...

Interestingly, that sounds a lot like Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu's contention that people should be allowed to "criticize" whatever they wish, but there are "red lines" that must not be crossed. What becomes all-important is who is in charge of drawing those "red lines," and in both cases, the agenda influencing where and how they are drawn is obvious.

Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu insists that "Everybody is entitled to criticize anybody or anything," but he also says there must be a "red line" that places "insults" and mockery off-limits. Who draws that line? What if, for example, the criticism is found to be insulting?

And there is much more, including an attempt to bolster the "racism" angle by presenting "Islamophobia" as the new anti-Semitism (never mind the raging hatred of Jews that is encouraged and sustained by Islamic texts), and a glossing over of the countless bloody battles waged in Islamic history over theological disputes (obviously some "red lines" were crossed there, and then all bets were off). It's tempting to say you can't make this stuff up. But on the other hand, İhsanoğlu just did:

"Islamophobia worse than racial prejudice," from Today's Zaman, October 30:

The secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Eklemeddin İhsanoğlu, has told a Danish newspaper that Western institutions which deal with Islamophobia agree that hatred against Islam and Muslims is worse than racial discrimination.

"Incitement to religious hatred is a new form of racism, and Western institutions dealing with Islamophobia are unanimous in saying that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is worse than racial discrimination," he stated in a recent written interview with the Danish Jyllands-Posten daily. İhsanoğlu stressed that discrimination is discrimination whether on religious or racial grounds. İhsanoğlu also clearly expressed that the OIC is neither against criticism of religion nor is it calling for a ban on any criticism of religion.

The full text of the written interview with the questions of Jyllands-Posten, a copy of which was also sent to Today's Zaman, is as follows:

Can you explain why you believe that criticism of religion can be defined as racism?

First of all, let me be very clear on one point. We are neither against criticism of religion nor do we call for a ban on criticizing religion. The history of religions, including Islam, is a history of criticism and debate which has led to the formation of different sects and schools of thought. These debates have always been there at the academic, scholarly or theological level. As for debates which are conducted at the level of public opinion, we have no problem with any criticism, as long as they are objective, fair and conducted in a responsible manner.

The problems start when the religious beliefs of individuals belonging to any religion or venerated religious figures, i.e., prophets, whether Muhammad, Jesus or Moses, are ridiculed, denigrated or targeted with campaigns of insults with apparent or declared intent to incite hatred against the followers of this or that religion. I am quite surprised to see in the Danish press insinuations that I and the OIC are opponents of freedom of expression, endeavoring to stifle this freedom by calling for a ban on the criticism of religion. [...]

But it all depends on your definition of "criticism."

Can you give an example of the kind of criticism that should be defined as racism?

We believe that incitement to religious hatred is a new form of racism. Western institutions dealing with Islamophobia are unanimous in saying that the phenomenon of Islamophobia is worse than racial discrimination. In practical terms, in many instances it is difficult to determine what constitutes incitement to religious or racial hatred, which are both proscribed as against international human rights. For example, when a Muslim immigrant is discriminated against or physically attacked by extremists, the causes could be on either racial or religious grounds, or both. The daily attacks, either physical or verbal, against Muslims throughout the West are the proof of the negative effect of hate speech campaigns which have resulted in an eroding of the human rights of those Muslim victims.

We should not forget that anti-Semitism, which caused horrendous tragedies for European Jews last century, cannot be explained technically or lexically as discrimination based solely on race, since the Jews subject to the Holocaust were Europeans from different parts of the continent; it was also because of their religious affiliation. Within the same context, one should realize that the Palestinians, who have been suffering a grave tragedy for the last 60 years, are ethnically Semitic, but what happens to them is not defined as anti-Semitism. What I am saying is that discrimination is discrimination whether on religious or racial grounds. I believe we are facing a gross campaign of disinformation on the part of some extremist quarters in the West and some European politicians who have little understanding of the matter and try to exploit the issue for domestic political gain by creating unnecessary fear of "the other."

Why should it not be possible to criticize a religion?

What follows is a massive conflation of insults (real or perceived) and incitement. This should be familiar, as many Islamic advocacy groups in the West persist in their efforts to classify any criticism of Islam or exposure of unpleasant aspects of Islamic law and belief as hate speech and incitement.

In my previous answers, I have tried to explain my views about this. If I may elaborate; the criticism of religion has been there for centuries. Trying to humiliate, insult others and jeopardize their basic human rights solely over their religious beliefs, particularly in the case of Islam, which is followed by 1.5 billion people, is understood as an act which falls outside the borders of critical dialogue or civilized criticism.

Narrowing down the discussion on the freedom of expression to demanding the freedom to be able to denigrate even the most sacred religious values is neither civilized nor intellectual. Yet, at the diplomatic level, we are not even focusing on this aspect. What we are saying is that incitement to hatred should not be allowed, particularly if this specific act constitutes a crime within the parameters of international human rights documents. Article 20 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requests governments to take measures at the national level against incitement to religious hatred.

What we are also advocating is that we should all abide not only by domestic laws and blasphemy laws, codes of conduct or ethics regulations, if they exist, but also by internationally agreed legal instruments.

According to The Washington Post, you recently said that there is a "red line" that should not be crossed. What do you mean by that? And what will happen if the "red line" is crossed?

I think there has always been, and there should be, a "red line" for any irresponsible attitude, whether it is on the individual or group level. Nobody can deny that in the exercising of any particular freedom, one should act with a sense of responsibility. We might differ on the point where freedom stops and responsibility starts. I would like to remind that all legal documents always strike a balance between freedoms and responsibility. With regard to the freedom of expression, the responsibility starts when there is an act of incitement to hatred proscribed by international law. It is important to recall that with the provision of freedom under human rights, it is only the freedom of expression which is linked with responsibility.

Read it all, preferably sitting down.

Not that he is endorsing any party, Reuters hastens to assure us. "Qaeda wants Republicans, Bush "humiliated": Web video," from Reuters, October 30 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

DUBAI (Reuters) - An al Qaeda leader has called for President George W. Bush and the Republicans to be "humiliated," without endorsing a party in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, according to an Internet video posting.

"O God, humiliate Bush and his party, O Lord of the Worlds, degrade and defy him," Abu Yahya al-Libi said at the end of sermon marking the Muslim feast of Eid al-Fitr, in a video posted on the Internet.

Libi, a top al Qaeda commander believed to be living in Afghanistan or Pakistan, called for God's wrath to be brought against Bush equating him with past tyrants in history.

The remarks were the first from a leading al Qaeda figure referring, albeit indirectly, to the U.S. elections. Muslim clerics often end sermons by calling on God to guide and support Muslims and help defeat their enemies....

Funny thing. Now, why is that? Reuters doesn't tell us, of course, about the sharp division between the believers -- the "best of people" (Qur'an 3:110) -- and the unbelievers -- the "most vile of created beings" (Qur'an 98:6) -- that runs through Islam. Nor does it discuss the geopolitical and supremacist implications of these prayers for the "defeat" of their enemies.

Some posters have also argued over the merits of trying to attack the United States before the election or waiting until later, the report said....

And indeed, although of course there still are a few days left, those who have counseled that it is best not to mount a violent jihad attack against the U.S. before the election seem to have won out.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain has been portrayed as likely to allow "the continuation of Republican control and aggressive policies toward the Islamic world."

One of the most striking elements of the response to the talks that I have been giving on university campuses all over the country is the never-yielding unwillingness of Muslim questioners to admit even the smallest point. They will dismiss the evidence that I bring from authoritative Islamic sources of the jihad imperative to subjugate non-Muslims under the rule of Islamic law as the ravings of a few extremists, not hesitating to repudiate any authority, no matter how influential it may be in the Islamic world.

This may seem to be a canny tactic, as most of the non-Muslims in any given audience have no idea who is an authoritative voice in Islam and who isn't, and so it gives the impression that I am quoting marginal people to whom the vast majority of Muslims don't listen. But as an approach it carries with it some serious risks: anyone in the audience who does know anything about Islamic theology and law, and about who the authoritative voices are in the Islamic world, will know they are lying. Also, anyone who is reasonably well informed about the extent of jihad activity worldwide, from Europe to Indonesia, will wonder just how tiny this Tiny Minority of Extremists™ really is.

Depending on what one means by "al-Qaeda," perhaps. If this official means a leader in the core unit of al-Qaeda issued it, that would be unlikely; if by "al-Qaeda" the official means Islamists with the same ideologies, who may nonetheless have no formal connection with al-Qaeda, bingo. It's most likely from al-Shabaab.

"Somalia bombings have markings of Al-Qaeda: US official," from AFP, October 30:

NAIROBI (AFP) — The deadly coordinated suicide car bomb attacks against key targets in two Somali breakaway states Wednesday have the markings of Al-Qaeda, Jendayi Frazer, US assistant secretary of state for Africa, told reporters in Nairobi.

"Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they have the markings of Al-Qaeda," she said after attending a summit on Somalia in the Kenyan capital.

"We believe that these senseless attacks highlight the determination of violent extremists to undermine peace and stability throughout Somalia and the Horn of Africa."

Frazer said Washington will continue to support regional efforts to combat terrorism.

"There is a serious terrorist threat in the Horn of Africa, concentrated in Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland and we have to address it as a region," she said.

Frazer called for action against Eritrea for hosting Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential Somali cleric listed as a terrorist by Washington and who has rejected recent peace talks and ceasefires.

"What I can say is Aweys is sitting in Eritrea... he is in the UN and US terror list. Eritrea is giving a safe haven to a terrorist, we need to act accordingly," she said.

"He is not for peace in Somalia, he is not for good governance in Somalia, he is making terrorism threats, we need to treat him accordingly," she told AFP.

And this from Dhimmi Jack! Of course, he gets himself off the hook by explaining to Muslims that "the arguments against creating a parallel system of Sharia law in Britain were 'overwhelming.'" Read: "It's not my fault!" Still, he did say the right thing; good for you, Jack.

"Jack Straw: Muslim courts will ALWAYS remain subservient to English law," by James Slack for the Daily Mail, October 30:

Muslim courts will always remain 'subservient' to English law, Jack Straw declared last night.

In a speech to an Islamic conference, the Justice Secretary said the arguments against creating a parallel system of Sharia law in Britain were 'overwhelming'.

His remarks come less than a week after one of his junior ministers, Bridget Prentice, appeared to clear Islamic courts to deal with family and divorce disputes, including how a Muslim couple divide their money and property and who gets the children.

Mr Straw said that - while courts could consider a Sharia ruling - they would make their own judgments on the welfare of the children.

Mr Straw, who is also Lord Chancellor, added: 'It is ultimately up to the court to decide whether the agreement complies with English law. No court will endorse an agreement which conflicts with English law.'

In the strongest passage of last night's speech, he continued: 'There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Sharia principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law.

'There is no question about that. But English law will always remain supreme, and religious councils subservient to it.'

Mr Straw earlier told the audience that 'many dreadful things have been done in the name of mainstream religions. Barbaric practices such as stoning have been – quite wrongly – justified by reference to Islam, for instance'.
[...]

But he added: 'Crucially, any member of a religious community – or indeed, any other community – has the right to refer to an English court, particularly if they feel pressured or coerced to resolve an issue in a way in which they feel uncomfortable.'...

Nice in theory, hard to implement in practice -- especially for already subservient, broken women, terrified of questioning their men, let alone dragging them before infidel courts to reassess a sharia court ruling.

Insulting artwork involving Islam, that is. Along with smashed windows and doors, the gallery has been receiving "12 abusive phone calls a day and emails condemning the show. Staff had to call police last week after an angry woman came in to complain. 'She was in a full burqa and was irate and upset. Her behaviour was quite threatening.'"

"Gallery attacked over 'insulting' artworks," by Arifa Akbar for The Independent, October 30:

A gallery showing inflammatory images of veiled Muslims, including a bare-breasted woman partially clad in a burqa, is under police surveillance after being attacked earlier this week.

Windows and doors at the SaLon Gallery in west London were smashed after a series of abusive, anonymous phone calls and angry protests about the images from Muslims. The gallery has complained to police.

The solo exhibition of paintings by Sarah Maple includes a veiled woman holding a pig, which is interpreted as a flagrant disregard of the Islamic ban on eating pork. The show – entitled "This Artist Blows" – also includes two self-portraits: one of Maple wearing a headscarf has an image of Kate Moss's naked breast attached to it; another shows Maple in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "I love jihad". In another, a veiled Muslim woman wears a badge that says "I love orgasms".

Last night, Maple, a 23-year-old of Kenyan and British parentage, defended her work, saying she had not meant to cause offence but to explore her Britishness and her Muslim faith. She voiced concern about her safety and said she hoped the exhibition of 39 pictures, which opened this month, would not be taken down before its official closing date of 23 November.

"I do think some people have just reacted to my work without thinking about the concepts behind it," she said. "I'm a practising Muslim and initially, when I started making the work, it was really personal, about my background with my father being British and my mother who is a Muslim and how I felt growing up. I was exploring the question of fusing those two together and whether it could be done."

Maple, from Sussex, has upset the Islamic world before. An exhibition by her earlier this year showed Muslim women in provocative poses, including one suggestively sucking on a banana. She won the Saatchi Prize last year for her self-portraits, some of which showed her in a headscarf smoking a cigarette. "People interpreted it as being related to sex, and that it was a post-sex light up," she said.

A spokeswoman for SaLon said the gallery in Bayswater, a part of London with a large Muslim population, was receiving about 12 abusive phone calls a day and emails condemning the show. Staff had to call police last week after an angry woman came in to complain. "She was in a full burqa and was irate and upset. Her behaviour was quite threatening," added the spokeswoman.

A small victory for the idea that workers should be treated equally and held to a uniform set of expectations, with none "more equal" than others. An update on this story. "Muslim worker loses out in Tesco booze bid," from the Evening Telegraph, October 29 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

A DERBY Muslim who sued Tesco for religious discrimination after he was asked to handle crates of alcohol has lost his case.

Mohammed Ahmed, who worked in a warehouse, said the job was against his Islamic beliefs.

The 32-year-old, of Upper Dale Road, Normanton, also accused Tesco of victimisation and harassment during a three-day employment tribunal in Birmingham.

His job at the supermarket giant's Lichfield depot involved the transportation of various goods, including alcoholic drinks, on fork-lift trucks.

The Saudi Arabian national told the tribunal he was not informed that he would be handling alcohol when he started the job last year.

He said he was considering appealing against the decision after being told his legal action had failed.

He said: "It's not fair but what can I do? They [Tesco] were not taking into account my religious beliefs. I will consult with solicitors."

The situation came to a head before Christmas last year, when more alcohol was ferried to the Tesco warehouse in preparation for the festive season.

Mr Ahmed told the tribunal that he was not made aware he would be required to handle alcohol when he started the job, a claim denied by Tesco.

He also said he had not visited any of Derby's three Tesco stores and was unaware alcohol was served by the shop. He admitted, however, that he had been to Sainsbury's, Asda and Lidl stores.

He refused to touch alcohol because it was against his religious principles as a Muslim, he said, and asked to be found other work.

He told the tribunal that Tesco failed to co-operate and alleged he was told by a supervisor, "You do the job or go home", a claim also denied by the store.

Mr Ahmed, who moved to Derby in 2006, complained to Tesco but claimed he was treated unfairly as a result. After eight months working for the company, he left in protest.

Speaking after the three-day tribunal in Birmingham, he had said: "It's in our religion that we are not allowed to handle alcohol. In the UK there's equal opportunities that should protect me and my beliefs."

Tesco said Mr Ahmed was made aware during his employment induction course that he would be handling alcohol, and that every effort was made to find him an alternative role in the warehouse.

In Human Events today I discuss how the Secretary of Defense seems to be wooing our media-anointed President-to-be by taking a hyper-PC line on the global jihad:

Is Robert Gates hoping that if Barack Obama is elected president, he will keep him on as Secretary of Defense?

It sure looks like it. Last week, while speaking at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gates tacitly endorsed Obama’s famous identification of Afghanistan as the central front in the war on terror. After a few brief and perfunctory remarks about Iraq, Gates spent most of his address talking about Afghanistan, which he proclaimed to be “the test, on the grandest scale, of what we are trying to achieve when it comes to integrating the military and the civilian, the public and private, the national and international.”

Nor was that the only indication that Gates is extending a virtual CV in Obama’s direction. In his address, Gates noted that “in the wake of the end of the Cold War, a new threat has emerged to menace peace-loving people of all nations and all religions.” That threat? “Violent extremism,” which Gates said “seeks to eject all westerners and western influence from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, to destroy Israel, and overthrow all secular and western-oriented governments in the region.” He explained that these “violent extremists” have “unlimited ‘ideological zeal,’” but he never even came close to explaining the content of that ideology, which would of course have required him to talk about Islam. This politically correct tack is sure to endear him to those who may soon be deciding who will oversee Obama’s Pentagon.

Note the usual insistence that sharia law itself is just, but isn't being carried out properly. Part of that hinges on widely divergent views of what constitutes justice in the first place, but it is also worth noting how readily sharia lends itself to further abuses on top of those enshrined in the letter of the law. The lack of real accountability of an Islamic government to its citizens, alongside the government's claiming license to mete out divine wrath on sharia's terms creates a particularly flexible atmosphere for additional brutality.

"Stoned woman 'screamed for her life'," from Reuters, October 29:

Kismayu - Relatives of a Somali woman who was publicly stoned to death by Islamists have reacted with fury.

Asha Ibrahim Dhuhulow, 23, was stoned to death after being accused of adultery, witnesses said. It was the first such public killing by the militants for about two years.

"The stoning was totally irreligious and illogical," said Dhuhulow's sister, who asked not to be named.

"Islam does not execute a woman for adultery unless four witnesses and the man with whom she committed sex are brought forward publicly," she said.

Dhuhulow was placed in a hole up to her neck for the execution late on Monday in front of hundreds of people in a square of this southern port, which the Islamist insurgents captured in August.

"A woman in a green veil and black mask was brought in a car as we waited to watch the merciless act of stoning," one resident, Abdullahi Aden, said.

"We were told she submitted herself to be punished, yet we could see her screaming as she was forcibly bound, legs and hands. A relative of hers ran towards her, but the Islamists opened fire and killed a child."

Stones were hurled at Dhuhulow's head, and the woman was brought out of the hole three times to see if she had died.

The Islamists last carried out public executions when they ruled Mogadishu and most of south Somalia for half of 2006. Allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled them at the end of that year

The Islamists controlling this port provide security, but impose fundamentalist practices such as banning entertainment seen as anti-Islamic.

"Restoring order."

Islamist leaders at the execution said the woman had breached Islamic law. They promised to punish the guard who shot the child.

"...Pressure from outside has embarrassed the Algerian government very much."

An update on this story. "Algeria - Christians acquitted in blasphemy case," from Compass Direct News, October 29:

ISTANBUL, October 29 (Compass Direct News) – A court in northwestern Algeria today acquitted three Christians charged with blaspheming Islam and threatening a member of their congregation who re-converted to Islam.

The acquittal was announced in a court at Ain El-Turck, 15 kilometers (nine miles) west of the coastal city of Oran. The defendants believe the judge’s decision to acquit was due to the spurious evidence used against them.

The acquittal also comes as part of a larger trend of the Algerian government bowing to negative international media attention and government condemnations of such cases, they said.

Defendant Youssef Ourahmane said that as a result, a recent government crackdown against evangelical Christians has eased off in recent months.

“We had noticed the last four or five months the government is trying to back down a little bit,” Ourahmane said. “I think the pressure on them has been strong, such as condemnations from the U.S. and foreign ministries from France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Spain. This pressure from outside has embarrassed the Algerian government very much.”

Algerian courts have handed several suspended sentences to local evangelicals in the last year under a recent presidential decree that prohibits proselytizing Muslims. No Christian, however, has served prison time on religious charges.

Ourahmane, Rachid Muhammad Essaghir, and a third man were charged in February with “blaspheming the name of the Prophet [Muhammad] and Islam” and threatening the life of a man who claimed to have converted to Christianity but who “returned” to Islam when his fundamentalist ties were exposed.

The first hearing of the three men took place on Oct. 21 in Ain El-Turck. A lawyer appointed by the Ministry of Religion also joined the hearing and surprised the defendants by supporting their plight.

The lawyer affirmed the rights of religious minorities such as Christians in Algeria. The Christians present said she would like the case to be closed.

A prosecutor in the case had sought three years of prison for the three men and a fine of 50,000 dinars (653 euros) for each.

Taking the stand last week, the three men were asked whether they had blasphemed Muhammad and threatened Shamouma Al-Aid, the convert and plaintiff. Al-Aid had professed Christianity from July 2004 through July 2006, when he attended a church near Oran. It was there that he met the Christians, against whom he later filed the blasphemy complaint.

Essaghir, an evangelist and church elder for a small community of Muslim converts to Christianity in Tiaret, has been one of the most targeted Christians in Algeria.

In the last year he has received three sentences, one for blasphemy and two for evangelism. Police stopped Essaghir and another man in June 2007 while transporting Christian literature. As a result they were convicted in absentia in November 2007 and given a two-year sentence and 5,000-euro fines. The Protestants requested a retrial, and the charges were dropped at a hearing in June.

Asked if he could explain why he and other Christians were under fire by Islamists, he told Compass that Muslims felt menaced by the existence of Christianity and its rise in Algeria.

“We are attacked because Muslims feel threatened by us,” said Essaghir. “There are many people who are coming to Christ.”

When the three accused Christians met Al-Aid, he claimed that his family was persecuting him, so they took him in to their church community. But in 2006 the Christians learned that Al-Aid in fact had links with Islamic fundamentalists.

After excommunicating Al-Aid, in October 2007 the three Christians were summoned by police when Al-Aid registered his complaint that they had insulted Muhammad and Islam and threatened his life.

“But the accusations against us are unfounded,” Essaghir told Compass last week by phone. “There is no proof, but we are being condemned because there is no justice.”

Ourahmane said that Al-Aid had shown the police text messages to support his claims, but that police said the number had not been registered with telecommunications services.

With their fresh acquittal, the three Christians could open a case against Al-Aid for bringing a case against them based on spurious evidence, according to Algerian law.

Instead, they want to offer their forgiveness, Ourahmane said.

“We have decided to forgive him and will communicate we are all ready to help him if he needs any help,” he said. “We are in touch with him through one of our team members, and if he is thirsty or hungry we are more than happy to help.”

We have seen in many cases that Muslim casualties are a major liability for jihadist groups. Politically, it is a safer bet to stick to infidels, whose lives are worth less under Islamic laws concerning blood money (diyya) and retaliation (qisas), not to mention the fact that they become targets as soon as they are deemed to have violated the dhimma protection racket.

"In Jakarta Christian priests and activists first target of Islamic terrorists," by Mathias Hariyadi for AsiaNews, October 29:

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Islamic terrorists are moving to a new strategy, opting for attacks against Christian clergymen and activists, targeting vital installations across the country instead of US interests, this according Police spokesman Inspector General Abubakar Nataprawira. Equally the threat of attacks linked to the November execution of three men sentenced for the October 2002 Bali bombings remains high.

Inspector General Nataprawira spoke at a press conference, unveiling the results from investigations sparked by the arrest on 21 October in Kelapa Ganding (North Jakarta) of members of a new terror group called Tauhid Wal Jihad.

“They were planning attacks against Christian priests and peace activities involved in peace actions and interfaith activities against terrorism,” the inspector said.

North Jakarta’s main fuel depot in Plumpang owned by Pertamina was also the group’s target list. Also the group was planning to bring weapons into the country and launch a six-month mass drive to recruit new members.

Wahyu, who has been involved in various terrorist attacks in Poso and Ambon (during the 2005-2006 sectarian clashes) and against the police, is among those arrested. He had been on the run since 2005.

Meanwhile some people are wondering whether the brutal assault against Fr Benny Susetyo was part of this strategy.

The clergyman, who is the secretary of Interfaith Dialogue Commission of the Indonesian Bishops of Conference, was savagely beaten by unknown assailants on 11 August in South Jakarta.

In some cases, it will be difficult to distinguish where a new trend may have begun from the persecution of Indonesian Christians that has been going on for years.

Will he follow through with the annulment? Or will this move simply get the media off his back until the uproar dies down? In any event, this story has yielded one important development: The assertion that, at least for now, Indonesian civil law still trumps sharia law in this area. What remains to be seen is the strength of the political will to keep it that way. An update on this story. "Indonesian cleric reconsiders marriage to minor," by Yunita Rovroy for Radio Netherlands, October 29:

In Indonesia, the controversial marriage between a Muslim cleric and an underage girl will probably be annulled. Wealthy businessman and Muslim cleric Pujiono Cahyo Widiyanto, aged 43, married 12-year-old Lutfiana Ulfa in August. Lutfania is the daughter of a poor family in the city of Semarang in central Java. The marriage has led to widespread protest.

Seto Mulyadi, chairman of the national children's rights commission Komnas Perlindungan Anak, feels reassured. He met Widyanto on Tuesday. He believes that the Muslim cleric has understood that his marriage constitutes a violation of the law. Widiyanto, who until now insisted that his marriage was in compliance with Islamic law, has eventually come around. He reportedly intended to conclude two other marriages with girls aged seven and nine.

Mulyadi believes the Indonesian government should take the initiative to create better social conditions for children:

"The government could achieve this in the cities, but also in villages. I hope these measures will better safeguard children's rights. In addition, children should be better protected against all kinds of forms of violence and abuse."

Decision welcomed

Mulyadi is pleased with Widiyanto's decision to have his marriage to Lutfiana annulled. His commission has succeeded in convincing the Muslim cleric that he made a mistake. By admitting his mistake, Widiyanto also acknowledged that national law takes precedence over Islamic Sharia law. Mulyadi hopes Widiyanto's step will make others realise that marriages with minors cannot be tolerated.

Indonesia's 1974 Marriage Act forbids marriages involving persons under the age of 16. Nevertheless, marriages to minors are quite common in rural Indonesia.

Even though the marriage will be dissolved, Professor Agnes Widanti of Jaringan Perempuan dan Anak Jawa Tengah (the Central Java Women's and Children's Network) speaks of a regrettable and embarrassing case. Widiyanto promised Lutfiana a good job with his company. The marriage was concluded with the consent of both the girl's parents. Widanti says money and power played an important role.

Physical and psychological problems

Widanti argues that for a minor, a marriage results in both physical and psychological problems. Lutfiana, says Widanti, will eventually feel locked out in society. As a child, she won't feel at home in the company of adults. And she will always remain the odd-one-out in the company of her peers.

"She will carry a heavy load. She will have to take responsibility for her family at a very young age. From a physical perspective, sexual intercourse with a child under 16 can lead to injuries and an increased risk of contracting a wide variety of diseases. These traumatic events in turn can leave their marks. All in all an extremely worrisome situation."Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar, is also opposed to marriages involving minors. Even though according to Islam Lutfiana is ready to marry - she had her first period at a young age - in Indonesia national law takes priority over Islamic law.

"This marriage is in violation of the law, in this case, the 1974 Marriage Act puts the minimum legal age at 16. The marriage is also in violation of the international treaty on the rights of the child [which has also been ratified by Indonesia]." Media reports prove there is widespread opposition in Indonesia against marriages with minors, also in Islamic circles. It is not clear exactly when the marriage between Widiyanto and Lutfiana will be annulled.

The northern part of the country had been relatively peaceful, but, you see, it was a completely wrong variety of peace (i.e., not the kind the jihadists promise), and thus, absolutely had to be stopped by any possible means.

Somalia Jihad Update. "Suicide attacks kill dozens in Somalia," by Xan Rice for the Guardian, October 29:

A wave of synchronized suicide attacks on UN, diplomatic and government institutions in northern Somalia killed up to 31 people today.

Three car bombs detonated in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway Somaliland region. Another two vehicles exploded in neighbouring Puntland, which, like Somaliland, has been relative peaceful compared to the rest of the country.

The careful coordination and nature of the attacks is unprecedented in Somalia and marks a serious deterioration in an already dire security situation. Suspicion immediately fell on the radical Shabaab militia, which is part of much broader Islamist-led resistance fighting against the Somali government and occupying Ethiopian troops.

In Hargeisa, the Ethiopian consulate suffered the greatest damage, with up to 20 people reported dead. An attack on the president's palace killed at three people, including the presidential secretary, while two workers died at the headquarters of the UN Development Programme (UNPD).

"A vehicle forced its way into the compound and then exploded," said a UNPD spokesperson in Nairobi. "It appears that the driver of the car was still inside."

The suicide bombers, who were reported to have used driving four-wheel drive vehicles, struck within a few minutes of each other.

In Bossaso, Puntland's main city, explosive-laden cars detonated at separate interior ministry offices responsible for combating terrorism, killing six people. Dozens were injured in the five attacks.

"I fear that this is exactly what it looks like - the Shabaab," said a military expert on Somalia, who cannot be named because of his position. "We expected them to launch high-profile attacks, but this was extraordinary, requiring a large coordinated and concealed effort."

Analysts believe the timing of the bombings was no accident. Regional heads of state, including Somalia's president, Abdullahi Yusuf, were meeting yesterday in Nairobi to discuss the country's future. Peace efforts had received a boost over the weekend when Yusuf's government and the opposition Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) signed a deal in Djibouti agreeing to a ceasefire, and a phased withdrawal of Ethiopian troops.

The jihadists will only allow peace (or the absence of shooting) and order to take hold on their terms. Then, if either ever comes into effect, they will take credit as the "only" group that could achieve it (see also: Hamas, and the Taliban).

But a breakaway wing of the ARS, as well as the Shabaab, rejected the deal. They refuse to enter negotiations before the complete withdrawal of the Ethiopian forces that invaded Somalia in December 2006 to oust an Islamist authority from power.

Previously during peace negotiations the Shabaab has launched large attacks, mainly in Mogadishu, to demonstrate that they have control on the ground.

"It's clear that the Shabaab, or jihadis or whatever you want to call them, are trying to make a statement that they target any place in Somalia, not just the south," said a Western diplomat in Nairobi. "But we cannot let this undermine the Djibouti agreement, and we have to expect and accept that these sort of attacks may continue in the short term."...

"Duped" into thinking he was only killing NATO forces, not UK civilians

His "high-profile" lawyer insists that his client "was duped by the extremists into believing the group intended to wage an attack on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, rather than targeting civilians in the U.K." More telling is the fact that the word "Islam" does not even show up anywhere in this report. Rather, we are told that the accused followed a "unique brand of ideological hatred." What, pray tell, could that be?

"Khawaja guilty on some but not all terror charges," from CTA.CA, October 29 (thanks to Sounder):

An Ottawa software developer whom prosecutors accused of promoting a unique brand of ideological hatred has been found guilty of some terror-related charges against him, but not all.

Momin Khawaja, the first person charged under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act, faced seven charges in connection with a foiled U.K. bomb plot.

An Ottawa judge found him guilty on five counts of financing and facilitating terrorism and two Criminal Code offences related to building a remote-controlled detonator with the intent of causing an explosion.

However, the judge said the prosecution did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that Khawaja, 29, was aware his U.K. associates planned to bomb domestic targets using the so-called Hi-Fi Digimonster detonator he built.

As a result, the charges related to the detonator weren't counted as terrorism-related charges, said CTV's Rosemary Thompson, outside the courtroom.

"So he faces a very stiff sentence down the road but the one caveat in this is his lawyer did convince the judge that his client wasn't aware of plans to bomb a night club and shopping centre as this cell was planning to do," Thompson told CTV Newsnet.

Sentencing has been scheduled for Nov. 18.

Khawaja's high-profile Canadian lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, has argued his client was duped by the extremists ["extremist" what, rock band?] into believing the group intended to wage an attack on NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, rather than targeting civilians in the U.K.

Crown Prosecutor David McKercher has pointed out that the British plotters bought and stockpiled a large quantity of fertilizer that could be used in a home-made bomb. He also said there was no chance Khawaja believed the plotters were going to carry the fertilizer into Afghanistan for use there, but that he knew they were planning to hit U.K. targets.

Evidence submitted in the case also indicated Khawaja met with people involved in the British plot to discuss remote-control technology, attended a terrorist training camp and that he supported the 9/11 terrorist bombings.

A shopping mall, night club, and electric and gas facilities were said to be on the group's list of U.K. targets.

Five of Khawaja's alleged co-conspirators were convicted in London last year and sentenced to life in prison.

Apparently they believe that "the Taliban is not monolithic. Reports out of Afghanistan reflect a splintering among Taliban leaders, with some offering to take part in a democratic system and allow girls to go to school." More here. "Our view on Afghanistan: Talk to the Taliban?" from USA Today, October 29 :

Negotiations might help as part of broad strategy to defeat al-Qaeda. A new, once preposterous, idea is gaining ground: Negotiate with the Taliban. Yes, that's right — the fundamentalist Islamic extremists who once ruled Afghanistan, who harbored 9/11 masterminds Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri and their terrorist training camps before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, and who continue to be al-Qaeda's allies and protectors.

After the invasion,Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders fled to Pakistan's wild northwest region, where they launch attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence agencies say any new attack on the U.S. would likely originate in the Taliban/al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan.

Yet opening communications with the Taliban is an option being considered by a range of leaders and experts, including the former U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, who's now in charge of Iraq and Afghanistan as head of Central Command.
[...]

Talking to the Taliban might be a long shot, but perhaps not quite as long as some suspect if the goal is simply to get its leaders to betray al-Qaeda. On Tuesday, Pakistani and Afghan political and tribal leaders agreed to establish contacts with the Taliban. Saudi Arabia has already facilitated informal talks.

Further, the Taliban is not monolithic. Reports out of Afghanistan reflect a splintering among Taliban leaders, with some offering to take part in a democratic system and allow girls to go to school. It's not unimaginable that they might, with the right pressure or incentives, help deliver al-Qaeda leaders. The point is that no options are possible unless explored.
[...]

The U.S. badly needs a winning strategy in Afghanistan — one that does not cripple the U.S. economy and military for many more years in pursuit of the unattainable. Talking to the Taliban? Time to hold our noses and at least be open to the idea.

Islamist Propaganda Alert. More on this story. "Guantanamo Yemeni claims 'al Qaeda's best video,'" by Jane Sutton for Reuters, October 29:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - A Yemeni prisoner watched an al Qaeda recruiting video with his Guantanamo interrogator and proudly admitted producing the work, the interrogator testified in the U.S. war crimes court on Wednesday.

"He considered it one of the best propaganda videos al Qaeda has to date," former FBI special agent Ali Soufan testified in the U.S. war crimes trial of defendant Ali Hamza al Bahlul.

Osama bin Laden was so impressed with the video that he promoted Bahlul to become his media secretary, the FBI agent quoted Bahlul as telling him.

Bahlul is on trial at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda to commit murderous attacks, soliciting to commit murder and providing material support for terrorism. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Bahlul was captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and sent to the Guantanamo detention center in early 2002. When Soufan showed him the video during an interrogation, Bahlul said it had taken him six months to piece together on his laptop computer using Adobe software, television news images and footage of bin Laden speeches.

The production summarized the state of the Muslim world and blamed America and Israel for all its woes.

It included a segment titled "The Destruction of the American Destroyer USS Cole," praising the suicide bombers who drove an explosives-filled boat into the side of the American warship at the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000. The blast blew a hole in the side of the Cole and killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Prosecutors said the video was shown at al Qaeda camps to persuade trainees that becoming suicide bombers was a righteous cause.

Soufan said Bahlul told him al Qaeda expected the Cole attack would lure a new wave of recruits to the anti U.S.-war that they believed to be the start of Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil.

Prosecutors showed the video to the jury of nine U.S. military officers on Wednesday. It showed starving and crying children, mangled and blood-spattered bodies and scenes of Muslims under attack in Bosnia, Chechnya and the Palestinian territories.

Gruesome images alternated with footage of Osama bin Laden saying, "The Jews are free to do whatever they wish with Muslim women ... the child dies in the arms of his mother."

In the piece, bin Laden urges Muslims to abandon their fear of dying and avenge the bloodshed.

The work is titled in flaming letters and punctuated with the sound of gun blasts, sobbing and Koranic verse. Bahlul used special effects to superimpose a cartoonish blast over a news photograph of the damaged Cole.

Bahlul sat at the defense table beaming with pride during some segments and nodding in agreement at the bin Laden portions. He pounded his fist on the table once at the mention of the defilement of Muslim women.

Soufan testified that Bahlul had told him, "Everything I believe is in that tape."

Bahlul, a slightly built man with a short, dark beard, was denied permission to act as his own attorney. His U.S. military lawyer is honoring his request not to put on any defense in the tribunal that Bahlul previously called "a farce."

His trial is the second full test of the special tribunals created to try non-U.S. citizens outside the regular civilian and military courts.

About 255 suspected members of al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated groups are now being detained at Guantanamo. More than 750 non-U.S. captives suspected of terrorism have been held without trial at the base in the seven years since President George W. Bush declared a war against terrorism.

(Edited by Jim Loney and David Wiessler)

He claims to have fooled al-Qaeda; did he fool the court as well?

"Australia's 'Jihad Jack' free," from the Straits Times, October 29:

MELBOURNE - AN AUSTRALIAN Muslim convert walked free on Wednesday after a years-long legal battle when a judged sentenced him to jail for holding a falsified passport, but released him due to time already served.

Joseph (Jack) Thomas was the first Australian to be convicted under anti-terrorism laws introduced after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US and subsequently dubbed 'Jihad Jack' by the media.

But the conviction for receiving money from the Al-Qaeda terror network while he was in Afghanistan was later quashed and a second trial last week cleared the 35-year-old of the charge.

He was sentenced on Wednesday to a nine-month jail term for possessing a falsified passport but was immediately released because he had already spent that time in custody.

The decision ends Thomas' five-and-a-half year legal battle which has seen him undergo two trials and spend some 265 days in jail in Australia.

The court heard that Thomas had changed the Taliban visa for Afghanistan in his passport because he felt that leaving it there would be a 'one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay'.

Thomas entered Afghanistan in 2001 before the September 11 attacks and was arrested in neighbouring Pakistan in January 2003 as he attempted he return to Australia. He was held in detention in Pakistan for six months without charge.

In 2006, an Australian court convicted him of accepting funds from Al-Qaeda.

He was released that August when the court of appeal quashed the conviction, ruling that an Australian police interview with Thomas in Pakistan in 2003 was conducted under duress and was therefore inadmissible.

Thomas' lawyer Jim Kennan said his client was relieved at the outcome.

'We're just pleased that the matter has now finally concluded,' he said outside court. -- AFP

But what is the alternative when mounting evidence indicates that the Pakistanis are double-dealing, and sometimes pre-warning the terrorists. Friend and Ally Update.

"Pakistan summons U.S. ambassador over missile strikes," from China View, October 29 (thanks to Dionysios):

ISLAMABAD, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned the United States ambassador to Pakistan and expressed its strong protest over the missile strikes by American drones in the country's tribal regions, Pakistani Foreign Office said in a statement.

"The U.S. ambassador was called to the Foreign Office today and a strong protest was lodged on the continued missile attacks by U.S. drones inside Pakistani territory," said the statement.

"It was underscored to the ambassador that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the missile attacks, which resulted into the loss of precious lives and property," the statement noted.

A copy of the Senate resolution adopted on Monday against the missile strikes was handed over to the ambassador, it said.

"It was emphasized that such attacks were a violation of Pakistan sovereignty and should be stopped immediately," the statement stressed.

The U.S. drones based in Afghanistan have carried out 34 strikes and intrusions into Pakistani territory in the last seven months, according to News Network International news agency.

Suspected U.S. drones fired missiles targeting local militants in South Waziristan tribal region who gathered to offer prayers last Sunday night. As a result, at least 20 people were killed, according to local media reports.

Dangerous kafir practice for Muslims; may cause "straying"

"Why should we look for other alternatives to exercise and search for peace? Yoga could cause (Muslims) to stray from their faith because its movements are according to the style and traditions of Hinduism."

"Ban on yoga for muslims?" from the Straits Times, October 29:

KUALA LUMPUR - MUSLIMS in Malaysia may be barred from the ancient practice of yoga if they engage in Hindu 'religious elements' during the exercise, a top Islamic cleric said on Wednesday.

Mr Harussani Zakaria, a controversial cleric from the northern Perak state, said the government-backed National Fatwa Council would soon release a decree, or 'fatwa', which would decide if Muslims were allowed to practise yoga.

'If it involves any faith or religious elements it is definitely not permissible but if it is just a form of exercise that is all right,' Mr Harussani said.

'Muslims cannot practice yoga in its original form because it involves another religion,' he said in response to a call to ban Muslims from engaging in yoga.

Islam is the official religion of Malaysia, where more than 60 percent of the population of 27 million are Muslim Malays who practice a conservative brand of the religion.

The practice of yoga, a popular stress-buster in Kuala Lumpur, dates back thousands of years in India, where it was a favorite of holy men before becoming hugely popular internationally, especially among western celebrities.

Prof Zakaria Stapa, a professor in the Islamic faculty of the National University of Malaysia, had called on Muslims to stop practising yoga, saying it could cause them to 'deviate from their faith', news reports said on Wednesday.

Muslims in Malaysia practised yoga not just for exercise but also as part of the growing urban lifestyle and involved 'chanting mantras while in various positions', he said.

'Why should we look for other alternatives to exercise and search for peace? Yoga could cause (Muslims) to stray from their faith because its movements are according to the style and traditions of Hinduism,' he said.

The fatwa council, one of Malaysia's highest Islamic bodies, last Friday banned women from dressing or behaving like men and engaging in lesbian sex, saying it was forbidden by the religion. -- AFP

But he counters the accusations against him with the most believable, bulletproof explanation of all time for the offensive content of the letter: His son wrote it! Of course!

"Top Muslim doctor faces sack for saying 'transsexuals are twisted and society needs protection from gays'," by James Tozer for the Daily Mail, October 27 (thanks to Alex):

A leading Muslim doctor called for gays to feel 'the stick of the law' to protect society from their 'ravages', a disciplinary hearing was told yesterday.

Dr Muhammad Siddiq, president of the Islamic Medical Association, wrote to a magazine for GPs accusing homosexuals of spreading disease with their ' irresponsible behaviour', it was claimed.

The 65-year-old, who is currently suspended, faces being struck off after the General Medical Council called for him to explain the comments.

The letter to Pulse magazine, signed by Dr Siddiq and dated July 2, 2007, stated that 'the gays are worse than the ordinary careless citizen, they are causing the spread of illness and they are the root cause of many sexually transmitted diseases'.

It added: 'Gays and homosexuals, they neither need sympathy or help, what they need is the stick of the law to put them on the right path and mend their ways and behaviour.

We need to protect society from their ravages. They are preying on society.'

It also criticised transsexuals, referring to a depressed patient undergoing a sex change as 'twisted'.

The letter sent by Dr Siddiq - who trained in Pakistan in the 1960s and worked at the Luqman Medical Centre in Walsall - provoked outrage when it was published, yesterday's hearing was told.

Bernadette Baxter, counsel for the GMC, said that when Walsall Primary Care Trust contacted the doctor for an explanation, he insisted that the letter laid out his personal views and he had done nothing wrong.

But just days later, he wrote to the PCT to apologise, saying he had been under intense stress at the time.

He wrote: 'I have thought long and hard about what has happened and I have had the opportunity to discuss it with my family.

'I categorically and unreservedly apologise for the hurt and offence I may have caused to anyone who may have read my letter.

'I have practised as a GP for more than 30 years and have never discriminated on any grounds. I would never refuse any treatment because of someone's sexuality.

'I just cannot understand how or why I could have said this in my letter.'

The letter concluded: 'I know that all of the above does not excuse my letter or the things in it.'

The story changes:

Dr Siddiq promised to send a retraction to the magazine, but the fitness to practise hearing was told he gave a completely different explanation just a few days later, claiming his original draft letter had supported better treatment for gay patients.

His son, Khubaib, who typed the letter, had also added the inflammatory remarks as 'a spoof', Dr Siddiq said, expecting him to spot the changes and throw it away.

Khubaib told the hearing: 'It was written and addressed and I expected my father to laugh and throw it away.'

Miss Baxter said Dr Saddiq then claimed he was 'so busy and overworked, he didn't read the letter, he simply signed it and sent it off without being aware of its contents'.

However, she told the panel: 'The GMC's case is that when Dr Siddiq realised his letter retracting his statement was not going to do the trick and bring an end to the matter, he strayed from the truth and set out a new explanation.

'Within a matter of days, Dr Siddiq had changed his explanation for the letter saying that, far from him being the author, it was his son who had effectively written it as a spoof.' [...]

Meanwhile, Abu Qatada lives, eats, and shops on the government dole. That'll show 'em. "Just one 'preacher of hate' deported in last three years," by Andrew Porter and Caroline Gammell for the Telegraph, October 28:

Ministers unveiled a 12 point plan to crack down on fanatics in the wake of the 7/7 bombings.

But three years on it been revealed that only one person has been deported from Britain, in 2006, for "fomenting extremism." Only two people have been stripped of UK citizenship as part of measures promised by Tony Blair.

In addition only nine people have been deported on "national security grounds" since 2005.

The figures - published in Home Office answers to questions from Tory MP James Clappison - came as Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, attempted to launch a new push designed to stop fanatics entering Britain.

Her efforts were attacked by Mr Clappison, a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He said it amounted to little more than a re-announcement and admission of failure.

He said: "The Government has been promising to draw up a list of preachers to be excluded since 2005 and failed to do so. They are treating the public with contempt by failing to deliver on a number of points in its 12-point plan.

"The Government's implementation of what was supposed to be a proper clamping down on serious threats to this country has been feeble. They have a woeful record on these matters."

Deporting preachers of hate living in Britain was a key element in a 12-point-plan announced by Tony Blair in August 2005 after the terrorist attacks in London. He said the measures would see foreigners deported or barred from entering Britain for justifying terrorism and encouraging hatred between communities.

The Home Office published a list of "unacceptable behaviour" which was part of an attempt to deal with radical clerics. Three years on Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, yesterday attempted to launch a renewed push to stop extremists entering Britain.

Miss Smith yesterday said that 230 people have been barred from entering the UK - 79 of them religious extremists.

She said in the future, the names of all those barred from Britain will be shared with other countries, as well as community groups and leaders in the UK.

Speculation that the Government would "name and shame" yesterday (tues) all those already on the list proved unfounded and led to the accusation that the announcement was little more than a "tawdry gimmick".

A Home Office spokeswoman said names would not be drip-fed to the public, but revealed if there was genuine public interest.

"These new rules will make it easier to exclude those who want to come to the UK to stir up religious or racial hatred - our presumption will be to keep people involved in these behaviours out of our country.

"For the first time we will name and shame preachers of hate and share our exclusions list with other countries to help them decide who should be excluded from their countries."

Alleged extremists will have to prove their innocence under rules designed to target radical Islamists, neo-Nazis and violent animal rights activists. Currently the burden of proof rests with the Government.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "Through these tough new measures I will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.

"Coming to the UK is a privilege and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life."

Among those already banned are Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, who ran the radical group Al-Muhajiroun, and Abdullah al-Faisal, a Mulsim [sic] preacher who influenced July 7 bomber Germaine Lindsay.

That's right: "Honor killing" as a defense, in yet another study in moral standards and priorities.

"Another 'honor killing': 17-year-old Pakistani girl murdered," by Qaiser Felix for AsiaNews, October 2:

Islamabad (AsiaNews) - Another honor killing against a girl in Pakistan: the murder took place in the district of Khairpur, in the southern province of Sindh. It took place last March, although the news has come out only in the past few days.

Tasleem Solangi, a 17-year-old girl, was accused without any proof of "immorality": the young woman was accused of having an "extramarital" relationship, for which reason she was punished by relatives. From the initial reconstruction, it emerges instead that a land dispute was at the origin of the brutal killing. The girl was murdered solely in order to convince her father to sell.

On March 7, 2008, Tasleem was killed with shocking ferocity: first, dogs were released on her, biting her legs repeatedly, until she fell to the ground. The dogs continued to maul her until her uncle, Zameer Solangi, shot her to death with a pistol. Tasleem's father had to watch helplessly as the massacre took place. He had been expected to sell some land to the uncle and his associates. The killing was also supported by a tribal judge in the area, Karim Bux, who exerted pressure on law enforcement to keep them from opening an investigation. In May, Karim gathered a jirga - tribal assembly - to judge the case, which "exonerated" the killers and "guaranteed them impunity."

Gul Sher, the girl's father, held a press conference in Karachi on Monday, October 27, denouncing the killing and calling for justice: he insisted that problems related to "a land dispute" were at the basis of the action, denying the charge of "immoral behavior" or infidelity on the part of his daughter. He also denounced the "false accusations" made against the young woman. Security forces have arrested her husband, Ibrahim Solangi, who has volunteered to confess to the crime.

More information about the cover-up and disputes about the dog attack (perhaps that would be "going too far"): "President orders re-probe into Tasleem Solangi case," from GeoTV, October 29:

KHAIRPUR: PPP MNA Nafeesa Shah Tuesday visited Hajan Shah Village near here to conduct probe into allegations that a young married women Tasleem Solangi had been thrown before dogs over a honour killing issue.

Addressing a press conference, here Tuesday, she said she was conducting the probe on the order of President Asif Zaradri, adding the report would be submitted to him in a couple of days.

She said her preliminary findings suggest that Tasleem Solangi was not put before hungry dogs as reported in the Press.

Earlier, a pregnant Pakistani teenager was reportedly mauled by dogs and then shot dead by her in-laws over a property dispute, the girl's parents and a human rights group said.

But 17-year-old Tasleem Solangi's death was later justified as an honour killing by a local jirga or tribal council over allegations that she had illicit relations with other men, they claimed.

The incident, which happened on March 08 but details of which have only emerged, is the latest honour killing that has claimed the lives of more than 150 women this year.

Gulsher Solangi, from Khaipur district, 425 kilometres (265 miles) from the southwestern city of Karachi, said his daughter's new family, who deny any wrongdoing, repeatedly beat her after her marriage and demanded she transfer land and pay money to them.

Reason? "Breaking Muslim rules by drinking alcohol." Couldn't they have simply taken him to one of the UK's sharia courts?

"Somali youth was killed 'in row over alcohol and Islam,'" by Angela Balakrishnan for the Guardian, October 28:

A gang of five men beat a Somali teenager to death because of a row over Muslims drinking alcohol, a court heard today.

Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim, 17, was repeatedly hit across the head with a samurai sword, baseball bat, machete and metal pole after being chased in Sefton Park, Liverpool, in March this year.

The teenager became embroiled in the fight after accompanying his cousin, Ahmed Mahamoud Ahmed, 16, to a "straightener" – a one-on-one fight – with the alleged killer Ali Mohammed, 19.

Liverpool crown court heard how Mohammed is believed to have accused Ahmed of breaking Muslim rules by drinking alcohol and held him down while a friend hit his head with a bat.

The 16-year-old boy was chased home where his mother's car windows were smashed, said Tim Holroyde QC, prosecuting.

The next day, Ahmed was lured to the fight - where Mohammed, his two brothers Khadar, 23, Essa, 22, and two cousins lay in wait, it was claimed.

During this attack, part-time student Ibrahim of Ritson Street, Toxeth, was killed and another cousin Abdhullah Mohammed Ahmed, 17, was severely injured and lost a finger.

"One of the defendants was heard to shout 'He's still alive'," Holroyde said.

"All five defendants then joined in a continued attack with weapons on the deceased as he lay, obviously helpless, on the ground.

"The deceased was left lying in the road with obvious and severe injuries to his head which were bleeding profusely.

"A passing motorist stopped to assist, an ambulance was called and the deceased was taken to hospital, but nothing could be done to save his life and he died about two hours later, at 1.20am."

A pathologist confirmed that there was "extensive fracturing of the skull… and other damage to the brain within the skull".

The three brothers from Toxteth deny murder. As do their cousins Ibrahim Ahmed, 23, of, Toxteth and Ahmed Kayse Ahmed, 30, of Greenwich, London.

The three brothers deny wounding with intent - relating to the attack on Abdullah Mohammed Ahmed. All five also deny violent disorder the night before the murder.

The murder weapons were found hours after the killing in a bin bag outside a house Khadar Mohammed used, the seven men and five women of the jury heard.

The metal pipe was stained with the dead boy's blood and hair, said Holroyde, and his blood was on the sword handle and baseball bat.

The prosecutor told the jury that when the defendants were arrested, the victim's blood was found on clothing belonging to the three brothers and Ahmed Kayse Ahmed.

The trial is scheduled to last six weeks.

Though not quite up to the neck, it must've been something like this

The sharia court issuing this "punishment" says that she not only confessed to adultery, but insisted on being "punished for the crime she committed."

"Woman stoned to death for adultery after Somali court ruling," from AFP, October 28:

MOGADISHU (AFP) — Thousands of people gathered Monday to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court in the southern port of Kismayo found her guilty of adultery, witnesses said.

Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, who had been found guilty of extra-marital intercourse was buried in the ground up to her neck while the men pelted her head with rocks.

"Our sister Aisha asked the Islamic Sharia court in Kismayo to be charged and punished for the crime she committed," local Islamist leader Sheikh Hayakallah told the crowd.

"She admitted in front of the court to engaging in adulterous sexual intercourse," he added.

"She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply."

The execution was carried in one of the city's main squares.

The port of Kismayo was seized in August by a coalition of forces loyal to rebel leader Hassan Turki, and the Shebab, the country's main radical Islamist insurgent organisation.

Turki is listed as a terrorist financier by Washington.

The new administration formed there began implementing a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law).

"This afternoon we are telling the people of Kismayo that we are practising a punishment that is rare in this region and was carried out in Kismayo for the first time," Sheikh Hayakallah said.

Cameras were banned from the public stoning but print and radio journalists were allowed to attend.

Expect Muslims in America to denounce and demonstrate against Ali Hamza al Bahlul's misuse of the word "jihad" forthwith. Expect MSA's on campuses all over the country to hold rallies denouncing Bahlul's linking of jihad with blood and destruction.

What's that? None of that will happen? Instead they will call me an "Islamophobe" for daring to point out what Bahlul said? Oh, of course. I forgot how things work there for a minute.

"Al Qaeda media man waged 'jihad by pen,' U.S. says," by Jane Sutton for Reuters, October 28:

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - An accused al Qaeda media director waged "jihad by word and pen" and made a video aimed at overcoming trainees' resistance to carrying out suicide attacks, a prosecutor in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal said on Tuesday.

The prosecutor, Army Maj. Dan Cowhig, outlined the case against Yemeni captive Ali Hamza al Bahlul at his trial at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba. His opening statement suggested the nine U.S. military officers on the jury will have to decide whether creating propaganda is a war crime.

Cowhig read from Bahlul's journal, which was seized in Afghanistan, and from letters he said Bahlul wrote from Guantanamo to al Qaeda leaders, lamenting that he could not join the September 11 hijackers he hailed as heroes.

..."Only jihad by word and pen is left," he quoted Bahlul as writing.

"I am an officer of al Qaeda," he quoted him as writing elsewhere. "Blood, blood, destruction, destruction."

Bahlul also is accused of scripting the videotaped wills of his former roommates, September 11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad al Jarrah. He set up a satellite link so bin Laden could hear news reports of those attacks on his laptop computer, but couldn't get the audio portion to work, Cowhig said....

History or Propaganda?

According to the executive producer's reasoning for making the movie -- "to bridge the gap of understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims" -- one can't help but conclude the latter.

"Prophet Mohammed film The Message set for remake," by Chris Irvine, for the Telegraph, October 28:

A remake of The Message, a movie about the life of the Prophet Mohammed, is to be filmed, its producers have said.

"The Messenger of Peace", to be shot around the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, was originally a 1977 Hollywood film made by Moustapha Akkad and starring Anthony Quinn.

It is often applauded by Muslims as an example of how commercial Western cinema can respect Islam.

Producer Oscar Zoghbi, who worked on the original, said: "We have only the utmost respect for Akkad's work but technology in cinema has advanced since the 1970s and this latest project will employ modern film techniques in its renewal of the first film's core messages."

Executive producer of the new movie, Hajja Subhia Abu Elheja, said: "Since 9/11, Islam's image has suffered tremendously.

"Now more than ever it has become important to bridge the gap of understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims."

"It is telling that only one great historical film has ever been made about Islam, a religion with 1.5 billion followers, whereas Christianity has been the subject of over 30."

The film's scriptwriter Ramsey Thomas, said: "In the 21st century there is a real need for a film that emotionally engages audiences on the journey that led to the birth of Islam."

In the original Message, Mohammed was not seen or heard. Instead Syrian-born director Akkad signified the Prophet's presence with light organ music and occasionally framed the film from the prophet's point of view.

Two versions of the film were shot - one in Arabic and one in English. The remake will be only the second English-language film of its kind ever made.

Akkad, who was the executive producer behind Hollywood's Halloween horror films, was killed in a suicide bomb attack on a luxury hotel in Jordan in 2005.

Portrayals of Mohammed have sparked anger in recent years - Danish cartoons of him in 2006 triggered protests by Muslims in many countries.

Random House US recently cancelled the publication of The Jewel of Medina, a book about one of Mohammed's wives, over fears it would offend Muslims.

It was also pulled in the UK when publisher Martin Rynja's house was targeted in a firebomb attack.

Why again are film-makers not too enthusiastic about making a movie about Muhammad?

Listen for yourself and see if you too have "religious right" ears

More on this story. "Minnesota Religious Right: Mattel’s new dolls support radical Islam," by Andy Birkey for the Minnesota Independent, October 27:

Jan Markell of the end-times movement Olive Tree Ministries in Maple Grove, Minn., says a doll marketed by toy-making giant Mattel is indoctrinating children into Islam. The Little Mommy Cuddle ‘n Coo dolls are designed to make baby sounds — cooing, giggling, and baby babble. But that’s not what the religious right is hearing.

It does seem to be saying, ‘Islam is the light.’ I don’t think too many people would argue with that, so I think they’re being a little disingenuous,” Markell told OneNewsNow.

“And this is not a healthy thing to be putting out in the marketplace when we’re in a war on terror, and little children are so susceptible to the messages they hear — even from a doll — then to take them into the school and talk about them. So yeah, this is a serious thing.”

Markell is a prominent Minnesota Christian radio host having had right-wing politicians, including Rep. Michele Bachmann, as regular guests on her show.

Mattel says the doll only says the word “mama” and the rest is baby babble, but they plan to reconfigure the babble sounds to ensure there are no misunderstandings.

Just another reason to be prepared with follow-up questions when you hear Muslim interest groups and speakers issuing blanket condemnations of "terrorism": Since terrorism is a tactic, and not an ideology, the term can be applied strictly or loosely to a wide range of situations, while not saying anything more substantial, objective, or even accurate about them. "Jihad," on the other hand, is highly specific; the more one is aware of the jihadist ideology and its basis in Islamic texts and teachings, the less room there is for dissembling by apologists. And hope springs eternal that this fact may yet dawn on the U.S. government.

An update on this story. "Syria: Foreign minister accuses US of 'terrorist aggression'," from AdnKronos International, October 27:

London, 27 Oct.(AKI) - Syria's Foreign Minister, Walid Muallem, on Monday accused the United States of "terrorist aggression" over an alleged weekend raid on a village near the Iraqi border. Speaking in London after talks with British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, Muallem said the attack was in breach of international law.

"We consider this criminal and terrorist aggression. We put the responsibility on the American government," he told a media conference in London.

"Killing civilians in international law means a terrorist aggression," he added, in the first comments by a Syrian minister since the reported attack on the village of Al-Sukkariya, eight kilometres from the border.

Earlier on Monday, Iran joined Syria in condemning the alleged US attack.

Asked if Syria would use force if the Americans mounted a similar operation again, he said: "As long as you are saying if, I tell you, if they do it again, we will defend our territories."

Muallem stressed that all the victims were unarmed Syrian civilians who were killed on Syrian territory.

The Syrian minister said that four American helicopters had crossed the border around 5 p.m/ on Sunday local time. Two of them landed at the village site, while the other two aircraft protected them.

In Washington, White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, refused to comment on the reported attack. However, media reports say that an unnamed US military official confirmed the attack.

More information: "Syrian foreign minister criticizes US raid," from the Associated Press, October 27 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

[...] The US military said it was targeting the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria to help fight in Iraq. Syria said troops in four helicopters attacked a building and killed eight people, including four children.

"They know full well that we stand against al-Qaida," al-Moallem said. "They know full well we are trying to tighten our border with Iraq."

Shocking? Not at all. But the official confirmation from a Revolutionary Guards commander suggests he doesn't anticipate anyone trying to stop them. "Iranian commander: Iran arms Mideast 'liberation armies'," from the Associated Press, October 27 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

A government web site in Iran quoted on Monday a top Revolutionary Guards commander as saying that the country is supplying weapons to "liberation armies" in the Middle East.

The report by Borna news provides the first official statement from a top military commander that Iran is providing weapons to armed groups in the Middle East.

Monday's report quotes Gen. Hossein Hamedani, deputy commander of a volunteer militia that is part of the elite Revolutionary Guards, as saying Iran is self-sufficient in weapons production and is supplying arms to "liberation armies" in the region.

Hamedani didn't provide further details, but Iran is widely believed to provide weapons to Lebanon's Hizbullah group.

In addition to supplying Shi'ite jihadist groups in Iraq and Hamas, along with its alleged role in Shi'ite insurrections in Yemen.

"According to the [12-year-old] girl's parents and some witnesses, the marriage between Pujiono and her is valid according to religion (kawin siri), but it is not registered with the state."

It's clear which brand of law Pujiono is going with, after the example of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha.

More on this story. "Cleric may face criminal charges: Commission," by Erwida Maulia for the Jakarta Post, October 27:

The Indonesian Child Protection Commission (KPAI) is planning to report to police a rich Muslim cleric in Semarang, Central Java, who married a 12-year-old girl, accusing him of having illegal sex with a minor.

KPAI secretary Hadi Supeno said Sunday the commission's fact-finding team sent to Semarang at the weekend found that cleric Pujiono Cahyo Widianto, 43, owner and head of an Islamic boarding school there, had married and very likely slept with 12-year-old Lutfiana Ulfa.

"According to the girl's parents and some witnesses, the marriage between Pujiono and her is valid according to religion (kawin siri), but it is not registered with the state," Hadi told The Jakarta Post.

"What surprises us is that she was selected through a contest involving Puji's first wife and followers as a panel of judges. Puji married the girl after she beat her competitors."

He said Lutfiana's parents admitted they had married her to Pujiono because of their financial difficulties.

"They said they couldn't afford to send their children to school and hoped the marriage would improve their economic situation."

Hadi said the commission would immediately report Pujiono, his 26-year-old first wife and Lutfiana's parents to the Central Java Police for a criminal investigation.

All those involved in the case, he said, could be charged under Articles 81, 82 and 83 of the 2002 Law on Child Protection. If found guilty, they would face a maximum sentence of 15 years in jail and a fine of Rp 300 million (US$30,000), for "forcing", "swindling" and/or "trading" a minor to sleep with another person.

The law defines a minor as anyone under the age of 18.

Hadi said Pujiono and the minor's parents might have also violated the 1974 Marriage Law, which states a person must be at least 16 to marry.

Hadi said it would require a psychological test to prove whether the cleric could be termed a pedophile.

"We hope the police or the court, if the case is brought to trial, can determine this," he added.

Pujiono reportedly married Lutfiana as his second wife in August and has declared he plans to marry two even younger girls -- a seven-year-old and a nine-year old. The "eccentric" cleric refused to name the children out of concern it would spark "wider criticism"....

"If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed."

"Yadlin: Syria-Hizbullah ties growing stronger," by Herb Keinon for the Jerusalem Post, October 26:

If Israel's indirect talks with Syria were aimed at testing whether it might be possible to pull Damascus out of Iran and Hizbullah's orbits, then so far the test has failed, Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin indicated in the cabinet Sunday.

Despite the talks, not only has Damascus not lessened its cooperation with Hizbullah, it has actually stepped up its relationship with the organization.

"[Syrian President Bashar] Assad currently trusts Hizbullah more than his own army," Yadlin said during a briefing. "Hizbullah operatives are working from within Syria. The Syrians are loosening all restraints, and [are irresponsibly giving] Hizbullah access to almost all of their strategic capabilities."

Assad "is continuing to open up his warehouses to Hizbullah," Yadlin continued, adding that Syria was "turning into the arms granary" for Hizbullah.

He also said that Iranian and Syrian involvement in Lebanon was a means of taking control of the country.

And Hizballah has proven itself an indispensible tool in undermining the control of the Lebanese government.

"Syria and Iran are buying the regime in Lebanon and are pouring substantial money into buying parliamentary representatives and into conducting dubious business deals," the MI chief said. "The Iranian offer to assist in the building of the Lebanese Army is a ruse to take control of Lebanon." [...]

Regarding the diplomatic process with Syria, Yadlin said Assad was interested in an agreement with Israel on Syria's terms, but wanted to wait until after the US elections and the establishment of a new administration before moving anything forward.

Yadlin said Hizbullah was still trying to avenge the assassination of its commander Imad Mughniyeh, but was concerned about a harsh Israeli response. As such, he said, Hizbullah was working through indirect channels, including attempts to carry out attacks through Gaza.

Yadlin said this was creating some tension between Hizbullah and Hamas, since Hamas had an interest in preserving the current calm in the Gaza Strip. He said Hamas had, in fact, recently arrested Hizbullah terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

Regarding the Iranian nuclear program, Yadlin said Teheran was exploiting the transition period and current political uncertainty both in Israel and the US to advance its nuclear program.

"The changing of the governments in the US and Israel, and the world economic crisis, are being exploited by the radical axis in order to improve its situation," Yadlin said. "Iran is exploiting the weakness in the international theater, in anticipation of the new government in the US, in order to move forward on its nuclear program and to soften the network of international opposition."

Mansuur Mohammed: This offends no one

Last week at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Muslim students rolled their eyes and smiled with exasperation when I noted that all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence taught that the penalty for apostasy from Islam was death, in accord with Muhammad's words, "If anyone changes his religion, kill him." One young man, who was unusually polite, actually wrote a piece about it in the school paper, which I still intend to answer. But the consensus in any case was that I was representing a minority view as a majority one. Very well: I expect, therefore, that the UWM MSA will be organizing a rally in memory of Mansuur Mohammed, denouncing his killers, and calling upon Muslims everywhere to defend the freedom of conscience.

Is that too much to ask?

"Somalia: Christian Aid Worker Beheaded For Converting From Islam," from Compass Direct, October 27:

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 27 (Compass Direct News) – Among at least 24 aid workers killed in Somalia this year was one who was beheaded last month specifically for converting from Islam to Christianity, among other charges, according to an eyewitness.

Muslim extremists from the al Shabab group fighting the transitional government on Sept. 23 sliced the head off of Mansuur Mohammed, 25, a World Food Program (WFP) worker, before horrified onlookers of Manyafulka village, 10 kilometers (six miles) from Baidoa.

The militants had intercepted Mohammed and a WFP driver, who managed to escape, earlier in the morning. Sources close to Mohammed’s family said he converted from Islam to Christianity in 2005.

The eyewitness, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said the militants that afternoon gathered the villagers of Manyafulka, telling them that they would prepare a feast for them. The people gathered anticipating the slaughter of a sheep, goat or camel according to local custom.

Five masked men emerged carrying guns, wielding Somali swords and dragging the handcuffed Mohammed. One pulled back Mohammed’s head, exposing his face as he scraped his sword against his short hair as if to sharpen it. Another recited the Quran as he proclaimed that Mohammed was a “murtid,” an Arabic term for one who converts from Islam to Christianity.

The Muslim militant announced that Mohammed was an infidel and a spy for occupying Ethiopian soldiers.

Mohammed remained calm with an expressionless face, never uttering a word, said the eyewitness. As the chanting of “Allah Akubar [God is greater]” rose to a crescendo, one of the militiamen twisted his head, allowing the other to slit his neck. When the head was finally severed from the torso, the killers cheered as they displayed it to the petrified crowd.

The militants allowed one of their accomplices to take a video of the slaughter using a mobile phone. The video was later circulated secretly and sold in Somalia and in neighboring countries in what many see as a strategy to instill fear among those contemplating conversion from Islam to Christianity....

Will Sanaa Nadim be outraged? What do you think?

The duty of Jihad has to be defined accurately, but also in a way that can easily be grasped by auditors, so that it does not exclude, but clearly includes, all of the current instruments that Muslims employ to further Jihad.

The initial smokescreen, or deception, offered both by Muslims and by such non-Muslim apologists as Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, was to suggest, or even insist, that the very recent, and most secondary, definition of “Jihad,” formulated primarily by some “reforming” Muslims in the last century (at a time when Muslims were weak, and in apparent disarray), was the widely-accepted one. But this has been impossible to sustain, given the widespread use by Muslims themselves – now copiously quoted at such sites as MEMRI, and in newspaper and radio and television accounts – of the real meaning of Jihad.

Obama once upon a time took tuition from, or at least listened intently to, the likes of Rashid Khalidi, a practiced performer on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And there were others too, who similarly presented the Arab case, with a practiced air of indignation, victimhood, and sweet reasonableness.

But like Prince Harry, when he becomes Henry V, Obama will have to reconsider, and not just for election purposes, some of the dangerous innocences and perhaps enthusiasms and misunderstandings of his youth, especially on a subject where, apparently, he never received any countervailing presentation from those capable of offering it. Jewish financial backers of the Peace-Now variety are not what one means by those capable of offering a countervailing presentation as to the history of Arabs and Jews, not only this year, or twenty years ago, but over the history of the Middle East since Islam arrived -- and put in the context of the Arab and Muslim treatment or attitude toward all non-Muslims and, as well, toward non-Arab Muslims such as the black Africans in Darfur.

Sanaa Nadim: Offended

Last Thursday night when I spoke at SUNY-Stony Brook, the new tactics about which I have written here, here and here were not as much in evidence as they had been at other campuses: students did not try to disrupt my remarks, but the MSA did show up in force, and were ready with hostile and contemptuous questions.

The fireworks began with the first question. Sister Sanaa Nadim, the chaplain of the Stony Brook MSA, stood up to declare how incredibly offended she was by my taking Qur'anic verses out of context in order to portray all Muslims as extremists. She launched into full-bore counter lecture mode (despite requests from me and the student organizers not to try to hijack the lecture during the question period, but to ask a brief question), repeatedly attempted to talk over my answers, and only retreated a bit when I pointed out what a splendid example of courtesy and fair play she was giving to her students.

When I did get a chance to speak again, I listed some of the Islamic authorities who taught that offensive jihad warfare against unbelievers was the final and lasting stage of jihad, including Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Kathir, the Tafsir al-Jalalayn, etc., and asked her to save her offense for those people if she truly opposed this point of view, but not to pretend that I had originated this perspective.

But of course, it is likely that she, like most of her coreligionists in the U.S., has never expressed any outrage toward any of them or their modern exponents, allowing bland condemnations of an undefined "terrorism" to suffice. I think it that the outrage she was directing at me seemed manufactured, perhaps to give gullible audience members the impression that she had never heard before of this interpretation of Islam -- as none other than Mahdi Bray once claimed during a Q-and-A after a talk I once gave in Boston.

I also cautioned Sanaa Nadim and the MSA members in attendance that it was dangerous to believe their own propaganda: I had not said that all Muslims were "extremists" during that speech or in any other speech or in anything I had ever written. (In fact, I don't even generally use the term "extremist.") Nadim and her MSA students at Stony Brook, like the shrieking self-righteous harpy who descended upon me at Penn State and her allies in the audience there, seem to have memorized a few talking points that have been cooked up somewhere about what I supposedly say, and were working from that rather than dealing with what I actually said.

At the same time, however, the MSA's furious reaction and eager distortion of my remarks at both Penn State and SUNY Stony Brook highlights the other side of the coin, a point I have also often emphasized: the limited value of the fact that not all Muslims are "extremists." That not all Muslims are on board with the Islamic supremacist program is simply a fact, but it does not follow from that fact that there is any significant body of Muslims who are actively or seriously opposing the jihadists and Islamic supremacists. There are a few courageous individuals here and there, but as I have pointed out many times using Ibn Warraq's phrase, while there are moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam. And while some people are cultural and nominal Muslims who are ignorant of and/or indifferent to the jihad imperative, it cannot be assumed (as many Western government and law enforcement officials assume) that any given peaceful Muslim opposes the jihad simply by virtue of the fact that he is not actively engaged in violence or participating in plotting in a violent jihad group.

Moreover, when Muslims in America get angrier at me for discussing how other Muslims are using Islam to justify and spread an expansionist, totalitarian, and discriminatory ideology, than they do against those Muslims, it does not inspire confidence. In fact, it should make every non-Muslim who witnesses it wonder at their misplaced priorities, and at just how insincere are their protestations of moderation. I am not saying that Sanaa Nadim and her students in the SUNY Stony Brook MSA are jihadists. But if they really want to show that they accept American Constitutional pluralism, they would do well to start by acknowledging the existence of the Islamic supremacist ideology and repudiating it in specific terms, and backing up that repudiation with deeds (beginning with transparent, honest, inspectable programs teaching against it in mosques and Islamic schools in America), instead of getting angry at anyone who brings it up.

I can illustrate my point here by reference to one of Sanaa Nadim's own writings. In 2002 she contributed a chapter to the book Women for Afghan Women: Shattering Myths and Claiming the Future, edited by Sunita Mehta. Nadim's chapter is called "Women and Equality In Islam." In it, she attempts to show that "the realities that we have seen in recent history regarding the status of women in so-called Muslim countries do not reflect authentic Islam." Indeed, "extremist Muslims -- the West shudders at the phrase -- have given all sincere Muslims a bad name." She declares that "Islam brought true freedom to women." One may be led to believe from all this that Sanaa Nadim in her essay takes up and refutes some of the reasons that those "extremist Muslims" give for their oppression of women, but no such luck. The most glaring omission is that Nadim, even while discussing some of the Qur'an's statements about women, never mentions Qur'an 4:34, which declares that "good women are obedient" -- and what of those who aren't? "Beat them."

She could have argued, as many Islamic apologists in the West have done, that no Muslims take this verse literally (it's okay for them to assume that Islam is a monolith), or that Muhammad mitigated it in the Hadith. Both of those positions are weak, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, but at least they aren't pretending that the verse doesn't exist at all. For Sanaa Nadim to ignore this verse in an essay about the status of women in Islam is extremely strange, and whatever her reasons may have been for doing this, they can't have had anything to do with genuine reform. Real reform doesn't happen by ignoring what needs reforming, but by confronting it. I think it's likely, however, that if during my talk I had mentioned 4:34, and the high incidence of wife abuse in Islamic countries, Sanaa Nadim's outrage would only have heightened. But the fact that it isn't turned against those Muslims who invoke 4:34 to justify spousal abuse, and that she passed up a golden opportunity to condemn them and call for reform in her book about women in Afghanistan, is telling.

As was the MSA's playing of the victim card Friday night in Stony Brook. One MSA member stood up to complain that MSA events at the university were not as well-staffed with campus police as mine was. I refrained from replying that I doubted that MSA events on campus were preceded by the threat that if they went on as planned, there would be "repercussions" -- which was a threat that the sponsoring group received in connection with my talk, and which police thoroughly investigated. I didn't refrain from telling him this out of politeness, but simply because I didn't think to mention it; I was too busy replying to his complaints about how difficult life had become for Muslims after 9/11.

I told him that I too was often singled out for extra searches in airports, and once while stuck in an airport was working on Jihad Watch when suddenly I found myself surrounded by police, several of whom were holding back hungry-looking police dogs. Someone had seen "jihad" on my screen and reported me, and I was taken away for questioning. I told him I didn't mind any of this, since I loved America and knew about threat we were all facing, and so didn't mind putting up with inconvenience for the sake of national security, knowing that if I wasn't doing anything wrong, it would all come out all right in the end anyway.

But of course if one doesn't hold in high regard the safety of innocent Americans, and would rather use the alleged mistreatment of Muslims in the war on terror as a means to halt those anti-terror efforts, one would not be interested in putting up with such inconveniences. Is that really the impression that this young man intended to leave with me and with the rest of the audience Thursday night?

From "Is America really going to do this?," by Melanie Phillips in The Spectator, October 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Obama assumes that Islamic terrorism is driven by despair, poverty, inflammatory US policy and the American presence on Muslim soil in the Persian Gulf. Thus he adopts the agenda of the Islamists themselves.

It's true: Obama adopts the jihadists' grievance-based analysis, which is based on the proposition that the anger toward the U.S. in the Islamic world stems from something the U.S. has done, not from imperatives within the Islamic world itself. This is not just a Leftist point of view: in this Obama has something in common with many on the Right, such as Dinesh D'Souza, who insists that the Left provoked 9/11 by making American pop culture so rotten that when it was exported it aroused the ire of straitlaced moralists like Osama bin Laden.

The problem with all of these analyses, whether from the Obamaite Left or the D'Souzaite Right, is that they completely ignore what underlies the shifting lists of grievances that the jihadists produce -- and that is the jihad and Islamic supremacist imperative to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law. This imperative that is not based on anything those unbelievers have done or not done, but solely upon their status as unbelievers. This imperative is rooted in the Qur'an (9:29), the Hadith (Sahih Muslim 4294) and Islamic jurisprudence (all the orthodox schools of Islamic law accept the principle that it is a responsibility of the Islamic community to wage war against unbelievers until they convert or submit). The contents of the grievance lists will change, but this will remain constant.

Yet virtually no one in public life dares even to face the fact of its existence.

Can't we all just get along?

According to the Associated Press, Saudi King Abdullah recently said that he plans on attending a meeting in November at the United Nations in New York to further his "initiative to promote interfaith dialogue.” The King further remarked that “extending Muslims' hands to non-Muslims will help ‘purify’ the reputation of Islam at a time when the world is criticizing the faith.”

Of course, none of this is new; Abdullah has been “reaching out” to infidels for some time now. Prior to the much touted interfaith conferences in Madrid, the Saudi monarch is said to have “made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews” — going so far as to refer to the latter two as “our brothers.” The Jerusalem Post further wrote that such talks would be geared toward developing “respect among religions.”

The Arabian kingdom, however, is famous for tenaciously upholding and exporting “Wahhabism/Salafism,” that literalist brand of Islam that preaches absolutely no tolerance, murders apostates, and condemns all non-Muslims as infidels. It is also famous for having supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11, “educating” fellows such as Osama bin Laden, and boasting, of all things, a sword on its national flag. One can’t help but question the old monarch’s motives. Moreover, while the Saudi king was/is beguiling infidels with his calls for “dialogue,” that the textbooks of his kingdom are still instructing the youth of Saudi Arabia to hate all non-Muslims, is further demonstrative of Abdullah’s sincerity, or lack thereof.

Here’s another telling anecdote: days before the Madrid conferences, prominent Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman Barrak issued a death-fatwa against two Saudi writers. Their crime? They wrote articles in the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh questioning the Muslim position that holds all non-Muslims — whom the Saudi king would otherwise call “brothers” — as infidels. According to the Arab News, Barrak had said: “Anyone who claims this [that non-Muslims are not infidels] has refuted Islam and should be tried so that he can take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam.”

Does this mean that King Abdullah truly believes Christians and Jews are not infidels, and if so, does that also mean that Barrak should issue a fatwa for his life, for having apostatized?

At any rate, is the Saudi king aware that “dialogue” is supposed to be held by two or more singular participants who nonetheless genuinely believe that they share some basic human rights — such as the freedom to practice whatever religion they wish without being molested? Only civilized peoples who are agreed to such fundamentals can move on to more temporal matters, such as territorial disputes (e.g., Israel/Palestine). But what is the point of having “dialogue” over secondary matters when the primary issues — basic human rights — are not endorsed by all participants?

In Saudi Arabia, the facts remain: native citizens who dare apostatize must be slain; absolutely no churches, synagogues, or any other symbol of non-Muslim worship (e.g., crosses, Stars of David, Bibles) is permitted on the peninsula; non-Muslims are barred from entering Mecca or Medina.

These are just the visible forms of intolerance practiced in the home of Islam and its founder. Theoretically — or rather, theologically — speaking, the juridical worldview of Islam is little better: whenever the opportunity presents itself, the whole world must be brought under Islamic rule, either willingly or by the sword, following the pattern of the Islamic prophet and the first “righteous” caliphs. What is even more troubling is that this Muslim view of world conquest isn’t merely a product of certain obscurantist schools of Islamic thought; nor is it a “hijacking” by Bin Laden and his likes. Rather, it is the codified worldview of all four schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. In fact, it is a communal duty (a fard kifaya) imposed on Muslims.

In light of all this, where exactly does Abdullah get the gall to call for “dialogue”? The measure of any community’s sincerity and tolerance toward the “Other” is how well that community treats the “Other” when the latter is under its authority.

Why? Because "once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world." Clearly Ibrahim Abu Jayyab thinks that Barack Obama is on the Palestinian side in their jihad against Israel. He hates Hamas, but of course Hamas is the fault of ... George W. Bush.

"Voices for Obama resound from afar," by Carolynne Wheeler for the Globe and Mail, October 27 (thanks to Writer Mom):

NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — For every point that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama gains ahead of the Nov. 4 election, a young student in a sparsely furnished room an ocean away is taking enormous satisfaction.

For months, Ibrahim Abu Jayyab has been working through the night, telephoning American voters at random to plead in broken English that they support his favourite candidate.

Never mind that most of the people Mr. Abu Jayyab calls don't even know where the Gaza Strip is, much less understand why this man with heavily accented English crackling down the phone line should care about the U.S. presidential race.

"Obama is the best candidate. He has leadership qualities, he is charismatic. Once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world," Mr. Abu Jayyab says, his eyes heavy after another late night, already back at the computer that is his pride and joy in a life otherwise dominated by poverty. On screen is an enormous photo of Mr. Obama in a classic pose - which has, perhaps, inspired Mr. Abu Jayyab's recurring dreams, of Mr. Obama putting a hand on his shoulder and promising peace.

A media student at Gaza's al-Aqsa University, Mr. Abu Jayyab, 23, has chafed at the strict religious rule enforced since the Islamist Hamas organization took control 17 months ago. A heavy economic embargo, imposed by the international community after Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, has collapsed Gaza's economy and squelched any hope of finding a decent job after graduation.

Like most in Gaza and across the Arab world, the young man blames U.S. President George W. Bush for the mess, in part for his unwavering support of Israel. So when a young, black American senator emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primaries, he found himself hoping for change, even here in the never-changing Middle East.

Mr. Abu Jayyab, who speaks little English and at first left only practised messages on telephone answering machines, has since enlisted the help of 15 friends to use computer VOIP programs, including iCall, to randomly call U.S. telephone numbers. They frequently meet in a nearby Internet café, where they work in fear that Hamas forces or even more radical groups will burst in.

Of the dozens of calls they'll make each night between midnight and 4 a.m. - early evening in most of the United States - Mr. Abu Jayyab and his friends say they may only speak to one out of every 10 households. They've encountered answering machines, small children, and often people impatient with their Arabic-accented English....

How could he not do so, given Muhammad's example? Sharia Alert from modern, moderate Indonesia: "Indonesia: Islamic leader defends child marriages," from AKI, October 27 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Jakarta, 27 Oct. (AKI) – An Islamist party leader has defended child marriages in Indonesia saying it is normal to marry children as young as 11 or 12. Hilman Rosyad Syihab, deputy leader of the Islamic party Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS), shared his views with Adnkronos International. The comments came after a Muslim cleric provoked public outrage in Indonesia by marrying a 12-year-old girl, and reportedly has plans to marry another two girls aged nine and seven.

Pujianto Cahyo Widianto married the girl in the central Java city of Semarang, during an unofficial religious ceremony.

Widianto, used Islam's Prophet Mohammed's marriage to a seven year-old, Aisha, in the 7th century A.D. to justify his actions.

He reportedly chose her from a pool of 20 girls, and gained her parents' approval before flying to Singapore with his new bride. He also .

"Many parents give their children for marriage when they reach 11 or 12 years of age," Hilman told AKI. "It is a normal practice even if it is in decline."...

The Christians in Iraq, although they have lived there longer than the Muslims have and have nothing to do with the United States, are considered, because they share the religion of the American "Crusaders," to be kuffar harbi -- infidels at war with Islam -- and thus by the terms of Islamic law their lives are forfeit. Persecution of Christians in Iraq Update: "'We are killed because we are Christians,'" by Deborah Haynes in the Times, October 27 (thanks to James):

One grey-haired woman understands more than most the fear that has gripped Iraq's beleaguered Christian community over the past month.

Her brother, Bashar al-Hazim, was among the first to be murdered in a wave of targeted killings that has forced more than 2,000 Christian families to flee the northern city of Mosul.

Masked gunmen walked up to Mr Hashim as he stood with his two children outside their house in the east-side of Mosul in late September.

They demanded to see his identity card, confirmed he was Christian and executed the 41-year-old on the spot.

"I could have died when I found out. He was a dear brother and was killed in a very despicable way," said the woman, 60, who was too afraid to give her name.

She, like thousands of other Christians who have left the city since the start of October, claims to have no idea who carried out the attack. Fear of potential repercussions appears to prevent many in the region from speaking their mind.

"We're peaceful people. When my brother was executed he had no enemies. Why was he killed? He was not a member of a party. There was no reason except for being Christian," the woman, dressed in a black gown, said....

Read it all.

If this really had been an "Islamophobic hate crime," of course, it would be front-page news all over the world. As it is, since the perpetrators were most likely jihadists, it will get no notice beyond this story. "Attackers 'gouge out Afghan man's eyes,'" from AP, October 27:

Armed assailants have attacked a man, gouging out his eyes in front of his family in southern Afghanistan, officials say....

Ghulam, 52, said three armed men knocked on his door in the Sangin district of Helmand province late Thursday. After he opened the door, they punched him in the face, put the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle in his mouth and gouged out his eyes with a knife in the presence of his wife and seven children....

Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand's governor, blamed Taliban fighters for the attack, saying the militants often kill innocent Afghans.

"This guy Ghulam was just a normal man, a farmer," Ahmadi said.

"He didn't have any link with the government or NATO forces. He was a normal man, but these killers took out his eyes in front of his family. I don't know what kind of heart these killers have."

Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied that Taliban fighters were involved....

Ghulam, whose head was almost completely wrapped in a large white bandage, said his attackers were wearing black turbans on their head like many Taliban fighters, but that he didn't know who carried out the attack.

Taliban militants sometimes carry out harsh punishments for people they accuse of being thieves or "spies" for the Afghan government. Such punishments have included cutting off people's hands or tarring and parading them publicly, but few reports of people having their eyes gouged out have surfaced in Afghanistan in recent years.

The Guardian makes no mention, of course, of the fact that this girl's status as a slave and a concubine is sanctioned by Islamic law. "And all married women are forbidden unto you save those captives whom your right hands possess..." (Qur'an 4:24). Until that changes, hardline Muslims will reject rulings like this. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in Niger.

"Niger guilty in landmark slavery case," from The Guardian, October 27:

A court in west Africa today convicted Niger of failing to protect a young girl sold into slavery in a landmark judgment with potentially far-reaching implications for the tens of thousands of people who remain enslaved in the region.

The justice arm of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) ruled that Niger, where slavery remains common in rural areas despite being officially abolished five years ago, had failed in its obligations to protect Hadijatou Mani.

Mani, who brought the case with the assistance of British-based anti-slavery groups, has said she was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for around £325 and regularly beaten and sexually abused.

"I am very happy with this decision," she told reporters after the ruling was announced, Reuters reported.

The court, sitting in the Niger capital of Niamey, ordered the state to pay her 10 million CFA francs (about £12,000) in damages and accumulated interest.

The ruling by the panel of judges from Senegal, Mali and Togo will bring hope to the more than 40,000 people being held as slaves in rural Niger and across the region.

Speaking before the judgment, Mani said: "It was very difficult to challenge my former master and to speak out when people see you as nothing more than a slave. But I knew that this was the only way to protect my child from suffering the same fate. Nobody deserves to be enslaved."

The life of a sadaka, or sexual slave, was described in detail by Mani during the court case. She explained how she had been born a slave, sold and then transferred as a child against her mother's wishes to a man named El Hadj Souleymane Naroua. She testified that she had been raped at 13 and constantly forced to have sex with her 63-year-old master, who owned seven other slaves.

In 2005, two years after Niger enacted a law forbidding slavery, Mani was presented with a "liberation certificate". This proved to be worthless, as she was immediately forced into a "wahiya marriage", with the status of a concubine....

"Officials said that they remained unsure of the motive for the killing and were investigating the guard’s background," although infiltration is being acknowledged as a possibility. The grave difficulty that Westerners have in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere is that there is no reliable way to determine who is really on their side and who is on the side of the jihadists, no matter how many bridges have been built and how many hearts and minds won.

"Briton and his colleague killed by their Afghan security guard," by Tom Coghlan for The Times, October 27 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A British man and his South African colleague became the latest victims of deteriorating security in Kabul when they were shot dead outside their office by a security guard who then killed himself.

The shootings occurred on the eve of the funeral of Gayle Williams, the British charity worker killed last week, who was buried yesterday in the Afghan capital’s British cemetery.

The British Embassy named the dead Briton as David Giles, 42, the country director of the international courier DHL in Afghanistan. He died with Jason Bresler, the freight company’s South African deputy director, when an Afghan security guard at the DHL offices sprayed their car with automatic fire as they arrived for work on Saturday. The guard placed the gun under his chin and shot himself.

Officials said that they remained unsure of the motive for the killing and were investigating the guard’s background. Some reports suggested the man joined the British-run security company that protected DHL only a month ago. “No one knows if this person was recruited [to carry out the killing] or there was infiltration of the enemy,” said Zmarai Bashery, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry.

A spokesman for the Taleban denied involvement in the killings. Privately, Western officials said that Taleban involvement in the latest attack was not thought likely....

"Syria condemns this aggressive act and holds American forces responsible for this aggression and all of its repercussions." A "developing situation."

"'US troops' strike inside Syria," from the BBC, October 26 (thanks to Paul):

US helicopter-borne troops have carried out a raid inside Syria along the Iraqi border, killing eight people including four children, Syrian officials say.

The official Syrian news agency Sana said the raid took place in the Abu Kamal border area, in eastern Syria.

It said that American soldiers on four helicopters had stormed a building under construction on Sunday night.

The US says it is investigating. It has previously accused Syria of allowing foreign militants into Iraq.

Syria has summoned the US and Iraqi envoys in Damascus to protest at the raid.

"Syria condemns this aggressive act and holds American forces responsible for this aggression and all of its repercussions," a government official said....

Its timing is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration's period of office and at a moment when many of America's European allies - like Britain and France - are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus, our correspondent adds....

"Four American helicopters violated Syrian airspace around 1645 local time [1345 GMT] on Sunday," Sana said.

"American soldiers" emerged from helicopters and "attacked a civilian building under construction and opened fire on workers inside - including the wife of the building guard - leading to [the deaths] of eight civilians", it added.

"The helicopters then left Syrian territory towards Iraqi territory," Sana said.

The dead include a man, his four children and a married couple, the Syrian report said, without giving details of the children's ages....

All while Saudi children textbooks continue to teach hatred of all things non-Islamic. "Saudi king to attend November UN interfaith dialogue," from the Associated Press, October 26:

The Saudi king said that he would attend a meeting at the United Nations in New York in November that will discuss his initiative to promote interfaith dialogue.

King Abdullah said that it is the duty of every human being to support such dialogue.

In remarks made late Saturday, the king said that extending Muslims' hands to non-Muslims will help "purify" the reputation of Islam at a time when the world is criticizing the faith.

Abdullah helped bring together Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and Buddhists among other religions at a conference hosted by Spain in July.

The company's invoices contained statements such as, "We certify that the goods enumerated in this Invoice are not of Israeli origin and do not contain any Israeli materials."

"Texas company fined for complying with Arab boycott," by Michael Freund for the Jerusalem Post, October 25 (thanks to Dionysios):

The US government has imposed a civil penalty on a Texas-based subsidiary of a German firm for repeated violations of American law regarding compliance with the Arab boycott of Israel.

In a settlement announced earlier this month, Rohde & Liesenfeld Inc., a freight-forwarder based in Houston, agreed to pay a civil penalty of $108,000 to settle charges leveled against it by the US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security.

The bureau, which oversees enforcement of US anti-boycott rules, had accused the company of 36 violations of the law between July 2002 and March 2003 in a series of dealings with the Syrian petroleum company Al-Furat.

In the transactions in question, Rohde & Liesenfeld supplied the Damascus-based firm with invoices stating: "We certify that the goods enumerated in this Invoice are not of Israeli origin and do not contain any Israeli materials."

Various Muslim and Arab states regularly ask foreign firms to supply documentation confirming that they have no business or financial ties to Israel. US law requires American companies, as well as their subsidiaries, to report requests for such information to the Commerce Department....

More on this story. "Al-Qaida appears to claim Glasgow attack," from the Associated Press, October 24:

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq has said his group is focused on attacks outside the country in a new audiotape in which he seemed to claim responsibility for the June 2007 attack on Glasgow International Airport.

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, did not specifically mention the Scottish airport in the nearly 45-minute interview posted on the Internet on Thursday.

But he said his group carried out its "last operation in Britain, a good part of which was launched on the airport and the rest was not carried out due to a mistake made by one of the brothers."

Two men were arrested and charged with conspiring to murder after a burning Jeep loaded with gas cylinders was driven into Glasgow airport in June 2007. A day earlier, police discovered two cars packed with explosives in central London.

British authorities indicated at the time that they thought the plotters may have had links with al-Qaida.

Masri said that a few days before the airport attack, one of the plotters "got in touch and informed [al-Qaida in Iraq] that the operation is about to happen."

Many terrorism analysts have expressed concern that well-trained fighters from al-Qaida in Iraq and other Islamic extremists groups in the country could seek to export violence to places like Western Europe and Afghanistan as Iraq becomes more stable....

More on this story. "Mixed Swimming Worries Swiss Muslims," by Hadi Yahmid for Islam Online, October 26:

BERN — A Swiss court ruling against exempting Muslim students from compulsory, mixed swimming classes has sparked a hot debate over respecting the religious beliefs of minorities.

"Muslim students in Europe should be granted the right to take swimming lessons that fit their religious beliefs," Chakib Benmakhlouf, head of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), told IslamOnline.net.

"Some Western countries violate the principles of freedom by laws and court rulings that transgress on the rights of their minorities."

A Swiss court turned down on Friday, October 24, a request by a Swiss Muslim father to exempt his two sons from attending mixed swimming classes.

It argued that exempting students from mixed swimming classes for religious reasons must be very restricted.

Equality between the two sexes and the success of the integration process should be given priority over religious considerations, argued the court.

The verdict runs counter to a 1993 court ruling which allowed the exemption of a Muslim schoolgirl from attending mixed swimming lessons that violate her religious tents.

There are more than 340,000 Muslims in Switzerland, which has a population of 7.4 million.

Islam is the second religion in the European country after Christianity.

Necessity

Some Swiss schools have taken measures to encourage Muslim students to attend swimming classes by allocating separate pools and changing rooms for boys and girls.

But many Muslim students had to dropped out from the mixed swimming classes when such accommodations were not make.

Sheikh Ounis Guergah, the head of the fatwa section of the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF), said people should strike the right balance.

"In principle, people should ne be very rigid when it comes to children who have not yet reached puberty," he told IOL.

"But even in this case, parents must teach their kids modesty and chastity."

Sheikh Guergah stressed that the case is different with adults and grown-ups.

"We recommend that they dress the way Islam dictates," he said, noting that international swimmers in the Beijing Olympics wore swimming suits that almost covered all their bodies.

The scholar said Muslim students should abide by their religious dressing code as much as possible and seek exemption when possible.

"But if this will lead to expulsion from school as was the case in many French schools, it would be in the best interest of students to attend these (swimming) lessons."

The cognitive dissonance between what these students say and what I hear from Muslim students on university campuses in the U.S. is enormous. These students openly acknowledge the Islamic imperative of violent jihad; on American campuses, Muslim students profess outrage and wounded indignation, exhorting me to "Stop the Hate" and pretending that I made up this Islamic imperative, and that it doesn't really exist at all. But if they consider Muslims such as the students at the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school -- and those who taught them -- to be twisting Islam and distorting its teachings, why is it that they never seem to do anything within the Islamic community to fight the spread of these teachings, but instead reserve all their ire for me simply for pointing out that many Muslims understand Islam to be exhorting them to violence and supremacism?

I've asked this question innumerable times, of course, and never gotten an answer, because there is no answer. Or rather, there is only one answer, and it is obvious, but Islamic groups in the U.S. still seem to be banking on the majority of Americans not noticing, or caring about, this obvious answer and its implications.

"Islamic students praise Bali bombers," from AFP, October 26 (thanks to JE):

FOR the skullcapped students of the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school there is no question that the three radical jihadis behind the 2002 Bali bombings are heroes.

Sheltering from the equatorial sun on the steps of the school's mosque, the students crowd to offer their approval of bombers Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.

Authorities say the three bombers will face the firing squad by early November for their role in the attack, which killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.

"They're holy warriors, that's how I respond, they're holy warriors,'' said Sir Muhammad Royhan Syihabuddin Ar-Rohmi, a slight 18-year-old.

His friend Nawawi, also 18, leaned forward in agreement: "They are like us, they wanted to do good deeds.''

Good deeds, i.e., killing 200 infidels.

With its peeling buildings, stray sheep and low-hanging mango trees, Darusy Syahadah in Central Java has long been a key hub for recruitment and indoctrination in the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, experts say.

While authorities have wound up JI cells and killed and imprisoned key militants, JI-linked Islamic boarding schools across Indonesia have been left to spread the network's radical ideology.

If a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this. Alumni include Salik Firdaus, a suicide bomber who obliterated himself in the 2005 Bali bombing that killed 20 people.

If the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ really deplored the jihad ideology, as everyone from George Bush and Colin Powell to students at the MSA's around the country at colleges where I have been speaking would have us believe, it would be reasonable to assume that their highest priority, or one of their highest priorities, would be to educate their own people against it. After all, if "a new generation of JI bombers were to emerge, it would be from schools like this," it is because the teachers at the the Darusy Syahadah Islamic school are teaching their students the propriety of killing or subjugating unbelievers. This is an ideology that is spread by education. Yet nowhere in the world -- not in the U.S., not anywhere else -- is there any counter-pedagogical effort by self-professed anti-terror Muslims.

However, analysts say the picture is not quite that simple.

Hurt by the police crackdown and facing public disgust over bombings, JI is deeply split, said Sidney Jones, a JI expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank.

A small minority faction behind fugitive Malaysian Noordin Mohammed Top still supports and is working towards bombing local and foreign targets, she said.

The other more numerous faction, dominating the schools, continues to glorify jihad, or holy war, but many of its members have been influenced by a government "deradicalisation'' strategy that has helped halt attacks.

"I think the schools are still problematic, they are inculcating the idea of the glory of jihad. But there isn't a jihad to fight now,'' Jones said.

"The question is: what will these graduates be doing five to 10 years from now?''

Finding a jihad to fight, of course, and one that will probably end up being on the doorstep of many people who today are insisting that Islam is a Religion of Peace™ and that those who are concerned about massive Muslim immigration into the West are just bigots and racists.

For Mustaqim, the principal of Darusy Syahadah, the watchword is preparation.

The school encourages exercise and self-defence and aims to strengthen and defend Islam, said Mustaqim, sporting white robes, a wispy beard and bruises on his forehead from frequent prayer.

"It says in the Koran that infidels will strengthen each other and wage a war of falsehood. We have been instructed to strengthen Islam against falsehood,'' he said.

That's rich, given how the entire edifice of Islam in the West is built on falsehood -- a well thought-out, carefully orchestrated campaign of falsehood, that meets with furious indignation and cries of "bigotry" anyone who dares to examine the stated motives and goals of the jihadists.

On suicide bombings against civilians - the hallmark of Noordin's faction - Mustaqim stressed that the aim is noble but the methods incorrect.

"In the methods (Noordin) has taken, we're not on the same path. Methods, that's what I'm talking about, methods,'' emphasised Mustaqim, whose wife is the sister of Ubeid, a JI militant jailed for helping the fugitive Noordin.

Methods, that's what he's talking about, methods. Yet in the U.S. Lawrence Wright wrote a much-lauded piece in the New Yorker about how some jihadists were changing their methods, and innumerable commentators, conservatives and liberals alike, could scarcely contain their excitement: Muslims were denouncing al-Qaeda! The Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims™ was finally asserting itself! The end of the War On Terror was at hand!

It never seemed to occur to these learned analysts that all that was being discussed was a change of methods, not of goals, as was patently clear from Wright's piece itself, although even Wright seemed to miss it. But since they have been focused on methods (terrorism) rather than goals (Sharia supremacism) all along, they missed this one also.

There are indeed peaceful Muslims, and there are indeed some among those who aren't interested in waging any kind of jihad. They either don't know or don't care about the imperative to struggle against unbelievers. They may have what they consider to be better things to do. Of course, such people are everywhere being challenged by Muslims who insist that they represent pure and true Islam, and that those who are not waging jihad are not good Muslims. Such people, being indifferent to or ignorant of these matters, are not going to stand up against the jihadists, and the jihadists regard them as a large recruiting field.

There is a very small group of Muslims who are actively trying to reform these Islamic imperatives, but don't kid yourself: it is a very small group, and not an influential one. The group of Muslims who feign indignation when non-Muslims discuss the jihad ideology, and who claim never to have heard of such a thing or that it is a heretical version of Islam cooked up by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ -- they are much more numerous. They are dangerous, also, because they fool so very many people.

Outside the mosque, student Nawawi said it was "up to God'' whether he would follow the example set by the Bali bombers.

"Not everyone has to follow them,'' he said.

He is quite right. In Islamic theology there are many ways to aid the jihad. Nawawi can wage the jihad of the tongue or the pen, or the jihad of the pocketbook. He may also be referring, although this is unlikely, to the fact that in classic Islamic theology jihad warfare is fard kifaya, an obligation of the community as a whole but not of every individual believer. Jihad becomes fard ayn, obligatory on every individual Muslim to aid in some way, when a Muslim land is attacked. I say that it is unlikely that he was referring to that distinction because jihadists today generally argue that Muslim lands have been attacked, and that therefore jihad is fard ayn. On the other hand, he may be referring specifically to Bali, where it would be hard to argue that a Muslim land has been attacked.

At the al-Mukmin boarding school founded by alleged JI spiritual head Abu Bakar Bashir in the nearby town of Ngruki, the bombers are honoured but opinions are similarly mixed.

About 1,600 students attend classes in rooms bedecked with cardboard cutouts of assault rifles and posters extolling the virtues of "martyrdom''.

Cardboard cutouts of assault rifles in a religious school. Yet no Muslim who gets so indignant at me seems to be upset about this. Now, why is that? Is it really so unclear?

Sitting on the floor of his lounge in the school grounds, the acid-tongued Bashir blamed the main 2002 blast on a CIA "micro-nuclear'' device fired from a ship off the Balinese coast.

"The bomb Amrozi set off, the first one, at most it shattered glass and didn't wound people, or at most wounded them a little,'' he said.

''(The bombers) struggled in that way, not as terror, but with the aim of defending Islam, which is being terrorised by America and its friends ... they are counter-terrorists, not terrorists,'' he said.

Remember that one the next time you hear a Muslim say that he condemns "terrorism," without defining his terms.

But al-Mukmin school principal Wahyudin said the bombers' indiscriminate bombing of nightclubs on the island was a disproportionate response to the global oppression of Muslims.

"What I can fault is that Bali is not a conflict area, it's not an area of war. Although we can say there certainly were enemies there, there were also non-enemies. That has to be avoided. That was a mistake there,'' he said.

What Wahyudin is saying is that jihad violence is fine in a conflict area, but not in an area in which there are present in significant numbers people who are not considered to be at war with Islam. But he has no problem with the concept of violent jihad in principle.

Karen Hughes: She was tested too

The Medinan Sura 60 calls for an examination of the all-important but completely overlooked question of frames of reference: what is said is not always heard the way it is meant. Consider these remarks by President Bush and Karen Hughes, his former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, on the Islamic Feast of Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the end of the Hajj and Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son.

In December 2006, Bush issued a statement that read in part:

For Muslims in America and around the world, Eid al-Adha is an important occasion to give thanks for their blessings and to remember Abraham’s trust in a loving God. During the four days of this special observance, Muslims honor Abraham’s example of sacrifice and devotion to God by celebrating with friends and family, exchanging gifts and greetings, and engaging in worship through sacrifice and charity.

And the previous January, Hughes said:

Eid is a celebration of commitment and obedience to God and also of God’s mercy and provision for all of us. It is a time of family and community, a time of charity....I want to read to you a message from President Bush: “I send greetings to Muslims around the world as you celebrate Eid al-Adha. When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham placed his faith in God above all else. During Eid al-Adha, Muslims celebrate Abraham’s devotion and give thanks for God’s mercy and many blessings.”

"Their organization campaigns for women's rights and against female genital mutilation but it was unclear who was behind the attack." My guess would be that it was militant Christian Fundamentalists.

"Aid worker killed in Somalia," from AP, October 26 (thanks to Eleutheria ´H Thanatos):

The head of a Somali aid agency says a gunman shot dead a Somali woman employee in the latest of a string of attacks on the humanitarian community.

Ali Sheik says Duniya Sheik Daud was killed Saturday evening as she returned from work at the Iida organization in the central Somali town of Gurilel. Their organization campaigns for women's rights and against female genital mutilation but it was unclear who was behind the attack....

An update on this story. "Pakistan: Girl's account re-opens custody fight for sisters," from Compass Direct News, October 24:

ISTANBUL, Turkey, October 24 (Compass Direct News) – Lawyers for two underage Christian sisters who were kidnapped plan to renew a custody fight for the older girl, a 13-year-old allegedly coerced into marrying her captor, based on new statements from her 10-year-old sister that they were raped and forced to convert to Islam.

The plans come after the court last month allowed 13-year-old Saba Masih to decide whether to return to her parents or remain with her husband; apparently still terrified from death threats, she chose to remain with her captor. Amjad Ali married Saba Masih shortly after the girls were kidnapped on June 26.

In the Sept. 9 ruling the court ordered the return of her 10-year-old sister, Aneela Masih, to her parents, a move lawyers hail as a rare and significant victory for human rights in Pakistan.

Since her release Aneela Masih has told her uncle, Khalid Raheel, previously unknown details of the sisters’ capture, including rape and forced conversion to Islam, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

Aneela Masih told Raheel that she and her sister were kidnapped when they stopped to buy fruit en route to their uncle’s home. The sisters were taken away by taxi and then raped, she said. After being tied up and locked in a room, she told him, the two were forced to make professions of Islamic faith.

She described how the pistol-toting captors threatened the girls with death. The kidnappers told the girls that their parents would also be killed, she said, if the sisters did not do everything asked of them.

“These poor little kids, they threatened them,” said Akbar Durrani, a lawyer from CLAAS who fought in court on the sisters’ behalf. “They were terrified. She said they were terrified.”

In light of these revelations, Durrani said he plans to file a new custody case for Saba Masih based on their abduction. This move, however, could jeopardize progress gained in the legal quest to free the sisters from their captors.

“The court statement never mentioned kidnapping,” Durrani said. “We are still working on it, because the Supreme Court may say to us, ‘We will reverse the position, get both the girls back and hear the case afresh.’”

Avoiding this scenario while convincing the court to allow further proceedings is the challenge Durrani now faces.

Saba Masih’s insistence that her age is 17 and that her conversion to Islam was real will also make regaining custody of her extremely difficult, according to lawyer Rashid Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Rehman also represented the girls’ family in the case.

Saba Masih’s husband, Ali, had obtained the backing of a medical committee possibly under pressure from Islamic groups in his claim that she was 17 and thus of legal age. He also claimed that her conversion removed her from the jurisdiction of her father.

It was a branch of the Lahore High Court in Multan that ruled on Sept. 9 that Aneela Masih should be handed back to her parents. When Saba Masih, whose birth certificate indicates that she is 13 but who testified that she was 17, said she did not want to return to her parents, she also tried to keep her younger sister from returning to them. Attorneys said the Muslim kidnappers had repeatedly threatened the girls that their parents would harm them if they returned.

Uncle Threatened

Throughout the case the girls’ uncle, Raheel, who has spearheaded the campaign to free the girls, has received death threats from supporters of Ali, he told Compass by telephone this week. With a tired voice, he said that he remains determined to explore every avenue to return Saba Masih to her parents.

“They are threatening me also, because I was proving the case,” he said. “They tell me also that if I keep on doing like this one day they will shoot me. I said, ‘Okay, no problem, you shoot me, but up to now I am alive. I will look after Saba. I will find her someday.’”

Various options remain open to CLAAS. The group’s lawyers are seeking advice from three local deputy inspector generals about how they should proceed.

“[We] can file a private complaint in the court of magistrate if a FIR [First Information Report] about kidnapping is not registered,” Durrani said. “If we are not getting any relief from this side, we will go to the Supreme Court.”

Lawyers told Compass that the court ruling for the return of the younger sister to her Christian parents, despite questions over her conversion to Islam, was an unusual decision and a significant victory for human rights in Pakistan.

“We have two or three cases in Islamabad [where] the judges did not allow minor girls to be given back to their parents,” Durrani said. “So in this context it was very important to at least get Aneela back.”

To attempt to deter America from attacking Iran, in a roundabout, Rube Goldberg sort of way. But the NATO agreement about mutual aid in the event of attacks would throw a bit of a wrench in the works. "Iranian official calls for attack on UK," by Jonny Paul for the Jerusalem Post, October 25:

Fearing a US strike on Iran during President George W. Bush's last months in office, a senior Iranian official has suggested the Islamic regime should target London to deter such an attack.

In an article on the Iranian Web site Aftab last week - translated by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute - the head of the Europe and US Department in the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Wahid Karimi, said that an attack on London would deter the US from attacking Teheran.

"The most appropriate means of deterrence that Iran has, in addition to a retaliatory operation in the [Gulf] region, is to take action against London," Karimi said.

In the article, the Iranian official said that an attack might also stem from the fact that presidents in their second terms are "usually adventuresome."

Citing some examples he said: "US presidents are usually adventuresome in their second terms... [Richard] Nixon, disgraced by the Watergate scandal; [Ronald] Reagan, with the 'Irangate' adventure; [and Bill] Clinton, with Monica Lewinsky - and perhaps George Bush, the sitting president, will create a scandal connected to Iran's legitimate nuclear activity so as not to be left behind."

He speculated that a US attack on Iran could come between next month's presidential election and when the new president enters office in January 2009.

"In the worst-case scenario, George Bush may perhaps persuade the president-elect to carry out an ill-conceived operation against Iran, prior to January 20, 2009 - that is, before the regime is handed over and he ends his presence in the White House. The next president of the US will have to deal with the consequences," he warned.

Bush may persuade the president-elect to carry out an operation against Iran before the president-elect is inaugurated? Or... Bush will ask permission of the president-elect? Alright, then.

Admitting that previous Iranian warnings to paralyze "the Jerusalem-occupying regime" to deter "American adventurism" has not worked, Karimi said that "the most appropriate means of deterrence" for Iran would be to attack London.

More on this story. "Sharia rulings on divorces and disputes to be rubber-stamped by English courts," by Chris Hastings for the Telegraph, October 25:

A Government decision to allow Islamic courts in Britain the right to rule on family disputes and divorces has been condemned as discriminatory to women.

Civil rights campaigners are angry that ministers have approved plans to allow Sharia councils in Britain the right to settle disputes regarding money, property and access to children.

They say such tribunals are institutions for male domination which treat women like second-class citizens.

Couples who choose to use the Sharia system must get the ruling rubber-stamped by a judge sitting in an ordinary family court.

But neither party has to attend this hearing and approval can be obtained by filling in a two-page application.

The endorsement of Sharia was announced to MPs by Bridget Prentice, a junior minister, in answer to a parliamentary question.

She said Sharia councils would still have no jurisdiction in England, and rulings by religious authorities would have no legal force.

But she added: "If, in a family dispute dealing with money or children, the parties to a judgement in Sharia council wish to have this recognised by English authorities, they are at liberty to draft a consent order embodying the terms of the agreement and submit it to an English court. This allows English judges to scrutinise it to ensure that it complies with English legal tenets."

Campaigners condemned the plans as unacceptable and said that the rulings were not compatible with English law, while the Conservatives insisted that should be safeguards for women.

Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: "There can be no place for parallel legal systems in our country.

"It is vital that in matrimonial disputes where a Sharia council is involved, women's rights are protected and judgments are non-binding."

Another Conservative spokesman, Paul Goodman, the shadow minister for communities and local government, accused the Government of keeping the public in the dark and warned: "There must be one British law for everyone."

Dr David Green, the Director of the Civitas think tank, said: "I think there are a number of problems with regards to Sharia law. These Sharia councils are supposed to operate under the Arbitration Act which allows citizens in a free society to settle their disputes on a voluntary basis if they so wish.

"But that legislation assumes that both parts are regarded as being equal. I think the problem is with tribunals like these you can't always be sure that women would be treated equally.

"Under Islam a man can divorce a woman just by saying I divorce you three times. But a woman must go to a Sharia court to seek a divorce. Often the ruling goes in favour of the woman, but I think on the whole these councils are institutions for male domination. As a result I do not believe these rulings and proceedings should be recognised under British law.

"Under the traditions of Sharia law the voice of a women is not equal to that of a man."...

Daring Question's Rashid

Unbeknownst to most English speakers, Islam is currently “under attack” (at least that’s how many Muslims depict it) from Christian, Arabic missionary satellite stations. Spearheading this phenomenon is Al-Haya (or “Life TV”), a station dedicated to discussing issues relating to Islam and Christianity, specifically, demonstrating the many shortcomings and problems of the former, while pointing out how those problems are not present in the latter.

Life TV has been extremely successful in winning converts from the Islamic world. Unprecedented in all ways—Middle Eastern Christians (dhimmis) being confrontational and critical towards Islam, while unabashedly proclaiming their faith—Life TV has rocked the Islamic world.

Perhaps most (in)famous is Coptic priest Zakaria Botros. After finding out about him and watching some of his shows on the Internet, I wrote about him for NRO. (I am told that mine was the first major and widespread article about Botros, which subsequently led to many reporters inquiring and writing more about the priest—a natural result considering that what he and Life TV are doing is both extremely newsworthy and practically unknown in the Western world. I’m only happy that it worked out this way.)

Aside from Zakaria Botros’ shows (Questions about Faith and Dialogue of Truth), there in another program I’ve been recently following called Su’al Jari’, that is, “Daring Question.” Hosted by apostate Muslim converts to Christianity known only by their first names, Rashid and Ahmed, the show’s no-holds barred style has made it, along with Zakaria’s shows, one of the most watched programs on Arabic satellite. And, as with the Coptic priest’s shows, theirs has come under increasing attack from the Muslim world—not least because it is instrumental in gaining converts from Islam. (The above YouTube video is an English sub-titled clip of Rashid and Ahmed talking to a weeping Muslim woman living in England who wants to convert to Christianity but is afraid of her Muslim husband.)

The show typically deals with a theme in Islam—most recently, the absurdities of recent fatwas. Next the hosts, who, as former pious Muslims are evidently very learned in their former faith, proceed to describe the legitimacy of that theme straight from Islam’s sources—first the Koran, followed by (often little known) hadiths, and then the words of the ulema—that is, usul al-fiqh. After demonstrating the problem, as well as Islam’s support for it—recently, that drinking camel’s urine is salutary—they discuss the issue, as well as welcome calls from viewers, some sympathetic apostates, some on-the-fence Muslims, others Muslim zealots who promise the hosts death and misery in this world and the hereafter.

Though all this is important, it is also all done in Arabic, preventing English speakers from following the debate, the issues, the outbursts, and the threats. While the show is geared towards proselytizing Muslims, it does this by exposing Islam—and it is this latter aspect which should be of particular importance to Jihad Watch readers, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack thereof.

I will, therefore, begin watching Life TV more regularly, summarizing the more important episodes—including making better known otherwise obscure hadiths and ulemaic verdicts and fatwas, as well as modern day Muslims’ views on these issues—thereby keeping Jihad Watch readers informed of this very important debate going on in the Islamic world and exclusively in Allah’s language.

When challenged, he "qualified" that assertion by saying "his comment about Islam was meant to address the threat of Islam to America's belief system, not its infrastructure."

"WAAY-TV pulls ad about Griffith's 'Islam' remark," by Niki Doyle for the Huntsville Times, October 25:

A local TV station has pulled the latest National Republican Congressional Committee ad in the 5th Congressional District campaign, apparently because of disputes over Democratic candidate Parker Griffith's statements about "radical Islam," according to an NRCC spokesman.

WAAY-TV Channel 31 did not air the ad, which features black-and-white footage of several terrorist bombings and the Sept. 11 attacks before airing audio of Griffith saying, "We have nothing to fear from radical Islam."

NRCC spokesman Brendan Buck said the station told him that some of Griffith's words were taken out of context.

Station mangers at WAAY-TV Channel 31 did not return phone messages left Friday afternoon.

Buck said the NRCC is working with the station to clear up any misunderstandings and hopes to have to the ad back on the air early next week.

"It's just like any other campaign ad where you show video and then take a sentence from a newspaper or other publication and show it," he said. "I don't see a difference between that and this. We're working with the station ... but it's indisputable that Parker Griffith said radical Islam is not a threat to America."

A statement issued from Griffith's campaign accused the NRCC of creating an ad that was "misleading and false."

Griffith, a state senator running against Republican Wayne Parker, told The Times last week that his comment about Islam was meant to address the threat of Islam to America's belief system, not its infrastructure.

The comment was recorded during a question-and-answer session with the Colbert-Lauderdale Baptist Association in September,

"I don't think anyone in the room misunderstood what I was saying," Griffith told The Times. "I was in a room full of Baptist ministers, and we were talking about religion, not matters of national security. The point I was making was that if we are strong in our Christian beliefs, that is stronger than any Islamic threat."

This is the second NRCC ad that WAAY-TV has chosen not to air without modifications. The station and WAFF-TV Channel 48 yanked an ad that attacked Griffith's medical career. The ads were aired a few days later with revisions.

Israel: damned either which way. So now, all the civil strife between Hamas and Fatah is due to those organizations losing sight of the real enemy, Israel. Makes sense -- especially since this sort of thing has plenty of precedents in Islamic history. Take the Islamic conquests, for example. Immediately after Muhammad's death (632), most of the Arab tribes tried to break away from Muslim authority, which led to the Ridda Wars (or "Apostasy Wars"), dominating the first caliph, Abu Bakr's, short reign (632-634). These civil wars were extremely bloody; tens of thousands of apostates were slain. Second caliph Omar, upon ascension, knew that the best way to put an end to the civil strife was to direct the Arabs' collective bellicosity to other peoples -- all in the name of jihad -- setting off the Islamic conquests. Ironically, one of the very first infidel regions to be conquered was Jerusalem. Thus today, since Muslims are losing focus on Israel, they fight and kill each other in Palestine -- or at least that's Islamic Jihad's take on it.

"Islamic Jihad Movement considers a slow down against Israel as leading to difficulties for the Palestinian people," from Al-Summaria, October 25 (my translation):

During the ceremony of the 31st anniversary of the assassination of the the Islamic Jihad Movement's founder, Fathi al-Shiqaqi, the current leader, Nafidh Azzam, considers a slowing down [of operations] against Israel as creating only difficulties for the Palestinian people's jihad, leading to only an increase in division and internal strife. He called on the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to halt negotiations with the Hebrew state. Similarly, Azzam demanded a halt to political arrests between Fatah and Hamas, stressing the need to support a reconciliation and end the division, easing the way for dialogue.

A good corrective by Walid Phares to the liberal media's insistence that al-Qaeda prefers McCain over Obama, and is actively trying to see to it that the former wins the election.

"Walid Phares explains al-Qaeda 'endorsement' of McCain," by Rick Moran for American Thinker, October 23:

Liberal blogs and websites were falling all over themselves yesterday, breathlessly and gleefully reporting that an al-Qaeda sympathetic website had come out and "endorsed" John McCain for president.

The reason they did this is because back in 2004, John Kerry said his loss to George Bush was not because he was one of the most boring, flip flopping, far left liberal candidates in history but because Osama Bin Laden released a tape a few days before the election that echoed many of the same talking points being pushed at the time by Democrats.

Well the simple minded fools now believe that this "endorsement" of McCain will have the same effect. Aside from the laughably ridiculous notion that anyone believes John McCain would be a better president for al-Qaeda than Barack "root causes" Obama, frequent AT contributor Dr. Walid Phares gives us the real reason behind this move by the terrorists:

[Writes Phares:] "If McCain is elected, al Qaeda knows that there will be different teams of advisors to wage a different type of campaign. The Jihadists are very knowledgeable about American and European intellectual debates. They also know the thinking process of the counterterrorism teams under Obama. Hence, there is a difference between what al Qaeda's decision-makers and their analysts know, and what their propagandists wish to instill in the U.S. election debate. What they state should be translated and understood only within the greater picture of what they want to achieve.

Al Qaeda's propagandists operate within the realm of what the Jihadi machine has created in terms of political culture over the years. The main ideas are that the U.S., under President Bush, tried but failed to destroy al Qaeda; hence, the Jihadist narrative says that any next U.S. President who continues the policies of the Bush Administration will give victory to al Qaeda. Inserting their arguments in the ongoing Presidential debate, this means that the candidate who advances Bush strategies will be better for the goals of Bin Laden. Hence the site's assertion that al Qaeda welcomes a McCain victory (in a sarcastic style).

But this tactic used by the Jihadi propagandists is part of a reverse psychology. It aims at sending a message to the American voters: if you want al Qaeda to win, vote for McCain. The Jihadi web sites cannot state it otherwise, such as if you want the U.S. to win, vote for Obama, because in Jihadi war doctrines there cannot be a victory for America, under any President. Hence, what al Qaeda seems to be attempting to achieve is to affect the perception of the undecided voters by stating to them that the strength of McCain in the war on terror is not really strength. Therefore, in the end, the move is aimed at sinking the chances of the former U.S. Navy Pilot by crumbling the support among undecided voters who might ultimately have come to his camp as late as D Day.

Of course, such subtleties are too much for our leftist friends on the internet. It won't alter either their political perception nor would any of this change their belief that a McCain election actually would be inimicable to our efforts to destroy al-Qaeda - that is, if destruction of the terrorists is what they want. They would much prefer to send them food, educate them, teach them how to improve their economies - all the things al-Qaeda could care less about. What they want are dead westerners and anything that furthers that goal - say, endorsing the stronger candidate believing it will adversely affect his chances thus electing someone weaker than McCain - seems to escape our leftist friends who are doing a victory dance over the terrorists endorsing McCain.

Hoping President Obama might let him keep his job, Gates toes the PC line and opts to ignore the one single explanation of their own motives and goals that the terrorists have offered to us.

"As Obama era looms, Gates drops 'Islamist' from characterization of terrorism," from the World Tribune, October 24 (thanks to Rosanne):

Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week referred to Islamist terrorism by the politically-correct term “violent extremism” during a speech to the U.S. Institute of Peace. The use of the non-Islamist terminology highlights the ongoing debate in government over the use of terms like jihad and Islamic extremism in public discussions of terrorism.

Gates said Oct. 15 that “in violent extremism, we face an adversary today that seeks to eject all Westerners and Western influence from the Middle East and Southwest Asia, to destroy Israel and overthrow all secular and Western-oriented governments in the region.”

In a second reference, he said “the long reach of violent extremism emanating from failed and failing states, from ungoverned spaces brought terror to America's shores and subsequently brought America and our allies to Afghanistan.”

The State Department and Department of Homeland Security recently issued guidelines for U.S. government officials that said American Muslim groups had recommended not using “jihad” or Islamic extremism in labeling Muslim extremist violence in order not to offend Muslims.

A U.S. Central Command Red Team of experts however, stated in a recent report that honest reports require labeling the terrorists as Islamic and jihadist since the roots of the violence lie in Islamic law. The controversial report called for “freedom of speech in jihad analysis” and sought to debunk the State and DHS reports claiming that the use of Islamic terms in describing terrorists was offensive speech and was opposed by some U.S. Muslim groups.

Several Democrats in recent weeks have said Gates should stay on if Barack Obama wins the presidential election, an appeal that has not been rejected by Gates, according to a Pentagon spokesman.

Rashid Khalidi is a supporter of the jihad against Israel. He is a Columbia University professor whom Hugh Fitzgerald terms a "long-time propagandist for the Arabs and quasi-academic engaged for decades in the 'construction-of-the-Palestinian-identity' project." He is also not always honest about his own statements about this -- and is apparently a close friend of Barack Obama.

The ever-vigilant Andrew McCarthy has details, via Stanley Kurtz, at The Corner.

Of course, what Musa Abu Zaid doesn't tell you is that "instability" will continue even after the "Palestinians" get a state, as is made clear by his own organization's insistence on the total destruction of Israel.

"Middle East: PNA, Without Own State Instability Will Remain," from ANSAmed, October 24 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - RENDE (COSENZA), OCTOBER 24 - The Palestinian people are "asking for a fair and total peace", which can only be reached "through the proclamation of a sovereign State, with Jerusalem as its capital and within the territory occupied in 1967. This is the basis for "peaceful coexistence with the Israeli people". Otherwise, "the region will encounter yet further problems and will remain a cause of instability in the world". These are the words of the Palestinian National Authority's Vice-Minister for Youth and Sport, Musa Abu Zaid, who was speaking today in Rende at the Euro-Mediterranean conference on the charity sector, which is linked to the 2008 Rexpò forum on social responsibility. "The Palestinian people", added the PNA's government representative, "have played an active and guiding role in the resistance of the occupation of Israel, acting in the love of liberty and independence. Consequently, they have paid a high price in terms of martyrs, wounded people, and those who have been arrested and expelled, just as they have suffered the destruction of economic, social and educational infrastructures, which has had a serious impact on the younger generations, in particular".

The younger generation, of course, has suffered most from the inculcation of the violent jihad ideology.

Asking everyone in the country to abide by the same laws. How racist! How Islamophobic!

"Federal Court overturns swimming ruling," from Swissinfo, October 24 (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater):

Children cannot be exempted from compulsory swimming lessons at school even for religious reasons, the Federal Court has ruled.

In making the ruling, announced on Friday, the court overturned its own decision of 1993.

The case was brought by the father of two primary schoolchildren in the northern canton of Schaffhausen, who wanted permission for his sons to opt out of swimming classes. His request had been turned down at every level before failing at the federal court too.

In the 1993 case the court had ruled that it was permissible for a schoolgirl to be exempted from mixed swimming lessons.

It justified its change of position by saying that society had changed in the last 15 years. Exempting children from compulsory lessons would undermine efforts at integration.

The president of the relevant court said the judgement was not aimed against the Muslim community or against freedom of religion. It was designed to help schools fulfil their task of integration....

Senior Tehran officials are recommending a preemptive strike against Israel to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear reactors, a senior Islamic Republic official told foreign diplomats two weeks ago in London. -- from this news article

But "pre-emptive wars never ever work." Just ask H.D.S. Greenway, who continues to be a bow-tied contributor, even in his anecdotage, to the Boston Globe, now on its uppers. And for more on Greenway, see my article "A Tribute to H.D. S. Greenway.”

The other day Greenway reported on a talk by Andrew Bacevich, who has recently (and far later than the JW articles on Iraq) understood that both McCain and Obama misunderstand the Jihad and what must be done about it. McCain shows this with his complete misunderstanding of what would constitute victory in Iraq (because McCain refuses to think through what outcome would divide, demoralize, and hence weaken the Camp of Islam and Jihad), and Obama does so with his belief, real or feigned, that he can only get out of Iraq if he shows just how rough-tough he intends to be in Afghanistan (and with Pakistan), who says, equally incorrectly, that Afghanistan is "the central front" in the "war on terror."

There is no "central front" in the "war on terror," and it is not even a "war on terror." It is a war, not yet recognized, and therefore clumsily and ineffectively fought, and fought with a tremendous waste, a quite-unnecessary squandering of men, money, and materiel.

When that old-time-religion comes back, and that religion, or rather Total Belief-System, is Islam, that can only mean disruption and danger for Infidels. This holds true whether they are in Muslim-dominated lands (Copts in Egypt, Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq) or in non-Muslim lands if Muslims with innate supremacism and a triumphalism gain power and influence. That triumphalism alternates with pessimistic and sullen passivity, when their inculcated impulse to make raids on and overcome non-Muslims must be held, for now, and only temporarily, in check.

When Islam was seen as obviously weak relative to the West-- as it was for about a century and a half (roughly, from 1820 to 1970) -- then Muslims were relatively quiet. In fact, they even made moves to placate the West in meaningless ways. For example, both Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary of the Arab League, in 1951 did remember to convey his good wishes to Christians at Christmas time. This was the same Azzam Pasha who promised that the war against the Jews in 1948 would result in a "massacre" the likes of which "had not been seen since the days of the Mongols," the man who is also the great-uncle of Ayman Al-Zawhiri (I am apparently the only one who finds this of note, for I keep mentioning it, and no one picks up on it). And for the same political calculations, when the Ayatollah Khomeini had not yet solidified his power, for one time, and one time only, he similarly wished Christians of the world his best wishes at Christmas time. We know, as the world's Christians did not know then, what Khomeini's real views, what Azzam Pasha's real views, are on what the rights of non-Muslims should be in a well-ordered society, and a well-ordered world. They are the same rights as dhimmis possess under the Shari'a, which means no rights other than those temporarily granted by benevolent Muslims, as long as the conditions of their dhimmi status are never broken, are faithfully and completely kept. And even then, Muslims have over time, whenever they felt like it, managed to find excuses for pogroms and mass forced conversions, or slaughter on the flimsiest of pretexts, whether of Copts in Egypt, or of Jews and Armenians in Tabriz under Shah Abbas II, or in the massacres of every Jew in Granada in 1066.

The learned European essayist Fjordman here reviews Ali Sina's Understanding Muhammad. Since Fjordman has been accused of being a white supremacist and a neofascist, some people have also accused me of being a white supremacist and neofascist, because I publish his fine essays on jihad and the Islamization of Europe. So I thought I would take this opportunity to say that while white supremacism and neofascism are wrong and should everywhere be opposed, I do not believe Fjordman is a white supremacist or a neofascist. What many have taken as "white supremacism" is his interest in trying to stem the tide of immigration into Europe, which threatens to make Europeans into minorities in their own countries, and -- because the immigrants are overwhelmingly Muslim -- to create a series of Sharia states across Europe. In 2006, well before he began to be accused of race supremacism, Fjordman wrote this:

We shouldn’t idealize mass-immigration too much. When one group of people move into a territory where another group of people already live, this has usually throughout human history ended in war. Either the newcomers will be expelled, or they will subdue or wipe out the previous inhabitants, or the groups will divide the country between them.

I see little reason to expect any different result where the indigenous population happens to be white. [...]

I do not see why I should have to choose between White Supremacy and White Worthlessness. It is one thing to reject the idea that your culture should be forced onto others, it is quite another thing to say that you shouldn’t be allowed to retain your culture even in your own country. The latter is simply a matter of self-preservation, the most basic instinct of all living things down to bacteria level.

I have a right to preserve my culture, too, even though I have blue eyes, and cannot see anything “racist” in not wanting my children to become a persecuted minority in their own country through mass immigration. That you are denounced as a White Supremacist for just stating the obvious shows how deeply entrenched and internalized this anti-white bias has become.

More recently (two weeks ago), the genuinely neofascist VNN Forum (an evil site to which I will provide no link) criticized one of Fjordman's articles about Europe for not blaming Jews for the problem. VNN Forum writers called Fjordman "a neocon jew-ass-kisser who is either oblivious of the fact that jews are responsible for what is happening or is aware but doesn't have the guts to name the jew." They also pointed out that "the Brussels Journal is never critical towards the Jew" and went on to complain that "multiculturalism stops when the Jew is down and out. Those Islamophobic 'nationalist' parties accomplish nothing....I would rather see anti-synagogue marches over anti-mosque ones. The mosques become a non-issue if you defeat the wretched sheeny."

I would rather stand with Israel, and Fjordman, than with those racist neofascists.

So without further ado, here is his review of Ali Sina's book:

If I make a shortlist of people who have significantly influenced my views on Islam, the Iranian ex-Muslim writing under the pseudonym Ali Sina has to be one of them. Now based in North America, he has founded the website Faith Freedom International (FFI), www.faithfreedom.org, to inform non-Muslims about the violent nature of Islam and help Muslims leave Islam. Sina has published the book Understanding Muhammad on the psychological nature of Islam's founder as he appears from Islamic sources.

The book Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out from 2003, edited by Ibn Warraq, contains the personal stories of several former Muslims, among them Ali Sina. Ibn Warraq is the author of several books, among them the modern classic Why I Am Not a Muslim and his most recent Defending the West. I will start with a few quotes from Sina's testimony in Leaving Islam and continue with quotes from his own book. I will provide page references to make it easier for others to quote and use the material.

In Leaving Islam, Ali Sina describes how, growing up in Iran, he had illusions of a "real Islam" which was good and tolerant. He advocated the real Islam as he thought it should be and criticized the mullahs and their deviations from the "true" teachings of Islam. Page 138:

"I idealized an Islam conforming to my own humanistic values. Of course, my imaginary Islam was a beautiful religion. It was a religion of equality and of peace. It was a religion that encouraged its followers to go after knowledge and be inquisitive. It was a religion that was in harmony with science and reason. I thought science got its inspiration from this religion. The Islam that I believed in sowed the seeds of modern science, which eventually bore its fruits in the West and made modern discoveries and inventions possible. Islam, I used to believe, was the real cause of the modern civilization. The reason the Muslims were living in such miserable state of ignorance in comparison to the un-Islamic West was all the fault of the self-centered mullahs and the religious leaders who, for their own personal gain and dominance, had misinterpreted the real teachings of Islam. Muslims honestly believe that the great Western civilization has its roots in Islam. They recall great Middle Eastern scientific minds whose contributions to science have been crucial in the birth of Modern science."

He mentions some of these scholars, like the mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam, the physician and alchemist Rhazes (al-Razi) and the physician and philosopher Avicenna (Ibn Sina), all of them worthy of respect. I should mention that they were all Persians, not Arabs, and that Rhazes in particular didn't believe a word of Islamic teachings. He was a good scholar, but he wasn't a good Muslim.

Sina tells about his education abroad. His father didn't want him to go to an immoral Western country. Page 139:

"Pakistan, being an Islamic country, was safe. People were religious and therefore moral. This, of course, proved to be untrue. I found people there to be as immoral and corrupt as Iranians. Yes, they were very religious. Yes, they did not eat pork and I saw no one consuming alcohol in public, but I noticed they had dirty minds, they lied, they were hypocrites, and they were cruel to the women and, above all, filled with hated for the Indians. I did not find them better than Iranians in any way. They were religious, but not moral."

However, he was appalled by the general disdain Pakistanis had for non-Muslims:

"I learned about the reasons for the partition (of India) and for the first time about Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He was presented as a very intelligent man, the father of the nation, while Gandhi was spoken of in a derogatory way. Even then I could not but side with Gandhi and condemn Jinnah as an arrogant and ambitious man who was responsible for breaking up a mighty nation and causing millions of deaths. I did not see difference of religion enough reason to break up a country. The very word Pakistan seemed to be an insult to the Indians. They called themselves pak, or 'clean' to distinguish themselves from the Indians, who were najis ('unclean'). The irony is that I never saw a people dirtier than the Pakistanis, both physically and mentally. It was disappointing to see another Islamic nation in such intellectual and moral bankruptcy."

Personally, I have a slightly more critical view of Gandhi, whom I believe was extremely naïve. His non-violent methods might leave an impression on a civilized nation such as Britain but clearly wouldn't have had any impact on a Genghis Khan, nor did they have any value against Muslims. I have noticed that where Westerners have "Islamophobia," Indians have "communalism." That's what it's called when non-Muslims talk about one thousand years of Jihad, a war which continues to this day. Non-Muslim communities have been virtually decimated in Pakistan and are in serious decline in Bangladesh, yet the Muslim population in the Republic of India has actually grown since the partition, not just in actual numbers but as a percentage of the overall population. Whereas the few remaining non-Muslim communities in Pakistan face brutal discrimination, Muslims in India enjoy special rights, including limited use of sharia law. They have more political freedom and a higher average income than Muslims in neighboring countries, but they still attack non-Muslims.

"[F]or combining the sacred words of the Qur'an with sexual themes. If convicted the poet could face up to three years in jail." Really, this is not so bad. After all, when the poet Ka`b bin al-Ashraf composed some amorous verse concerning Muslim women during Muhammad's time, the latter exclaimed in front of his followers, "Who is willing to kill Ka`b bin al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His apostle?" Naturally a young, ambitious Muslim accepted the task (and was given permission to lie to Ka'b simply in order to assassinate him). Sure enough, the poet was slain and his head taken to Muhammad in triumph, who reacted with an exclamation of (according to the account of Ibn Sa'd V1P37) "Allah Akbar!" An update to this story.

"Jordan arrests poet for insulting Islam," from the Guardian, October 24 (thanks to Shechild):

Jordanian police arrested a local writer on Tuesday for incorporating verses of the Qur'an, the Muslim holy book, into his love poetry, a judicial official said.

The poet, Islam Samhan, published his collection of poems, Grace like a Shadow, which allegedly insults the holy book, without the approval of the Jordanian government, the official added. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Samhan was charged with harming the Islamic faith and violating the press and publication law for combining the sacred words of the Qur'an with sexual themes. If convicted the poet could face up to three years in jail.

Jordanian law bans the publication of any books or articles that could be seen as harmful to Islam and its Prophet Muhammad. More than two years ago, the court convicted the editors of two weekly newspapers of insulting Islam and sentenced them to two months in prison after they reprinted Danish political cartoons of Muhammad.

Jordanian writers and artists urged the government in a collective petition to immediately release the poet, saying the arrest is a "retreat in the freedom of expression," and called for an end to the "oppression of freedom and intimidation practiced against intellectuals."

Can you spot the difference between these two passages? If you can, I'll buy you a beer.

Both are from The Western Heritage, by Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, and Frank M. Turner. Ninth edition, Prentice Hall, 2007. It's an advanced high school world history text.

Passage #1:

The authors of the Gospels believed Jesus was the son of God and that he has come into the world to redeem humanity and to bring immortality to those who believed in him and followed his way. To the Gospel writers, Jesus' resurrection was striking proof of his teachings. At the same time, the Gospels regard Jesus as a figure in history, and they recount events in his life as well as his sayings. (p. 161)

Passage #2:

At about age forty, [Muhammad] began to receive revelations from the angel Gabriel, who recited God's word to him at irregular intervals. These revelations were collected after his death into the Islamic holy book, the Qur'an [literally, a "reciting"], which his followers compiled between 650 and 651. The basic message Muhammad received was a summons to all Arabs to submit to God's will. (p. 200)

Wait a minute. Does this have anything to do with the jihad? Oh yes it does.

Morality: gambling? No way! Armed kidnapping? Fine.

"Gunmen kidnap up to 15 in Russia's Ingushetia," from Reuters, October 24 (thanks to James):

NAZRAN, Russia (Reuters) - Armed men drove into Russia's Ingushetia region and abducted up to 15 people including policemen from a checkpoint and a slot machine parlour, police and witnesses said on Friday.

Witnesses said the gunmen, dressed in camouflage, entered Ingushetia from neighbouring Chechnya late on Thursday and presented themselves as police officers. Chechen authorities said they had nothing to do with the raid.

Islamist groups fighting an insurgency in Ingushetia against Moscow's rule frequently target gambling halls and shops selling alcohol, saying they contradict Islam....

Tuesday night at the University of Scranton some members of the sponsoring group were nervous. The university had taken much longer to approve my speaking at the campus than they had taken to approve other speakers, and had made the students answer all sorts of questions about whether the event would be in keeping with the mission of the university.

How about this for the mission of a university? Should it perchance be "the place to which a thousand schools make contributions; in which the intellect may safely range and speculate, sure to find its equal in some antagonist activity, and its judge in the tribunal of truth" Should it be a place where "inquiry is pushed forward, and discoveries verified and perfected, and rashness rendered innocuous, and error exposed, by the collision of mind with mind, and knowledge with knowledge"? (Thus Cardinal Newman.) Or should it be an indoctrination house for propagandists to stifle inquiry into and speculation about issues they wish not to be explored, as they interfere with the thrust of their propaganda?

Fort Dix Jihad Update. "Jurors in Fort Dix terror trial view tape from seized computers," by John P. Martin for the Star-Ledger, October 23 :

Jurors at the Fort Dix terror trial today watched videos of beheadings and al Qaeda propaganda seized from one defendant's computer, footage investigators contend proves the young Muslim men were studying terror tactics and preparing to attack.

One video opened with background music and a man singing "Blood shall be spilled" in Arabic.

Then two Iraqi captives appeared in succession on camera, each sitting before a red tapestry and confessing they had been spies for America and Israel.

An FBI language specialist, Gassan Hajjar, then described for jurors what happened next: Using a knife, the captors sliced off the hostages' heads, taking four to six minutes to complete the decapitations, he said. They held the severed heads aloft, placed them back on the bodies and celebrated.

Prosecutors aired the videos as the first week of testimony in the Camden courtroom came to an end, letting the images potentially linger in jurors' minds as a searing coda to the week.

Agents extracted the videos from a computer seized last year at the Cherry Hill home of Shain and Eljvir Duka, illegal Albanian immigrants who prosecutors say were radical Islamists plotting to attack Fort Dix or another area installation.

Being tried with them on charges of conspiring to kill U.S. soldiers are their brother, Dritan Duka, of Cherry Hill; Mohamad Shnewer, a native of Jordan and nationalized U.S. citizen from Cherry Hill, and Serdar Tatar, a legal permanent resident from Turkey who lived in Philadelphia.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Hammer and William Fitzpatrick have argued in court filings that the men watched al Qaeda videos of religious lectures, political propaganda and violent attacks to mentally and emotionally prepare themselves for a jihad, or holy war.

The clips jurors watched were among hundreds of jihadist photos, articles and Internet links agents found on the defendants' computers after the May 2007 arrests ended a 15-month FBI investigation.

Jurors were spared the actual scenes of beheadings after attorneys objected the explicit brutality wasn't proof of any conspiracy by their clients and would unfairly prejudice the jury against them. U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler refused to ban the videos altogether, but ordered that prosecutors show an "antiseptic" version that stopped the videos right before the decapitations.
[...]

Defense attorneys have argued there was no terror plot. They claim the alleged conspiracy was created and encouraged by paid FBI informants hired to infiltrate the plot and agents eager to win a terrorism conviction.

Last Monday night I spoke at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This was the campus I was most looking forward to visiting and simultaneously least looking forward to visiting, for a variety of reasons: I lived in Chapel Hill for seven years myself, graduated from the university, and still have some close personal connections there; I've had unfriendly exchanges with the academic propagandists Carl Ernst and Omid Safi, both of whom are professors there; and as I anticipated arriving there and then walked through the campus again it was hard to keep from thinking about the 2006 freelance jihad attack of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, which took place in a central area of the campus, a place I know very well and of which I have many memories -- a place which upon revisiting, even though there is no sign that anything out of the ordinary ever happened there, brought even to me a peculiar and unsettling vividness to this issue.

Before the talk I walked through campus with an old friend, and in due course we passed through Saunders Hall, home of the Religious Studies Department -- a place where I spent a great deal of time many years ago, the place where I first began reading the Qur'an and studying Islam, the place where so many things happened that have proven to be decisive in the course my life has taken. I found Omid Safi's office, but didn't find Safi, and neither he nor Ernst showed up for my talk. As it happened, James Taylor was in town playing a concert for Obama, and as Taylor is a big local hero, few people turned out to discuss the global jihad. But Taylor wasn't the only reason why people stayed away: Aisha Saad of the campus chapter of the Muslim Students Association told The Daily Tar Heel that the MSA decided not to come out to see me: "We do not see it setting the stage for a productive discourse but rather falling into a circular discussion that perpetuates stigmatized and superficial conceptions of a diverse community."

Uh huh. Well, pardon me if I find that a bit odd, not to mention disingenuous. I myself am always ready to defend my views. Ernst and Safi have both consigned me to the circle of hell reserved for "Islamophobes," but neither has ever deigned to point out even a single inaccuracy in anything I have written about the global jihad or Islamic supremacism, and neither of them had the decency or courage to come out to my address and talk things over. Neither did the MSA.

Short hair is out too. Saudi Arabia, of course -- always at the forefront of this sort of thing -- takes it one step further. Though many Saudi women are overweight, they are discouraged from going to gyms and disrobing around other women, as that too may transform them into lesbians.

"Muslims Ban Lesbians In Malaysia," from Sky News, October 24:

The National Fatwa Council also forbade the practice of girls behaving or dressing like boys.

Lesbianism has been banned under an edict issued by clerics in Malaysia who ruled that "tomboy" behaviour was against Islam.

Abdul Shukor Husin, chairman of the council, said many young women admire the way men dress and behave - and branded it a denial of their femininity and a violation of human nature.

He said: "It is unacceptable to see women who love the male lifestyle including dressing in the clothes men wear.

"It becomes clearer when they start to have sex with someone of the same gender, that is woman and woman.

"In view of this, the National Fatwa Council have decided and taken the stand that such acts are forbidden and banned."

Under the edict, girls are forbidden to sport short hair and dress, walk and act like boys.

Male homosexuality - specifically sodomy - is illegal in Malaysia and punishable with up to 20 years in jail.

Accusations of sodomy have twice been levelled against the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in what he says are politically motivated attempts to destroy him.

But lawyers say there is no provision banning lesbian sex in Malaysia's civil code.

The latest fatwa appears to be an attempt to push lesbianism towards illegality.

Harussani Idris Zakaria, the mufti of northern Perak state, said the council's ruling was not legally binding because it has not been passed into law, but that tomboys should be banned because their actions are "immoral".

He said: "It doesn't matter if it's a law or not. When it's wrong, it's wrong. It is a sin."

How long before the sharia courts in England begin handing down similar sentences? "Three Algerian Christians Face 3 Years in Prison for Blasphemy," from ICC, October 23 (thanks to Kyros):

Algeria (International Christian Concern)-On October 21, 2008, an Algerian court held a hearing on the case of three Christians who face three years of prison and a fine of 500 euros. The Court held the hearing in Ain Turk, a town 267 miles away from Algiers, the capital of Algeria.

The three Christians are Youssef Ourahmane, Rachid Seghir and Hamid Ramdani. The public prosecutor accused them of "insulting Islam, its prophet and threatening the former professing Christian that complained against them.”

Earlier, a lower court agreed with the prosecutor and handed down a 3 year prison sentence and 500 euro fine. The defendants were not present at the time of the decision. The defendants then appealed the decision of the lower court on July 15, 2008. The appeal court postponed the hearing until October 21, 2008.

The case against the three Christians was brought by the public prosecutor with the help of Mr. Shamouma Al-Aid. Mr. Al-Aid "converted" from Islam to Christianity for a period time during which he also attended a Bible school. According to Compass Direct News, Mr. Al-Aid continued to maintain relations with radical Muslims while attending churches and the Bible school.

Later he "reconverted" to Islam and alleged that the three Christians were blaspheming Islam and its prophet Mohammed. He also alleged that the Christians were threatening him for "reconverting" to Islam.

The Judge, after hearing the arguments of the parties, scheduled to decide the case on October 29, 2008.

ICC's Regional Manger for Africa, Jonathan Racho, stated, "As a member of the international community, the Algerian government has the obligation to respect the freedom of religion for its Christian minorities. It is time for Algerian officials to carry out their obligations by ceasing to interfere with freedom of worship of the country's Christian minorities."...

At last, someone takes up the issue of the nearly forgotten elephant in the living room. "Candidates On Fighting Islamic Extremism," from CBS, October 23 (thanks to Twostellas):

Obama:

* Says if he gets a shot at bin Laden, he will take it - with or without Pakistani permission.
* Would send in more troops to Afghanistan.
* Wants to give Pakistan $7 million to build schools, roads and health clinics.

McCain:

* Says it’s a mistake to be so explicit about violating another country territory, but leaves little doubt he would go after bin Laden even if that would be necessary.
* Would send in more troops to Afghanistan.
* Supports non-military aid to Pakistan, but has put no price tag on it.

(CBS) To help you make an informed decision in the presidential election, CBS News is devoting a large part of our broadcasts until Nov. 4 to telling you where the candidates stand on major issues - from the war in Iraq to health insurance to education … and a lot more. Each piece will be an in-depth look at the issues facing the 44th president. In this installment, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports on how what Barack Obama and John McCain propose to do about Islamic extremism would affect the world.

The Issue

The driver of an orange-and-white car shown in a video tape is a suicide bomber. He just barely misses an American convoy. The threat of Islamic extremists on the battlefield is so deadly, the only way to win is to shoot first.

But to Greg Mortenson, the real battleground is in the Hindu Kush, where Muslim children have no schools. For him, a classroom is the best weapon against terrorists.

"I think they fear education and literacy much more than they fear a good gun battle," Mortenson said.

Since 1993, Mortenson has been building schools in mountains so dangerous you take your life in your hands just crossing a river.

"Fifteen years later, now we have 78 schools, about 28,000 students and our primary focus is on girls' education," he said.

He is competing against religious schools called madrassas, teaching jihad to young boys who graduate to terrorist training camps. And his 78 schools are badly outgunned.

"Today, there's about 25,000 extremist madrassas with about four million mostly boys going to school, learning about militant ideology," he said.

Why is that? Does anyone know or care? Do they really think that there are 25,000 "extremist madrassas" because people don't have roads or scholarships?

"Doesn't sound like a fair contest," Martin said.

"It's just a drop in the bucket," Mortenson said.

A drop in the bucket against a fanatic ideology that, for a decade now, has spawned monstrous attacks on Americans.

The Candidates

There is no more visceral issue than the battle against Islamic extremism. And from the beginning, both candidates have put it at the center of their appeal to voters.

For both men, it begins with hunting down Osama bin Laden and other top terrorists - wherever they are.

"We cannot tolerate a terrorist sanctuary, and as president, I will not," Sen. Barack Obama said in May. "We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

Obama makes no bones about it - if he gets a shot at bin Laden, he will take it - with or without Pakistani permission.

Sen. John McCain says it’s a mistake to be so explicit about violating another country's territory, but leaves little doubt he would do exactly the same.

"There's a guy out there in Afghanistan or Pakistan," McCain said in March. "You know his name: Osama bin Laden. And if I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I'll get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice."

The battle against bin Laden and Islamic extremism began in Afghanistan. Seven years later, the United States has 32,000 troops there, and it is still not clear which side is winning.

"Our commanders on the ground in Afghanistan say that they need at least three additional brigades - and our commanders in Afghanistan must get them," McCain said.

Both candidates say they would send in more troops.

"As Commander in Chief, I will have no greater priority than taking out these terrorists that threaten America, and finishing the job against the Taliban. That's why I've called for at least two additional U.S. combat brigades," Obama said.

The U.S. military is already planning to send four more combat brigades - about 15,000 troops - and both candidates seem likely to approve. Both also recognize that's not enough. It will take what's called "soft power."

Obama wants to give Pakistan $7 million to build schools, roads and health clinics. McCain also supports non-military aid, but has put no price tag on it.

Has either one even been asked about the evidence that the Pakistani government has jihadists in high places, and that much of the money we have given them to fight "extremists" in the past has...gone astray?

In Los Angeles, McCain said: "Our goal must be to win the hearts and minds of the vast majority of moderate Muslims who do not want their future controlled by a minority of violent extremists. In this struggle, scholarships will be far more important than smart bombs."

Does study of the roots of "violent extremism" enter into this struggle against it and attempt to win hearts and minds? Are we too politically correct even to allow ourselves to know what we're dealing with? Does McCain, does Obama have a plan for combating the Islamic supremacist ideology that renders so many of our attempts to win hearts and minds fruitless?

Does anyone even wish to know or care where this problem came from? They continue to assume that it's all about poverty, despite the fact that so many studies have shown that jihadists tend to be wealthier and better educated than their peaceful peers. Scholarships and roads will fix it. But have they even considered the possibility that some Muslims may wish to wage jihad against the West even after they receive scholarships and schools and roads and health clinics?

Is it forbidden even to raise the possibility that some Muslims will consider that an attempt to buy them off, and will hold all the more tenaciously to their ideology of violence and supremacism?

"[Safe] Bourada was one of 36 Islamic militants convicted a decade ago for providing support for bombings that terrorized France in 1995. He received a 10-year term, but won early release in 2003 under police surveillance."

"9 convicted in Paris terror trial," by Pierre-Antoine Souchard for the Associated Press, October 23:

PARIS (AP) — A Paris criminal court convicted nine people on Thursday including a French-Algerian former prison inmate who admitted establishing an Islamic group that called for armed jihad in France.

Safe Bourada, 38, was sentenced to 15 years in prison while eight others received penalties of one to nine years on charges linked to financing of and association with a terror group.

Bourada admitted in court to creating a militant group called "Ansar al-Fath," or Partisans of Victory. The group was suspected of planning attacks on the Paris Metro and Orly airport. It was dismantled in 2005 after French authorities received a tip from Algerian counterparts.

In 2005, Christophe Chaboud, head of the counterterrorism unit of the national police, told The Associated Press that the group had had "indirect" contacts with Iraq's former al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2006 in Diyala province.

The court ruled that one of the group's members — Kaci Ouarab, 31 — had received weapons training in Lebanon in 2005 that was designed to help carry out bombings in France.

Ouarab, who the court considered "the natural, legitimate and even operational successor" of Bourada, was sentenced to nine years without the possibility of parole for at least six.

Kais Melliti, 36, considered an important organizing and financial operative, was given eight years — without the possibility of parole for at least two-thirds of that term.

Another suspect, Djamel Badaoui, 31, was sentenced to five years. The court ruled he was in charge of "seizing goods" — notably by extorting money from prostitutes on three occasions, to fund terror attacks.

Two French converts to Islam — Stephane Hadoux, 40, and Emmanuel Nieto, 34, — were given three-year sentences, half of which were suspended by the court.

Bourada was one of 36 Islamic militants convicted a decade ago for providing support for bombings that terrorized France in 1995. He received a 10-year term, but won early release in 2003 under police surveillance.

Under Thursday's verdict, he will not be eligible for parole for at least 10 years.

Two studies in priorities: First, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, which should -- should -- have its hands full with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, is devoting time and resources to cases like this.

Second, where did those resources come from? How are Western countries responding to their aid and support for Karzai's government being used in this fashion? Are they responding at all?

More on this story. "Journalist sentenced to die in Kabul lives to tell his tale," by Jessica Leeder for the Globe and Mail, October 23:

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- On the morning of Oct. 27, 2007, Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh got the call that changed his life.

The phone rang early, before Mr. Kambakhsh had started his day as a second-year journalism student. The caller identified himself as an official from the notorious National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's national intelligence agency.

"They said come to the NDS office," Mr. Kambakhsh recalled. At the time, he couldn't fathom what the visit was about. "I arrived over there at 10 a.m. And I waited until 3 p.m., when I asked for the manager to see if I could go home," he said. "It was my working time. They said to me, 'You cannot go. You are under arrest.' Then, they arrested me."

This week Mr. Kambakhsh narrowly escaped the death penalty over alleged actions that - even had he committed them, which he denies - would be nothing more than a typical classroom debate for a journalism student in the West.

Rather than execution, Mr. Kambakhsh now faces 20 years in prison.

In an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail from his central Kabul jail cell, the 24-year-old recounted for the first time his final moments of freedom and the events that led to his conviction.

His case has made headlines since the arrest - international justice and journalism advocates began a lobbying surge early this year after he was convicted of blasphemy for allegedly asking questions about the role of women in Islamic society.

The death sentence was reduced this week after a witness confessed to lying about Mr. Kambakhsh's alleged indiscretions, but a Kabul court still upheld the conviction.

And so, at an age when most Afghan men are raising young families, Mr. Kambakhsh finds himself locked alone in prison, pleading for justice and for a chance simply to be heard.

"I am not at fault," he told The Globe, speaking through a Pashto translator. "I am a Muslim and I respect Islamic rules and regulations. I respect the Holy book of Koran. I respect the Prophet. I am an innocent person. I must be free."

Back in October, Mr. Kambakhsh tried, to no avail, to tell the intelligence service this very same thing. [...]

Ultimately, Mr. Kambakhsh came to believe that his conviction was a sort of consolation prize, one meant to satiate local warlords who were incensed at his older brother.

Also a journalist, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi Kambakhsh's passion was to publish works outlining "how the people of Afghanistan are the victims of warlordism and extremism," he said.

"They couldn't do anything against me directly because ... I was very exact about my pieces," Yaqub Kambakhsh said yesterday.

Still, warlords and their militias had previously attempted to deter him by sending him death threats, and one pointed a gun at his head.

"They are afraid of me because ... they are linked with war crimes. If there was real freedom of expression and freedom of media, they would go to war crimes trials."

He said that the reason the warlords were deterred from killing him was likely because of his international media ties and the "international problems" that coverage of his murder would create.

And so, he said, indirectly killing his brother became their solution.

"They wanted to put pressure and shock me and shock the critical journalists of Afghanistan who are really working for democracy and freedom," he said.

To a degree, their strategy has worked. Yaqub Kambakhsh has stopped working as a journalist so he can focus on his brother's case full time. Other journalist friends, he said, have stayed away from sensitive and controversial stories in hopes of preserving their own lives. [...]

Mr. Kambakhsh's brother, Yaqub, said foreign nations investing in Afghanistan's redevelopment should press President Hamid Karzai to intervene. The President has yet to comment publicly on the case.

"If Karzai doesn't have a clear position about this case, countries like Canada must stop their support with this regime, which doesn't respect the values of democracy," he said.

"It seems that the Afghan government has two faces, one for foreign countries and one for the people of Afghanistan," he said. "The real face is very dark and extremist."

"We want the officer in question to be more responsible for his words because they touched on the sensitivities of Muslims."

How many times have we heard or read similar words? How often are similar phrases uttered in Western educational institutions? Every time one hears this sort of argument, this case may serve as a reminder of what lies farther down the slippery slope of sharia-based accommodation, and of the all-important question of where accommodation for the sake of avoiding conflict and ill will must stop. "Student officer’s remarks on Islam to be probed," from The Star, October 23:

PETALING JAYA: The Islamic Development Department will investigate a Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) student affairs officer over statements he had allegedly made on Islam.

The officer had allegedly told two female UPM students that it was “useless to be devout when one does not pay college fees.”

It was learnt that the two girls -- Nursha Fiqa Mohd Ali and Farhana Farzieana Azmi, both 21 -- were studying at UPM Serdang when they were banned on Oct 15 from living on campus a week before their examinations, which started Oct 20.

The two alleged that the officer had accused them of not paying their tuition fees when the bank had already disbursed the payments.

According to Nursha, the university took care of the loan transfer from the bank and the loan was released in early July.

“He gave no valid reason. He also made an excuse that we were evicted from the hostel because there were no rooms,” she said on Thursday.

The Islamic Student Association reported the matter to the Department in Putrajaya on Thursday.

Wanita PKR said the alleged remarks were irresponsible and confusing to Muslims, and wanted the Islamic Development Department to investigate the matter.

“We want the University to explain the matter,” said Wanita PKR chief Zuraida Kamruddin.

“The administration is supposed to set an example to students and not confuse them or display bad behaviour,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

“We want the officer in question to be more responsible for his words because they touched on the sensitivities of Muslims,” Zuraida added.

Or, from an Islamic perspective, jizya: "Payment to Afghan Governor's family part of bid to win 'hearts and minds,'" from ABC News, October 23 (thanks to Dumbledoresarmy):

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon says the ex gratia payment to the family of a dead Afghan Governor is part of the overall approach to the war in Afghanistan.

The Government will make a payment to the family of the Chora district Governor Rozi Khan, who is believed to have been accidentally killed by Australian soldiers during a battle with enemy forces.

Mr Fitzgibbon says the investigation into the death is not finished but it is important to make the act of grace payment.

"The project is largely about winning the hearts and minds of the local people," he said.

"We will be successful in Afghanistan when we convince the majority of Afghans that the democratic social and economic system we are offering is better than anything being offered by any other group.

"Payments like this are very important in terms of making progress in that regard."