February 2009 Archives

"The Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will."

Sharia Alert, and Myopia in Moscow. "Chechen leader imposes strict brand of Islam," from the Associated Press, February 28 (thanks to L.):

GROZNY, Russia: The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die.

Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings.

"If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic.

The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya, in an effort to blunt the appeal of hardline Islamic separatists and shore up his power. In doing so, critics say, he is setting up a dictatorship where Russian laws do not apply.

Some in Russia say Kadyrov's attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state. But the Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will.

"Kadyrov willfully tries to increase the influence of local customs over the life of the republic because this makes him the absolute ruler of the republic," said Yulia Latynina, a political analyst in Moscow.

Kadyrov's bluster shows how confident he is of his position. "No one can tell us not to be Muslims," he said outside the mosque. "If anyone says I cannot be a Muslim, he is my enemy."

Few dare to challenge Kadyrov's rule in this southern Russian region of more than a million people, which is only now emerging from the devastation of two wars in the past 15 years. The fighting between Islamic separatists and Russian troops, compounded by atrocities on both sides, claimed tens of thousands of lives and terrorized civilians.

Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls are now required to wear headscarves in all schools, universities and government offices.

Some Chechen women say they support or at least accept Kadyrov's strict new guidelines.

"Headscarves make a woman beautiful," said Zulikhan Nakayeva, a medical student whose long dark hair flowed out from under her head covering, her big brown eyes accentuated by mascara.

But many chafe under the restrictions.

"How do women live in Chechnya? They live as the men say," said Taisiya, 20, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution. She was not wearing a headscarf while shopping in central Grozny, which she said was her way of protesting.

Most women now wear headscarves in public, though the scarves rarely fully cover their hair and in some cases are little more than colorful silk headbands. Women who go out without a headscarf tend to tuck one into their bag for use where headscarves are required.

Many people suspect Kadyrov is branding the seven late November slayings honor killings to advance his political agenda. He said the women were planning to go abroad to work as prostitutes, but their relatives found out about it and killed them.

Few Chechens believe that.

"If women are killed according to tradition then it is done very secretly to prevent too many people from finding out that someone in the family behaved incorrectly," said Natalya Estemirova, a prominent human rights activist in Grozny.

There are two unsettling things in the preceding paragraphs: A society where a leader can tout honor killings and expect political gain has a massive problem with respect to human rights. And the fact that Chechens don't buy their leader's story because they know that's not how honor killings are done only confirms how serious and pervasive the problem is.

"The verbal abuse is there, the intimidation is there, the feeling of helplessness is there, not only among students but among faculty." And Judea Pearl doesn't say so, but it is coming from Muslim students and their Leftist allies. Israeli consul general Avika Tor was hounded off a stage at San Jose State University three weeks ago. A photo of some of the protesters is above, and an account here.

"Slain reporter's father fearful of anti-Semitism on campus," by Stan Wilson for CNN, February 28 (thanks to Paul):

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Jewish students and faculty at California universities fear for their safety on campus because of threats aimed at them over the Middle East conflict, the father of a slain Wall Street Journal reporter said Friday.

Judea Pearl, whose son, Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and killed by al Qaeda extremists while on assignment in Pakistan in 2002, told reporters at a news conference that anti-Semitic e-mail and verbal threats have escalated since Israel's three-week invasion of Gaza in January.

"I received hate messages (after a recent panel on "Human Rights and Gaza") from someone at UCLA who did not identify himself and said, 'I saw you in Ackerman Union and I know where your office is and I'm going to beat the (expletive) out of you,'" said Pearl, who teaches computer science on UCLA's Westwood campus. "I handed it to the campus police, and they did not do anything."

UCLA spokeswoman Elizabeth Boatright-Simon told CNN there is no record of Pearl's complaint to campus police but said the university plans to meet with him. On its Web site, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block issued a statement about the university's policy.

"The conflict in the Middle East and current events in Gaza are some of the most highly controversial issues of our time, stirring deep emotions on all sides," the statement read.

"We have a responsibility to protect the freedom of expression. We also all have a responsibility to listen and engage -- respectfully -- even as we must understand that not every campus forum on a controversial topic will satisfy passionate and concerned members of the campus and broader communities," said Block....

A responsibility to protect the freedom of expression, eh? Then how about, say, showing Fitna?

Last night Geert Wilders spoke at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, DC -- the site of CPAC. Pamela Geller organized a gala event that was sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Atlas Shrugs, and Jihad Watch. Here via Pamela is a firsthand account of what happened from a reader of Atlas Shrugs and Jihad Watch, who was there:

The $25 Banana---priceless! If given the chance to fly back in time to hear Patrick Henry deliver his "liberty or death" speech, I probably would. No, I'm sure I would. In a very real sense, that's why I left Danville and drove almost six hours (and almost another six on the way back immediately after) to hear a man from the Netherlands named Geert Wilders.

Friday morning, after almost five hours of class time with my Humanities students, I left for Washington, D.C. to see Wilders, a modern day Henry. Of course, there was a problem I couldn't ignore. I knew that Wilder's speech to the crowd attending what had been billed as AN EVENING WITH GEERT WILDERS: FITNA, FREEDOM, FOOD .............. FIERCE! at D.C.'s Omni Shoreham Hotel would be as short as it would be inspirational. In other words, I knew that I had to be at the site within minutes of the time the event was to begin at 6:00 p.m.

Armed only with mapquest directions, I sped up US 29 North to I-66 East where I eventually exited into the maze of Washington. Thanks to directions from a man who was walking across the Francis Scott Key Bridge, I found 1900 Calvert Street and turned into an area where Omni valets parked visitors' cars.

Immediately I was told that their lot was full, that I would have to try the Marriott lot a few blocks away. There was no time to complain; it was after six. I hurried into traffic, and drove past the Marriott sign that said "TEMPORARILY FULL" then headed up Calvert. For a block and a half, there was nothing. As I neared a stop light, I looked into my rearview mirror and noticed that someone was leaving a curbside spot just behind me. Carefully, but quickly, I reversed, then took that spot.

I speedily walked to the Omni entrance, found the concierge, then headed down the corridor to the left that led to a right turn down a few stairs. There I saw the "Evening With Geert Wilders" sign. But the doors were closed, and a tall and very serious security guard told me that no one else could enter due to the excessive crowd and fire code restrictions.

"But I've driven six hours," I pleaded, too weary to be more defiant.

"Sorry," he said, "those are the rules."

I didn't move since I was next in line if someone left. But why would they? It was almost 6:30 and Wilders was sure to speak any moment. What made me so intent on coming caused me to stay put. If Wilders was brave enough to produce FITNA, a very short and controversial film that discussed the brutal tenets of Islam, and courageous enough to demand Islamic accountability for its violence and its supremacist ideology, I could at least be close.

Behind me there were others who had apparently made the same commitment. They weren't leaving either. None of us became unruly or upset. We looked at each other as if to say we were happy to have gotten this close. I shrugged just as the door opened to within a foot of where I stood. A man with wire rim glasses and a short sandy colored beard asked who I was.

"I've driven here from southern Virginia," I said, "and Robert Spencer and I..."

He stopped me. "Come on in." He waved to the others also.

Inside was standing room only. On a small platform at the other end of the room in front of the microphone was Pamela Geller, dressed in black, the bright and attractive outspoken American Jewess who produces the prize winning blog, Atlas Shrugs. Touting the work that Wilders had done regarding the defense of free speech, she commented on the size of the audience who had come to express their support. Just behind her were...Robert Spencer, author of the best selling book, The Truth About Muhammad and many others. Geller thanked both of them, who, along with the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Atlas Shrugs, sponsored the event.

After rousing the crowd to repeated cheers, Geller introduced...Robert Spencer.

Spencer held a thick reference book, an impeccable Islamic source regarding the true intent of sura 8, verse 60 and sura 47, verse 4 of the Koran. Both dealt with Muhammad's dictate to murder infidels, unbelievers in Islam. Both were discussed in FITNA. Spencer explained that a rational discussion of such suras, even using or relying on Islamic texts, was regarded as hate speech. When Spencer referred to handouts given the crowd by Muslims in opposition to the event, he read Muslim claims that references to the Koran in the movie FITNA were taken out of context. That's when Spencer opened the reference book and read from it.

Then he introduced Wilders who took the stage during our thunderous applause. Geller, more than a foot shorter than Wilders, was beaming as both stood at the podium. Then Geller walked away.

"Free speech is no longer a given," he said, reflecting on charges filed against him in the Netherlands, where he and his family live. "I will be prosecuted because of my film FITNA."

He described his full time protection from Muslims, how he moves from one safe house to another, how he occasionally sleeps in prison cells. He asked why free speech was being put behind bars.

"Cultural relativism is the biggest disease of Europe today." He claimed that the European left was attacking cultural values rooted in Christianity and Judaism in a vain attempt to please Muslims. Gravely, Wilders said "Their population is growing ten times faster than our local populations."

He mentioned the need for the Europeans to adopt a freedom of speech law that would allow criticism of any and all ideologies. Quoting George Orwell, Wilders said that freedom was the ability to tell people what they didn't want to hear.

When the applause that followed ebbed, he looked around the room and said, stoically, "Freedom must prevail! Freedom will prevail!"

Cheers accompanied him off the stage as FITNA began.

I saw Geller and Spencer head for the exit. Earlier I had introduced myself to them both when I ignored the security guard behind me who was warning me not to. Both recognized my name from the many messages I had sent to each of them. Geller gave me a hug. Now that they were leaving, I stopped Geller to hand her a $25 check I had written for the Wilders Legal Defense Fund.

"It's just a small donation," I said.

"No, it's a big one," she replied, as she gave me an even bigger hug, one I will never forget.

All eyes were turned to the hanging screen that was as wide as the small stage. FITNA had begun. I worked my way to the rear door. I had seen FITNA before because I had shown it many times to my classes, and would show it many more. As I reached the exit, I turned in time to see the opening image of a plane sailing into the World Trade Center.

"Bastards!" I heard a woman seethe who an arm's length away. "Yeah," I thought, acknowledging the reason that I had come. Like Wilders I knew that our freedoms were worth fighting for.

Once out the door, I patted the pocket inside my sport coat. I had taken a banana from one of the food tables for my ride home. Amused by the thought that some would say I had paid twenty five bucks for the banana, I told myself that I wished I could have given more.

B. Koplen 2/28/09

And here is another account by Judy at the superb Refugee Resettlement Watch site.

Here is part two of Alyssa A. Lappen's interview of Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs at Right Side News (part one is here). In this segment they discuss a longstanding focus of Jihad Watch: Islamic law's institutionalized discrimination against women, and how it plays out in violent and oppressive behavior today.

AAL: Why do you consider the situation of women so important within the Muslim war upon Western freedoms?

Atlas: This war is for women, and about women, and the ownership of women. You can judge the health of any society by how they treat women. And obviously in Islam, women are chattel.

I grew up in the Golden Age. I grew up in post World War II America. I was a post-boomer, what they called the generation Joneses. I grew up watching Andy Griffiths and I Love Lucy --- mindless, carefree, free. Freedoms were like the air I breathe. It was not until those freedoms were threatened that I realized how privileged I was and am and how I must do everything in my power to save it. No one stomps on my neck because I wear high heal shoes and low necked sweaters.

And now, the key to our freedom, believe it or not, is the freedom of women in the Muslim world.

AAL: Changing the situation for them seems like a very tall order, almost an impossibility.

Atlas: Women in the Muslim world have to be part of the effort, although they know nothing else and they live under fear and oppression. They have no one fighting for freedom. Their situation is like that of people who've had Stockholm syndrome for 1,400 years.

If you throw a frog in boiling water, he will jump out. But if you put a frog into warm water and turn up the heat until it gets hotter and hotter, that frog will be toast. That is what has happened to Muslim women, and it's why we have to work for them. We have to stop that, because it is already happening here.

People are auto-censoring themselves. There is double speak. People say what seems correct because they are afraid of the truth. Where you are not free to speak we are all in trouble. And the battle line in North America, first and foremost, is for Muslim women.

AAL: How can we show skeptics how difficult things have already grown in the West.

Atlas: Look, all you have to to is going onto YouTube to see videos on how to beat your wife without leaving marks, what tools to use, like they would beat a dog. There are Islamic clerics who teach men to beat their wives "gently."

The long and short of it is, in Islamic countries, women are slaves. And there is still slavery in these countries. They have human trafficking. It is not part of our culture; it is not part of our rules. Of course there is illegal human trafficking here, but it is not systemic. It is against the law. Slavery was abolished with the emancipation proclamation. Slavery is still very much a part of Islamic societies.

They consider it perfectly normal.

But we currently have a United Nations that has paid no attention to the millions of people murdered in the southern Sudan and Darfur genocides. These atrocities are of no consequence to them. So women's rights are certainly not even on the playing field.

AAL: How much of this happens in the West. Do we now have an epidemic in North America, too?

Atlas: So many people ask me how many women in the West are murdered in honor killings. I can't give them an answer. Part of the problem is that even when there's unquestionably been an honor killing, officials do not want to label it. This was the case when Yaser Abdel Said murdered his daughters Amina Said, 18, and Sarah Said, 17 on New Year's Day in 2008. They were gorgeous, vibrant, quintessential girls. But they were too Western and they were dating non-Muslims. They spoke to a teacher at school. They called social services. They totally invested themselves in the West. They took honors and advanced placement classes. None of that mattered. No one helped them. Finally they ran away. The West could not save them. Their mother Patricia and brother, Islam, lured them back to Texas, to be murdered on New Year's Day. Their father Yaser fled the country, probably to Egypt and the FBI issued a wanted poster. Their great aunt, Gail Gartrell, lobbied officials to designate the crimes honor killings, which they were.

Their mother, father and brother are still at large. And it took the FBI 10 months to add the words "honor killing" to the wanted poster. I called it a pig-flying moment, when the FBI finally acted, it was so rare. They called a spade a spade. But within days, the FBI caved in to pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood and revised the wanted poster, to exclude the truth.

There is much more. Read it all.

The very idea that because Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan, Afghanistan has a special, irreplaceable importance in the "war against terrorism," is false.

In the first place, the fact that Al Qaeda found Afghanistan under the Taliban (a Taliban nurtured by an American-supported Pakistan, and recognized by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) useful does not mean that Al Qaeda can only regroup in Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks in London were not hatched by those trained in Afghanistan, but by people living in, raised in, Great Britain. Those who bombed the Atocha station in Madrid were not from Afghanistan. Those who killed Pim Fortuyn (a weak-minded Dutchman put up to it by Muslims) and Theo van Gogh were not trained in Afghanistan. The Chechens who seized the theatre in Moscow, or the school in Beslan, were not trained in Afghanistan. Anywhere there are Muslims, ready to participate in Jihad through violence, they will be able to find sufficient weaponry and bombs. Afghanistan is being endowed with a significance it does not possess.

In the second place, the very idea that Americans and other NATO troops must be sent in large numbers to pacify Afghanistan, a vast country, remote from Western bases, difficult to get in and out of (just look at the sums demanded by Kyrgyzstan for the continued use of an airbase), and that requires the collaboration of another meretricious Muslim state that is actually far more hideous and dangerous than Afghanistan itself, Pakistan, is nonsense. Afghanistan, or rather the various ethnic groups within it, can be controlled, or at least the threat coming from them can be managed from afar. The very idea that the only choice is ever-increasing numbers of American troops, and ever more billions poured into Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries on earth, on the theory that Muslim hearts, if they are not with the Taliban, are therefore accessible and winnable, is absurd.

Extraordinarily important observations about a phenomenon that has been far too little noted by law enforcement and government officials.

"Are Acts of Staged Controversy an Islamist Strategic Tactic?," by Madeleine Gruen and Edward Sloan for IPT News, February 27:

[...]

Minnesota Imams

On November 20, 2006, six imams boarded a US Airways jet that was about to depart from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for Phoenix, Arizona. They had attended a three-day conference of the North American Imams Federation. Three only had one-way tickets and no checked luggage.[8] Various witnesses reported observing the group praying in an unusually loud way in the waiting area prior to boarding.[9] One of the witnesses, a clergyman who was familiar with Islamic practices, described their behavior at the gate as "atypical."[10] This same witness was later seated next to one of the imams on the plane and intentionally engaged him in conversation. The imam initially expressed to the witness that he was in the United States to do work related to his Ph.D. Later in the discussion, he admitted he was not doing academic work but instead intended to "represent Muslims in the United States" by generating support for Shari'a law.[11]

Upon boarding the plane, the imams dispersed. Two sat in the front of the plane, two in the middle, and two in the rear.[12] The flight crew and passengers observed them changing seats, and several of the men requested seat-belt extenders.[13] Crew members thought the request was odd, as none of the imams appeared overweight.[14] Although the extenders were provided, they were never used and were left on floor of the plane.[15] One passenger stated that she believed that the imams deliberately acted out as a part of an attempt to intimidate airline employees.[16] Another passenger said, "I can't explain it, but it was like they were definitely trying to raise suspicion."[17] The flight was delayed and the imams were removed from the plane by the airport police, questioned, and released after their plane had already departed.

CAIR filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation, and a separate civil suit in federal court on behalf of the imams against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, citing civil rights violations. CAIR also sued the "John Does" who alerted the aircrew and authorities after becoming alarmed by the imam's behavior in the terminal and on the plane.[18] While the "John Doe" provision of a bill (designed to protect citizens who report possible terrorist-related behavior from being sued, and to protect officers acting in an official capacity to prevent terrorist attacks) was moving through Congress, CAIR persisted with its lawsuit, claiming the right to discover whether the complaints were actually made "in good faith" or if they were racially motivated.[19]

President George W. Bush signed the "John Doe" provision[20] into law on August 3, 2007 and CAIR dropped its claims against the "Does."[21] There may be a residual "chilling effect," however, that would prevent concerned citizens from reporting suspicious incidents for fear of getting sued.[22] Causing reluctance to report suspicious incidents in which Muslims are involved may be an aspect of Islamist strategy to reduce resistance to the Islamization of society.

In January 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation ruled that US Airways did not discriminate against the imams and that the airline's actions were reasonable. The civil suit is scheduled to go to trial in August, 2009.[23]

Giants Stadium

During a football game September 19, 2005 at Giants Stadium, five Muslim men were questioned by FBI agents after they prayed near the stadium's main air intake duct located in a sensitive area.[24] Former President George H.W. Bush attended the game and security was high. After approximately 20 minutes of questioning, FBI agents determined that the group did not pose a threat and allowed them to return to the game.

This group may have acted completely innocently. The issue, however, was not dropped by the men, and a few weeks later, on November 2, 2005, the group joined forces with the New Jersey-based American Muslim Union and the New York City chapter of CAIR for a joint press conference concerning the incident. At the conference, the men complained that they had been humiliated at Giants Stadium, and that their "main aim [in publicizing the episode] was to bring to light and educate people about what it is we're supposed to do."[25] They also took the opportunity to promote a campaign called "Pray for Understanding,"[26] which the executive director of the New York office of CAIR described as a way to teach people about Islam. The tie-in to the "Pray for Understanding" campaign at the press conference suggests the possibility that the incident at Giants Stadium may have been staged to create a platform to promote an ulterior public relations agenda.

What Islamists Might Gain from "Acts of Staged Controversy"

The Minnesota Imams and Giants Stadium incidents are just two examples where unusual but overt behavior has been investigated, dropped (because there was no clear indication of wrongdoing), and subsequently taken up and intensified by CAIR or by other Muslim groups. Due to the involvement of Islamist advocacy groups, news stories are generated and controversy stirred.

If the objective of Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, is to establish Islam as the dominant global societal doctrine, then how would creating acts of controversy - or seizing on opportunities to create controversy - further their strategy to achieve their objective? If they intend to achieve their objective through non-violent means then it is logical to conclude that they would want Muslims to embrace their perspective and to eschew democratic principles..

For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:

* Cause Muslims to feel disaffection for the democratic system by promoting feelings of betrayal and abandonment.
* Convince Muslim Americans that they are not accepted as Americans. Acts of staged controversy provoke a response from authorities that can foment an "us vs. them" rift between Muslims and non-Muslims.
* Incite political divides that may ultimately cause political instability.
* Influence legislators to call for laws to outlaw profiling and/or repeal existing laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act.
* Draw attention from foreign media in an attempt to show that the U.S. rhetoric about acceptance is hollow.

Acts of staged controversy could also be exploited by groups who seek to use violence. For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:

* Desensitize security personnel by making activity that common sense would deem suspicious instead seem routine and not worth any special effort.
* Intimidate security personnel and citizens by threatening lawsuits; making them reluctant to report suspicious behavior.

Handling Acts of Staged Controversy

Unfortunately, hatred, bigotry, and mistrust exist in the United States, and it is the role of civil rights groups to respond appropriately when acts of hatred do occur. It is the duty of responsible officials to monitor political, religious, and social tensions so that violent acts motivated by hatred can be prevented. The long view for homeland security, however, cannot be compromised by hasty responses to ambiguous situations. It is possible that some Islamist groups may exaggerate the occurrence of anti-Islamic discrimination in order to validate the premise that "Islamophobia" is rampant. According to FBI statistics, out of a total 7,624 hate crimes reported in the United States in 2007, 115 were motivated by anti-Islamic bias.[27] By contrast, 2,658 were motivated by bias against blacks, 749 were anti-white, 1,265 targeted people based on sexual orientation and 969 of the hate crimes reported were motivated by bias against Jews.[28]

Law enforcement and security personnel, airline and airport managers, legislators, politicians, media, and private citizens all have roles to play to prevent the spread of extremist ideology, which could lead to radicalization and, ultimately, a possible terrorist event.

Response at the Federal, Law Enforcement and Media Levels

Politicians must acknowledge Islamist ideology is being promoted in the United States, recognize who is promoting it, and understand the subtle tactics used by the Islamist groups before they can introduce effective counter-measures against terrorism. Politicians must realize that Islamist groups are competing for hearts and minds in the United States, so commitment to democratic values cannot be taken for granted.

How does law enforcement play a role in acts of staged controversy if there is no apparent crime committed? It is unlawful to conspire and to deliberately disrupt or interfere with the legitimate activities of law enforcement and security personnel. Engaging in deliberately suspicious behavior in order to distract security and law enforcement authorities is a tactic that has been discussed on Islamist message boards.[29] Of course, in ambiguous situations it is hard to prove the actual intent of the actors. Difficult though it may be, investigations should be conducted and cooperating witnesses sought and developed. The stakes are high, especially when the results of these incidents are considered in the aggregate and not individually.

Associations with terrorists or terrorist groups are not evidence of a crime, but are valuable data points in evaluating the true nature of an incident. If there are nefarious or questionable associations or prior activities that could shed light on possible motivations for ambiguous acts, they should be made known as much as possible. For example, one of the six imams involved in the Minnesota airport case, Omar Shahin, raised money for the Holy Land Foundation and for the Illinois-based KindHearts Foundation, which the government shut down last year for alleged support of Hamas."[30]

Additionally, the media should be aware of the possibility that it is being used to further an Islamist agenda. Media cooperation and extensive coverage is a key element of successful acts of staged controversy. Historically, global political Islamist groups have skillfully manipulated the media as part of their effort to circulate their message.[31] Statements made by spokespeople representing Islamist groups are often taken at face value by the media, and past involvements and associations often go unmentioned. Just as it is for law enforcement, it is important for the media to consider incidents in the aggregate.[...]

Read it all. There is much more, plus references for all the endnotes, at the IPT News site.

Because, you see, this will keep them from becoming "radicalized" -- i.e., turning to jihad. Living in a society that treats all equally before the law is not enough: Muslims have to be placed in a special class with rights and privileges beyond those of non-Muslims. And that, of course, is precisely the arrangement envisioned by Sharia.

"Police In Race Bias Outrage: Scottish forces ordered to give priority to crimes against Muslims," by Dean Herbert in the Scottish Daily Mail, February 28, via The Frozen North (thanks to Pamela):

Police in Scotland have been ordered to give special priority to crimes where the victims are Muslim.

In a move that last night sparked a fresh row over political correctness, a senior officer revealed that the race and religion of a victim has now become a crucial factor in how police respond to crime.

Inspector Tom Galbraith, of Lothian and Borders Police’s diversity unit, told a conference on tackling terrorism that it was important to stop Scottish Muslims feeling “vulnerable” in case they were driven towards radicalism.

Mr. Galbraith said the force encouraged officers to consider the religious or ethnic backgrounds of victims to assess their needs in dealing with hate crimes.

He said that both an attack and a perceived lack of action by police could turn Islamic youths into future terrorists.

But mind you, he is speaking about "a perceived lack of action by police," not an actual lack of action, and is recommending that preferential treatment be given to Muslims, not just that they be treated in the same way as the rest of the population is treated. And almost certainly it has never occurred to him that Muslim groups might try to use grievances to manipulate non-Muslim officials into granting them preferential treatment -- or taking the edge off anti-terror investigations. To suggest such a possibility, despite the abundance of evidence demonstrating that this kind of thing happens not infrequently, would be "Islamophobic."

Mr. Galbraith also revealed that police officers, Special Branch and BAA security staff were being given special lessons about Islamic culture after Muslims complained that being questioned when entering the country about whether they pray and attend mosques was offensive to their faith.

Speaking at a national security conference in Edinburgh on Thursday, Mr. Galbraith said, “It is not about treating everybody the same. If I have a young Asian man who has been subjected to a hate crime, I would rather put more resources into that than if it had happened to a white male because the white male is far less likely to end up becoming radicalised.”

Many times I have mentioned "the equality of rights of all people before the law" as a key Western principle that needed to be defended from Islamic supremacism. Looks as if it is dead already in Scotland.

He later confirmed that his remarks were in line with Lothian and Borders Police policy, saying that cases of hate crime were assessed “by need”.

He added: “You have to consider cases according to need. The idea of treating people all the same is a bit naive and we have to remember that there are vulnerable individuals who can be put on the path of radicalism.”

Last night, the police were criticised for being too politically correct in dealing with hate crimes.

Conservative Justice spokesman Bill Aitken said: “I’m afraid we are now living in a society in which some people are more equal than others.

“Not accepting assault against some people is a serious matter and the law is required to be proactive in each and every case.

“There is no room for political correctness in the fight against crime.”

Richard Cook, Scottish spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, added: “I think people will be extremely concerned that victims are being treated differently according to their religion, colour of their skin and where they live.”

During the conference, Mr. Galbraith also said that police officers and airport security staff were being given lessons in Islamic culture to avoid offending arrivals.

He said: “Sometimes they will be asked “Do you pray?” or “Do you visit mosques?” when they arrive in the country.

“This kind of thing is derogatory to the Islamic faith. A lot of people then wonder what is wrong with going to mosques in this country.

“It is about making an effort in learning about other cultures and faiths.”

He later confirmed that training in Islamic culture was now on-going among officers.

Mr. Galbraith joined Lothian and Borders police in 1988.

He presently works in the diversity unit under the “prevent” strand of the UK counter-terrorism strategy.

Yeah, that's gonna work like a charm.

The government is "saddened" by the AU peacekeepers' assertive measures vis-a-vis the Islamists, who, as opposed to the former, intentionally and repeatedly kill and terrorize Somali civilians -- with, of course, nary a word from the Somali government (yes, Somalia actually has a government).

"Somalia 'saddened' by AU peacekeepers' shelling of Mogadishu residential areas," from China View, February 27:

MOGADISHU, Feb. 27 (Xinhua) -- The Somali government Friday said it was saddened by the shelling of residential areas by African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu which it said led to the death and injury of people and the further displacement of new returnees, according to local media reports.

The statement comes after two days of intense fighting between fighters of the insurgent group of Hezbul Islam, and peacekeepers from the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) backing Somali government forces.

"We are saddened that AMISOM have bombed people who have now started to return to their homes and have restarted to flee again. We hope that would stop," Suleman Olad Roble, the Minister for Youth and Sports in the newly formed government of national unity, was quoted by Shebelle radio in Mogadishu as saying.[...]

This is an unprecedented statement from the Somali government which relies mainly on the peacekeepers for its protection against armed insurgent groups opposed to its existence.

Roble said it was important that the Somali people reconcile among themselves so that "the African Union peacekeepers can go home."

The presence of the nearly 34,00 peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi has been a thorny issue for the new Somali government as influential local clerics have demanded that the government ask the troops to leave the country within 120 days...

Moreover, the government is required to fully implement sharia law, a la Pakistan's recent capitulation in the Swat Valley, in this same 120 day period --or else.

Even though he "pledged to do his [Bin Laden's] bidding in the United States"

Ali al-Marri update. "U.S. indictment of enemy combatant unsealed," by John Schwartz for IHT, February 27 :

Ali al-Marri, the only prisoner considered an enemy combatant being detained on U.S. soil, has been indicted on charges of helping the terrorist group Al Qaeda, the Justice Department announced Friday afternoon.

The two-page indictment was approved by a federal grand jury in Peoria, Illinois on Thursday and unsealed Friday. It accuses Marri of conspiracy to provide material support and resources to Al Qaeda, as well as providing the support and resources.

If Marri is found guilty of both counts, he faces as much as 30 years in prison.[...]

The government contends that Marri is a "sleeper agent" for Qaeda who had met with Osama Bin Laden and pledged to do his bidding in the United States; he had arrived in this country on Sept. 10, 2001.

Marri's attorneys have denied that he is an agent of Al Qaeda, and have challenged his detention. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which was scheduled for oral arguments in April.

The government will now move to have the Supreme Court case dismissed, the Justice Department announced in its statement about the indictment.

Marri's lead attorney, Jonathan Hafetz of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that "this indictment is an important step toward restoring the rule of law and is exactly what should happen when the government suspects an individual of terrorist acts. This case is now finally where it belongs: in a legitimate court that can fairly determine whether Mr. al-Marri is guilty of a crime."

He added, however, that the ACLU would oppose dismissing the Supreme Court case.

"We will continue to pursue Mr. al-Marri's case before the Supreme Court to make sure that no American citizen or lawful resident will ever again be subjected to such treatment," he said. "It is important that the Court hears Mr. al-Marri's case and rejects, once and for all, the notion that any president has the sweeping authority to deprive individuals living in the United States of their most basic constitutional rights by designating them 'enemy combatants.' "

Why would the chair of the Islamic Dawah Foundation be upset about this? After all, Qur'an 29:46 says:

"And argue not with the People of the Scripture unless it be in (a way) that is better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We believe in that which hath been revealed unto us and revealed unto you; our Allah and your Allah is One, and unto Him we surrender."

However, that talking point is meant to be part of a one-way conversation -- for dawah, or Islamic proselytizing. "Our Allah and your Allah" may be claimed to be the same "Allah," but the message is ultimately: You're worshiping our deity, but we're doing it right, and you're not. For that matter, the mention of that which has been "revealed unto us and unto you" is not a warm, fuzzy interfaith endorsement of the truth of non-Islamic scriptures, but an implication that the non-Muslims' scriptures have been corrupted.

Obviously, then, under Islamic law, a Christian would be forbidden from preaching to Muslims in this way.

An update on this story. "Withdraw Permission To Use 'Allah' In Christian Publications," from Bernama, February 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

KEPALA BATAS, Feb 28 (Bernama) -- The Malaysian Islamic Da'wah Foundation (Yadim) today called on the government to withdraw the permission for the conditional use of the word "Allah" in Christian publications.

Its chairman Datuk Mohd Nakhaie Ahmad said the government had not acted wisely in allowing the use of the word in Christian publications, which he said could anger Muslims not only in the country but also throughout the world.

He said the government should have left the matter for the court to decide.

"To me, it's a mistake," he told reporters after opening a halal carnival here Saturday.

A government gazette dated Feb 16 has stated that documents and publications relating to Christianity containing the world "Allah" are prohibited unless the words "FOR CHRISTIANITY" are written on their front covers.

The condition was contained under the Internal Security (Prohibition on Use of Specific Words on Document and Publication) Order 2009.

Paragraph 2(1) of the order reads: The printing, publication, sale, issue, circulation and possession of any document and publication relating to Christianity containing the words "Allah", "Kaabah, "Baitullah" and "solat" are prohibited unless on the front cover of the document and publication are written with the words "FOR CHRISTIANITY".

Actually, a blank check would do very nicely, thank you

Even though Pakistan is constantly demonstrating its duplicitous nature, its Islamist zeal, including its greater interest to battle India as opposed to its own homegrown terrorists -- here is the U.S. government, instead of holding the Pakistani government more accountable, offering it more money. But hey -- maybe the real underlying and brilliant logic here is that more money will "make them like us"?

"Obama administration seeks more aid for Pakistan," by Anwar Iqbal for the Dawn, February 28:

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration’s budget for 2010 includes an unspecified amount of military and civilian aid for Pakistan.

Although Pakistan has asked for drone aircraft, helicopters and other equipment, the US administration has not yet said what equipment it was willing to provide.

Two top US defence officials – Secretary of Defence Robert Gates and Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen – held extensive talks with Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in Washington earlier this week.

Mr Gates also met a Pakistani delegation, which included the ISI chief and was headed by the foreign minister.

‘Well, I think one of the themes that, certainly, in my meetings with Pakistanis have been, how can we work more closely together? How can we help them be effective? How can we help ourselves by helping them?’ said Secretary Gates explaining what Pakistan expected from the United States.

‘Clearly, more intelligence is an important aspect of that. In terms of the drones specifically, that hasn't come up in my talks, but figuring out ways to help them have better intelligence to guide their operations, I think, is a positive thing and we ought to do as much as we can,’ he added.

Admiral Mullen also stressed the need to help Pakistan, saying: ‘It's very important that we help resource them and develop this comprehensive strategy with Pakistan over a number of years. And I'm delighted to see that kind of support in the ‘10 budget.’...

After all, it contained Shias, and "the hardline Sunni Taleban say they consider the Shias heretical." More blatantly dishonorable jihadi behavior. "Pakistan Shia children 'attacked'," from BBC, February 27:

Taleban gunmen in north-west Pakistan have attacked a school bus, killing the driver and injuring three pupils in a sectarian attack, police say.

Some reports say several children were abducted in the attack in Hangu.

Police say the children in the bus were Shia Muslims. It follows the murder of a Shia lawyer in Hangu on Thursday.

The Taleban are active in Hangu - where there is tension between Shias and Sunnis - and have imposed their version of Sharia law in parts of the area.

Hangu - in North West Frontier Province - has seen especially violent clashes in the past between Shias and Sunnis during the Shia religious ceremony of Ashura.

The hardline Sunni Taleban say they consider the Shias heretical.

What do you think CAIR's objective is here? Obviously they want the FBI to stop placing informants in mosques, and to trust their assurances that they will help them with anti-terror efforts. Yet CAIR has opposed every anti-terror initiative that has ever come down the pike, most notably the Patriot Act. It aided the Flying Imams in their lawsuit against the passengers who reported them for suspicious behavior -- a lawsuit that, had it succeeded, would have made Americans afraid to report suspicious behavior in airports for fear of being sued. And now CAIR wants informants out of the mosques -- despite the fact, as Pamela points out here, that studies show that jihad violence and Islamic supremacism are taught in the vast majority of American mosques. If the FBI turns a blind eye to what is going on in the mosques, who will be the sole beneficiary?

"SoCal Muslims Angry at Informants in Mosques," from NBCLosAngeles.com, February 28 (thanks to Pamela):

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- A Muslim advocacy organization said Friday that American Muslims are feeling "anger, disillusionment and mistrust" toward the FBI in the aftermath of reports that it used an informant to infiltrate Southland mosques.

"The American Muslim community has never wavered from its commitment to keeping America safe, nor has it hesitated from cooperating with various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, in ensuring the security of all U.S. citizens," the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement.

This coming from a group that has had several of its officials convicted of various terror-related crimes, and that is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

But, it said, reports that informants have been paid "to monitor and provoke law-abiding Muslims in houses of worship" and the recruitment by the FBI of Muslims "to become informants" have left American Muslims with "deeply troubling concerns."

You know something? No one ought to be able to provoke a law-abiding citizen to commit treason.

One of them is that "these coercive and intimidating methods highlight the fact that the FBI continues to view the entire American Muslim community as suspect and treat it as such," the statement said.

Maybe the hypocrisy and disingenuousness of statements like this contributes to that.

"Infiltrating mainstream mosques the way FBI informants infiltrate white supremacist groups illustrates the FBI's perception of American Muslims as a community that must be constantly monitored, instead of being treated as an equal partner in fighting crime and terrorism," according to the statement.

An Irvine man who claims he worked as an FBI informant to infiltrate mosques and gather information about a man now accused of lying about ties to al-Qaida said this week that he spent four to five hours a day with the suspect, and he now fears his life may be in danger from extremist groups.

Craig Monteilh, 46, says he recorded Ahmadullah Sais Niazi discussing jihad, weapons and plans to blow up abandoned buildings.

Monteilh filed court documents Wednesday saying he served as a confidential informant for the FBI from July 2006 to October 2007 to identify and thwart terrorist operations in the Orange County Islamic community.

The CAIR statement said Monteilh's story coupled with an FBI agent's court testimony this week in Niazi's trial regarding the use of an informant "to infiltrate" Southland mosques "have re-ignited feelings of anger, disillusionment and mistrust among American Muslims toward the FBI."

"...The FBI's counter-productive actions damage the trust between Muslims and law enforcement and trample our constitutionally mandated civil liberties," it said.

An update on this story, and another manifestation of a much broader problem in Pakistan: The increasingly strident unwillingness to respect and enforce the rule of secular law. And it is causing them to lose (or give up) ever-larger swathes of their own territory. "Pakistan - Charges filed against kidnappers of young girls," from Compass Direct News, February 27:

ISTANBUL, February 26 (Compass Direct News) – After months of legal deadlock, lawyers in Pakistan said they have new hope they can restore to her family a 13-year-old Christian girl who was kidnapped and forced to marry a Muslim.

Saba Masih might be returned to her family, the lawyers said, if they can legally maneuver around Pakistani policemen who have stonewalled their attempts to pursue a kidnapping case against the captors. On Saturday (Feb. 21) a Pakistani judge charged the suspects with kidnapping for the first time in the seven-month legal ordeal.

“The judiciary is one thing, the police are another,” said Arfan Goshe, a lawyer who has taken on the custody case. “I will prove [the three accused men] kidnapped Saba so the judiciary will force the police to arrest them.”

On Saturday (Feb. 21), Judge Mohammed Ilyas issued a First Instance Report (FIR) at a subordinate court in the Punjabi village of Chawk Munda against Amjad Ali, Muhammad Ashraf and Muhammed Arif Bajwa on charges of kidnapping, trespassing, and threatening the Masih family.

Attorney Goshe, a Muslim, said the three kidnappers trespassed onto the property of Yunus Masih, the father of Saba, and threatened to kill his family and burn down his house in late December.

The decision to file kidnapping charges marks a major shift of momentum in the case. In previous hearings judges have nearly always sided with the kidnappers – based on either dubious evidence or threats from local Islamists – in the Muslims’ legal battle to retain custody of Saba and her 10-year-old sister Aneela. A court ruled the younger daughter could return to her family last September.

The two girls were kidnapped in June 2008 while traveling to visit their uncle in Sarwar Shaheed, northwest of Multan. Saba was married to Ali the next day. Bajwa and Ali registered a case with police on June 28 for custody of the girls based on their alleged conversion to Islam. The court granted them custody in July.

At nearly all the hearings, Muslim groups protested outside the courtroom against lawyers attempting to return Saba to her Christian parents. A traditional interpretation of Islamic law (sharia) does not allow non-Muslim parents to have custody of Muslim children.

In spite of the judge’s decision to begin procedures for kidnapping charges, Chawk Munda police have not followed through with the FIR by arresting the three Muslims. Today the judge contacted the local police station and ordered officers to register the kidnapping case against the three men, Goshe told Compass. He said he hopes police will file the FIR within the next few days.

“The police are favoring the accused party at this time,” he said. “Everybody knows [Saba] was abducted, and that the culprits are trying to threaten minorities everywhere.”

But others are less optimistic the kidnappers will be arrested. Khalid Raheel, Saba’s uncle, said he believes he may have to bribe the police. They would likely demand around 20,000 Pakistani rupees (US$250), he said.

Uncooperative police had also blocked the legal team’s efforts to register charges before Saturday’s ruling. As a result, the Christian family’s lawyers filed a private complaint to the subordinate court of Chawk Munda, sidestepping the need for a police investigation to file charges that would be necessary at a normal criminal court.

Goshe said the court is finally complying after months of deadlock because the multiple charges against the kidnappers cannot be ignored. Previous court hearings focused on Saba’s alleged conversion to Islam to mitigate the charges of her kidnapping, but the judiciary could not ignore the three suspects’ subsequent crimes of trespassing and attempting to burn down the Masihs’ house, he said.

In January, lawyer Akbar Durrani of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS) filed an appeal to register kidnapping charges against Ali, the husband of Saba. Durrani had tried to register these charges in December, but Judge Malik Saeed Ijaz refused the case since it was built upon the testimony of Saba’s sister Aneela, whose status as a minor invalidated her testimony.

Instead, the judge ordered Ali to pay a dowry of 100,000 rupees (US$1,255) and allow her parents to visit, both required by Pakistani marriage protocol. Saba, however, relinquished her dowry, a prerogative provided by sharia. Her family suspects that she made this decision under threat....

I was at this press conference this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Wilders stated the case for free speech forcefully. Will post video when available.

Geert Wilders will also be speaking tonight at 6PM EST at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, at an event sponsored by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Atlas Shrugs, and Jihad Watch.

"Geert Wilders: An International First Amendment and a ban on all 'hate-speech' laws; Keynotes Center-sponsored press conference," a press release from the Center for Security Policy:

Washington, DC: Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders, founder and floor leader of the Freedom Party (PVV), and member of the Board of Advisors of the International Free Press Society (IFPS), recounted today before a packed audience in Washington's National Press Club the recent, alarming attacks on free speech worldwide - including legal actions and death threats to which he and other political leaders and journalists have lately been exposed.

Notably, Mr Wilders is being prosecuted in his own county because of reaction to his film "Fitna," and his remarks challenging the contention that Islam is a "religion of peace."

Attendees at the press conference co-sponsored by the Center for Security Policy and the International Free Press Society had an opportunity to view "Fitna" in its entirety and to engage in a lively question and answer session with Mr. Wilders. The film features quotations from the Koran, documentary footage of Islamic leaders inciting violence (jihad) based on those quotations, and documentary footage of the results: deaths of innocent civilians and destruction of property in various Western nations.

The film can be viewed at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=216_1207467783

Highlights of Mr. Wilders' remarks (a copy of his entire statement may obtained here) included the following:

The real question is: will free speech be put behind bars? And the larger question for the West is: will we leave Europe's children the values of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca Teheran, and Gaza?

Hate speech will always be used against the people defending the West-in order to please and appease Muslims. They can say whatever they want: throw gays from apartment buildings, kill the Jews, slaughter the infidel, destroy Israel, jihad against the West. Whatever their book tells them.

...My prosecution is a full-fledged attack by the Left on freedom of speech in order to please Muslims.

I propose the withdrawal of all hate speech legislation in Europe....In Europe, we should defend freedom of speech like Americans do....Millions think liberty is precious. That democracy is better than Shariah....there is no stronger power than the force of free men fighting for the great cause of liberty.

In welcoming Mr. Wilders to America, Frank Gaffney, President of the Center for Security Policy, observed that the threats he faces are actually threats to all of us. They arise from the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls "Shariah": Mr. Gaffney observed that:

The insinuation of Shariah legal codes and practices into Free World societies includes the effort to impose Shariah blasphemy, slander and libel laws in the West. According to Shariah, it is impermissible to engage in speech or writings that 'defame' Islam or otherwise offend its followers. We must oppose all these efforts.

Diana West, the syndicated columnist and best-selling author who serves as Vice President of the International Free Press Society said:

The ideal speech protections lie in the spirit of the American First Amendment. While Mr. Wilders would clearly live and breathe more easily with such speech protections, it is important for all of us who are here today to witness him speak to note, that even under existing legal constraints, governmental efforts to further

Lars Hedegaard, President of the International Free Press Society, introduced Wilders and outlined the IFPS 2009 campaign to ban hate speech laws and to work for an "International First Amendment." Mr. Hedegaard said:

The hate speech and blasphemy laws that are now common in many European countries lack clarity as to precisely what they aim to criminalize. Recent experience with their implementation further shows that they are unequally applied. This state of affairs is intolerable and the IFPS must therefore demand that all such laws be repealed. The way to deal with controversial, offensive or even hateful statements-unless they are directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action-is to expose them to public debate and criticism.

A video of the entire press conference will be available shortly at the Center for Security Policy's website: www.SecureFreedom.org.

At last, a bit of good news from the Obama Administration. An update on this story: "U.S. pulling out of ‘Durban II’ conference," by Ron Kampeas for the JTA, February 27 (thanks to Pamela):

The Obama administration has decided to boycott the so-called Durban II conference out of concerns for anti-Semitism. Multiple sources on a conference call with the White House on Friday told JTA that the Obama administration had opted not to attend any further preparatory meetings ahead of the planned U.N. conference against racism in Geneva in April.

Read it all.

Bitterly ironic in light of this. Projection Alert: "Egyptian Cleric Ahmad Abd Al-Salam: Jews 'Infect Food with Cancer and Ship it to Muslim Countries,'" from MEMRI, February 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Following are excerpts from a speech delivered by Egyptian cleric Ahmad Abd Al-Salam, which aired on Al-Nas TV on January 28, 2009.

To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2035.htm.

TO VIEW THIS CLIP AND OTHERS, YOU MUST LOG IN/REGISTER FOR MEMRI TV, AT http://subscriptions.memri.org/content/en/member_registr_tv.htm. REGISTRATION IS FREE OF CHARGE.

The Jews "Invest Their Utmost Efforts... in Conspiring How to Corrupt the Islamic Nation... This Is Why We Hate Them"

Ahmad Abd Al-Salam: "The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt' the believers. What does this mean? The Jews are never remiss - they invest their utmost efforts, day and night, in conspiring how to corrupt the Islamic nation, the nation led by the Prophet Muhammad.

"I want you, Muslim viewers, to imagine the Jews sitting around a table, conspiring how to corrupt the Muslims, and how to destroy their worldly and religious affairs. The Jews 'will not fail to corrupt you,' and this is why we hate them."

The Jews "Infect Food with Cancer and Ship It to Muslim Countries"

"The Jews conspire day and night to destroy the Muslims' worldly and religious affairs. The Jews conspire to destroy the economy of the Muslims. The Jews conspire to infect the food of the Muslims with cancer. It is the Jews who infect food with cancer and ship it to Muslim countries."...

It goes on. It gets worse. Read it all, if you have the stomach.

Hypocrisy Alert: you notice there have never been any riots or protests of any kind when Islamic jihadists have used mosques in Gaza and Iraq to store weapons and launch jihad attacks.

"Afghans protest alleged NATO gunshots in mosque," from The Associated Press, February 27 :

KABUL: Hundreds of people blocked roads and fought with police in southern Afghanistan on Friday over unconfirmed reports that Polish troops fired guns in a village mosque, in a protest underscoring Afghans' growing mistrust of international forces.

Both NATO forces and Polish officials said they had no reports of any such incident. Polish troops are deployed in the province but there were no records of international troops in the immediate area, NATO added.

It is often difficult in Afghanistan's turbulent south to separate actual incidents from Taliban propaganda, but a government delegation said the mosque door was damaged by bullets and some protesters said they had witnessed the mosque raid on Thursday....

[See here for part I.] Regarding my more recent “War and Peace—and Deceit—in Islam," others have written to me complaining that, by not juxtaposing more “moderate interpretations” to the mainstream ones I delineated (e.g., Tabari, Ibn Kathir, al-Qurtubi, al-Razi, al-Arabi, et al), I am supposedly “distorting.” While there are in fact “moderate interpretations,” most of these come from minority sects—such as the Ahmadiyyas or the Quraniyuns—who, as they make up a trivial percentage of the Islamic world, and are in fact often accused of and persecuted for apostasy by mainstream Muslims, are definitely not representative of the latter.

Other critics express dismay as to how I can interpret certain verses as being supportive of taqiyya. Of course, being neither a Muslim nor one of the ulema, I hardly ever interpret this or that verse as being supportive of taqiyya/deception, but rather always attribute such exegeses to the appropriate jurist, scholar, or theologian—the ulema, who have the final say in mainstream Islam. (Ironically, being only a 4,000 word essay, I only supplied a tithe of the numerous albeit subtle taqiyya decrees and interpretations I have surveyed in Arabic texts dedicated to this topic.)

Still other critics point to strange English translations of the Koran that do not capture the actual meaning of the Arabic—definitely not the way the ulema understand it—in an effort to obfuscate the doctrine of taqiyya. For instance, some have written to me insisting that Koran 3:28 has “absolutely nothing” to do with deceit. As evidence, they quote the following translation from the website IslamUSA.org: “Let not the believers take the disbelievers for friends in preference to the believers unless you very carefully guard against evil from them.”

The original Arabic says absolutely nothing about “guarding against evil from them.” (Is IslamUSA.org practicing taqiyya in regard to ayat al-taqiyya, or the verse of taqiyya?) Instead, the original Arabic most literally says, “Let believers not take infidels for friends in place of the believers; whoever does this shall have nothing left with Allah—unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions.” In other words, it does not warn Muslims against befriending infidels due to the latter’s proclivity for evil (which may contaminate Muslims who do not actively “guard” against it), but simply because they are infidels, non-Muslims—by default, the enemy. As for “guard[ing] yourselves” and “taking precautions,” once again, however one wants to interpret these, the fact is, the ulema have already settled and interpreted it as aforementioned: deceit.

(Incidentally, is it not curious that while people are nitpicking about what the latter half of that verse means, no one seems to be interested in the far from ambiguous former half, where Muslims are simply commanded to not befriend non-Muslims in the first place? Is that not, in and of itself, demonstrative of Islam’s position vis-à-vis the other, the infidel?)

Others have written to me, absolutely flabbergasted that I say Koran 4:29 or 2:195, which command Muslims to not “kill/destroy themselves,” encourages taqiyya. For the record, I said no such thing; the ulema have—such as the classical exegete Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (see Tafsir al-Kabir, vol.10, p.98). According to him, since Muslims are commanded to not “destroy themselves,” disclosing any truths that might lead to their destruction is forbidden. Thus a mujahid (“jihadist”), according to Razi, must conceal his identity, since infidels might “destroy” him if they were to discover what he was about. And so, in this sense, 4:29 and 2:195 do permit deception.

Others are scandalized that I wrote Allah himself is described in the Koran as being the best “deceiver” or “schemer.” They write to me insisting that the Koran uses no such language (based on their trusty English translations), but rather portrays Allah as the best “planner” or “plotter”—the words used, for instance, in the widely quoted translations of Yusuf Ali and Shakir. So, who am I to ascribe the word “deceiver” or “schemer” to Allah?

Simple: in the original Arabic, the word translated (actually, euphemized) into English as “planner/plotter”—makar—most literally denotes (and, to Arabic ears, connotes) deception. Moreover, according to the definitive Hans Wehr Arabic-English dictionary, the trilateral root “m-k-r” means “to deceive, delude, cheat, dupe, gull, double-cross.” One who takes on the attributes of “m-k-r”—such as Allah in the Koran—is described as “sly, crafty, wily, an impostor, a swindler.” In colloquial Arabic, a makar is a sly trickster.

My reliance on one canonical hadith as supportive of deception has also come under fire: Muhammad said, “If I take an oath and later find something else better, I do what is better and break my oath.” He also encouraged Muslims to do the same.

Many have written to me insisting that I “shamelessly” took these hadiths “out of context.” For the record, then, here is the context: Some Muslims came to Muhammad requesting camel mounts to ride, but “he took an oath that he would not give us any mounts, and added, ‘I have nothing to mount you on.’” Later, some mounts fell into the prophet’s share of war plunder, and he gave these to the men. Overcome by altruism, one of the men reminded Muhammad of his oath to which the latter replied, “If I take an oath [to not give the men mounts] and later find something else better [the opportunity to give mounts presents itself], I do what is better and break my oath.”

Now, if Muhammad swore he would not give mounts, but then when he was able to, he broke his oath (“to do what is better”), why should, say, jihadists fighting to make Allah’s word supreme, after giving oaths to infidels (e.g., peace-treaties of sulh, truces, etc) not break their oaths when they too are able “to do what is better”? After all, what is “better”: breaking an oath so some men can have camels to ride, or breaking an oath to make Islam—the embodiment of all good—supreme?

Once again, and whichever way one interprets this oath-breaking hadith, the fact remains: breaking truces with infidels has a long lineage in Islam. The authoritative Encyclopaedia of Islam, for example, simply states: “[T]here can be no question of genuine peace treaties [between Muslims and non-Muslims]… only truces, whose duration ought not, in principle, to exceed ten years, are authorized. But even such truces are precarious, inasmuch as they can, before they expire, be repudiated unilaterally should it appear more profitable for Islam to resume the conflict”—that is, if the opportunity to do “something better” presents itself.

In closing, it should be noted that the most revealing aspect of the recent, and atypical, barrage of disgruntled e-mails regarding my “War and Peace—and Deceit—in Islam,” is that no Muslim (minus fringe Ahmadiyyas, etc.) has written to deny the more troubling aspects of the essay. For instance, while many nitpicked over the aforementioned, none have denied the fact that Muhammad permitted lying in certain situations, affirmed that “war is deceit,” and permitted Muslims to deceive and assassinate infidels—all according to canonical (sahih) hadiths (hence the reason mainstream Muslims cannot refute them).

Moreover, the main point of my essay was not to demonstrate that Islam permits deceit during war—a phenomenon I indicated also prevails among many non-Muslim strategists as well—but to show that, for Islam, warfare with non-Muslims is eternal, “until all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to Allah (Koran 8:39). Yet no one wrote denying this classical Islamic formulation of the world into Dar al-Harb and Dar al-Islam, which must be in perpetual war until the latter subsumes the former (except of course Michael Ryan, but he is simply another non-Muslim apologist).

Usually, silence is not necessarily indicative of assent; however, when large numbers of people take it upon themselves to criticize certain (minor) aspects of an argument, it seems reasonable to assume that their silence regarding the more revealing and problematic issues—such as eternal jihad—is, in fact, implicit assent.

An Ethiopian man with HIV sent Obama letters tainted with the former's blood. Officials believe the man is "mentally disturbed" (perhaps not even fit for trial). Yet, this same man "was arrested by police in 2006 after starting a fire in the middle of a crowded Chicago intersection. When officers arrived on the scene, he was waving the Koran in the air and yelling "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great" in Arabic. Court documents said he was transported to a hospital, where he called President Bush a terrorist and criticized American foreign policy." Then as now, "He was not formally charged, but he did spend time in the mental health unit of the hospital."

"Chicago Man Arrested for Allegedly Targeting Obama With HIV-Infected Blood," by Mike Levine for Fox News, February 27 (thanks to Shechild):

A man from President Obama's hometown of Chicago has been arrested for allegedly sending Obama and his staff envelopes containing HIV-infected blood, in the hopes of killing or harming them.

It's only the second time ever that HIV-infected blood has been sent with malicious intent through the U.S. mail system, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said.

In the weeks leading up to Obama's inauguration, Saad Hussein, an Ethiopian refugee in his late 20's, sent an envelope addressed to "Barack Obama" to offices of the Illinois government in Springfield, Ill., according to court documents. The envelope contained a series of unusual items, including a letter with reddish stains and an admission ticket for Obama's election-night celebration in Chicago's Grant Park.

Court documents said Hussein, who takes drugs to treat a mental illness, later told FBI agents he is "very sick with HIV" and cut his fingers with a razor so he could bleed on the letter.

Hazmat teams were called in after the envelope was opened, and offices of the Illinois Department on Aging and the Department of Revenue were locked down for nearly two hours, locking 300 staffers in their offices, court documents said.[...]

Hussein, who has never held a job in the three years he's been in the United States, was arrested last month. An affidavit filed at the time accused Hussein of "knowingly" mailing letters "containing HIV-infected blood, with the intent to kill or injure another," in violation of federal law.[...]

After Hussein's arrest, he was placed in a Chicago correctional facility. He has yet to be formally charged. A judge ordered he receive a mental examination to see if he's fit for trial, but as of two weeks ago the court couldn't locate a translator to conduct the examination, according to court documents.

A publicly-appointed attorney representing Hussein declined comment, saying he was "not at liberty to discuss pending criminal matters."

This is not the first time law enforcement officials have had to take Hussein into custody. He was arrested by police in 2006 after starting a fire in the middle of a crowded Chicago intersection. When officers arrived on the scene, he was waiving the Koran in the air and yelling "Allah Akbar," or "God is Great" in Arabic. Court documents said he was transported to a hospital, where he called President Bush a terrorist and criticized American foreign policy. He was not formally charged, but he did spend time in the mental health unit of the hospital...

Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN), whose recent Hajj was paid for by a Muslim Brotherhood front group, is unhappy that Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) sponsored a showing of Geert Wilders's film Fitna at The Capitol yesterday. Yet he does not, of course, explain how anything in the film is inaccurate. And he cannot, because the film is accurate.

"Ellison Expresses Concern and Disappointment with Decision to Screen Anti-Islamic Film: Takes Issue with sponsorship of film by Senator Kyl," from Common Dreams, February 26 (thanks to Twostellas):

WASHINGTON - February 26 - Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) took issue with the screening of a film by the controversial Dutch Parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, in the United States Capitol. The film being screened, "Fitna", is said to compare Islamic terrorism to Nazism. The screening is sponsored by Senator John Kyl (R-AZ).

Yes, Islamic terrorism is much more cuddly than Nazism, eh? Aside from this absurdity there is the nagging problem that neither Ellison nor anyone else who is upset about Fitna ever addresses: the fact that it depicts only the Qur'an and the words of Islamic jihadists themselves. If it is hateful, it is because they are hateful.

"I am a strong an advocate of First Amendment free speech. However, this is not about free speech, but rather an issue of propriety, timing and venue," Ellison said. "Senator Kyl has every right to host anyone he chooses, however it becomes a question of propriety to use the United States Capitol as a venue for the condemnation of an entire religion," Ellison said.

Then it is about free speech after all, isn't it? In the first place, Fitna doesn't condemn "an entire religion," but even if it did, why isn't Senator Kyl free to show such a piece in any venue he chooses?

Mr. Wilders was denied entry by the British government because of his extremist views. A British Home Office spokesman stated: "The government opposes extremism in all its forms." The Dutch government has disavowed Mr. Wilders visit to this country and believes the release of this film "serves no purpose other than to cause offence."

Now if only the Dutch government would say the same thing about the jihadists in the Netherlands.

According to the London Telegraph, Wilders has stated that the Qu'ran should be banned.

This is the most common charge made against Wilders -- that he is inconsistent. Here is a full answer.

Ellison further stated, "At a time when President Obama has said to the Muslim world, ‘We are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest,' the showing of a film that denigrates the faith of 1.4 billion of the world's citizens does not foster mutual respect or mutual interest.

Then let the Islamic jihadists stop denigrating their own faith by acting in the way the film depicts -- and when has Ellison expressed the same kind of indignation about that as he directs here against Wilders?

This hatefest will only abet the global jihad. Yet Obama still has not come out against it, and probably will not do so at all. "Why is the U.S. still entertaining Durban II? Obama should have nixed UN's hatefest by now," by Anne Bayefsky for the New York Daily News, February 26 (thanks to Paul):

Durban II - the UN "anti-racism" conference scheduled for April 20, 2009 in Geneva - is fast approaching. Well aware that the U.S. could undermine the credibility of this global human rights hoax instantaneously by deciding not to go, the Obama administration has still not announced its intentions. Canada and Israel have pulled out and, at the highest levels, Israel has asked President Obama not to attend. What lies behind the U.S.'s delay?

For one, Obama is making new friends. The administration's decision last week to participate in planning meetings for Durban II was very well received by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

On February 21, 2009, the OIC "welcomed" the move as a "positive development." OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said it "would be widely perceived by the Muslim world as a credible signal of the new U.S. Administration's goodwill and desire to introduce a fresh, fair and objective approach to the . . . Middle East peace process as well as to rejuvenate the United States' positive image throughout the Muslim nations."...

And that seems to be all that matters, even if it strengthens a jihad that ultimately the United States will have to face, and no positive image will help Americans elude it.

Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate Malaysia: the Catholic Herald magazine had been forbidden to use the word "Allah" for God, despite centuries of use of the word by Arabic-speaking Christians and others Christians in the Muslim world as a synonym for "God." But now the Herald has been granted permission to resume this hallowed usage, as long as it labels its publication as clearly for Christians only. They wouldn't want Muslims to get confused, you see, and risk the capital offense of apostasy.

An update on this story. "Herald allowed to use the word ‘Allah,’" by Lourdes Charles and Loong Meng Yee for The Star (Malaysia), February 27 (thanks to Swyko):

KUALA LUMPUR: The Catholic Herald magazine is permitted to use the word Allah provided the publication clearly states the words “For Christians only” in its masthead.

Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew said this was stated in the recently gazetted Internal Security Act signed by the Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar on Feb 16.

“The next edition of the Herald will contain the word Allah, and we will print the words “For Christians only” on the masthead so as not to contravene the Act,” he said.

It is learnt the Act also forbids the use of the words Kaabah, solat and baitullah....

The Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, who is the plaintiff, had applied for a judicial review of a Home Ministry directive last year forbidding the Herald publisher from using the word Allah as a synonym for “God.”...

Muhammad commanded: "If anyone changes his religion, kill him (Bukhari vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57)."

But they're keeping their grievances current, too: "Memos submitted by opposing lawyers asserted that cases such as El-Gohary’s form part of a U.S. Zionist attack on Islam in Egypt, that Christianity is an inferior religion to Islam and that Copts protect and defend converts from Islam at their own peril."

An update on this story. "Egypt - Islamic lawyers urge death sentence for convert," from Compass Direct News, February 26:

ISTANBUL, February 26 (Compass Direct News) – In the latest hearing of a Muslim-born Egyptian’s effort to officially convert to Christianity, opposing lawyers advocated he be convicted of “apostasy,” or leaving Islam, and sentenced to death.

More than 20 Islamic lawyers attended the hearing on Sunday (Feb. 22) in Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary’s case to obtain identification papers with Christianity designated as his religious affiliation. Two lawyers led the charge, Ahmed Dia El-Din and Abdel Al-Migid El-Anani.

“[El-Din] started to talk about the Quran being in a higher position than the Bible,” one of El-Gohary’s lawyers, Said Fayez, told Compass. “[El-Din said] people can move to a higher religion but not down, so people cannot move away from Islam because it is highest in rank.”

That always raises the same question as the "people's paradises" behind the Iron Curtain (and in North Korea still): Really, how great are you if you have to kill people to keep them from leaving? It sure doesn't look good.

Memos submitted by opposing lawyers asserted that cases such as El-Gohary’s form part of a U.S. Zionist attack on Islam in Egypt, that Christianity is an inferior religion to Islam and that Copts protect and defend converts from Islam at their own peril.

“We received 150 pages from them that talked about religion,” said Fayez. “We are not in a position to talk about religion, we are only talking about the law.”

El-Gohary Beaten

El-Gohary was not present at the hearing, as attendance would put him at extreme personal risk. He had planned to obtain papers authorizing attorney Nabil Ghobreyal to act as his proxy representation in court, but staff members at the registry office swore at and beat him, lawyers said.

Judge Hamdy Yasin was forced to adjourn the case until March 28 because El-Gohary did not obtain the necessary proxy representation documents.

“I am now in a position where I can’t do anything else,” El-Gohary, who has been in hiding, told Compass. “I have to go [to court] despite the danger. I believe God will protect me. It’s a very hard decision, but I have to go.”

Copts and Christian converts have to face such systemic prejudice daily in the battle for their rights, he said.

“Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals,” El-Gohary said. “We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us.”

El-Gohary, 56, has been attacked in the street, spat at and knocked down in his effort to win the right to officially convert. He said he and his 14-year-old daughter continue to receive death threats by text message and phone call.

But he also has received text messages, he said, of encouragement from other Muslim-born converts too fearful to take a similar stand.

“Everyday I get calls from people who have converted but are secret,” said El-Gohary. “They ask me every day about what is happening, because it affects their future....”

A predictable response, in an update on this story. "A ' fatwa' against Yemeni law setting minimum age for marriage," from Asia News, February 26:

Sana’a (AsiaNews) - Some Yemeni religious figures have launched a "fatwa" against the law recently approved by Parliament that sets the minimum age for marriage at 17. The statement, signed by the rector of Al-Eman University, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, and by representatives of the party Islamic Islah, is aimed at eliminating the minimum age limit.

The question of the minimum age for marriage in Yemen was brought to the attention of world public opinion last April, following the case of Nojud Mohammed Ali, an 8-year-old girl who requested and obtained a divorce after being forced to marry a 30-year-old man.

News Yemen reports that the 17 signers of the "fatwa" claim that the law has no Islamic foundation and violates Sharia, the Islamic law, which the Constitution of the country affirms as the basis of all of its laws. "The marriage age," says the assistant secretary general of the Islah party, Mohammad Assadi, "is an Islamic rule, and political parties cannot intervene in such affairs."

And that rule, after all, is based on Muhammad's own example in marrying Aisha when she was six and consummating the marriage when she was nine -- a "beautiful pattern of conduct," per Qur'an 33:21.

But there are also some who are asking that the minimum age be raised to 18. One researcher on Islamic questions, AbdulAziz alAsali, also a member of Islah, maintains that girls need to be given time to complete high school, and that "at 18 years they are mentally and physically ready for marriage."

For its part, the National Women's Committee has asked Parliament not to respond to the lawmakers who are asking for the marriage age limit to be lowered to 12.

If that were to happen, there would likely be sudden wave of suspiciously young looking "12-year-old" brides. As things stand now, the same could happen with alleged 17-year-olds, but it would be slightly harder to fake for very young girls like Nojud Ali. Of course, the law, as described in earlier story linked above, provides its own ample loopholes for child marriage with respect to the supposed "best interests [!] of the child."

Having written at length on various aspects of Islam, it is always my writings concerning doctrinal deceit that elicit (sometimes irate) responses. As such, the purpose of this article is to revisit the issue of deceit and taqiyya in Islam, and address the many ostensibly plausible rebuttals made by both Muslims and non-Muslims.

The earliest rebuttal I received appeared last year, days after I wrote an essay called “Islam’s doctrines of deception” for the subscription-based Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Due to the controversy it initiated among the intelligence community and abroad, the editors were quick to publish an apologetic counter-article by one Michael Ryan called “Interpreting Taqiyya.”

For starters, Ryan is not a careful reader: he says I fail to mention ijma (consensus) among the ulema, even though I repeatedly cite and delineate the ulema’s (quite consensual) verdicts supporting taqiyya; he sardonically suggests that, of course all people, not just Muslims, engage in deception during war—a point I stressed; and he evinces shock that I say Islam has no “common sense” and is “legalistic,” when I simply wrote that sharia law is not based on common sense but rather the 7th century words of Muhammad, which may or may not rely on what we would today call “common sense.” (I had in mind anecdotes of Muhammad saying camel urine heals, people should cover their mouths when yawning (lest Satan dive down their throat), men cannot wear gold, only silver, and in order to be in each other’s company, women should “breast-feed” strange men ).

Next, Ryan makes the usual (and ultimately superficial) arguments without any backing: that I “cherry-picked citations from the Quran”; that I focused on a “very narrow use of the term taqiyya”; and that there are “other respected jurists who disagree” with the notion of taqiyya I stressed.

Unfortunately, he overlooks the fact that, right or wrong, none of this denies that there are Koranic references that do permit deception; that, even if there are “broader” definitions for taqiyya, the “narrow” one I delineated is still valid; and that if there are “respected jurists who disagree,” there are still more who agree.

As expected, whereas I listed and quoted several authoritative jurists justifying taqiyya, Ryan makes only flat counter-assertions whose plausibility rests solely in the fact that they comport with the epistemology of the Western, secular reader, who cannot comprehend that a religion would actually mandate temporal conquests and permit deceit in their furtherance.

For instance, he makes comforting assertions such as “[I]t is manifestly not true that Muslims as a whole desire eternal warfare with non-Muslims,” even though I never argue that Muslims desire eternal war but rather that sharia mandates it. Regarding a verse I cited as being relied on by the ulema in support of taqiyya (2:73), he writes, “To this reader, the verse inspires admiration rather than any other emotion.” Odd that an article in a publication geared to the intelligence community and dedicated to analyzing Islam would bother evoking “emotions” in the first place—further revealing that Ryan’s rebuttal relies more on “shared feelings,” not facts.

Moreover, like most of Islam’s apologists who are obsessed with portraying the “true-peaceful-and-tolerant” face of Islam, Ryan overlooks the pivotal fact that it matters very little if the entire Muslim world believes in jihad and deception. What matters is that some Muslims have, do, and always will. If 19 surreptitious jihadists managed to cause horrific deaths and destruction on 9/11, insisting that not all Muslims accept these doctrines is neither relevant nor reassuring.

Ryan next spends time making the argument that the word taqiyya “never appears in the Quran. The root in other forms appears in various contexts, but it never means dissimulation.” As for taqiyya’s cornerstone verse (3:28), Ryan, presuming the mantle of mufasir (exegete), and after quoting an English translation, writes: “The English ‘guard against’ is a translation of a verb that is taken from the same root as the word taqiyya but it has nothing to do linguistically with lying or deception [emphasis added].”

Absolutely true. But of course, all this overlooks the fact that the Koran is not the all-in-all in Islam; more important in determining right and wrong (i.e., in articulating sharia) are the hadith-derived sunna, and the indispensable tafsirs and ijma (exegeses and consensus) of the ulema. And these do use the word “taqiyya” and do define it as lying and deception.

Moreover, there is widespread consensus among the ulema. According to Imam Tabari, whose multi-volume exegesis is a standard reference work in the Islamic world, 3:28 means: “If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harboring inner animosity for them.” Regarding 3:28, Ibn Kathir recommends the advice of Muhammad’s companion: “Let us smile to the face of some people while our hearts curse them.”

Perhaps Ryan thinks his non-Muslim, that is, infidel, exegesis of 3:28 will be more acceptable to the average Muslim than the exegeses of the pious Tabari, Ibn Kathir, and other ulema? And what “consensus” does he have in mind when the Muslim author of the authoritative Al Taqiyya Fi Al Islam asserts, “Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it [taqiyya] and practices it. We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam, and that those few sects not practicing it diverge from the mainstream”?

Ironically, and despite all the above, Ryan closes his article by saying

It would be fundamentally incorrect to suggest that the strained positions of Osama bin Laden and other extremists somehow grow out of normal or mainstream Muslim thought: Al-Qaeda's deception does not grow out of valid religious duty. [Yet Muhammad said, "War is deceit."] If we fail to make the distinction between radical Islamists and valid, thoughtful and authoritative views of expert Muslim jurists, [apparently the many I delineated in my original essay don't count] we risk undermining one of the most promising tools to defeat radical thought. I am referring to recent successful programmes by the Saudis and Egyptians to persuade what the West might call radical jihadists that their extremist activities are actually against the canons of Islam as interpreted by mainstream jurists [emphasis added].

In short, Ryan’s points crumble in face of the fact that, all philology, sophistry, and appeals to emotions aside, in mainstream Islam, what ultimately matters is how the ulema—especially the “mainstream jurists” he continues evoking—have understood and articulated the doctrine of taqiyya.

This is not a new theme. In Milestones, written in the 1960s, the renowned jihad theorist and popularizer Sayyid Qutb recommended Islamic law as the viable alternative to what he termed the failed ideologies of capitalism and Communism. Here, then, is yet another aspect of the jihadists' ideological appeal that is going unanswered by the West, because Western officials are constrained to pretend that Islam contains no political program in the first place.

"Terrorism: 'New Al-Qaeda video' targets Germany," from AKI, February 26 :

Dubai, 26 Feb. (Aki) - A new video purportedly from Al-Qaeda criticises the German government for squandering taxpayers' money on troops stationed in Afghanistan. The video, which has been posted to jihadist websites, urges Germany to renounce capitalism and embrace Islam to escape economic recession.

The video shows a still image of a German citizen turned Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighter in Afghanistan, who calls himself Abu Talha. He delivers a 44-minute message in German with Arabic subtitles.

"Where are the German philosophers and economists, now that economic crisis besets us?" Abu Talha asks in the message.

"And what has happened to all the taxpayers' money? Much of it has been spent on keeping our soldiers here in Afghanistan," the message continues.

Abu Taba talks at length about Islamic finance and its prohibition of interest ('ribah' in Arabic), a central concept of western capitalism.

"After the end of communism, everyone in Germany believed that capitalism was the answer. But what I am saying to you is that Islam is the only way to escape from the economic crisis," he says....

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." Qur'an 47:4

They just want Sharia -- as always.

"Thailand: More beheadings in troubled Muslim south," from AKI, February 26 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Narathiwat, 26 Feb. (AKI) - Suspected Islamist rebels have decapitated three people in Thailand's Muslim dominated south in the past week, police said on Thursday.

Three people were killed late on Wednesday in the southern Thai province of Narathiwat , and one of the victims was decapitated, police said.

Forty-seven people, often soldiers, have been beheaded in Thailand's three Muslim-majority provinces of Yala, Narathiwat and Pattani since 2004. An estimated 3,300 people have been killed in the conflict.

Experts say the region's Islamic schools or 'pondok' are fomenting the Islamist rebellion.

Demands by Thai Muslims include the introduction of Islamic law and making ethnic Pattani Malay (Yawi) a working language in the region. They also want an improvement in the local economy and education system....

There is no problem with this as long as non-Muslim students are accorded the same privileges. However, the involvement of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case and an organization that has had several of its officials convicted of terrorism-related offenses, is a red flag, and suggests that this effort is part of the larger effort by Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups to assert a more visible presence for Islam in American public life, and pushing for accommodation of Islamic law wherever Islamic law and American law conflict.

An update on this story. "Muslim prayer-in-school controversy might be solved," by Andrea Alexander for NorthJersey.com, February 25:

WAYNE — Four students knelt on a classroom floor during lunch at the Albert Payson Terhune Elementary School today and performed the afternoon Muslim prayer ritual.

It was the first time the students had prayed in the school during school hours. And it may end a controversy over what arrangement the district should make to ensure the children’s constitutionally protected right to exercise their religion during school hours.

School parent Rola Awwad has been seeking a private place for her 10-year-old son, Adam, to pray in school since the fall. The district offered to let him pray at recess — either outside or in classroom while his classmates are there. At first, Awwad called the offer “unacceptable,” and the situation attracted attention from Muslim advocates who suggested bringing the issue to the state for resolution.

But Adam decided on his own to pray at lunch, Awwad said. He joined three friends today in a classroom with other students present. They performed the ritual in the back of a room.

“If it continues like this, it will be very nice,’’ Awwad said.

She said her 7-year-old daughter, Amana, also prayed in her second grade class, and she thanked the teacher for the arrangement.

Her son had worried other students would make fun of him if they watched him pray, but schools Superintendent John Sico Jr. assured her the district wouldn’t let that happen. As the students prayed, classmates played games, he said.

Sico said he consulted the Imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County and felt he received support for his position.

Imam Mohammad Qatanani told The Record he had had a good talk with Sico and will meet with Mrs. Awwad today “to understand the issue from her side more.”

“As far as I am concerned the issue is resolved,’’ Sico said. “We did the right thing. The kids did the right thing. No one was making fun.’’

Afsheen Shamsi, spokeswoman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, which has intervened with the district on Awwad’s behalf said the accommodation was a correct step.

“It’s a question of finding the right balance and making sure the student is comfortable and the district is comfortable,’’ she said.

She said CAIR had considered bringing the issue before the state Board of Education. But Awwad said she wants to wait and see if the accommodation continues to work for her children.

All students are constitutionally guaranteed the right to pray during the school day as long as it doesn't interfere with learning. Muslims pray five times a day to reaffirm their faith and submit to follow divine commandments. The prayer is said during prescribed times; in the fall, when clocks roll back at the end of daylight savings time, the afternoon prayer must be said during the school day, Awwad explained.

Federal guidelines say schools can't prevent students from praying during school, but they can't sponsor religious activities or lead students in prayer. For instance, those guidelines specifically mention a student's right to quietly read the Bible during lunch. But they are not clear on what action to take when the religious expression is more demonstrative, as it is in Adam's case....

Aasiya Hassan

In my column in Human Events today I discuss the Buffalo beheading:

Muzzammil Hassan allegedly beheaded his wife Aasiya on February 12 in the offices of Bridges TV, the Muslim-oriented cable channel that he founded in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he claimed were dominating mainstream media coverage.

He said at the time the station was founded that Aasiya was his inspiration for founding Bridges TV: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

The environment that they will grow up in instead cannot be imagined. But many people are doing their best to make sure that, whatever the other features of that environment may be, a critical appraisal of the roots of honor killing in Islamic culture, and a determination to put an end to this phenomenon, will not be among them.

They should have been prepared for this. This should surprise no one -- except, of course, those who have actually believed that the mosques in Britain have departed from Islam's traditional teaching and are not preaching jihad and Islamic supremacism. "Exclusive: Army is fighting British jihadists in Afghanistan: Top Army officers reveal surge in attacks by radicalised Britons," by Kim Sengupta in The Independent, February 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):

British soldiers are engaged in "a surreal mini civil war" with growing numbers of home-grown jihadists who have travelled to Afghanistan to support the Taliban, senior Army officers have told The Independent.

Interceptions of Taliban communications have shown that British jihadists – some "speaking with West Midlands accents" – are active in Helmand and other parts of southern Afghanistan, according to briefing papers prepared by an official security agency.

The document states that the numbers of young British Muslims, "seemingly committed jihadists", travelling abroad to commit extremist violence has been rising, with Pakistan and Somalia the most frequent destinations.

MI5 has estimated that up to 4,000 British Muslims had travelled to Pakistan and, before the fall of the Taliban, to Afghanistan for military training. The main concern until now has been about the parts some of them had played in terrorist plots in the UK. Now there are signs that they are mounting missions against British and Western targets abroad. "We are now involved in a kind of surreal mini-British civil war a few thousand miles away," said one Army officer.

Somalia is also becoming a destination for British Muslims of Somali extraction who have started fighting alongside al-Qa'ida-backed Islamist forces. A 21-year-old Briton of Somali extraction, who had been brought up in Ealing, west London, recently blew himself up in the town of Baidoa, killing 20 people. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has raised the worrying issue of British citizens being indoctrinated in Somalia, and Michael Hayden, the outgoing head of the CIA, warned that the conflict in the Horn of Africa had "catalysed" expatriate Somalis in the West.

But it is in Afghanistan that British forces are now directly facing fellow Britons on the other side. RAF Nimrod aircraft flying over Afghanistan at up to 40,000ft have been picking up Taliban electronic "chatter" in which voices can be heard in West Midlands and Yorkshire accents. Worryingly for the military, this has increased in the past few months, with communications picked up by both ground and air surveillance, showing the presence of more British voices in the Taliban front line.

The men involved are said to try to hide their British connections but sometimes "fall back" into speaking English. One senior military source said: "We have been hearing a lot more Punjabi, Urdu and Kashmiri Urdu rather than just Pashtu, so there appears to be more men from other parts of Pakistan fighting with the Taliban than just the Pashtuns who have tribal allegiances with the Afghan Pashtuns. It is this second group, the Urdu, Punjabi speakers etc, who fall back into English in, for example, Brummie accents. You get the impression that they have been told not to talk in English but sometimes simply can't help it."...

Read it all.

"... the Taxpayers' Alliance, a lobby group, has complained: 'Polygamy is not officially condoned here, so why should British taxpayers have to pay for extra benefits for men to have two, three or four wives?'"

For that matter, how many traditional, monogamous couples and their children in Britain are suffering because of the recession while their government hemorrhages money to reward illegal behavior?

"Polygamy UK: This special Mail investigation reveals how thousands of men are milking the benefits system to support several wives," by Sue Reid for the Daily Mail, February 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

He cut a smart figure in his grey suit and crisply ironed shirt. The 6ft tall Somalian bowed to the judge, calling him 'Sir', before begging for his wife, Fatima, and their teenage son to be allowed to stay in Britain.

Fatima, with a black khimar veil covering her hair and shoulders, sat quietly next to her husband.

In her late 30s and wearing open sandals, she lowered her dark eyes as the details of the unconventional life she and her husband, Abdi, led in the West London suburb of Shepherd's Bush unfolded at a busy immigration court.

The judge listened in silence. Perhaps he knew from past experience what was coming next. Abdi went on to reveal that Fatima was not his only wife.

Indeed, he was a self-confessed bigamist who had a second, much younger wife and a 13-year-old daughter by her. They both lived nearby.

'I visit them regularly,' said Abdi, 51, who arrived in Britain in the 1990s and works in an old people's home. 'I have done nothing wrong. In Somalia, it is normal to have two wives - even three or four. Fatima is still my wife and she should not be deported.'

Exhibit A: The world map. Where are you now? It's still not "normal" in Britain.

He was unable to produce wedding certificates or valid official documents to prove where, or when, he had married both women, therefore raising questions over the validity of the unions, under either Somali or British law.

Yet his story, unravelling at an ordinary weekday hearing at Taylor House, an asylum appeals' centre in North London, is just one example of the growing phenomenon of multiple marriage in Britain.

Officially, such unions are punishable by up to seven years in prison. They were first declared illegal in England and Wales in 1604, when the Parliament of James I took action to restrain 'evil persons' marrying more than one wife. Parliament ruled that anyone found guilty of the crime would be sentenced to death.

In the four centuries since, bigamy (having two wives) and polygamy (more than two) has been frowned on by the state, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.

Yet it is clear that officialdom is turning a blind eye to such marriages.

A recent review by four Government departments - the Treasury, the Work and Pensions Department, the Inland Revenue and the Home Office - has concluded that 1,000 men in the United Kingdom are now polygamists, although some say the figure is higher.

And crime pays:

What is more, the review found, a Muslim man can claim state support of more than £10,000 a year to keep his wives, if the wedding took place in one of those countries where polygamy is commonplace, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and across huge tracts of Africa.

That's right. The U.K. does recognize polygamous unions if the wedding was performed in a country where polygamy is legal.

For example, a man can receive &£92.80 a week in income support for wife number one, and a further £33.65p for each of his subsequent spouses.

Therefore, if he has four wives - the maximum permitted under Islamic teachings - he can claim nearly £800 a month from the British taxpayer.

Controversially, a polygamist is also entitled to more generous housing benefits and bigger council houses to reflect the large size of his family. He is also able to claim £1,000 a year in child benefit for each of his growing brood.

The Government insists that polygamy has declined in Britain since the 1988 Immigration Act, which made it harder for men to bring second, third or fourth wives to the UK.

However, it's little wonder that critics claim our generosity simply encourages more Muslim men to keep several spouses. Supporters of polygamy claim the Koran states unequivocally that a Muslim man can marry up to four women so long as he treats them equally.

But the Taxpayers' Alliance, a lobby group, has complained: 'Polygamy is not officially condoned here, so why should British taxpayers have to pay for extra benefits for men to have two, three or four wives?' ...

Read it all.

They differ with Al-Qaeda on the means, not on the goals.

Here is a pdf of the full report. See especially pages 27 through 30: "Islamist Groups and Shari'a." On page 27, the report says: "The Islamist goal of giving Shari'a a larger role in Islamic society is viewed positively."

And on page 29: "In Egypt 81 percent said they agreed with the al Qaeda goal of "requir[ing] a strict application of Shari'a law in every Islamic country" (65% strongly); only 12 percent disagreed. Pakistanis were similar with 76 percent agreeing with this goal (52% strongly); 5 percent disagreed. Indonesians, however, agreed by only a narrow plurality: 49 percent supported the goal (just 14% strongly), while 42 percent disagreed. In Morocco in late 2006, 76 percent agreed."

"Muslim Publics Oppose Al Qaeda's Terrorism, But Agree With Its Goal of Driving U.S. Forces Out" a press release:

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Feb. 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A study of public opinion in predominantly Muslim countries reveals that very large majorities continue to renounce the use of attacks on civilians as a means of pursuing political goals. People in majority-Muslim countries express mixed feelings about al Qaeda and other Islamist groups that use violence, however, perhaps due to a combination of support for al Qaeda's goals and disapproval of its terrorist methods.

Large majorities support allowing Islamist groups to organize parties and participate in democratic elections. In some majority-Muslim countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are forbidden from participating in elections....

The survey is part of an ongoing study of Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia, with additional polling in Turkey, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Azerbaijan, and Nigeria. It was conducted July through September, 2008 by WorldPublicOpinion.org with support from the START Consortium at the University of Maryland. Margins of error range from +/- 3 to 4 percent.

In nearly all nations polled more than seven in 10 say they disapprove of attacks on American civilians. "Bombings and assassinations that are carried out to achieve political or religious goals" are rejected as "not justified at all" by large majorities ranging from 67 to 89 percent. There is a growing belief that attacks on civilians are ineffective, with approximately half now saying that such attacks are hardly ever effective....

Views of al Qaeda are complex. Majorities agree with nearly all of al Qaeda's goals to change U.S. behavior in the Muslim world, to promote Islamist governance, and to preserve and affirm Islamic identity. However only minorities say they approve of al Qaeda's attacks on Americans....

Here is Geert Wilders' speech at the Four Seasons in New York on February 23:

Thank you.

Thank you very much for inviting me. And – to the immigration authorities – thank you for letting me into this country. It is always a pleasure to cross a border without being sent back on the first plane.

Today, the dearest of our many freedoms is under attack all throughout Europe. Free speech is no longer a given. What we once considered a natural element of our existence, our birth right, is now something we once again have to battle for.

As you might know, I will be prosecuted, because of my film Fitna, my remarks regarding Islam, and my view concerning what some call a ‘religion of peace’. A few years from now, I might be a criminal.

Whether or not I end up in jail is not the most pressing issue; I gave up my freedom four years ago. I am under full-time police protection ever since. The real question is: will free speech be put behind bars? And the larger question for the West is: will we leave Europe’s children the values of Rome, Athens and Jerusalem, or the values of Mecca, Teheran and Gaza?

This is what video blogger Pat Condell said in one of his latest you tube appearances. He says: “If I talked about Muslims the way their holy book talks about me, I’d be arrested for hate speech.” Now, Mr Condell is a stand-up comedian, but in the video he is dead serious and the joke is on us. Hate speech will always be used against the people defending the West – in order to please and appease Muslims. They can say whatever they want: throw gays from apartment buildings, kill the Jews, slaughter the infidel, destroy Israel, jihad against the West. Whatever their book tells them.

Today, I come before you to warn of a great threat. It is called Islam. It poses as a religion, but its goals are very worldly: world domination, holy war, sharia law, the end of the separation of church and state, slavery of women, the end of democracy. It is NOT a religion, it is an political ideology. It demands your respect, but has no respect for you.

There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam. Islam will never change, because it is built on two rocks that are forever, two fundamental beliefs that will never change, and will never alter. First, there is the Quran, Allah’s personal word, uncreated, forever, with orders that need to be fulfilled regardless of place or time. And second, there is al-insal al-kamil, the perfect man, Muhammad the role model, whose deeds are to be imitated by all Muslims. And since Muhammad was a warlord and a conqueror we know what to expect. Islam means submission, so there cannot be any mistake about it’s goal. That’s a given. It’s fact.

This is Europe 2009. Muslim settlers calling for our destruction, and free speech on trial. All this is the outcome of a sick and evil ideology, the ideology that is weakening us, the surrender ideology of cultural relativism. It believes that all cultures are equal, and therefore Islam deserves an equal place in the West. It is their duty, the left thinks, to facilitate Islam. This way the cultural relativists paradise comes within reach and we will all be happy, and sing kumbaya.

The forces of Islam couldn’t agree more. Islam being facilitated by government is their agenda too. But they see it as jizya, the money dhimmis pay in order not to be killed or raped by their Muslim masters. Therefore, they happily accept the welfare cheque or the subsidies for their mosque or the money governments donate to their organizations.

This is just one example of cultural relativists and Muslim settlers having the same agenda. There is another. Islam considers itself a religion and therefore we are not permitted to criticize it. The left agrees. Although it hated Christianity for decades, now that Islam appears on the scene, they suddenly change course and demand ‘respect’ for something they call a religion.

Again we see the left and Islam having the same agenda: it is a religion, so shut up.

This all culminates in a third coming-together: nor the left nor Islam is in favor of criticism. In fact, given the opportunity, they would simply outlaw it. Multiculturalism is the left’s pet project. It is actually their religion. Their love of it is so great, if you oppose it, it must be hate. And if you say it, it is labeled hate speech. Now here is something the Islam can agree on.

This is the essence of my short introduction today: where the left and Islam come together, freedom will suffer.

My friends, make no mistake, my prosecution is a full-fledged attack by the left on freedom of speech in order to please Muslims. It was started by a member of the Dutch Labour party, and the entire legal proceeding is done by well-to-do liberals, the radical chic of Dutch society, the snobbish left. Too much money, too much time, too little love of liberty. If you read what the court of Amsterdam has written about me, you read the same texts that cultural relativists produce.

How low can we go in the Netherlands? About my prosecution, The Wall Street Journal noted: “this is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside”. The Journal concluded that by The Netherlands accepting the free speech standards of, “Saudi-Arabia”, I stand correct in my observation that - I quote - “Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties”.

Now, if the Wall Street Journal has the moral clarity to see that my prosecution is the logical outcome of our disastrous, self-hating, multiculturalists immigration policies, then why can’t the European liberal establishment see the same thing? Why aren’t they getting at least a little bit scared by the latest news out of, for example, the UK. News that tells that the Muslim population in Britain is growing ten times as fast as the rest of society. Why don’t they care?

The answer is: they don’t care because they are blinded by their cultural relativism. Their disdain of the West is so much greater than the appreciation of our many liberties. And therefore, they are willing to sacrifice everything. The left once stood for women rights, gay rights, equality, democracy. Now, they favour immigration policies that will end all this. Many even lost their decency. Elite politicians have no problem to participate in or finance demonstrations where settlers shout “Death to the Jews”. Seventy years after Auschwitz they know of no shame.

Two weeks ago, I tried to get into Britain, a fellow EU country. I was invited to give a speech in Parliament. However, upon arrival at London airport, I was refused entry into the UK, and sent back on the first plane to Holland. I would have loved to have reminded the audience of a great man who once spoke in the House of Commons. In 1982 President Reagan gave a speech there very few people liked. Reagan called upon the West to reject communism and defend freedom. He introduced a phrase: ‘evil empire’. Reagan’s speech stands out as a clarion call to preserve our liberties. I quote: If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly. What Reagan meant is that you cannot run away from history, you cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. Denial is no option.

So, what should we do? Is this a good moment for freedom-loving people to give in or to change course? To all-of-a-sudden start singing praise of Islam, or proclaiming there is such a thing as a moderate Islam? Will we now accept the continuation of Muslim mass immigration to the West? Will we appease sharia and jihad? Should we sacrifice gay rights and women rights? Or democracy? Should we sell out Israel, our dearest ally, and a frontline state of Islam?

Well, my humble opinion is: No way, Jose!

I suggest to defend freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular. I propose the withdrawal of all hate speech legislation in Europe. I propose a European First Amendment. In Europe we should defend freedom of speech like you Americans do. In Europe freedom of speech should be extended, instead of restricted. Of course, calling for violence or unjustly yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre have to be punished, but the right to criticize ideologies or religions are necessary conditions for a vital democracry. As George Orwell once said: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.

Let us defend freedom of speech and let us gain strength and work hard to become even stronger. Millions think just like you and me. Millions think liberty is precious. That democracy is better than sharia. And after all, why should we be afraid? Our many freedoms and our prosperity are the result of centuries of endeavour. Centuries of hard work and sacrifice. We do not stand alone, and we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Late December 1944 the American army was suddenly faced with a last-ditch effort by the Germans. In the Ardennes, in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler and his national-socialists fought for their last chance. And they were very successful. Americans faced defeat, and death.

In the darkest of winter, in the freezing cold, in a lonely forest with snow and ice as even fiercer enemies than the Nazi war machine itself, the American army was told to surrender. That might be their only chance to survive. But General McAuliffe thought otherwise. He gave the Germans a short message. This message contained just four letters. Four letters only, but never in the history of freedom was a desire for liberty and perseverance in the face of evil expressed more eloquently than in that message. It spelled N – U – T – S. “Nuts”.

My friends, the national-socialists got the message. Because it left no room for interpretation!

I suggest we walk in the tradition of giants like General McAuliffe and the American soldiers who fought and died for the freedom of my country and for a secular and democratic Europe, and we tell the enemies of freedom just that. NUTS! Because that’s all there is to it. No explanations. No beating around the bush. No caveats.

Our enemies should know: we will never apologize for being free men, we will never bow for the combined forces of Mecca and the left. And we will never surrender. We stand on the shoulders of giants. There is no stronger power than the force of free men fighting for the great cause of liberty. Because freedom is the birthright of all man.

While hate bloggers continue to defame anti-jihadists with false and libelous charges of connections with or allegiance to white supremacism, neofascism, and neo-Nazism, back in the real world even the New York Times has begun to notice that the ones who are really echoing the Nazis are jihadists and Islamic supremacists.

"Nazis’ ‘Terrible Weapon,’ Aimed at Minds and Hearts," by Edward Rothstein in the New York Times, February 23:

WASHINGTON — The most haunting image in “State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda,” a major new exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here, may be the first one you see after the introductory videos. At the end of a darkened corridor is a black-and-white photograph on a black background. Underneath, with unornamented simplicity, is a single word: Hitler. [...]

It is chilling because we know what that face unleashed, and as we make our way through the exhibition, we feel almost physically assailed. A muscular fist smashes into the face of a cringing, sweating Jew (1928). An enormous Hitler is superimposed on a crowd of ecstatic Germans raising hands in salute as red gothic letters shout, “Ja!” (1934). [...]

As the show, organized by Steven Luckert, winds its way from the beginnings of Nazism in the aftershocks of the First World War to the Allied attempt to eradicate Nazi propaganda after the Second, the effect is overwhelming. Conceptually everything is familiar: the foundering Weimar Republic, the celebrations of Aryan virility, the Jew as embodiment of evil, the mass rallies, the death camps, the defeat. But the effect is not in the facts but in the images and artifacts, many of which have been lent by institutions in Europe for this show.

And if this is how powerfully these images affect an early-21st-century viewer who would have been a prospective victim, imagine the power they had on believers, flattering their highest vision of themselves while reminding them that endangering this imminent utopia was the conniving Jew, known from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In one 1943 poster a giant hand points accusingly at a corpulent caricature wearing a yellow star, “Jude”: “He is to blame for the war!” This, of course, while Jews were being carried off on trains heading east to feed the crematoriums. [...]

Is anything rhetorically comparable today?

Perhaps. The exhibition points out that the Nazis financed anti-Semitic broadcasts by Haj Amin al-Husseini, “an Arab nationalist and prominent Muslim religious leader.” Now no sponsorship seems needed. Major Middle East media outlets have asserted that Jews use children’s blood to bake matzos. In recent weeks we have heard that Jews are following the nefarious plot outlined in the Protocols to exterminate all gentiles, this from the poet and former member of the Lebanese Parliament Ghassan Matar. An Egyptian cleric, Safwat Higazi, has described Jews being “as smooth as a viper”: “Dispatch those son of apes and pigs to the Hellfire.”

And an Egyptian cleric with strong ties to the West, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradhawi, has described Jews as “a profligate, cunning arrogant band of people”: “Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.”

The extent of these visions (chronicled by the Middle East Media Research Institute), the historical distortions they codify and the readiness with which they are taught to children and are secularized into political action suggest that the strongest contemporary analogy to Nazi propaganda may be one the exhibition leaves unmentioned.

Yep.

The genuine atrocities committed by the Milosevic regime have become an all-purpose excuse for many to ignore the growing influence of the jihad doctrine and Islamic supremacism in the Balkans, and to defame those who oppose the jihad in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the surrounding regions as supporters of fascism and genocide. This includes people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of the principles of non-establishment of religion and the equality of rights of all people before the law as cornerstones of a just society.

For evidence of just how irresponsible and stupid -- and, above all, jihad-abetting -- this is, see this article from today's Spiegel about the spread of jihadism in Sarajevo.

"Islamists Gain Ground in Sarajevo," by Walter Mayr in Spiegel, February 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Radical Muslim imams and nationalist politicians from all camps are threatening Sarajevo's multicultural legacy. With the help of Arab benefactors, the deeply devout are acquiring new recruits. In the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," Islamists are on the rise.

The obliteration of Israel is heralded in a torrent of words. "Zionist terrorists," the imam thunders from the glass-enclosed pulpit at the end of the mosque. "Animals in human form" have transformed the Gaza Strip into a "concentration camp," and this marks "the beginning of the end" for the Jewish pseudo-state.

Over 4,000 faithful are listening to the religious service in the King Fahd Mosque, named after the late Saudi Arabian monarch King Fahd Bin Abd al-Asis Al Saud. The women sit separately, screened off in the left wing of the building. It is the day of the Khutbah, the great Friday sermon, and the city where the imam has predicted Israel's demise lies some 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) northwest of Gaza.

It is a city in the heart of Europe: Sarajevo.

"Tea or coffee?" Shortly after stepping down from the pulpit, Nezim Halilovic -- the imam and fiery speaker of the King Fahd Mosque -- reveals himself to be the perfect Bosnian host. He has fruits, nuts and sweetened gelatin served in his quarters behind the house of worship. A chastely-dressed wife and four children add themselves to the picture. It's a scene of domestic tranquility that stands in stark contrast to the railing sermon of the controversial Koran scholar.

Familiar Allegations

Sarajevo's King Fahd Mosque was built with millions of Saudi dollars as the largest house of worship for Muslims in the Balkans. The mosque has a reputation as a magnet for Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the imam is said to be the patron of the Wahhabites, although they call themselves Salafites, after an ultra-conservative movement in Sunni Islam.

Halilovic is familiar with the allegations and the usual accompanying thought patterns: Wahhabite equals al-Qaida, which equals a worldwide terror network. He says he has nothing to do with that, but he "cannot forbid a Muslim from worshiping in my mosque according to his own rites." He explains the general air of suspicion surrounding the King Fahd Mosque as follows: "The West is annoyed that many Muslims are returning to their faith, instead of sneaking by the mosque to the bar, as they used to do, to drink alcohol and eat pork."

Many Bosnians have despised "the West" since 1992, when the United Nations arms embargo seriously impeded the military resistance of the Muslims in their war against the Serb aggressors. It wasn't until four years later, and after 100,000 people had died, that the international community -- at the urging and under the leadership of the US -- finally put an end to the slaughter. Over 80 percent of the dead civilians in the Bosnian War were Muslims.

This traumatic experience left a deep mark on the traditionally cosmopolitan Muslim Bosnians -- and opened the door to the Islamists. Years later, the religious fundamentalists have declared the attacks by Christian Serbs and Croats a "crusade" by infidels -- and painted themselves as the steadfast protectors of Muslim Bosnians.

Imam Halilovic served during the war as commander of the Fourth Muslim Brigade. A photo shows him standing next to a 155 milimeter howitzer, dressed in black combat fatigues, a flowing beard and a scarf wrapped around his head. He witnessed the arrival of the first religious warriors from countries in the Middle East and northern Africa. These fighters brought ideological seeds that have now found fertile ground -- the beliefs of the Salafites, Islamic fundamentalists who orient themselves according to the alleged unique, pure origin of their religion and reject all newer Islamic traditions. [...]

Bosnia's capital city still remains a bustling town with well-stocked bars, concerts and garish advertisements for sexy lingerie. Men with billowing trousers and full beards and women with full-body veils are still a relatively rare sight on the streets. The last reports of sharia militias intervening against public kissing in parks on the outskirts of town date back two years ago.

According to a survey conducted in 2006, however, over 3 percent of all Muslim Bosnians -- over 60,000 men and women -- profess the Wahhabi creed, and an additional 10 percent say that they sympathize with the devout defenders of morals. But since the radicals and their Arab benefactors have been subject to heightened surveillance in the wake of 9/11, they tend to keep a low profile. [...]

The older generation of Muslims in Sarajevo's mosques now has to listen to lectures from bearded missionaries on what is "halal" and "haram" -- lawful and forbidden -- as if they and their ancestors had been living according to a misconception for over half a millennium. To protest this, the imam of the time-honored Emperor's Mosque has temporarily locked the doors of his house of worship -- for the first time in its nearly 450-year history.

This clash of civilizations also takes place in less prominent places, like the Internet forums of the Bosnian Web site Studio Din. Here the heirs of the officially godless, socialist Yugoslavia can learn about the Salafi doctrine. They ask questions that have to do with everyday life -- listening to music, smoking, earning money -- but also questions dealing with clothing and moral rules.

The answers from the preachers on the Web are unequivocal: "Music is forbidden in Islam, listening to instruments is a sin." "Smoking is forbidden in Islam." "Whoever works as a cleaning lady at a bank that charges its customers interest is an accessory to a sin. It's no different than having cleaning ladies in bars and brothels."

In October, 2008, the Baden-Württemberg state branch of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, conducted a study on the Studio Din Web site, which is also regularly visited by Bosnians living in exile. Entries in the forum -- which include discussions on jihad, the holy war, as a direct way of reaching Allah -- indicate time and again visitors from the Wahhabi King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo, Imam Halilovic's flock.

Could a radical, potentially violent parallel society be emerging in the Muslim dominated region of the war-torn republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, eight months after the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union?

Explosive Belts

There are indications of this. Resid Hafizovic, a professor at the Islamic University, was the first to speak of a "potentially deadly virus" in Bosnian society. The head of the Bosnian federal police has recently admitted that there is a growing threat of "terrorism with an Islamistic character" and has cited indications that suicide bombers have begun to equip themselves with explosive belts.

"They have everything to blow themselves up. Whether they do it depends on the orders from their leaders," says Esad Hecimovic, author of a standard work on the mujahedeen in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Last March, officials of the special anti-terror unit arrested five men, including four Salafites in Sarajevo.

The Bosnian leader of the group, a former fighter in the Al-Mujahedeen Brigade, reportedly has sponsors in Germany and Austria who helped him acquire explosives. In connection with the arrests, police conducted raids in remote mountain areas and seized caches of arms and military equipment that were used for combat training exercises.

After discovering that some of the masterminds behind 9/11, such as Khalid Scheikh Mohammed, had been active in Bosnia, international pressure increased on the government in Sarajevo in 2002. Foundations were closed and police searched the Sarajevo office of the Saudi High Commissioner for Aid to Bosnia, which had until then enjoyed the protection of the United States.

Al-Qaida veteran Ali Hamad from Bahrain and Syrian-born Abu Hamza are currently in custody on the outskirts of Sarajevo and awaiting deportation. Intelligence sources say that Hamza secretly channeled money between Arab sponsors and Bosnian Salafites. The amount of €500 -- an average monthly salary -- is reportedly rewarded for every woman who decides to wear a full-body veil.

The Islamists are slowly but surely permeating the firm ground upon which Sarajevo's society stands. They are influencing men like the quiet, bearded cab driver who waits for customers day after day at the bridge where the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in June, 1914. On the evening of Sept. 24, 2008, the cabbie suddenly appeared at the front of a protest, right in the midst of those who shouted "Allahu akbar!" at the police line in front the Art Academy of Fine Arts and attacked visitors to Bosnia's first gay and lesbian festival.

Wahhabites scuffled alongside common hooligans. Eight people were injured and all subsequent events were canceled. Srdjan Dizdarevic, chairman of the Bosnian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights -- an independent, nonprofit organization for the protection, promotion and monitoring of human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina -- spoke afterwards of a defeat for civil society, of "fascist rhetoric" leading up to the incident, and called it reminiscent of the "pogroms that happened in the times of Adolf Hitler."

'We Are only Interested in Opening Ourselves as an Islamic Society'

The fact of the matter is that politicians from all parties are playing the background music to a radicalization that threatens not just the secular character of Bosnia, but also the unity of this country comprised of Muslims, Serbs and Croats. This includes some local politicians who have demanded that school classes be strictly divided according to religious confessions -- and in December, 2008 obtained the first ban affecting state-run daycare centers in Sarajevo. The ban concerned the Christian Santa Claus who, until then, even Muslim children had revered as "Little Father Frost." [...]

[Bosnian Mufti Mustafa] Ceric has never left any doubts about his deep roots in the liberal Bosnian Islamic tradition. But the fact that he does not shy away from maintaining close contacts with the Salafit camp, including one-time Osama bin Laden mentor Sheikh Salman al-Auda from Saudi Arabia, has drawn criticism. "Totally unfounded," says Ceric: "We are only interested in opening ourselves as an Islamic society."

Sure enough, he recently even allowed a woman and her film crew to enter the King Fahd Mosque. The huge, Saudi monumental style building made of gray-brown sprinkled marble looks like a UFO -- complete with antennas shaped like minarets -- stranded among high-rise apartment buildings on the edge of Sarajevo. [...]

The film was about a man who became an "Islamist." Read it all.

Muslims! Unite!

This report vaguely refers to "the enemy." But what "enemy" would Muslims in general -- from Morocco to Indonesia -- have if not their famous nemesis and natural counterpart, the infidel? Had Ahmadinejad urged national or regional unity, the enemy could be more particularized, more "temporalized." But no, Ahmadinejad's is simply a call to unify the umma, Shia and Sunni, perhaps in preparation of the "Hidden Imam," and the ushering of global "justice" -- sharia style.

"Ahmadinejad urges Muslim unity against enemy," from Press TV, February 24:

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on Islamic countries across the world to build a united barrier against the 'enemy plots'.

"Unity and cooperation between Muslim states will thwart the enemy plot to sow discord between Muslims and spread hegemony over them," President Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with President of Djibouti Ismail Omar Guelleh on Tuesday...

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, AKA, the Pragmatist

Much has been made of former al-Qaeda leader Sayyid Imam al-Sharif's criticism of al-Qaeda. As is evident to anyone who closely examines his words, however, the man is not disavowing jihad or Islam's imperative to subjugate the world, but rather assessing al-Qaeda's tactics vis-a-vis infidels, and finding them wanting. Even the brief excerpts quoted below from his much touted book demonstrate as much. Moreover, getting caught up in what one man has to say either for or against al-Qaeda completely overlooks the fact that, the worldview that motivates al-Qaeda -- not to mention an undetermined percentage of the Islamic world -- does not begin or end with Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, or Sayyid Imam al-Sharif.

"One of the Men Who Created Al Qaeda Rips Into Usama bin Laden," by Bret Baier for Fox News, February 24:

One of the founders of Al Qaeda has written a book repudiating terrorism and railing against Usama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reports Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, better known as Doctor Fadl, led an Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s. Now he writes that the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were both immoral and counterproductive: "Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy's buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?"

Fadl says the murder of innocent people goes against Islam: "Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers."

Why doesn't he bemoan the fact that American blood shed on 9/11 is also "the responsibility of of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers"? In fact, even though this report maintains that al-Sharif says "the murder of innocent people goes against Islam," the quote excerpted as demonstrative of this makes mention only of Muslim innocents -- which is to be expected since only the latter are truly "innocent." (The Muslim prophet himself seems to have concurred: when Muslims questioned the use of catapults during Muhammad's siege of the infidel city of Ta'if, citing that women and children might also be struck, the prophet coolly asserted,"They [innocent women and children] are from among them [reprobate infidels whose blood is halal, or permitted].”

And, of course, they already have -- at a much grander scale via the devastating strikes of 9/11. It is good that Mueller is pointing out the obvious, but also troubling that this even needs to be pointed out in the first place. "Mumbai attacks could happen in the US: FBI," from AFP, February 24:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Attacks that killed 172 people in Mumbai in November could happen in the United States, FBI Director Robert Mueller warned in a speech here.

"How many other cities around the world could fall prey to such an attack? How many cities here, in the United States?" Mueller asked Monday in a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Mueller, who took over the Federal Bureau of Investigation just days before September 11 2001, said the Mumbai attacks showed that terrorists "with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact."

"It again raises the question of whether a similar attack could happen in Seattle or San Diego, Miami or Manhattan," he said.

Mueller added that although Al-Qaeda remains a threat to the United States, US officials "must also focus on less well-known terrorist groups, as well as homegrown terrorists. And we must consider extremists from visa-waiver countries, who are merely an e-ticket away from the United States."

The FBI is "increasingly concerned with pockets of people around the world that identify with Al-Qaeda and its ideology. Some may have little or no actual contact with Al-Qaeda."

He also warned of homegrown threats: "A man from Minneapolis became what we believe to be the first US citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing. The attack occurred last October in northern Somalia, but it appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota," Mueller said.

Don't trust any imam over 30. That'll fix it, right?

Once again, a theory that attempts to explain away the obvious nexus between Islamic teachings and violence in the name of Islam simply puts a spotlight on the elephant in the room: The matter of where all these "extremists" keep coming from, and how resilient their "misunderstanding" of the Religion of Peace continues to be. "Young Muslims at the mercy of extremists because of out-of-touch Imams," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, February 24:

Mosques dominated by elderly foreign clerics are leaving young Muslims at the mercy of extremists, a study has found.

The Quilliam Foundation, an Islamic think tank, has found that 97 per cent of imams in Britain's mosques are from overseas, although the majority of Muslims in Britain were born in the UK.

The study also found that forty-four per cent of mosques do not hold their sermons at the main Friday prayers in English.

Nearly half of Britain's mosques do not have facilities for women, "depriving half the community of access to public spaces," the study said.

It added: "Foreign imams, poorly paid and with limited proficiency in English, are ill-equipped to navigate Britain's complex, liberal and multi-faith society.

And from that, we're to infer that the social ills of Muslim communities can all be attributed to "cultural" issues, and not anything contained in Islamic teachings.

"They have neither the freedom, being at the mercy of mosque management committees dominated by first generation elders, nor the capacity to promote a British Islam informed by British values.

"By failing to reach out to young British Muslims, radical Islamists have the upper-hand. Britain's young Muslims, without a voice in mosques, are looking elsewhere for religious guidance and will continue to be drawn in by young, articulate extremists who offer an alternative narrative, cause and social space."

Quilliam's director, Maajid Nawaz said: "These findings are deeply disturbing. Our first line of defence against terrorism is the ability, commitment, and confidence of mosques and Muslim communities to root out extremism. Currently, we are failing.

"With foreign imams who are physically in Britain, but psychologically in Pakistan or Bangladesh, mosques lack the requisite resilience to challenge Islamist extremists. We cannot continue to ignore the malaise in our mosques."

The report's author, Anya Hart Dyke, a senior research fellow at Quilliam, said mosques needed to include women and young people in running mosques, make use of government support from funds aimed at preventing violent extremism, and take advantage of training opportunities as well as sharing their space with community organisations and schools, and opening their doors to non-Muslims.

She said the mosques could learn from some local initiatives introduced in some mosques as well as the way churches and synagogues operate.

Why, exactly! That must be why you don't see their youth carrying menacing placards and calling for the overthrow of governments. Not to mention the dearth of bombings.

"There are signs of hope. I have found some locally-led initiatives in mosques across the country, but this needs to become the norm amongst our mosques," she added.

Quilliam attempted to contact over 1,000 mosques by using researchers who spoke Urdu or Bengali during Ramadan in late 2008, a busy period in mosques.

Due to lack of resources at most mosques and after repeated phone calls they successfully polled 512 mosques, although not all mosques responded to every question posed.

As usual, there's not really a problem, except when there kind of is, even though there really isn't. It's complicated:

Seyyed Ferjani, chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, admitted there was a problem in mosques but said it was not on the scale suggested in the report.

"The imam in the mosque only leads prayers," he said. "We have a problem in our mosques that most, the bulk of our youth, they don't seek advice from imams, they seek advice elsewhere."

Referring to the July 7 bombers, he added: "The problem that we've got, like the people who are in Leeds and elsewhere, they are outside of mosques, who are grooming them."

An increasing trend. Where jihadists organize doesn't answer questions about their ideology.

Not against one's fellow Muslims in the Pakistani security forces. After all, many of those among those forces are on the Taliban's side, and the Qur'an forbids Muslims to kill fellow Muslims (4:92).

"Mulla Omar orders halt to attacks on Pak troops," by Mazhar Tufail in The News International, February 24 (thanks to James):

ISLAMABAD: The militants active in North and South Waziristan agencies have been directed by Mulla Omar to immediately stop their attacks on the Pakistani security forces.

In a letter to the militants, who have forged a new alliance, Mulla Omar admonished them not to fight the Pakistani security forces and kill their Muslim brethren, a reliable source told The News on Monday.

“Mulla Omar first sent an envoy to the local Taliban and then wrote a letter to the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) admonishing these leaders and told the TTP that fighting Muslims could not be described as Jihad so they should immediately cease attacks on the Pakistani security forces.

He told them that if they really want to participate in Jihad, they must fight the US and Nato troops inside Afghanistan because their attacks on the Pakistani security forces are undermining the objectives of the war against the invaders and cause of the Taliban movement.

“If anybody really wants to wage Jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan,” the source quoted Mulla Omar as having told the TTP leaders. “Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to Mujahideen and harming the war against the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.”

“Our aim is to liberate Afghanistan from the occupation forces and death and destruction inside neighbouring Pakistan has never been our goal,” he added. The source said according to Mulla Omar, the US was devising a new strategy and adopting new tactics to crush Mujahideen in Afghanistan so the Taliban, too, must forge unity in their ranks, and instead of operating in Pakistan, they must concentrate on actions against the US and Nato forces....

More on how Obama is abandoning the country that stands in the front line of the West's defense against the global jihad. "The Obama Administration Sacrifices Israel," by Anne Bayefsky in Forbes, February 22 (thanks to Bob):

The Obama administration's decision to join the planning of the U.N.'s Durban II "anti-racism" conference has just taken a new twist: cover-up. On Friday, State Department officials and a member of the American Durban II delegation claimed the United States had worked actively to oppose efforts to brand Israel as racist in the committee drafting a Durban II declaration. The trouble is that they didn't.

The Feb. 20 State Department press release says the U.S. delegation in Geneva "outline[d] our concerns with the current outcome document" and in particular "our strong reservations about the direction of the conference, as the draft document singles out Israel for criticism." One member of the delegation told The Washington Post: "The administration is pushing back against efforts to brand Israel as racist in this conference." In fact, tucked away in a Geneva hall with few observers, the U.S. had done just the opposite. The U.S. delegates had made no objection to a new proposal to nail Israel in an anti-racism manifesto that makes no other country-specific claims.

Getting involved in activities intended to implement the 2001 Durban Declaration--after seven and a half years of refusing to lend the anti-Israel agenda any credibility--was controversial to be sure. But late on Saturday Feb. 14, the State Department slithered out a press release justifying the move. It claimed that "the intent of our participation is to work to try to change the direction in which the Review Conference is heading."

Following what was clearly a planned public relations exercise, Washington Post columnist Colum Lynch championed the U.S. bravado in an article based on the story orchestrated by the American delegates. In his Feb. 20 article entitled: "U.S. Holds Firm on Reparations, Israel in U.N. Racism Talks," he fawned: "The Obama administration on Thursday concluded its first round of politically charged U.N. negotiations on racism, pressing foreign governments ... to desist from singling out Israel for criticism in a draft declaration to be presented at a U.N. conference in April."

The reality, however, was nothing of the sort. Instead, Obama's Durban II team slipped easily into the U.N.'s anti-Israel and anti-Jewish environs, taking the approach that "fitting in" was best accomplished by staying silent....

Read it all.

Abandoning the country that stands in the first line of the West's defense against the global jihad. Sammy Benoit of Yid with Lid has the story in The American Thinker, February 24:

Ben Smith has confirmed that Chas Freeman has been offered and accepted President Obama's invitation to be the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead U.S. governmental body in producing national intelligence estimates.

For the last dozen years, Freeman, the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been President of the Middle East Policy Council (formally known as the American Arab Affairs Council) a lobbying group for the Arab world. One of the group’s primary functions is to publish a quarterly journal called Middle East Policy. The journal is filled with anti-Israel messages that are beyond even the broadest definition of mainstream of U.S. thinking on the region. As the President of the organization responsible for this vicious and biased journal, the appointment of Freeman as a gatekeeper for U.S. intelligence is a very disturbing matter.

The Chairman of the National Intelligence Council is just like the editor of a journal. He must review, edit, add context to, and decide what to present to the President in terms of good intelligence. Therefore it is reasonable to predict Freeman's handling of the NIC job by looking at his work as President of MPEC and the journal that is published under his authority, Middle East Policy.

As you are about to see, the vicious and distorted polemics that have passed through his editorial desk prove that Freeman is not qualified to be the "editor" of America's intelligence.

In MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XV, NO. 3, FALL 2008, the Editor's Note perpetuates the anti-Israel slander that the Iraq war was waged for Israel:

...beginning that the war was an excuse to enlarge the U.S. strategic “footprint” (as neocon William Kristol calls it) on top of the lakes of oil in the Gulf region and make life safer for Irael, starting with the easiest problem case, Iraq. If the governments in the area did not come around, no problem; American troops were there in any case and would protect Israel....In a New York Times op-ed (July 18), Benny Morris put the matter to Bush/Cheney crudely: bomb the suspected sites now or Israel will have to use nuclear weapons on Iran later. Call it extortion, if you will. But perhaps a better term is moral hazard: having been “insured” by the United States, Israel does not have to be cautious or even sensible. The Georgians seem to have learned this lesson too, and without having to pay the high premium that a first-class standing army of lobbyists requires. Anne Joyce August 15, 2008

In another Editor's Note (July 07 ) IDF is depicted using Nazi military tactics during the Six-Day-War:

As regime-change advocates would have it, real peace talks cannot happen first; a deal with Syria involving an exchange of land for peace would cement in place the ruling Baath party of Bashar al-Asad. If he were to regain through negotiations the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since its Blitzkrieg of June 1967, he would be a god to his people, having set right what his father could not. A popular leader is very hard to topple, even in a weak state...

Read it all.

Poisoning food with feces is detailed as a tactic in the Al-Qaeda manual found a few years ago by British intelligence.

Also, there are precedents, both involving Muslims, as does this story:

UK: Shop-owners sold chocolate cake sprinkled with human faeces

Man Caught On Tape Sprinkling Fecal Matter On Pastries

Fecal Jihad Update: "Man accused of waging spray war," from This Is Gloucestershire, February 24 (thanks to Pamela):

A man who is accused of waging a urine and faeces-spraying campaign at two supermarkets, a pub and a bookshop caused £700,000 damage, a court heard yesterday.

Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, is alleged to have squirted a brown, foul-smelling substance from a spray container at four businesses in Gloucestershire on May 14 and 16 last year.

The court heard the man from White City, Gloucester, visited the Air Balloon pub at around 12.45pm on May 14 where police were called after he asked a barmaid Susan Lawson-Bagent how much it would cost to rape her.

When officers arrived Daifallah had gone but he had left a trail of stench behind him which the prosecution say was his calling card.

Stephen Dent, prosecuting, told the jury: “He mixed up an evil potion of various biological ingredients including his own faeces and urine.

“It was not until after he had left that staff started to notice a bad smell of excrement.

“We say that this was his little calling card because he did not like the way he had been treated.”

Daifallah then moved on to Waterstone’s bookstore in Cirencester where it is alleged he sprayed the brown substance all over a toilet in the coffee shop.

Staff noticed the smell but it was not until after he had left the store that they discovered a 20-metre area of 38 shelves had been doused in the foul substance.

In total 706 books were contaminated, most of them in the children’s section.

On May 16 at around 11am Daifallah is said to have visited the Tesco store in Quedgeley.

Mr Dent said a customer saw Daifallah reach into his laptop bag and produce a jet of fluid over the frozen chips.

He allegedly moved on to the wine section where a member of staff saw a fine vapour come from bag and on to the wine, leaving brown fluid over the shelves....

Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) is coming under pressure from stealth jihad groups and their allies and dupes for his plan to host a showing of the film Fitna in The Capitol.

Please contact Senator Kyl and declare your support for his courageous decision to show this honest and accurate but politically incorrect film. He needs expressions of support more than ever today!

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
730 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4521
Fax: (202) 224-2207

This is his website where you can send him an email:
http://kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Who "radicalized" him? Who else was "radicalized"? Are the teachings that "radicalized" Shirwa Ahmed being taught in any mosques in America? (Of course they are.)

Shirwa Ahmed Update: "Militants Drew Recruit in U.S., F.B.I. Says," by David Johnston for the New York Times, February 23 (thanks to James):

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Monday that a Somali-American man who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack last October in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in the United States.

The man, Shirwa Ahmed, was the first known suicide bomber with American citizenship. He immigrated with his family to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, Mr. Mueller said, but he returned to Somalia after he was recruited by a militant group.

“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mr. Mueller said, speaking at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Minneapolis claims the country’s largest Somali population.

Mr. Ahmed was driving a vehicle laden with explosives that blew up in northern Somalia in an attack that killed as many as 30 people, according to news reports. His body was returned to the United States with the help of the F.B.I....

“It raises the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what might they undertake here,” he said.

Indeed.

What can be said about the likes of Obama’s “Policy Review Panel Co-chair,” Bruce Riedel? One would love to get such a man, such an adviser, in a room in front of a large number of other people (ideally, with Obama, Clinton, and Holbrooke present) and ask him a series of questions about Islam. What has he read? What does he make of these dozen or five dozen passages of the Qur'an (handouts dutifully passed out)? What does he make of these Hadith, "authentic" hadith (or "ahadith") from the most "authoritative muhaddithin”? (more Handouts, silently distributed to everyone present). And what does he make of the figure of Muhammad, that Perfect Man, that Exemplar, and his own campaigns against Unbelievers? And what does he, Bruce Riedel, make of such things as the beheadings of Buddhists in southern Thailand? Oh, but that, he will tell you, is simply a case of "Islamic nationalism" (!). Very well, then, what would he like to say about the mass murder of non-Muslim black Africans in the southern Sudan, with nearly 2 million victims? And what would he like to say about the beating to death of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh?

Or what would Bruce Riedel like to say about the relevance of the war being made on Israel by Arab Muslims to the mass killing of Christian Ibo that precipitated the attempt by Christians, and not only the Ibo or Igbo, to declare the independent state of Biafra? What does Bruce Riedel make of the treatment of the Christians in the Moluccas by Muslims, and how does he explain the burning down of thousands of churches (see the reports of the British Barnabas Fund)? What does Bruce Riedel make of the deep drop in the non-Muslim percentage of the population -- consisting chiefly of Hindus -- in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, while the percentage of Muslims in the Indian population has only gone up since Partition? What does Bruce Riedel make of the clearly articulated goals of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, to take over this country from within? How would that be lessened by throwing Israel to the wolves?

Both last night. Thanks to Awake for the heads-up.

They were invited to lunch. They probably thought that they were doing important work winning Iraqi hearts and minds. The politically correct ethos that prevails in official Washington, and in all too much of the military establishment, prevented them from being sufficiently aware of the fact that no Islamic group worldwide has declared the jihad doctrine or Islamic supremacism to be un-Islamic, and so there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from an actual or potential jihadist.

"US soldiers hurt in Iraq attack," from the BBC, February 24 (thanks to John):

At least three US soldiers have been wounded and an Iraqi interpreter has been killed after coming under fire from police in Iraq.

The shooting took place at 1500 (1200 GMT) at a checkpoint under a bridge in the northern city of Mosul.

Two policemen opened fire before fleeing the scene in a waiting car.

The US military says the wounded soldiers have been taken to hospital and an investigation is under way. A second interpreter was also injured....

A police intelligence source the Americans were invited to lunch with Iraqi police at a checkpoint under a bridge, reports the BBC's Mike Sergeant in Baghdad.

He says when the soldiers arrived, the two policemen - a corporal and a private - opened fire on them, before making their escape.

Our correspondent says the shooting is not the first such incident, but it is the most serious of its kind for some time....

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, will not give the money to Hamas. However, with even the UNRWA halting aid to Gaza after Hamas kept stealing it, what safeguards will the U.S. have that this near-billion will not go to Hamas also? None whatsoever.

"U.S. to Give $900 Million in Gaza Aid, Officials Say," by Helene Cooper for the New York Times, February 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration intends to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza after the Israeli incursion that ended last month, administration officials said Monday.

In an early sign of how the administration plans to deal with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that controls Gaza, an official said that the aid would not go to Hamas but that it would be funneled through nongovernmental organizations.

By seeking to aid Gazans but not Hamas, the administration is following the lead of the Bush administration, which sent money to Gaza through nongovernmental organizations. In December, it said it would give $85 million to the United Nations agency that provides aid to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The United States considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and the Bush administration refused to have any formal dealings with the group....

Why might rule by the Taliban, or their Pakistani allies, and the imposition of Shari’a in the Valley of Swat, ever be seen as "acceptable" by the Western powers? Because the Americans are now at their wits' end, and don't know how to stop it. They are finally beginning, with their amazingly slow learning curve, to understand that Pakistan is a deeply Muslim country, and that the real Pakistan, the Pakistan that counts, is not represented by elegant and smiling anglophones, such as the meretricious Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador, who previously managed to head the International Relations Department at B.U. and even to smuggle in a fellow Pakistani onto the faculty, someone who famously has served as a comical apologist for Islam at mosque outreach nights, or those Ispahani girls, or the late Benazir Bhutto. They're all the same, really. They’re all the same in that they don't want to admit that Islam is the root of the problems that currently beset Pakistan.

With their Western educations, the members of the Pakistani elite do what they can to pretend that they, and not the vast primitive masses of Pakistan, are the "real Pakistan." In this respect, they are like all those ramrod-straight terry-thomas-moustachioed Pakistani generals who for decades fooled their American counterparts, carefully explaining that Islam was "a bulwark against Communism" and that they, therefore, were so much more deserving of American aid, especially military aid, than India. India, after all, was dominated by its New Left Book Club leader Jawaharlal Nehru and his marxisant, bandung-conferencing foreign minister, who even allowed the Soviets in to build steel mills and suchlike, Krishna Menon. And the Americans fell for it, and have been falling for that Pakistani line, or some variant on it, ever since -- right up until the day before yesterday.

Just give it up, infidels

This seems like a bold statement until one realizes that Larijani made it to former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- a man who believes that "it was wrong to have ignored and isolated Palestinian Islamist militant group, Hamas."

"Iran tells Gerhard Schroeder 'impossible' to stop nuclear plan," from Expatica, February 23:

Tehran -- Iran's parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani told former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over the weekend that it is impossible to deprive Tehran of nuclear technology for peaceful uses.

"Iran has observed international regulations and depriving Iran of nuclear technology and energy for peaceful purposes is impossible," Larijani told Schroeder during a meeting in Tehran, according to state broadcaster.

The latest remarks by Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator for Iran, came after the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday said Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, potentially a stage in making an atomic bomb, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.[...]

During his meeting with Larijani, the former chancellor praised Iran's "positive and constructive role in Afghanistan".

Later during a meeting with former Iranian president Akber Hashemi Rafsanjani, he said that without "US and Iran cooperating" current regional issues will not be solved.

Schroeder also said it was wrong to have ignored and isolated Palestinian Islamist militant group, Hamas, over the past years while solving the regional issues.

"It is necessary to have this group join regional solutions," he said...

Why? Muslims in Malaysia are subject to sharia law. None of those secular shenanigans apply. It is an instructive case for Western countries pondering or already embarking down the slippery slope of granting legal legitimacy to sharia rulings within their borders: Are constitutional liberties really preserved when an "alternative" system does not guarantee freedom of conscience and other freedoms unequivocally?

The question is valid even when sharia is not as officially compulsory as it is in Malaysia: Social and familial pressures are just as likely to make the idea of the "choice" of systems a farce and work against the people most in need of the legal protections of the non-sharia system.

"Clause doesn’t cover Muslims," from The Star, February 24:

FREEDOM of religion as stated in Article 11 (1) of the Federal Constitution does not cover Muslims who wish to convert at any time.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz said Muslims who wish to renounce the religion would need to obtain an order or declaration from the Syariah Court, which has the jurisdiction under state Enactments of Islam.

The case Lina Joy vs Federal Territory Religious Department would be the guide for anyone intending to renounce Islam, he said.

In other words: No.

“The judgment in the case states clearly that a Muslim cannot renounce the religion as he wishes. If such freedom is given to Muslims, this will affect the status of Islam as the official religion, as stated in the Federal Constitution,” he said.

Replying to Zulkifli Noordin (PKR – Kulim Bandar Baru), he said Phrase 4 of Article 11 prohibited non-Muslims from spreading other religions to Muslims.

At the moment, Nazri said there are 10 states in Malaysia that limit the spread of other religions to Muslims with state laws.

The states are Terengganu, Kelantan, Selangor, Perak, Malacca, Kedah, Pahang, Negri Sembilan, Johor and Perlis.

Nazri said a Muslim can only renounce the religion once the Syariah Court gives the order whereby the National Registration Department would delete the word “Islam” from the identity card once relevant documents are shown.

He also said that the government has no intention to amend Article 11 (1) after the Federal Court decided on the Lina Joy case.

Against all those infidels -- including Obama -- who are "carrying out acts of barbarism against innocent people": Irony. "Waziristan Taliban set up shura to wage jihad," by Haji Mujtaba for the Daily Times, February 23:

Pamphlets call for holy war against Obama, Zardari, Karzai

MIRANSHAH: The Taliban in Waziristan announced forming a ‘Shura Ittehadul Mujahideen’ (Council of United Mujahideen) on Sunday to wage jihad ‘in an organised manner’.

Pamphlets distributed in the Miranshah Bazaar and other areas of the agency headquarters said the forces led by Mullah Muhammad Omar and Osama Bin Laden were fighting against ‘infidels’ led by US President Barack Obama, Pakistani President Asif Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

They quoted verses of the holy Quran calling people to fight a holy war against ‘infidels’, who they said were killing innocent Muslims.

The announcement was made by Taliban leaders Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is the Taliban emir in North Waziristan, Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban commander in South Waziristan, and Maulvi Nazir, the chief of Taliban in Wana, who said they wanted to “stop the infidels from carrying out acts of barbarism against innocent people”.

However, we're still waiting for the total closure of Guantanamo

More on this story. "Miliband: Binyam release is the 1st step towards shared goal to close Guantanamo," from the Kuwait News Agency, February 23:

LONDON, Feb 23 (KUNA) -- Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Monday that he was pleased that Binyam Mohamed was coming back to the United Kingdom.

"His release and return from Guantanamo Bay is the result of a number of years of very hard work by officials with him and with his team.

"Obviously the release of Binyam Mohamed is the first release from Guantanamo Bay since the election of President (Barack) Obama.

"We very much welcome President Obama's commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and I see today's return of Binyam Mohamed as the first step towards that shared goal, " he added.

Mohamed just arrived back to UK coming from Guantanamo with a coverage of his arrival by media.

They got those vaunted peaceful teachings wrong again, in an update on this story."Islamic terrors [sic] suspects on trial in Spain," from the Associated Press, February 23:

MADRID — Fourteen people went on trial today in Spain on charges of involvement with Islamic terrorist groups and recruiting extremists to fight in Iraq, a court official said.

The 14, mostly Moroccans, are charged with belonging to or collaborating with Islamic terrorism groups.

They are also accused of helping several people suspected in the March 11, 2004 terror bombings in Madrid to flee Spain.

The prosecution is seeking sentences of between seven and 14 years. A court official says trial was likely to last several days.

The 14 were arrested in a series of raids in recent years, most in the northeastern region of Catalonia.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with court regulations.

The defendants are accused of belonging to a network called Tigris that is alleged to have dealings with Ansar el Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.

The group had its headquarters in the town of Santa Coloma de Gramanet, close to Barcelona. According to the prosecution, the house was used to recruit, indoctrinate and prepare future jihad fighters.

The prosecution said five people linked to the Madrid bomb attacks, in which 191 people were killed, visited the house. Among them was Moroccan Mohamed Afalah, who Spanish authorities say died in a suicide attack in Iraq in 2005.

For failing to stop their “illegal and un-Islamic” business. "Faith healers: another casualty of lawlessness in Frontier," from The News, February 23:

PESHAWAR: Faith healers have either stopped practicing or have gone underground because of threats to their lives.

The faith healers of the city have been receiving threats for the past many months and the government failed to provide them security. A number of them were picked from various parts of the city and freed only after assurance that they would no longer continue their practice.

Phool Badshah — the latest victim in the city — was shot dead by unknown people at Khan Mast Colony in the Yakatoot Police Station jurisdiction. Police, as usual, are yet to work out the case.

The office of another faith healer was blown up with explosives in Kohati locality last month. He was threatened by a group to stop his “illegal and un-Islamic” business, but he refused. Abdul Nasir of Pandu, Naseer Shah of Kohat Road, two ‘pirs’ of Badaber and a number of others from across the city were either picked or attacked for practicing faith healing.

The murder of Pir Rafiullah of Taroo Jabba grieved the entire city. Armed men from picked him up from outside his residence last month and later his beheaded body was recovered from the boundary of Khyber Agency. No group claimed responsibly for his murder so far...

Algeria is several weeks away from a presidential election; unfortunately, there will likely be more attacks like this. "Algerian Islamists kill nine security guards: residents," from Agence France-Presse, February 23:

ALGIERS (AFP) — Nine members of a private security firm were killed when Islamist militants attacked their base near Jijel in northeastern Algeria, residents and local journalists said on Monday.

Three other guards were wounded in the attack on the building used by private security company Spas on Sunday evening in the town of Ziama Mansouriah, around 360 kilometres (225 miles) east of the capital Algiers, they said.

The Algerian company carries out security work for factories in the region.

There was no immediate confirmation by authorities of the attack, which came three weeks ahead of the start of a presidential election campaign in the north African country.

The extremists used a mortar to shell the security guards' building in the first such attack in the region in several years, though the company has been targeted before.

Residents were unable to say how many men took part in the offensive.

The attack is the worst in the past six months in Algeria, and follows a spate of deadly assaults on military and civilians in the northeast of the country over the past month.

Seven soldiers were killed in two separate attacks on February 15, three in in an Islamist ambush some 50 kilometres east of Algiers, and four others in Tebessa in the far east of the country, in an attack on their convoy.

Algerians go to the polls to elect a new president on April 9, with the incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika seeking an unprecedented third term.

Bouteflika has vowed to "press on with a policy of national reconciliation" that he launched in 2000 following two referendums, and which has enabled the release from jail or the surrender of thousands of Islamist fighters who have laid down their weapons.

But the 72-year-old head of state added that while "the door remains open to those who repent," he will "continue to fight terrorism with all necessary means."

The most serious round of recent violence took place, as frequently occurs, during and around the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, which extremists consider auspicious for armed struggle.

In the name of, you got it, "honor." Incidentally, since Pakistan is 97% Muslim, there is a 97% chance this honor-zealous man was Muslim. "Man slays sister for honour," from the Daily Times, February 23:

KARACHI: A man surrendered himself after killing his elderly sister on the pretext of honour killing.

Elahi Bux, 45, surrendered himself after axing to death his 60-year-old sister, Shehla Bibi, at his house located in Sector 15, Mehran Town, within the jurisdiction of Korangi Industrial Area Police Station.

Confessing to the crime, the accused alleged that his sister had illicit relations with a landlord of Larkana. According to SHO Ismail Lashari, Bux only dealt one swift blow to the victim’s head and when her screams attracted the neighbours, rather than fleeing, Bux waited for the police to arrive. The police have registered a case on behalf of the victim’s son.

However, according to family sources, Bux was in financial debt of the landlord and as he could not repay the money, he had married his daughter to the landlord. However, now the landlord wanted to marry Shehla Bibi, therefore, Bux thought it best to kill her rather than stain the family’s honour. The deceased was a widowed mother of five children...

An update on this story. "Death toll hits 11 in sectarian violence: Nigerian police," from Agence France-Presse, February 23:

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) — Police arrested seven people in connection with Muslim-Christian clashes in northern Nigeria as the death toll from the weekend unrest rose to 11, police and Red Cross officials said Monday.

"So far the number of those killed stands at 11," police spokesman Mohammed Barau told AFP by telephone from Bauchi state of sectarian clashes there that left 38 wounded.

Six churches and roughly a dozen houses were also torched, a Red Cross official said.

Muslim youths went on a rampage Saturday, attacking Christians and burning churches. They said their acts were reprisals for the burning of two mosques overnight in the state capital Bauchi.

Authorities in the city have deployed troops and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in seven areas affected by the violence.

"Normalcy has been restored," Barau said.

But dozens nursed injuries in a state better known as home to one of Nigeria's major national parks.

"We have 38 persons who sustained varying degrees of injuries in the violence," Bauchi Red Cross secretary Adamu Abubakar told AFP.

Hundreds of others displaced by the violence have sought refuge in military barracks, churches and two camps erected by the Red Cross.

Tensions have risen in Bauchi, a city of four million, since February 13 when Pentecostal Christians barricaded a pathway used by Muslims attending Friday prayers at a nearby mosque, residents said.

The initial story, linked above, offers a much different account, in which the alleged "barricade" was actually a broken-down truck.

Bauchi suffered bloody sectarian strife in 2004 when Muslim-Christian violence in the town of Tafawa Balewa, some 100 kilometres (62 miles) away, spilled over to the city, and houses, mosques and churches were burnt.

Of course multiculturalism has long manifested itself in the sorts of books Western libraries select, but this is ridiculous. "Jihad books were in library," from This-Is-Leicestershire, February 23:

A library service was stocking books which encouraged jihad and the murder of non-Muslims, a Government-backed report has revealed.

A cost-cutting measure has been blamed for the blunder, which happened five years ago.

Leicester City Council had changed its book supplier so it could buy more foreign-language books for its customers.

However, council bosses say they were poorly advised by the new provider and, as a result, brought some inflammatory material into stock.

After "several months", they realised the dangerous nature of the material and removed it from the shelves, and returned it to the supplier.[...]

A city council spokesman said: "We bought some stock from independent book sellers who, as it turned out, did not advise us very well. One of our staff identified that about two or three titles had a jihadist theme, and the books were removed from the shelves.[...]

The report also revealed the council had problems with people attempting to donate inflammatory books...

Stand up for free speech -- and the truth

Three cheers for John Kyl!

"US lawmaker hosts anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker," by Associated Press, February 23:

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Jon Kyl is hosting a film screening at the Capitol building on Thursday for a far-right Dutch lawmaker who claims that Islam inspires terrorism.

Yes, Geert Wilders originated that idea! Osama bin Laden never thought of it!

Kyl is sponsoring the event for Geert Wilders, who was denied entry to London earlier this month because British authorities said he posed a threat to public order.

Wilders’ 15-minute film juxtaposes verses from the Quran with images of violence by Muslims. Wilders has called the Quran a "fascist book" and said it should be banned.

Kyl agreed to facilitate the event because "all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered," said spokesman Ryan Patmintra.

Thursday’s event was being sponsored by the International Free Press Society, headed by Danish activist Lars Hedegaard, and the Center for Security Policy, a think tank in Washington led by Republican Frank Gaffney....

More on the IFPS, of which I am a member of the Board of Advisors, here -- and its joining Geert Wilders to call for an International First Amendment here.

The Israelis have to decide that? The Palestinians apparently are already all on board with the idea of peaceful coexistence with Israel, and have forgotten all about that jihad business? What planet is Bill Clinton on? The same planet, of course, that is inhabited by most of the learned analysts when it comes to the jihad against Israel -- and the overwhelming evidence that the Palestinians don't want peace, but will continue to press for the destruction of Israel, never seems to disturb their comfortable analyses.

"Former US President Clinton calls for Palestinian state," from Maan News Agency, February 22 :

Bethlehem – Ma’an – Former US President Bill Clinton said on Tuesday that he is hopeful about peace between Israel and Palestine.

Speaking with the US-based Cable News Network (CNN), Clinton said the appointment of US Senator George Mitchell was a step forward in the prospects for a two-state solution.

Asked by interviewer Larry King about “any chance of the Mideast having peace,” Clinton responded that Mitchell will have to “fill in the blanks” in negotiations between both sides, “however the Israeli government is constituted.”

Clinton also warned that Israel is running out of time it wants to remain a Jewish state.

“Palestinians are having more babies than the Israelis. The Israelis have to decide whether they want to share the future in a positive way with a constructive Palestinian state,” Clinton said.

“And if they [Israel] don't, then they'll have to disenfranchise the Palestinians living outside of old Israel, pre-'67 Israel, and they won't be a democracy anymore. Or they will let everybody vote and they won't be a Jewish state anymore. That hasn't changed,” he said.

“The other thing that has happened that's really better now is the external environment is so much better," he insisted.

"The king of Saudi Arabia and I think more than 20 other Muslim countries in the whole Arab Middle East, with the exception of Syria, has been out there strongly supporting a peace process,” he noted.

“[The Arab League] will urge the Palestinians to sign it. [They] will help them succeed economically. [They] will relocate them,” Clinton said of the Arab Peace Initiative, which was first presented by Saudi Arabia in Beirut during 2002.

“Now, therefore, I think there's hope, and I don't see what the alternative is,” the former US president added.

The alternative? A realistic appraisal of the situation.

Has the Western world, and has the American government in particular, gone mad? Does it not see, with Pakistan, the hideous situation created when a Muslim state acquires nuclear weapons? The Americans now are in the position of having to protect the corrupt and hopeless government of Zardari, a crooked zamindar (whose wife, Benazir Bhutto, by the way, though no saint herself, could not stand him). The Americans must do this because they are terrified of what may happen with those nuclear weapons -- and they should be -- if the government were to fall to the Pakistani "militants" or "extremists."

And so a country that is hopeless will now become some kind of political and economic ward of the Americans, because they haven't any idea how to deal with those nuclear weapons. Just Sunday the New York Times reported that “more than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s lawless tribal areas, American military officials said.”

Mark Steyn weighs in on the National Post's Chris Selley's smear of Pamela Geller's attempt to memorialize honor killing victim Aqsa Parvez -- an attempt I have been proud to support and assist: "Aqsa to grind," by Mark Steyn, February 21 (thanks to all who sent this in):

For reasons best known to himself, The National Post's Chris Selley chose to pick a fight with the few people who want to ensure that Aqsa Parvez's short life is memorialized by something more than the plot number of an unmarked grave. Pamela Geller and Kathy Shaidle can take care of themselves, and have done, but the reality is that if it weren't for the frothing loony ranting wackjob haters of the blogosphere a 16-year old girl murdered for not wanting to be imprisoned by her family's culture would be entirely forgotten.

So what's more offensive? The moral outrage of Pamela Geller at the westernization of "honor killing"? Or the mainstream coverage by a politically correct media? Here's what the lunchtime poll at Toronto's CITY-TV thought was the big issue arising from Aqsa Parvez's murder:

Do you think society discriminates against women who wear a hijab?

Gotcha. It's our fault.

Here's the weirdly contorted lengths Canada's Number One news anchor, CTV's Lloyd Robertson, went to to avoid telling his viewers Aqsa Parvez had been strangled?

Her neck was compressed, to the point she couldn't breathe.

Here's the Montreal Gazette's editorialists insisting that Mr Parvez and every pur laine papa in la belle province are merely different points on the same continuum:

Muhammed Parvez might have been fighting a losing battle trying to make Aqsa wear a hijab, but that hardly sets him apart. Few are the fathers, of any faith or none, who have not clashed with their adolescent daughters over something...

So which response to this issue is, in Chris Selley's words, "a few chick peas short of a falafel"? The Misses Geller and Shaidle? Or the sensible, reasonable, moderate, measured approach of the PC eunuchs at Canada's most-watched TV stations and major metropolitan newspapers?...

Read it all. Also, Pamela herself has further remarks here about this initiative, and why she began it.

A milk bottle incident

So says her husband, anyway. You may have seen the picture above last year, when the formerly Boston-based jihadist Aafia Siddiqui was captured in Afghanistan. The photo was widely circulated as indicating that Siddiqui had been tortured in U.S. custody; I received a large amount of hate mail like this one:

Look at before US custody and after US custody:

If that doesn't kill you and make you appalled at what your country is doing, then NOTHING will. Nothing.

However, now her husband says that the photo comes from quite different circumstances that have nothing to do with the Americans. His lengthy account in Pakistan's News International is suspect in many ways -- chiefly in his rather unconvincing attempts to exonerate himself from charges that he abused Aafia -- but nonetheless illuminating, especially this detail.

From "Dr Aafia Siddiqui’s husband breaks his silence after six years," from The News International, February 18 (thanks to Miss Kelly):

He added that Dr Fowzia had similarly threatened him several years ago by taking a picture of Aafia while she was asleep after she injured her upper lip (by a milk bottle) in an accident. Dr Fowzia warned Amjad that if he tried to divorce Aafia, she would use the picture against him alleging him to be an abusive husband. “It was made to appear in the picture that Aafia was badly injured. Today, the same picture is being circulated in the media to claim that Aafia was tortured for years in Bagram,” he revealed.

As Muhammad said, War is deceit!

Not on Pakistan International Airlines, please

It's an anti-Islamic attempt to please the West! The upshot of this, then, is that any mitigation of Sharia norms is illegitimate: Western governments should take careful note of the invoking of France at the end of this article.

"PIA banned sporting beard to please West: Jamaat," from Express India, February 21 (thanks to Looney Tunes):

Religious scholars of the country have condemned Pakistan International Airline's decision banning its employees from sporting beard.

The scholars have termed the move as violation of their constitution and fundamental rights, media report in Islamabad said.

In a joint statement, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, along with others, said that the PIA was trying to please Washington by banning its male cabin crew from having beard, the 'News' has reported.

The statement said, "PIA's new policy was a stark violation of Sunnah and an attempt to please the West."

Citing example of France where Muslim girls have been banned from wearing head-scarves, the Ulema said that most Western countries had adopted anti-Islamic policies.

And certainly there are many groups worldwide that share the same beliefs as those held by Hizballah and Hamas. "'Global jihad could be behind rockets,'" by Yaakov Lappin for the Jerusalem Post, February 23 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Al-Qaida affiliated global jihadi groups could be playing an important role in the trickle of rocket fire and border attacks being directed against Israel from southern Lebanon and Gaza in recent days, terrorism analysts have said.

On Saturday night, a Grad-type rocket struck an open area south of Ashkelon. No injury or damage was reported in that incident either. The rockets follow a Katyusha attack on Saturday, when a rocket fired from southern Lebanon struck a town in the western Galilee, injuring three people and damaging a home. No group claimed responsibility.

"When I look at the Katyusha attack from southern Lebanon, my instinct tells me a global jihad group is linked," said Yoram Schweitzer, director of the Program on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS).

No one could say with certainty who was behind Saturday's rocket, Schweitzer said, but "there is a basis for a confrontation" between radical Sunni jihadi groups stationed in southern Lebanon and Hizbullah.

Sunni jihadi groups are likely to seek a defiant stance towards Hizbullah and its patron Iran in the future, but for now are establishing their presence by occasionally firing on Israel, Schweitzer said.

Al-Qaida affiliated groups like Fatah al-Islam and Asbat al-Ansar recruit their members from Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, where disaffected residents embrace an extremist ideology, Schweitzer added....

Unimportant in himself, Tom Friedman has become important by virtue of his station: he is one of the columnists for The New York Times. He is read, and by many, and is assumed to know whereof he speaks. He has a line in name-dropping (“When I met with the ambassador” or “when I had a chat with [Indian or Chinese industrialist or American entrepreneur]”) that offers, for some, a superficial gleam. His world-traveling makes him, for some, soothing, soothing because of his simplifying, his cheerful reductionism. He is soothing also for some because of his eager enthusiasm for whatever topic that he is already preparing for his next Tom-Friedman-Splains-It-All-To-You book, to be followed by $45,000/per lectures to busy businessmen who are suitably impressed with Tom Friedman (“He must know what he’s talking about. He’s got a Pulitzer. He writes for the Times. He goes on Charlie Rose.”).

Friedman’s reductions to sound-bite, lecture-ready phrases (e.g., “the world is flat”) are not those of someone who has mastered a great deal of material and then managed to present it, after thought, in a lucid form, accessible to many because of his mastery of phrase that reflects a complete grasp of the material. No, his simplifications are truly those of someone who is a simpleton himself, and who is not so much in the business of lucidly making sense of things, but of finding a catch phrase, and then finding bits and pieces of anecdotal evidence to weave a little tale that will make no demands on reader, or listener. The perfect thing for business-babbitts wanting a complicated and disturbing world made simple. No mental activity necessary. Just listen to the self-satisfied guru, a mountebank of the updated Chautauqua circuit, who expresses no nuance, who hints at no doubts. He knows what’s going on. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.

A nice example of this was Friedman’s column the other day, about what he, Tom Friedman, had discovered on his trip to India. He had found that Indian Muslims – all 150 million of them, apparently – were responding splendidly to the Mumbai massacres, rallying around the flag of Mother India, showing that they were horrified by this “terrorism” that, bien entendu, had “nothing to do with Islam.” And so the lesson that Tom Friedman wanted millions of readers to take away was this: you have nothing to fear from Islam, rightly understood. Here are Indian Muslims, declaring in no uncertain terms that Islam and terrorism are incompatible, that Islam forbids the very things that those terrorists, in the name of Islam, in Mumbai did.

Fighting phantom Crusaders

He doesn't want Hamas to accept a truce with Israel -- despite the fact that Hamas would only do so in order to gather strength to fight the Israelis more fiercely later.

"Al-Qaida No. 2 urges Hamas: Don't agree to Gaza truce," from The Associated Press, February 23 (thanks to James):

Al-Qaida's No. 2 warned Palestinians in Gaza against accepting a truce with Israel in an audio message posted on extremist Web sites, an Internet monitoring service said Monday.

Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri said Israel's Arab aides are trying to impose a truce in Gaza to defeat the Palestinians and he called on them to be steadfast while Jewish targets are attacked around the world.

"The jihad to liberate Palestine and all the homelands of Islam mustn't cease, and if the field tightens in one place, it widens in other places, and Crusader and Jewish targets are spread all over the world," he said in a transcript of the speech provided by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamic extremist Web sites....

Here's the press release:

AN EVENING WITH GEERT WILDERS

Geert Wilders, chairman of the Freedom Party in The Netherlands (PVV), maker of the film Fitna, and brave fighter for Western values, will speak in Washington, DC, this week.

Wilders, the foremost defender of free speech in the modern age, will deliver an address at a reception at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, site of the Conservative Political Action Conference, on Friday, February 27, at 6:00PM.

The reception will feature a screening of Wilders's courageous and hard-hitting film Fitna, which demonstrates how Islamic jihadists use the Qur'an and Islamic teachings to justify acts of violence and terrorism, and which has become the focus of efforts by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to restrict and criminalize free speech about the global jihad threat. A question-and-answer period will follow.

The reception is sponsored by the

David Horowitz Freedom Center, Atlas Shrugs, and Jihad Watch.

It is open to the public. In light of the multiple threats on Geert Wilders's life, security will be very tight: no bags or coats will be allowed, all materials brought in to the room will be searched, and the event organizers reserve the right to deny entry to or eject anyone at any time.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com, wildersevening@aol.com

Pamela has more on Wilders's stay in this country.

As one reads the following numerous anecdotes of Christian persecution at the hands of Islam, the one thing to bear in mind is that this is but a tithe of what really goes on in the Islamic world (and possibly the UK) -- most of which never makes it to the media. "The Bulletin of Christian Worldwide Persecution," from the Right Side News, February 22:

Bulletin of Christian Persecution, The Facts -- We Collect the Dots; You Connect Them:

Lahore, Pakistan: Two female nursing students were accused of blasphemy. The students are said to have desecrating verses of the Koran. It is believed that this is a trumped-up charge resulting from the students' roommates having been offended by a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall, which the roommates desecrated. A demonstration was staged against the students. 2/17 (Full Article and more at PoliticalIslam)

Sangla Hill, Pakistan: A 13-year-old Christian girl was gang-raped by five Muslims when she went outside to take out the trash. She was kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to their neighborhood. Sangla Hill is the same city where 3 churches, 3 clerical residences, a high school, and the houses of 3 Christian families were destroyed in a riot in 2005. 2/17

Shajwal, Pakistan: Three men murdered a Christian milkman after he demanded his paycheck. He was denied his wages for a month, and when he demanded to be paid his employers, two Muslim brothers and their nephew, taunted him with slurs and then killed him. 2/17

That's just Pakistan. Read it all and get an idea of the sort of persecution Christians suffer at the hands of Islam in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and, of course, the UK.

Persecuted for being Jewish

Considering that the prophet of Islam, Muhammad himself, said, "I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim," it is difficult to find fault in the following Muslim behavior -- from an Islamic perspective, that is.

"Al Qaeda’s Rise in Yemen Prompts Jewish Immigration," by Avraham Zuroff for Israel National News, February 22:

(IsraelNN.com) The emigration of Yemen’s remaining Jews comes in wake of increased anti-Semitism, a rise in Al-Qaeda activities in the country, and the terrorist organization’s targeting of Jews.

Ten new immigrants arrived in Israel on Thursday afternoon from the Yemenite community of Raida, where Jews have recently been harrassed by Muslims. The group included Said Ben-Yisrael, one of the heads of the Raida Jewish community. Several weeks ago, Muslim extremists threw a grenade into the Ben-Yisrael family's courtyard. After receiving threats against his life, Said went to live in the capital city of Sana'a, taking his family with him. From there he proceeded to the Jewish State.

Yemen, which does not share diplomatic relations with the State of Israel, nevertheless permits the immigration of its Jews to any location, including Israel.

In an opinion piece in the London-based Arabic daily, Ash-Sharq il-Awsat, columnist Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed warns that Al-Qaeda “is transferring its men and furnishings to the mountains of Yemen.” Al-Rashed adds, “Yemen will be turned into a free-for-all, not only by the terrorists, but by all the countries that want to hound Al-Qaeda wherever it settles.”...

"[A] two-pronged attack which peddles death and misery [to infidels] with heroin while netting massive sums to pay for future terror attacks," that is, the jihad. "Asian terror gangs target UK with killer heroin," by Scott Hesketh for the Daily Star, February 22 :

TERROR chiefs plan to flood our streets with heroin in a terrifying plot to wage “chemical jihad” on Britain.

And they have been using hate-filled Muslim gangs as their UK dealers.

Pakistani and Afghan-based al-Qaida and Taliban warlords are sitting on a £6billion stash of deadly heroin.

And they have ordered their dealers to sell it only to non-Muslims.

The ruthless racket is a two-pronged attack which peddles death and misery with heroin while netting massive sums to pay for future terror attacks.

A senior security source told the Daily Star Sunday: “The Afghan poppy fields are probably the biggest financial contributor to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“The UK’s heroin trade is increasing at an alarming rate and most of the cash helps arm terrorists with bombs and guns.”

The US has already been ­targeted in the evil campaign which mirrors a terror plot in the new James Bond novel Devil May Care.

Between 1990 and 2005 Taliban-linked drug peddler Haji Baz Mohammed raked in a staggering £17billion by pouring heroin into North America.

He told a US court that “selling heroin was a jihad because they were taking Americans’ money and the heroin was killing them”.

Now the fanatics have made the UK their top target. A whopping 30 tonnes of heroin is being smuggled into Britain every year.

The drug is grown in the Afghan badlands and bought for £1,500 a kilo in neighbouring Pakistan.

It’s finally sold on Britain’s streets, often in the backs of cabs or over kebab shop counters, at between £30 and £50 a gram.

Asian gangs are operating in South London, Luton, Preston, Manchester, Leeds, Oldham, Birmingham and Bradford.

Our investigators went on the hunt for heroin in Luton and did a deal in the back of a taxi.

Pulling out a handful of wraps, the ­driver said: “I’ll sort you a fix for £10 but a gram’s £50. It’s knockout gear.” Asked where the drugs came from he said: “Poppy fields between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The big bosses have Taliban and al-Qaida connections and we’re often told only to deal it to non-Muslims. They call it ­chemical jihad and hope to ruin lives while ­getting massive payouts at the same time.

“I’m more interested in the money. I knock it out to anyone, ­whatever their beliefs.

“But there are lots of big-­hitters who only sell to non-Muslims – to poison them.”...

"The Swat Taliban have also announced that families with unmarried females should come forward in mosques so that the women/girls may be married off – to the Taliban. Or else, they are to be forcibly married (read raped)."

"Whither Swat’s women?" by Qurat ul ain Siddiqui for the Dawn, February 22:

WHAT happened with Shikarpur’s Maria Shah, a recent victim of an acid attack, may be considered as a random act of violence but the degree of resolve and perfection with which misogyny is being systematized in Swat is simply unprecedented in Pakistan.

Banning education for females and specifically targeting girls’ schools was, to look at the current situation on the ground, only the prelude to what is turning out to be a conscious establishment of a system of violence and sadism.

With the destruction of over 180 schools in the valley, thousands of female teachers are without a source of income and some 80,000 female students are no longer getting an education.

However, it is not ‘only’ women’s education and livelihood that are at stake here. Women can also no longer venture outside their homes without a male relative (definitely a mehram) and it is mandatory for couples to carry their nikah-namaas or they are asking for trouble. The Swat Taliban have also announced that families with unmarried females should come forward in mosques so that the women/girls may be married off – to the Taliban. Or else, they are to be forcibly married (read raped).

So would any Pakistani woman want to wake up the following morning only to find out she’s in Swat? Hopefully not.

The government has done little, if not nothing, to address this ‘institutionalisation’ of gender-specific violence in the once idyllic valley. And while a visit to the region by some in the national cabinet was in the offing, the NWFP government’s recent decision to implement ‘sharia’ in the area seems highly unlikely to rescue the population from this despotic setup.

What was done to Bakht Zeba, a 45-year-old resident of Mingora and a former member of the Swat district council, should have been enough to serve as a wake up call for those entrusted with the security of our lives and properties.

Zeba's criticism of the Swat Taliban's anti-women measures was more than enough to incur the Talibs' wrath. On Nov 26, Bakht Zeba was dragged out of her Mingora home and was shot in the head after being brutally flogged.

A mere three hour drive (less than 200 miles) from Islamabad, Swat has transmogrified into a horrific embodiment and just when one dares to think that it can’t get any worse, a whole new horrible bunch of stunts is pulled only to keep one’s optimism in check.

The rather recent decree regarding bringing unmarried girls/women to give them away in marriage to the Taliban is a truly shocking one. Going a few more steps ahead than the Afghan Taliban, this group has clearly expressed its disregard for anything and everything with a semblance of civilised behaviour. So really, what form of the sharia will satiate their appetite for brutality?...

Read it all.

Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in order to improve the image of American Muslims. He ended up beheading his wife in the Bridges TV offices. Now Faizan Haq says, bizarrely: “I think of Aasiya as a martyr. She has given her life to protect the image of American Muslims. And as an American Muslim community, we owe it to her not to let this happen again.”

The last sentence is true. But the only way Faizan Haq or anyone else can prevent it from happening again would be to confront the Islamic texts and teachings that foster the idea that women are the possessions of their husbands, that they can be beaten if they disobey (cf. Qur'an 4:34), and that honor killings are justified under certain circumstances.

"A history of abuse preceded Orchard Park beheading," by Sandra Tan, Gene Warner and Fred O. Williams for the Buffalo News, February 22 (thanks to Alan):

The lives of Muzzammil and Aasiya Hassan were quite different from their public image in the local Muslim and broadcast communities.

In the public eye, they were a dynamic couple, building their — actually her — dream of a Muslim-lifestyle TV channel in the United States.

But police reports compiled for much of their marriage tell another story:

Their home life was a nightmare. Aasiya was repeatedly subjected to controlling and sometimes violent acts by her ambitious but troubled husband.

To protect herself, she went to the police in two states. Yet for years she stopped short of pressing charges — thus preserving Muzzammil’s reputation and the venture they built together.

On Feb. 6, she filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection, barring him from their home in Orchard Park. A week later, she lay dead in their television offices — stabbed and decapitated. Muzzammil was charged with her murder.

“I think of Aasiya as a martyr,” said Faizan Haq, a local professor who helped launch Bridges TV, the station in Orchard Park that the Hassans started in 2004. “She has given her life to protect the image of American Muslims. And as an American Muslim community, we owe it to her not to let this happen again.”

The Hassans were well-known to local police, both in Orchard Park and Texas, where Muzzammil has family. Police were called to their Orchard Park home more than a dozen times for domestic issues dating back 2z years. And in 2006, Aasiya told police that the abuse had been going on “for about the last six years.”

The abuse, according to police reports, ranged from restrictive control to outbursts of violence, including a black eye and fat lip.

At various times, Aasiya accused her husband of physically preventing her from calling the police, abandoning her vehicle in Clarence so she couldn’t flee and pouring water on her to keep her from sleeping.

A nationwide debate has begun among Muslim leaders and women’s advocates about what role religion and culture may have played in this awful killing.

That debate continues....

Really? All I see in the mainstream media are denials that religion had anything to do with this at all. Where is this debate?

Incitement to hatred against non-Muslims? In the Qur'an, the Book of Peace? You gotta be kidding!

(9:5) Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.;

(9:28) O ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean. So let them not come near the Inviolable Place of Worship after this their year. If ye fear poverty (from the loss of their merchandise) Allah shall preserve you of His bounty if He will. Lo! Allah is Knower, Wise.;

(4:101) And when ye go forth in the land, it is no sin for you to curtail (your) worship if ye fear that those who disbelieve may attack you. In truth the disbelievers are an open enemy to you.;

(9:123) O ye who believe! Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you, and know that Allah is with those who keep their duty (unto Him).;

(4:56) Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise.;

(9:23) O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers.;

(9:37) Postponement (of a sacred month) is only an excess of disbelief whereby those who disbelieve are misled; they allow it one year and forbid it (another) year, that they may make up the number of the months which Allah hath hallowed, so that they allow that which Allah hath forbidden. The evil of their deeds is made fairseeming unto them. Allah guideth not the disbelieving folk;

(5:57) O Ye who believe! Choose not for guardians such of those who received the Scripture before you, and of the disbelievers, as make a jest and sport of your religion. But keep your duty to Allah if ye are true believers.;

(33:61) Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a (fierce) slaughter.;

(21:98) Lo! ye (idolaters) and that which ye worship beside Allah are fuel of hell. Thereunto ye will come.;

(32:22) And who doth greater wrong than he who is reminded of the revelations of his Lord, then turneth from them. Lo! We shall requite the guilty.;

(48:20) Allah promiseth you much booty that ye will capture, and hath given you this in advance, and hath withheld men's hands from you, that it may be a token for the believers, and that He may guide you on a right path.;

(8:69) Now enjoy what ye have won [in war], as lawful and good, and keep your duty to Allah. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.;

(66:9) O Prophet! Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern with them. Hell will be their home, a hapless journey's end.;

(41:27) But verily We shall cause those who disbelieve to taste an awful doom, and verily We shall requite them the worst of what they used to do.;

(41:28) That is the reward of Allah's enemies: the Fire. Therein is their immortal home, payment forasmuch as they denied Our revelations.;

(9:111) Lo! Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden will be theirs: they shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain. It is a promise which is binding on Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur'an. Who fulfilleth His covenant better than Allah? Rejoice then in your bargain that ye have made, for that is the supreme triumph.;

(9:68) Allah promiseth the hypocrites, both men and women, and the disbelievers fire of hell for their abode. It will suffice them. Allah curseth them, and theirs is lasting torment.;

(8:65) O Prophet! Exhort the believers to fight. If there be of you twenty steadfast they shall overcome two hundred, and if there be of you a hundred (steadfast) they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they (the disbelievers) are a folk without intelligence.;

(5:51) O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.;

(9:29) Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.;

(5:14) And with those who say: "Lo! we are Christians," We made a covenant, but they forgot a part of that whereof they were admonished. Therefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will inform them of their handiwork.;

(4:89) They long that ye should disbelieve even as they disbelieve, that ye may be upon a level (with them). So choose not friends from them till they forsake their homes in the way of Allah; if they turn back (to enmity) then take them and kill them wherever ye find them, and choose no friend nor helper from among them;

(9:14) Fight them! Allah will chastise them at your hands, and He will lay them low and give you victory over them, and He will heal the breasts of folk who are believers."

(There are many more where those came from -- just peruse pretty much any segment of my Jihad Watch Blogging the Qur'an series.)

"B.C. man who filed human rights complaint after reading Koran has case dismissed," from The Canadian Press, February 21 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- A B.C. man who filed a human rights complaint after buying a copy of the Koran at a Chapters bookstore has had that complaint dismissed.

John Simpson alleged certain verses of the Koran discriminate against people of Christian and Jewish faith and filed his complaint against Indigo Books & Music Inc. (TSX:IDG), the store's parent company.

Simpson's complaint came under Section 7 of the Human Rights Code.

The section states that a person must not publish any statement that is likely to expose a person or group to hatred or contempt because of their religion.

But B.C. Human Rights Tribunal member Barbara Humphreys says Simpson didn't explain how the Koran, the central religious text of Islam that has existed for more than 1,300 years, had a negative impact on him.

Humphreys dismissed the case after ruling that Simpson's complaint would not further the purposes of the Human Rights Code.

Of course. Because the purpose of the Human Rights Code is to silence criticism of Islamic jihad supremacism, not to put pressure on Muslims because of Islam's violent and supremacist doctrines.

No one has claimed responsibility at this point. We have seen jihadists target tourists in Egypt before. "Tourists hit by Cairo bomb blast," from the BBC, February 22 (thanks to Larry):

A bomb explosion in Cairo has killed at least one person and injured 17 others, mostly foreign tourists, police say.

The dead person was identified as a French tourist. An unconfirmed report from Reuters news agency said there were four dead, two of them foreigners.

The blast happened outside a cafe packed with French tourists in the historic Khan al-Khalili area.

The explosion was relatively small, most likely caused by a home-made explosive device, police believe....

U.S. "bullying" is no good, but it's OK for me to bully Israel

Here again we see, as discussed here, that appeasement only emboldens the power that is being appeased. While Ahmadinejad rails about "bullying," it is of course he who is the only one who is behaving like a bully.

"Iran's president calls for "real changes" in U.S. policies," from Xinhua, February 18 (thanks to Pamela):

TEHRAN, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday repeated his call for "real changes" in the U.S. policies, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Bullying powers should make good on their mistakes by making fundamental and real changes to serve the interests of nations instead of killing them," Ahmadinejad told a rally in the central city of Yazd.

"If you... insist on committing your previous crimes and atrocities, your destiny will be no better than that of former U.S. President Gorge W. Bush," Ahmadinejad said, indirectly addressing current U.S. President Barack Obama.

In a live interview with state television Tuesday night, Ahmadinejad also called for "real changes" in Washington's policies under Obama.

"Iran, along with other world countries, is waiting to witness real changes in the U.S. (policies)," Ahmadinejad said in the live interview.

"Talking about changes is much easier than making them in practice," he said, adding that "the United States needs substantial changes in order to maintain its entity."...

Is he saying that the U.S. will cease to exist if it doesn't make "substantial changes"?

"Holy fighters carried out suicide attacks ... in the national university."

"Somali suicide bomb kills 6 peacekeepers," from AFP, February 23 (thanks to JE):

Six Burundi peacekeepers in Somalia were killed Sunday and another 20 injured in a suicide attack by Islamist rebels on an African Union base in Mogadishu.

"There was a suicide attack" against a camp of Burundi soldiers with the African Union peacekeeping force, said Colonel Adlophe Manirakiza, adding: "The toll is six dead and about 20 wounded."

"A vehicle exploded inside the camp" while the soldiers were unloading a truck that had brought in supplies, he said.

The attack, the deadliest against the AU peacekeepers in the Somali capital since early 2007, targeted the base in the south of the city.

Sheikh Muktar Robow Abu Mansur, spokesman of the hard-line Shebab Islamist rebels, claimed responsibility, saying "holy fighters carried out suicide attacks ... in the national university."

One of the suicide bombers detonated a vest filled with explosives inside the camp, he said, while another drove a primed car into the base....

Out to "settle" with infidels one way or another

But there is some "concern." For example, Lord Carlile "expect[s] a light and gentle touch to be applied to ensure that he [Mr Mohamed] is not harassed in any way by the authorities and is given every opportunity, subject to the law, to integrate himself back into British society."

"Guantanamo man 'can settle in UK,'" from the BBC, February 21:

A UK resident soon to be released from Guantanamo Bay is unlikely to face harassment by British authorities, says the UK reviewer of terror laws.

Lord Carlile said he thought Binyam Mohamed would be "given every opportunity, subject to the law, to integrate himself back" into society.

Mr Mohamed has been detained since 2002 and spent more than four years at the controversial US military base in Cuba.

It is not clear if the Ethiopian-born man will be allowed to stay in the UK.

On Friday, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said agreement had been reached with the US for 30-year-old Mr Mohamed's return "as soon as the practical arrangements can be made".

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile is the independent reviewer of terror laws for the government.

He said: "I would expect a light and gentle touch to be applied to ensure that he [Mr Mohamed] is not harassed in any way by the authorities and is given every opportunity, subject to the law, to integrate himself back into British society."

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I hope very much, and I trust, that he will be given every facility available to be able to return to a normal life as a British resident."

The US had accused Mr Mohamed of involvement in a plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in America, but all charges against him were dropped last year.

Mr Mohamed claims he was tortured into falsely confessing to terrorism and alleges UK MI5 officers were complicit in his abuse...

"[The letter] doesn't change our policy in not dealing with terrorists"

Even though the Hamas author of the letter reminds Obama, "There can be no peace without Hamas." At any rate, it appears the Hamas letter will be going to Obama, after all. But not to worry; Kerry insists this will not change policy. More on this story. "Kerry: Hamas letter doesn't change policy," from the Jerusalem Post, February 21 :

The United States will not change its policy towards Hamas, despite a letter which will be passed to the new American president requesting that he engage the group in dialogue, Senator John Kerry said on Saturday.

"[The letter] doesn't change our policy in not dealing with terrorists," Kerry said during an interview with Channel 2. "We will deal with the Palestinian Authority government, with [PA President Mahmoud Abbas], and [PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad]."

Hamas official Ahmed Yousef on Saturday said he wrote a letter to US President Barack Obama, which was received by Kerry during his visit to Gaza.

The letter was given to UN officials who passed it to the US senator during a one-day visit to Gaza on Thursday.

Yousef said that the letter was endorsed by the Hamas government.

The letter calls on Obama "to deal in a fair way with the Palestinian issue," he said, noting that many Palestinians believe that US foreign policy is biased in Israel's favor.[...]

At first, Hamas denied addressing a letter to Obama. One Palestinian official suggested that the letter was the private initiative of an adviser to the group, who wrote it without consulting with the organization's leaders.

However, according to the New York Times, Yousef, the letter's author, called on the new US administration to bring real change to the Middle East.

"There can be no peace without Hamas," Mr. Yousef told the Times that he had written.

"We also said that Mr. Kerry's visit to Gaza showed that the new administration has a clarity of vision and is not controlled by Israeli propaganda," Yousef was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

But, "mercifully," they only get 20 years in prison. More on this story. "Afghan Court Upholds Sentences in Quran Trial," by Rahim Faiez for the Associated Press, February 22:

KABUL - An appeals court in Afghanistan upheld 20-year prison sentences for two men who published a translation of the Quran that drove religious leaders to call for their execution.

The panel ruled Sunday that the men were guilty of modifying the Quran — a crime punishable by death. However, the three-judge panel reiterated a lower court ruling giving the men 20 years each.

The controversial text is a translation of Islam's holy book into an Afghan language without the original Arabic verses alongside. Muslims regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and it is believed that a mistranslation could warp God's word.

A host of Muslim clerics in this conservative Islamic state have condemned the translation — which was published in 2007 and handed out for free — as blasphemous and accused its publishers of setting themselves up as false prophets.

Critics have said the trial illustrates the undue influence of hard-line clerics in Afghanistan's fledgling legal system.

The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for the two men — Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a former spokesman for the attorney general, and Mushtaq Ahmad, a Muslim cleric who signed a letter endorsing the translation.

Chief judge Abdul Salam Qazizada invoked Islamic Shariah law when reading out the sentence, saying death would not have been an extreme punishment.

"He who commits such an act is an infidel and should be killed" according to some interpretations of Shariah law, Qazizada said.

Qazizada did not explain why they didn't issue a harsher verdict...

Because lots of infidels would've jumped on it, bringing more unwanted attention to sharia in Afghanistan.

Hillary has made it a point to express continued support to Pakistan, implying that the government of "the land of the pure" -- which recently surrendered to the jihadis in the Swat Valley by supporting full sharia law -- is taking steps in the right direct. Indeed, according to the U.S. Defense Secretary, the U.S. too may begin to look for a similar "compromise" in Afghanistan. "Pakistan taking steps in right direction: Hillary," from the Daily Times, February 22:

LAHORE: The United States has assured Pakistan of continued support for efforts to eliminate terrorism and extremism, a private TV channel reported on Saturday.

According to the channel, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned President Asif Ali Zardari in China and assured him Washington would continue to help Islamabad in its efforts to eradicate terrorism. Clinton also said she was looking forward to meeting Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in Washington on Monday.

"It was the third decapitation in the insurgency-hit far south in three days after militants beheaded two soldiers on Friday."

"Couple beheaded in Thai south," from Agence France-Presse, February 22:

YALA - A married couple were shot dead by separatist rebels in Thailand's far south on Sunday, who then beheaded the husband and left his corpse in a rubber plantation, police said.

The Thai man and wife, both in their late 30s, were on their way to tap rubber in Yala province at dawn on Sunday when they were ambushed by the militants.

When security forces arrived to investigate, insurgents used a mobile phone signal to detonate explosives at the scene, injuring one policeman, officers in the province said.

It was the third decapitation in the insurgency-hit far south in three days after militants beheaded two soldiers on Friday.

"Insurgency-hit": That's a step up from the standard "restive."

More than 3,500 people have been killed since separatist unrest erupted five years ago in the Muslim-majority south of Thailand. Tensions have simmered since Thailand annexed the mainly Malay sultanate in 1902.

Attacks have become increasingly brutal as the insurgency drags on, with corpses sometimes mutilated or burnt and left in public areas.

"They came at it like a target. They attacked in a very cold-blooded manner, and then they walked away as if nothing had happened." Just doing their religious duty, as they understood it.

"Turkey Militants Attack Christian Bookshop," from Worthy News, February 20 (thanks to Richard):

ISTANBUL, TURKEY (Worthy News) -- Christian workers in southern Turkey faced a tense day Friday, February 20, after their bookshop was vandalized for the second time in a week by suspected Muslim militants, Christians said.

The Soz Kitapevi bookshop of the Turkish Bible Society in the city of Adana was reportedly vandalized for the second time in a week, after threats from Muslim nationalists.

Security camera footage showed two youths attacking the storefront of the shop Thursday, February 12, kicking and smashing glass in both the window and the door, reported Christian news agency Compass Direct News. The door frame was also damaged.

"They came at it like a target," Bookshop employee Dogan Simsek was quoted as saying. "They attacked in a very cold-blooded manner, and then they walked away as if nothing had happened."

GLASS SMASHED

The security camera apparently did not clearly capture the faces of either youth, and police were reportedly still attempting to identify the perpetrators. During the first attack on February 7, the glass of the front door was smashed and the security camera mangled. Both have since been repaired.

In published remarks, Simsek said attacks came after the bookshop received threats from Muslim "hardliners and nationalists".

Conspiracy paranoia may have had something to do with the attack:

Last November, a man apparently entered the shop accusing the store of having ties with the United States Central Intelligence Agency."You work with them killing people in Muslim countries, harming Muslim countries," the man was quoted as saying....

It all started with a broken-down truck that Muslims saw as a provocation. Then the local imams apparently fueled anger at Christians during their sermons at Friday prayers. "Five killed in Christian-Muslim clashes in Nigeria," from AFP, February 21 (thanks to Maxwell):

KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – Five people were killed and four injured Saturday in sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians over places of worship in northern Nigeria's Bauchi state, residents said.

Government officials, however, blamed the violence on disaffected local politicians and said they had asked troops to take over security duties from the police in the immediate area affected.

Muslim youths attacked Christians and burned churches in reprisals over the burning of two mosques overnight in the state capital Bauchi, which the Muslims blamed on Christians, residents told AFP by telephone from Bauchi, 300 kilometres (200 miles) northeast of Abuja.

"I saw five dead bodies on the streets this morning, one of them was burnt," resident Muazu Hardawa said.

"One of the dead bodies was one of five Muslim youths shot by police deployed to the area to restore calm when a mob insisted on burning a church," he said.

Hardawa said three churches in nearby Kofar Dumi neighbourhood were burnt during the violence....

Tensions have risen in Bauchi since February 13 when members of a pentacostal church opposite a mosque in the area barricaded a pathway outside the church used by Muslims attending Friday prayers, residents said.

A truck had broken down in the middle of the road separating the church and the mosque, blocking the passage and the Muslims had to use a narrow path between the truck and the church, further inflaming tensions, according to resident Babayo Hassan.

He said a police detachment stationed in the area had to intervene by removing the barricades and appealing for calm on both sides.

"Angered by what they saw as provocation, an unprecedented number of Muslims attended the Friday prayers and the congregation overflowed to the church's gate but there was no incident," Hassan said.

"But around 3:00 a.m. two mosques in the area went up in flames. The Muslims accused the members of the church for the arson and enraged Muslim youths went on a rampage," he added....

Unwept, unremembered

Some time ago Pamela Geller began to take up a collection to provide honor killing victim Aqsa Parvez with a headstone -- at present Aqsa lies in an unmarked grave, plot #774 in Meadowvale Cemetery in Brampton, Ontario. I joined Pamela in this effort, which was a chance to honor Aqsa personally and to show those who commit honor killings that we in the West will not acquiesce in their devaluing and destruction of these human beings, and attempt even to erase their memories.

As things have developed, however, Aqsa's family rejected the grave marker we had offered to place at her gravesite, which contained her name and dates and the legend "Beloved, Remembered, Free." This was always their prerogative, but it is ironic in light of the fact that family members apparently stood idly by as Aqsa was brutalized and ultimately murdered by her father. They seem to prefer, in line with the honor killing ethos, that she continue to lie in an unmarked grave rather than be remembered. Meanwhile, the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, owns all the land surrounding the gravesite, preventing us from placing a monument near Aqsa's grave.

Pamela has a new update here, and responds here to "journalist" Chris Selley, who slammed the initiative in Canada's National Post. There are also numerous good comments from supporters of the initiative at the National Post site -- see especially the one by John Jay, posted February 20 at 2:58 AM.

In any case, we are not giving up, and are looking into other ways in which we can memorialize Aqsa, and show the honor killers in the West -- and the dhimmis who abet them in various ways -- that we will not let their terror and brutalization, and dehumanization of women, go unchallenged. Thanks once again to all those who contributed to Pamela's initiative. I'll continue to keep you posted.

Steyn on truth, Wilders, Muslims, and the inimitable dhimmi Jacqui Smith: "From Islamabad to Bradford: Degrees of accommodation," by Mark Steyn in National Review, February 21 (thanks to Hugo Schmidt):

Anyway, Geert Wilders’s short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities — whoops, sorry, “anti-Islamic activities” — accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on “public order” grounds — in other words, the government’s fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders’s movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it’s best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn’t, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can’t have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they’ll go bananas and smash the place up.

A fine, pious young man

This is the kind of story that is designed to tug on the heartstrings: here is a good boy, a pious boy, and all he wants is a few minutes out of the school day to fulfill his religious obligations, but the soulless wheels of bureaucracy turn in vain, and the whole thing has become a snafu. Why do things have to be this complicated? Can't you just let the boy pray?

Unfortunately, however, there are other issues involved. The ACLU has been working for decades to keep Christian prayer out of public schools. Now, as you can see in this article, school officials are anxious to be accommodating of Muslim prayer in this public school. The bottom line is that policies should be formulated and enforced consistently; the fact that Islam has obligatory prayer at specified times and Christianity does not should not become a pretext to allow Muslim students privileges in public schools that Christian students do not have.

It must also be recognized that the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization dedicated in its own words to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within, and sabotaging its miserable house...so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions," is working in the United States to insinuate elements of Islamic law into American businesses, schools, and other institutions, and to reinforce the principle that where Islamic law and American law conflict, it is American law that must give way. I detail numerous examples of such initiatives in my book Stealth Jihad.

A cornerstone of this effort has been a campaign to bring prayer back into public schools -- Islamic prayer. Thus public schools in the Atlanta area opted in October 2004, after meetings with Islamic leaders (whose efforts were coordinated by none other than the Council on American-Islamic Relations), to allow Muslim students to be excused from class for Islamic Friday prayers. And in San Diego’s Carver Elementary School, when over one hundred Somali Muslim students enrolled after a charter school closed in 2006, school officials scheduled breaks so that Muslim students could pray during school time, and even introduced sex-segregated classes to conform to Islamic sensibilities. Pork, of course, vanished from the school cafeteria, and Arabic classes were added to the curriculum. Investor’s Business Daily went straight to the heart of the problem when it editorialized, “In effect, Carver administrators have carved out a school within a school expressly for Muslims, elevating them above Christian and Jewish students. They’ve had 15 minutes of instruction time taken away from them, so Muslims can roll out their prayer mats. It amounts to a special privilege afforded a specific religion, which plainly does not have our best interests at heart.”

Some of these accommodations were later dropped after a public outcry, but since public awareness of the stealth jihad agenda remain abysmal, these kinds of accommodations will inevitably recur, sometime, at another public school.

"Muslim boy looking for a place to pray," by Andrea Alexander for NorthJersey.com, February 19 (thanks to Pamela):

WAYNE — Rola Awwad wants a private space for her 10-year-old son at Albert Payson Terhune Elementary School to exercise his right to Muslim prayer.

The school district had offered to let him pray at recess — either outside or in a classroom while classmates are there. And that, says Awwad, is "unacceptable."

All students are constitutionally guaranteed the right to pray during the school day as long as it doesn't interfere with learning. But Wayne is struggling with what accommodations to make if a Muslim student requests privacy for prayer.

The answer in other North Jersey districts ranges from providing access to the principal's office, to providing a spare room. But school administrators in suburban Wayne have been weighing the question since fall, when Awwad asked the principal to allow her son, Adam, a few minutes of privacy each afternoon to pray.

The district says it's concerned about allowing a young pupil to be unsupervised, even for a short time, and Awwad said her request was met with resistance.

"Why can't he be on his own for five minutes praying?" said Awwad, a Palestinian who moved to the United States from Jordan 11 years ago.

She said it's important to her that her children go to public school and make diverse friends. But she also wants them to be able to practice their religion.

"All I want from the school is to let my son pray in a private place in a small room, say his prayer and go back to class," she said.

Muslims pray five times a day to reaffirm their faith and submit to follow divine commandments. The prayer is said during prescribed times; in the fall, when the clocks roll back at the end of daylight savings time, the afternoon prayer must be said during the school day, Awwad explained.

Federal guidelines say schools can't prevent students from praying during school hours, but schools can't sponsor religious activities or lead students in prayer. But the guidelines don't provide specifics on how schools should handle requests like Awwad's. And because that's left to the discretion of school administrators, North Jersey districts have responded with a hodgepodge of approaches.

In Passaic, an elementary school student is allowed to pray privately in a classroom storage closet, Superintendent Robert Holster said. A middle school principal in Cliffside Park allows a student to pray in her office, Superintendent Michael Romagnino said. If an elementary school child wanted a private place to pray, the superintendent said he would ask the principal to make an accommodation in an available office.

And Teaneck High School sets aside a room where Muslim students are allowed to go and say their prayers, said district spokesman Dave Bicofsky....

School board Attorney John Croot said the district thought it had made an "acceptable accommodation" when it offered to let Muslim students pray outside during lunch, or inside in a classroom in days of bad weather. He said the district is trying to strike a balance between constitutional principles.

For school officials, the issue is complicated by the degree of religious practice: For instance, federal guidelines specifically mention a student's right to quietly read the Bible during lunch. But the guidelines are not clear on what a district should do when the expression of religion is more demonstrative, as it is in Adam's case.

"Then you are talking about a public school district,'' Croot said. "You have to carefully weigh the constitutional issues. It's a balance between the free exercise of religion and the concept of the separation of church and state. It's a public school district and you have to consider those constitutional issues.''

Croot said he sought guidance from the U.S. Department of Education and was advised the district should have a consistent approach.

Awwad told the district in a letter that its latest accommodation "is unacceptable." Her son would have to put his prayer mat and touch his forehead on the damp ground if he prayed outside. And she said Adam was worried that other students would ridicule him if he prayed in the classroom.

Croot said "nothing has been foreclosed yet. We are still in discussions. We have indicated one possible accommodation that would have been acceptable, but there may be other accommodations that we could reach."

A small ray of hope that the freedom of conscience might gain some ground in Egypt.

An update on this story. "Egypt: Law Granting Twins To Muslim To Be Reviewed," from Compass Direct News, February 20 (thanks to Ibrahim):

ISTANBUL, February 20 (Compass Direct News) – Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud last week granted the mother of 14-year-old twins Andrew and Mario Medhat Ramses the right to appeal a custody decision awarding her sons to their Muslim father.

Muslim convert Medhat Ramses Labib gained custody of the boys last September, contrary to Article 20 of Egypt’s Personal Status Law, which states children should remain with their mother until age 15. The boys’ mother, Kamilia Lotfy Gaballah, won the right to appeal on Feb. 11.

“We all have a little bit of hope, new hope,” said George Ramses, the twins’ older brother. “Of course, they are a little afraid about everything, but generally they are excited.”

With support from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Gaballah will appeal the Family Court’s decision awarding custody to the father before the Court of Cassation. Family Court decisions are not usually given recourse to the Court of Cassation, one of Egypt’s highest courts, and require special referral from a public prosecutor.

EIPR Director Hossam Bahgat stressed that the Court of Cassation will be examining the law on which the decision was based, not the decision itself.

“The Court of Cassation will pronounce a decision on the legal rule that Christian children, when one of their parents converts to Islam, should be automatically moved to the Muslim parent’s custody,” he said. “So it is very important in terms of changing the legal rule, but according to the law it will not have a direct impact on Andrew and Mario themselves.”...

The boys’ father, Labib, converted to Islam in 1999 after divorcing Gaballah to marry another woman. In 2006 Labib altered the official religious status of the boys and later applied for custody....

The Mufti of Egypt, the vaunted reformist Ali Gomaa, says that custody should be with the Muslim father "unless they change their religion with full will after puberty" -- in which case he is previously on record saying they should be punished.

The issue once again shows the contradictory stances of Egyptian civil law, which reflects both freedom of religion and Islamic thought. A fatwa (religious edict) issued by Egypt’s Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, regarding the case of Andrew and Mario states, “The religion of the two children should follow their Muslim father’s, unless they change their religion with full will after puberty.”

Although this statement allows Andrew and Mario the right to choose their religion “after puberty,” conversion from Islam is not only extremely difficult in Egypt but also dangerous....

And why is that? Because Muhammad said: "If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him."

Tiny Minority of Extremists Update. "Islamic fundamentalism promoted on websites at some Muslim schools in the UK, think tank finds," by Tom Whitehead for the Telegraph, February 20:

Islamic fundamentalism that encourages children to despise British society is being promoted on websites at some Muslim schools in the UK, think tank Civitas has revealed.

It warns the messages are threatening social cohesion and could fuel "ghettoization" and segregation.

A site linked to one primary school said playing Monopoly or chess was forbidden and likened the latter to "one who dips his hands in the blood of swine".

Another warned children in Britain were being exposed to a culture that was against everything Islam stands for, while a third school's website had electronic links to alleged extremist sites.

Others had links to other sites or chatrooms that contain fundamental views such as forbidding the playing of cricket or even reading of Harry Potter books.

Many of the messages, sites or links mentioned in the report have since been taken down, but the Department for Children, Schools and Families last night said it would investigate the allegations it contained.

Representatives of Muslim schools angrily dismissed the study, labelling it "misleading, intolerant and divisive", but the report will reignite the debate over the growth of religious schools in the country.

In a foreword to Music, Chess and other Sins, Civitas director David Green said: "The schools that give cause for concern are being run by religious fundamentalists.

"Their aim is to capture the next generation of Muslims for fundamentalism and to turn children away, not only from Western influence, but also from liberal and secular Muslims, whom they despise perhaps with greater vehemence than non-Muslims."

The report said there are around 166 Muslim schools in the UK, which are a mixture or private or state funded, as well as around 700 part-time madrasas.

But it found some were promoting anti-Western views actively on their website.

The Madani Secondary Girls' School in East London said on its website: "Our children are exposed to a culture that is in opposition with almost everything Islam stands for."

Damage control:

The school was unavailable for comment but the sentence has since been removed from the site.

The Feversham College in Bradford had links on its website for two other sites, one of which allegedly advocated jihad.

A spokeswoman for the college said the two links have now been removed and insisted the college was "unequivocally committed to community cohesion and promoting strong responsible citizenship".

"Our website pages have for some time had links with other sites which are generally informative," she said.

"It has been brought to our attention that some of the content now on two of those sites could be misinterpreted. We have therefore reviewed the position and have removed any links to those websites."

That's how jihadist violence always happens, isn't it? Misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

A third school, a primary, had links with a site which said games such as Ludo, Monopoly, draughts and chess should be forbidden.

The site added: "The Holy Prophet stated the person who plays chess is like one who dips his hands in the blood of a swine (pig)."

The site was not working last night and the school was unavailable for comment.

The report also found evidence of sites saying a woman who is raped is "jointly responsible" for the crime, that women should remain at home rather than study or that the greatest form of veiling for a woman was to stay indoors and keep herself hidden....

Read it all.

With fellow countrymen like these, who needs enemies?

Electronic devices such as "mobile phones filled with explosives, which could kill or seriously injure British soldiers patrolling on foot, and more sophisticated devices that can be used against military vehicles." Quite ingenious these British Muslims; combining their Western heritage (e.g.., technology) with their jihadi blood-lust, they can sure be quite creative.

"British Muslims 'providing Taliban with electronic devices for roadside bombs,'" by Con Coughlin for the Telegraph, February 21:

British Muslims are providing the Taliban with electronic devices to make roadside bombs for use in attacks against British forces serving in southern Afghanistan, The Telegraph can disclose.

The devices, which enable Taliban fighters to detonate roadside bombs by remote control, are either sent to sympathizers in the region, or carried by volunteers who fly to Pakistan and then make their way across the border.

Details of how British electronic components have been found in roadside bombs were given to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, when he visited British troops at their military compound at Lashkagar, in Helmand province, earlier this week.

In a briefing on British operations in southern Afghanistan by Brigadier Gordon Messenger, the Royal Marine commander of the British battlegroup, Mr Miliband was shown examples of the crude, home-made devices that are being used in attacks against British patrols.

They included mobile phones filled with explosives, which could kill or seriously injure British soldiers patrolling on foot, and more sophisticated devices that can be used against military vehicles.

Explosives experts who have examined the devices say they have found British-made electronic components that enable Taliban insurgents to detonate their home-made, road-side bombs by remote control.

The electronic devices smuggled into Afghanistan from Britain range from basic remote control units that are normally used to fly model airplanes to more advanced components that enable insurgents to conduct attacks from up to a mile away from British patrols.

"We have found electronic components in devices used to target British troops that originally come from Britain," a British explosives officer told Mr Miliband during a detailed briefing on the type of improvised explosive device (IED) used against British forces.

When asked how the components had reached Afghanistan, the officer explained that they had either been sent from Britain, or physically brought to Afghanistan by British Muslims who had flown over.

The disclosure is the latest in a string of suggestions from British commanders about the connections between British Muslims and violence in Afghanistan...

The Iranians' impeccable logic to the British infidels was this: We will stop killing some of you in Iraq now, if you allow us to develop nukes unhindered, so we can kill many more of you later. "Iran 'offered to halt attacks on UK troops' in nuclear pact," by Damien McElroy for the Telegraph, February 21 :

Iran offered to halt attacks on British soldiers deployed in Iraq in return for a secret pact that would enable it to continue its nuclear programme, a senior British diplomat has said.

Sir John Sawers, the British ambassador to the United Nations, revealed that Iranian officials openly acknowledged complicity in attacks that killed scores of British soldiers in southern Iraq.

In private talks in hotels around Europe, the unnamed Iranians floated a grand bargain that would have derailed efforts to impose sanctions on Iran to stop its covert nuclear programme.

"There were various Iranians who would come to London and suggest we had tea in some hotel or other," Sir John tells the final part of a BBC documentary on the Islamic Republic's relations with the West, to be broadcast on Saturday. "They'd do the same in Paris, they'd do the same in Berlin, and then we'd compare notes among the three of us.

"The Iranians wanted to be able to strike a deal whereby they stopped killing our forces in Iraq in return for them being allowed to carry on with their nuclear programme: 'We stop killing you in Iraq, stop undermining the political process there, you allow us to carry on with our nuclear programme without let or hindrance'."

Iran supplied arms, training and strategic direction to Shia Muslim militias that were battling British forces for control of Basra and other southern cities. Iran supplied the militias with a deadly bomb, the shaped-charge explosive device, that required precision engineering at its military factories...

Regardless, NATO hopes to eventually enlist Iran's aid in stabilizing Afghanistan.

Searching for a "political solution"

According to the UN nuclear watchdog, now that Bush is gone, a military strike against Iran is no longer an option -- followed by the same old mantra: "Force can only be used as a last option... when all other political possibilities have been exhausted. I don't think we've done that yet." No, and while we waste time exhausting "political possibilities" -- whatever that means -- it will, if not already, be too late.

"Military strikes against Iran no longer an option: IAEA," from the Times of India, February 21:

PARIS: UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed El Baradei says in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday that he believed the possibility of a military solution to the Iran nuclear crisis had been ruled out.

"I believe so," he said when asked if he thought that after US President George W. Bush stood down it was no longer likely that there would be a military strike.

"Force can only be used as a last option... when all other political possibilities have been exhausted. I don't think we've done that yet," he told Radio France International and TV5-Monde.

The comments came a day after International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a key stage in the atom bomb making process, but had slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.

The IAEA report conceded that, despite six years of intensive investigation, it was no closer to determining whether Iran's disputed nuclear drive is as peaceful as Tehran claims.

Exonerated!

More on this story. "Kerry Turns Over Hamas Letter to U.S. Consulate," from Fox News, February 20:

There were conflicting reports over whether U.S. Sen. John Kerry accepted a letter from Hamas to President Obama while traveling in the Middle East -- but his spokesman now says he has turned over the letter after learning where it came from.U.S. Sen. John Kerry has turned over to the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem a letter from Hamas to President Obama that Kerry had received during his trip to the Middle East, FOX News has learned.

Kerry spokesman Frederick Jones said the Democratic senator was not aware that the letter was from Hamas when he accepted it from a United Nations official, and only heard media reports of its origin, which prompted him to relinquish it.

News that Kerry had given up the letter came after the Israeli embassy and a former Bush adviser on Middle East affairs said Friday that Kerry should not act as mailman for a group labeled as a terrorist organization by the United States...

The IAEA had understated Iran's holdings by 1/3. Whoops.

Said IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei: "They [the Iranians] are not following what the Security Council asked us to do, that is: 'Please clarify this issue'."

Among other avenues for meaningful action on the part of the IAEA, the UN, and the international community, it's probably about time to stop saying "please."

"Iran uranium haul enough to make a bomb," from The Australian, February 21 (thanks to JE):

IRAN has for the first time amassed enough enriched uranium to make an atom bomb, the UN's nuclear watchdog declared yesterday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency also said Iran recently understated by a third how much uranium it had enriched. In a report issued in Vienna, it said it had discovered an extra 209kg of low-enriched uranium.

Media reports said yesterday the agency had made the find during its annual physical inventory of nuclear materials at Iran's desert enrichment plant at Natanz, 210km south of Tehran.

Independent nuclear weapons experts expressed surprise at the disclosure and criticised the atomic inspectors for making independent checks on Iran's progress only once a year.

"It's worse than we thought," Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, told The New York Times. "It's alarming that the actual production was underreported by a third."

US President Barack Obama wants to open direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. But getting the talks under way could take months, and officials told The New York Times yesterday Iran was moving quickly with its uranium enrichment.

An Obama administration official who had reviewed the new report told the paper: "There is a steady timeline of improvement, especially in terms of mastering the efficiency of the centrifuges."

This means Iran has been able to increase its output of enriched uranium. The official said there were longstanding suspicions Iran could have other uranium enrichment sites the inspectors had not seen or heard about.

"Everyone's nervous and worried about the possibility of Iran pursuing a clandestine capability," he told the paper.

The IAEA report said Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a process potentially used to make an atom bomb.

"Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the IAEA wrote.

Enriched uranium is used to make nuclear fuel and the fissile material for an atom bomb. The report noted Iran had produced 1010kg of low-enriched uranium.

The disclosure of the unaccounted third came to light when the report noted the new total came from the addition of 171kg of new production to 839kg of old production. But the agency had previously reported the old production as 630kg. So the Iranians had made 209kg more uranium than disclosed.

Analysts say between 1000kg and 1700kg would be needed to convert into high-enriched uranium suitable for one bomb.

According to the IAEA, there are 3964 centrifuges actively enriching uranium in Natanz, 164 more than in November. On top of those, a further 1476 centrifuges were undergoing vacuum or dry-run tests without nuclear material and an extra 125 had been installed but remained stationary.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei complained earlier this week that Tehran was not co-operating.

"Iran right now is not providing any access, any clarification with regards to the whole area of the possible military dimension," he said at a conference in Paris.

"They are not following what the Security Council asked us to do, that is: 'Please clarify this issue'," Mr ElBaradei said.

The IAEA conceded that, despite six years of intensive investigation, it was no closer to determining whether Iran's disputed nuclear drive was entirely peaceful, as Tehran has claimed.

Ahmadullah Sais Niazi's web of deceit goes back a number of years. But it looks like his lies have finally caught up with him. "Man with possible tie to bin Laden is arrested," by Salvador Hernandez for the Orange County Register, February 20:

TUSTIN A local man lied to obtain citizenship, a U.S. passport, and about a trip to Pakistan in 2005 – information he is believed to have falsified to hide alleged connections to terrorists and terrorist organizations abroad, authorities said.

Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a 34-year-old man from Tustin who was born in Afghanistan, was taken into custody by federal authorities this morning in the 13000 block of Charloma Drive, officials said.

He is facing several charges, ranging from perjury to naturalization fraud, misuse of a passport obtained by fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency. Court documents also show that Niazi and his wife, Jamilah Amin, had been investigated by federal authorities since at least June 2008, for several suspicious financial transactions in the Unites States and financial transfers to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While Niazi is not facing any terrorism-related charges, officials said he made several false statements to cover up what they allege are connections to organizations such as al-Qaida, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and the Taliban.

According to a federal indictment unsealed today, Niazi hid his alleged connections with terrorist groups when he applied for residency, citizenship and a U.S. passport. The arrest comes after months of investigation conducted by the Orange County Joint Terrorist Task Force, said Laura Eimiller, spokeswoman for the FBI.

According to the unsealed indictment, on Feb. 24, 2004, Niazi lied in his naturalization application by not stating other names he used in the past and lying about being associated with terrorist organizations.

“In truth, and in fact, as defendant Niazi then well knew, he was associated with one or more terrorist organizations, namely al-Qaeda, HIG, and/or the Taliban,” the indictment reads.

In 2005, Niazi is also believed to have traveled to Pakistan, where he met with Dr. Amin al-Haq, who has been identified by the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control as a global terrorist, according to officials. Al-Haq, according to the indictment, is believed to be Osama bin Laden’s security coordinator.

Niazi identified al-Haq as his sister’s husband. According to the search warrant affidavit, al-Haq was a member of the Afghan mujahedeen who fought the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Niazi said his family disapproved of his sister’s marriage and that he knew al-Haq was a member of Hezb-e-Islami, but that he didn’t know if he was a member of al-Qaeda.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said he could not comment on why Niazi would have met with al-Haq. [...]

Federal agents had searched Niazi’s home before in June 2008, where authorities seized several documents that showed that he and his wife used an unlicensed money-transfer system to make several transfers totaling $16,400 to Peshawar, Pakistan and Kabul, Afghanistan, between 1999 and 2006, according to a search warrant affidavit.

According to the affidavit, more than $30,000 was also deposited to the couple’s bank account in a five-month period beginning in Sept. 2007. Niazi was currently involved a company named California Food Channel, which distributed fruits, nuts and berries from overseas to California markets, but his compensation was not made in cash.

Authorities also investigated transactions between Niazi’s account and another accounts under the names of his wife and his in-laws, accounts that investigators believe showed a pattern of transactions made to evade Currency Transaction Reports, which financial institutions must make when transactions greater than $10,000 are made. One of those accounts showed that almost $600,000 was deposited into one account in about a year’s time – almost a third of it was made in cash.

The indictment also alleges that Niazi lied about a two-week trip he took to Pakistan in May 2004.When he returned from Pakistan, Niazi is alleged to have said that he had traveled to Qatar to visit family.

If convicted, Niazi faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in jail.

For the record, "Swat-style" truce refers to the recent capitulation of the Pakistani government when it gave in to the Taliban's demands to enforce sharia law -- which is, after all, the ultimate motivation of jihadis everywhere. More troubling is the fact that, according to this report, NATO hopes to begin relying on Iran to stabilize Afghanistan, not "immediately," of course, but "at a certain stage" -- you know, some time after Barack and Hillary have endeared the entire Muslim world to the West, and all these silly misunderstandings, suspicions, and jihadi blood-lust just go away.

"Swat-style Afghan truce acceptable: US," from the Daily Times, February 21 :

Gates says political reconciliation has to be part of long-term solution

KRAKOW: Washington could accept a political agreement between the Afghan government and Taliban along the lines of the truce in Pakistan, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

Gates’ comments at the close of a NATO meeting contrasted with those of Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who said he was worried that the peace deal was tantamount to surrender by Pakistan.

“We have said all along that ultimately some sort of political reconciliation has to be part of the long-term solution in Afghanistan,” Gates said.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said at the defence meeting that a broader regional approach was needed to help put down the insurgency in Afghanistan. The focus would be on more involvement from Pakistan, but could include Iran one day, he said.

He said the suggestion does not mean that NATO plans to enter into dialogue with Iran immediately but that Tehran could be involved “at a certain stage ... in a regional approach toward Afghanistan”.

Gates told reporters in Krakow, southern Poland, later that up to 20 nations have offered to boost their civilian or military commitments to Afghanistan and more are likely to do so soon.

Slate notes that "a Muslim man was accused of beheading his wife last week" -- a cursory and uninformative way to explain what happened in Buffalo last week -- and Slate's Explainer feature today undertakes to explain whether or not there is "any special significance to beheading in Islam." And the answer that The Explainer gives us is...Well, yes, but other people do it too!

Longtime Jihad Watch readers, and particularly readers of Hugh Fitzgerald's remarkable body of work, will know that this is a logical fallacy known as tu quoque -- an attempt to mitigate one's responsibility for a wrongdoing by pointing out that others also, perhaps even the accuser, do the same thing. It is a fallacy because it doesn't matter how many men behead their wives, it is wrong in every case. If the men are Christians, or Jews, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Muslims, or atheists, it is wrong. If a Christian beheads his wife, it doesn't mean that the Muslim who beheads his wife the following week is somehow less responsible for his deed than he otherwise would have been. And if that Muslim beheads his wife because he believes that to do so is in line with Islamic texts and teachings, then those texts and teachings have to be addressed in some way -- discarded, reevaluated, reinterpreted -- in order to try to prevent recurrence of the behavior. And the existence of similar texts or teachings in other traditions does nothing to make this confrontation any less necessary.

Tu quoque is also misplaced in this instance, as in most instances, because it simply isn't true. There is justification in Islamic Scripture and tradition for beheading, and Muslims throughout history have considered that in beheading people they have been following the dictates of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and the example of Muhammad. And people who behead other people today are not exclusively Muslim, but they are overwhelmingly Muslims who are doing so in accord with the dictates of Islam. There simply aren't Jews or Christians beheading people and citing the example of David and Goliath, or Judith and Holofernes.

Why does this matter? Because to call attention to Biblical passages that no one believes are applicable in today's world, as if they were the equivalent of Qur'anic passages that are considered applicable today by jihadists the world over, is simply to avoid the hard work of scrutinizing how Islamic texts and teachings may have influenced Muzzammil Hassan as he came to believe that his wife must be beheaded -- and to sidestep the necessity of doing something about those texts and teachings so that there are no more Muzzammil Hassans.

"Decapitation and the Muslim World: Is there any special significance to beheading in Islam?," by Nina Shen Rastogi in Slate, February 20 (thanks to Meryl Yourish):

A Muslim man was accused of beheading his wife last week in Buffalo, N.Y. In recent years, Islamic terrorist groups have made a common practice of decapitating their political and religious enemies and broadcasting the acts in gory videos. Is there any significance to beheading in Islam?

Yes, but it's important in other cultures, too. As Lee Smith noted in a 2004 Slate piece, two verses in the Quran refer to decapitation—both in the context of religious war. Sura 47, verse 4 reads: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks." However, this line has generally been interpreted by Islamic scholars to mean that when facing infidels on the battlefield, one must strike with a deadly force. (The verse goes on to say that once you have fully subdued your enemy, survivors should be shown "generosity and ransom.") The same is true in sura 8, verse 12, in which it's recalled that the Lord said to the angels at the Battle of Badr, "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instil [misspelling is in original] terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them." Both verses are traditionally understood as inspirations to ferocity and not literal calls for beheading.

Actually, the literal understanding of this verse is paramount among Islamic commentators. Ibn Kathir says that it means that when Muslims “fight against” unbelievers, they should “cut them down totally with your swords.” The Tafsir al-Jalalayn spells it out further: “in other words, slay them — reference is made to the ‘striking of the necks’ because the predominant cause of being slayed is to be struck in the neck.” And Zamakhshari takes “strike at the necks” to mean that Muslims should strike non-Muslims specifically on the neck rather than elsewhere, so as to make sure they are dead and not just wounded.

Modern-day jihad groups such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in Iraq a few years ago pointed to this and other Qur’anic verses as justifications for their beheadings. And when al-Zarqawi beheaded Nick Berg in 2004, he invoked Muhammad's example: "Is it not time for you [Muslims] to take the path of jihad and carry the sword of the Prophet of prophets?... The Prophet, the most merciful, ordered [his army] to strike the necks of some prisoners in [the battle of] Badr and to kill them... And he set a good example for us."

Islamic history does have its share of prominent beheadings, however. Muhammad's earliest biographer, Ibn-Ishaq, describes how the prophet approved the beheadings of between 600 and 900 men from the Jewish Quyraza tribe following the Battle of the Trench.

It is refreshing to see this acknowledged at Slate, since Islamic apologists usually deny it, despite its presence in the earliest biography of Muhammad. But fear not! Christians did it too:

Decapitation of a dead enemy on the battlefield was the "primary form of symbolic aggression among Ottoman soldiers," according to this history of the Ottoman Empire. However, Christian Crusaders were known to do likewise—Fulcher of Chartres chronicles how, in 1099, 10,000 Jews and Arabs were beheaded in the Temple of Solomon during the capture of Jerusalem.

Outside the context of warfare, beheadings are accepted as a criminal sanction in parts of the modern Islamic world. Under Sharia law, there are no crimes that specifically call for decapitation, but it is one of a range of execution methods that may be employed, along with stoning or hanging. Saudi Arabia is the only nation that continues to make regular and official use of decapitation, though as of 2004, Yemen, Iran, and Qatar had laws on their books that explicitly allow it.

But fear not! Non-Muslim countries do it too:

Among Western countries, court-sanctioned beheadings continued well into the 20th century: Murderer Johann Alfred Ander was Sweden's last decapitation in 1910; the last German to be beheaded was Berthold Wehmeyer in 1949; and the last guillotining in France took place in 1977—though death by the "national razor" remained on the books until 1981, when France abolished the death penalty.

There's at least one mention of a righteous beheading in the Bible—according to the Old Testament, David killed Goliath with a stone and then ran to the giant, drew his sword from his sheath, "and slew him, and cut off his head therewith," before carrying the trophy to Jerusalem. And in the deuterocanonical book of Judith, the beautiful Hebrew widow seduces the Babylonian tyrant Holofernes and then, after getting him drunk, cuts off his head. For the act she is "made great," becoming "the most renowned in all the land of Israel" (16:25).

Well, then! As soon as I see a squadron of Catholic militants beheading people and invoking the Book of Judith, I will retract everything in this article.

At the end of the piece, the author, Nina Shen Rastogi, thanks a number of Islamic scholars, presumably for providing her with information about beheading and Islam: Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Anver Emon of the University of Toronto, Dipak Gupta of San Diego State University, Regina Janes of Skidmore College, and...Khaleel Mohammed of San Diego State.

Khaleel Mohammed. Ah.

They knew

They knew, and apparently kept silent. "Muslim community knew of Hassan's abuse," by Mylous Hairston for WIVB, February 19 (thanks to Axel):

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WIVB) - A grand jury will now decide whether the founder of Bridges TV will go to trial for the decapitation murder of his wife, Aasiya Zubair Hassan.

"Everyone in the Muslim community was aware that she was indeed going through abuse," said Attorney Nadia Shahram." [sic]

Did anyone in the Muslim community report Muzzammil Hassan to authorities?

Although not evident in family pictures, investigators say the 37-year-old mother endured abuse at the hands of her husband, Muzzammil Hassan.

Hassan is accused of beheading his wife last Thursday at Bridges TV in Orchard Park.

He walked into Orchard police headquarters and told them that his wife is dead. "Well, obviously that statement is part of the case and will be part of the proof the prosecution has," said James Harrington, Hassan's Defense Attorney.

Hassan founded Bridges TV following the 9/11 attacks against America. He wanted to dispel stereotypes about Muslims and to bridge cultures.

"We have to make sure act of one Muslim does not create any doubt on the religion of Islam," said Shahram.

Shahram added, "This act has no roots in the religion of Islam. It's just unfortunate that we have a bad practioner [sic] of Islam."

Yeah, there are so many of those -- Muslims who believe that violence against women is justified. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. Dominating their women by violence is a prerogative Muslim men cling to tenaciously. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.

The Qur'an says: “Men shall take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has guarded. And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them…” (4:34)

The Islamic prophet Muhammad was once told that “women have become emboldened towards their husbands,” whereupon he “gave permission to beat them” (Sunan Abu Dawud, book 11, no. 2141). He was unhappy with the women who complained, not with their husbands who beat them.

Muhammad even struck his favorite wife, Aisha. One night, thinking she was asleep, he went out. Aisha surreptitiously followed him. When he found out what she had done, he hit her: “He struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?” (Sahih Muslim, book 4, no. 2127).

Nothing in there about killing one's wife, of course. But when it comes to honor killing, there is the fact that some majority Muslim countries, even modern, moderate Jordan, have lesser penalties for honor murders -- it is understood that such crimes are justified in the right circumstances. This is the kind of thing that has to be confronted, or there are going to be more Aasiyah Hassans in the United States.

Aasiyah had recently filed for divorce and got a court order of protection.

"Divorce means shame for Muslim woman," said Shahram.

And shame, of course, leads others to try to restore their honor.

Dr. Strangelove inspects the Natanz uranium enrichment plant

1939 Alert. "Israel: Iran, Syria secretly continuing nuclear projects," from the Jerusalem Post, February 20 (thanks to Louis):

"Iran and Syria are secretly working on nuclear technology in a manner which risks peace in the region and the world and while bluntly ignoring their international obligations," a statement by the Foreign Ministry said Friday evening.

The statement was issued following a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which indicated Iran was continuing to enrich uranium.

"The report on Iran indicates a continuation of the uranium enrichment project which goes against the [UN's] Security Council's resolutions and proves Iran's lack of cooperation with the IAEA's effort to clear up heavy suspicions over the military goals of Iran's plan," the statement continues.

Israel also expressed concern over the Syrian military facility bombed in September 2007 and was expecting the IAEA "to continue investigating, including visiting other sites to which Syria is currently blocking access."

Earlier Friday, experts said a recent report by the UN nuclear watchdog which stated that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment program neglected to underscore the fact that Teheran already had enough fissile material to produce an atomic bomb....

Possible victim of "all-jihadi-violence-traces-back-to-Israel" syndrome

Or simply just another delusional/wishful-thinking ex-CIA agent? "An Obama Adviser's Not-So-Bright Idea for Winning in Afghanistan," by John McCormack for the Weekly Standard, February 20:

President Obama named Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official and Brooking Institution scholar, to head up a review team for overhauling U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Via the Christian Science Monitor, a big part of Riedel's grand strategy for winning in Afghanistan is, um, securing a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel:

Ultimately, the solution in Afghanistan may involve solving the age-old conflict between the Arab states and Israel, says administration adviser Riedel in a book published by the Brookings Institution, a foreign-policy think tank, last year. Al Qaeda, and the Taliban to some extent, continue to be motivated by the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Riedel argues. If that conflict is resolved, Al Qaeda may go away.

"If Palestinians choose to make peace with Israel, the most fundamental point of Al Qaeda's narrative becomes irrelevant," Riedel writes. "In other words, making peace between Israelis and Arabs is not only wise policy in its own right, but also an extremely useful strategy for pulling the rug out from under Al Qaeda."

A few points:

1. The conflict between Palestinians and Israel is not "the most fundamental point of Al Qaeda's narrative"--see bin Laden's 1996 declaration of war against the United States. He cites a number of grievances regarding flashpoints throughout the Muslim world. Does the Palestinian issue really motivate jihadists in Afghanistan/Pakistan more than the conflict, much closer to home, with India?

2. The deep theological/ideological underpinnings for jihad aren't going to go away if the Palestinians agree to a peace deal. Raymond Ibrahim's recent review of The Mind of Jihad serves as useful reminder of this fact.

3. Is there any indication that Palestinians are going to "choose to make peace with Israel" in the near future? It seems delusional think that Hamas will choose to lay down its arms.[...]

If one of Obama's top advisers thinks that holding Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at Camp David will lead to victory in Afghanistan, then we may be in bigger trouble than we thought.

The jihadists and their supporters keep telling us that this is a religious issue, not a political one, and the learned analysts in the West keep refusing to believe it, and keep telling themselves and us that a concerted effort at winning hearts and minds, to the tune of a few billion here and a few billion there, will solve the problem.

"Egyptian Cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar: The Arab World Is Ruled By the Scum of the Earth and the Garbage of All Nations; I Am 'Absolutely' Calling to Wage Jihad Against the Jews, Who Are Devils in Human Form," from MEMRI, February 20 (thanks to Looney Tunes):

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 6, 2009.

To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2033.htm.

To view the MEMRI TV page for Egyptian cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar, visit http://www.memritv.org/subject/en/638.htm.(1)

TO VIEW THIS CLIP AND OTHERS, YOU MUST LOG IN/REGISTER FOR MEMRI TV, AT http://subscriptions.memri.org/content/en/member_registr_tv.htm. REGISTRATION IS FREE OF CHARGE.

Al-Naggar starts with some choice conspiracy fantasies:

"The West Wanted To Avenge Its Defeat In The Crusades, So It Gathered These Dispersed [Jewish] Communities... And Planted Them In The Heart Of The Arab World"

Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "I have written about the conspiracy against the Palestinian people, and about how this abominable conspiracy was hatched by Britain and France, in collaboration with several Western countries. In our days, this conspiracy has been adopted by the U.S.

"This conspiracy has many causes. The West wanted to avenge its defeat in the Crusades, so it gathered these dispersed [Jewish] communities – the scum of the earth and garbage of the nations – and planted them in the heart of the Arab world, thus saying to us: 'We've returned, after you drove us out of this blessed land.'

"The Jews used to live a life of squalor and humiliation, and were fought and persecuted in Europe and the whole world.

"Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found save (where they grasp) a rope from Allah and a rope from men. They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve the revelations of Allah, and slew the prophets wrongfully. That is because they were rebellious and used to transgress." -- Qur'an 3:112

I lived in Britain from the early 1960s, and many stores and restaurants still had a 'no dogs, no Jews' sign. The Jews wanted to escape the humiliation imposed on them by the West, and to shift it to the Arab nation. In this case, two goals coincided: The Jews' goal was to have a state, which would protect them from their humiliation all over the world, and the goal of the West was to avenge its defeat in the Crusades, by returning to the region.

"This conspiracy began in the 17th century CE, when the Jews convinced the British to form the Zionist-Crusader Committee. This committee devised the general outlines of the conspiracy. Later, Europe, because of its hatred for the Islamic Caliphate, launched a fierce war of attrition against the Islamic countries, and the Caliphate eventually collapsed.

[...]

"The Jews have never been faithful to agreements."

Interviewer: "Right."

Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "That is how they are described in the Koran.

"They are those with whom thou didst make a covenant, but they break their covenant every time, and they have not the fear (of Allah)." -- Qur'an 8:56

They are not faithful to treaties or agreements. They depend upon American and Western aid. We – the Arab states, governments, and officials – made a huge mistake in dealing with this as a political issue, when it is, in fact, a religious issue."

At this point the State Department analyst will stop reading. So long, my friend! He is too invested in "Land for Peace" and "Easing Poverty Will Ease Terrorism" to hear or understand this.

Interviewer: "An issue of faith."

Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "The Prophet Muhammad said: 'If [the enemy] treads upon even an inch of Muslim land, Jihad becomes a duty, and a child should set out on Jihad even without his parents' permission, a wife without her husband's permission, and a slave without his master's permission.'"

Interviewer: "So are you calling to wage Jihad?"

Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "Absolutely. There is no solution..."

Interviewer: "But who has the right to declare Jihad?"

Zaghloul Al-Naggar: "Let me be clear. Jihad is the only way to resolve this issue. With the Jews, one cannot achieve anything by means of peace, or a settlement, or open borders, or diplomatic and commercial ties. They are devils in human form. Many people think that Judaism is a religion, but today's Jews are not really Jews, and have nothing to do with Moses and the Torah. They are a gang of evil thieves who stole this land. By nature, a thief who knows he has no right to the land imposes his presence by means of force, by bloodshed, by excessive massacres, by excessive killings, and by destruction, in order to prove that he has rights in this region."...

This manifests the Islamic belief that Judaism and Christianity are illegitimate, renegade, twisted forms of the Islamic message that was actually taught by the Muslim prophets Moses and Jesus.

A.J. Caschetta reviews Ibn Warraq's monumental deconstruction of the work of the single individual who was most responsible for the effacing of honest discussion about Islam and jihad from America's universities: Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism in the winter 2009 issue of Middle East Quarterly:

It is now five years after the death of Edward Said, the man who made it cool to hate the West, and the reevaluation of his thought and work is thankfully well underway. Said forged a career out of revisiting the past, "deconstructing" what he found and writing it anew. Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism by Ibn Warraq, founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society, reveals just how massive a fabrication Said's version of history is. The book spells out in great detail Said's deeply flawed writings and his legacy: the modern academic fetish for examining microscopically the flaws and failings (real and imagined) of the West while simultaneously portraying an ever-peaceful East perpetually victimized by the technologically superior but, of course, morally benighted West. This is the fashionable narrative in the humanities departments of virtually every college and university in America, if not in all of Western academia. [...]

The author lays bare Said's methods of obfuscation, which often use nonsensical and impenetrable prose, insinuation, and outright falsification. Said's ad hominem attacks against those who criticized his work are recounted, demonstrating that Said was both a metaphorical as well as a literal stone-thrower. And the growing list of Said's "historical howlers" (obvious inaccuracies and misstatements of fact) unmasks an amateur historian who was either extremely sloppy or just plain dishonest.

Ibn Warraq's defense of the West centers around what he calls the "Three Tutelary Guiding Lights" (rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism), which he portrays as the cement of Western civilization. From ancient Greece to Victorian England, Ibn Warraq takes his readers on a ride through history, repairing the damage wrought by Edward Said and his Saidists, arguing that the three "golden threads" are always present. By contrast, some of Ibn Warraq's defense of the West is accomplished by a comparison to the East in which the flaws of the latter are examined. This brave and decidedly un-PC tack tells the story of Eastern imperialism (which Said largely ignored) and exposes a litany of human rights abuses in Eastern, often Islamic, nations in what will be an eye-opening experience for some readers.

In reappraising the Orientalists, Ibn Warraq defends their works as labors of love rather than exploitative endeavors. Those readers unfamiliar with these Orientalists will find themselves seeking out their work where, Ibn Warraq tells us, can be found "no disdain, but rather sympathy, patience, attentive curiosity, and the surprise of discovery." Ibn Warraq argues that rather than the conniving and condescending bogeymen Saidists portray, "Orientalists of the late nineteenth century were drawing upon a humane tradition established 250 years earlier." [...]

Those readers who were intrigued by Ibn Warraq's brief scheme of "the three Islams" in the introduction to his ground-breaking Why I Am Not a Muslim[2] will appreciate the elaboration on the idea in his chapter "The Pathological Niceness of Liberals, Antimonies, Paradoxes, and Western Values." This section would serve nicely as a stand-alone piece and as an excellent anodyne to any college freshman who has survived, mind intact, the institutionalized pabulum that passes as "global studies" in most public schools today.

Will Ibn Warraq's new book end forever the deleterious effects of more than thirty years of petulant, dishonest, self-loathing Saidism? Probably not. But any honest acolytes of Edward Said who read this book will either be forever relieved of their knee-jerk faith in the simple dichotomy of Western guilt and Eastern victimhood that is at the core of Said's thought, or they will be forced to participate in their own hoodwinking. Ibn Warraq's critique of Said's thought and work is thorough and convincing, indeed devastating to anyone depending on Saidism. It should do to Orientalism what Mary Lefkowitz's Not Out of Africa[3] did to Martin Bernal's Black Athena.[4] And it should force the Saidists to acknowledge the sophistry of their false prophet.

But it probably won't.

Read it all.

Winning trust is going to be tough!

"Taliban: Afghanistan Will Be 'Graveyard' For U.S.," from CBS News, February 19 :

A former government minister from the Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan says the United States can throw as many soldiers into the country as it wants, they will just meet the same fate as all previous "foreign invaders."

A day after President Obama announced a massive increase in the U.S. troop presence — an additional 17,000 pairs of boots on the ground, coming soon — the former minister told CBS News he couldn't understand, "why the U.S. relies on figures and the number of troops in a country such as Afghanistan, where the number of foreign invaders has never made any difference, and the winners have always been the freedom fighters." [...]

"The more troops that the U.S. and NATO send, the more they will get deeper stuck in Afghanistan," said the former minister, who spoke to CBS on condition that he not be identified.

He still has ties to the militant group, which was toppled from power by the 2001 U.S. invasion, and he claims the number of armed of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan is set to grow by at least a third this year, to 10,000. He said last year they had 5,000 fighters and another 3,000 Kuwa Zarbati (reserves). The largest concentration of militants, he said, was in the southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

He said the increase was not related to the influx of new U.S. troops, but had already been decided due to a change in tactic; moving the fight from the countryside to do battle in settled areas. "The numbers aren't significant, what's important is the new strategy and tactics," he said.

The former government minister boasted of suicide bombers in waiting. "Bombers are our main assets, and still we have a number of suicide bombers."

The compassion of Muslims worldwide toward the Taliban's cause has increased significantly in the wake of "Israel's Zionist attack in Gaza," he said, claiming that donors from many nations have been sending cash to buy cars and explosives, which would be used in bombs aimed at the soon-to-arrive American forces....

Will the Somali government buckle the way the Pakistani government recently did? "Somali clerics call for rule of Islamic law," by Abdi Guled for Reuters, February 19:

MOGADISHU, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Somali religious leaders have given the new government 120 days to declare that the Horn of Africa country will be ruled according to Islamic law, a cleric said on Thursday.

A meeting of more than 100 mainly moderate clerics in the battle scarred capital also said African Union (AU) troops in Mogadishu should be withdrawn by the same deadline and no other foreign troops brought in.

It was not clear what actions they would take if the deadlines were not met.

Somalia's new president, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, faces the herculean task of bringing peace to Somalia for the first time in 18 years after being elected by parliament last month.

The main threat to stability comes from al Shabaab, which is on Washington's list of foreign terrorists. The hardline Islamists and allied groups control much of southern and central Somalia and want to impose their strict version of Islamic law.

Diplomats in the region hope that Ahmed, Somalia's first Islamist president, will be able to bring moderate Islamists on board and marginalise al Shabaab, which is known to have foreign fighters within its ranks...

Take heed: along with "moderate Muslims," we now apparently have "moderate Islamists," even though the word "Islamist" itself defies all moderation, and was supposed to denote the antithesis of the "moderate Muslim." Another oxymoron courtesy of dhimmified diplomatic jargon.

More on this story, including the fact that the slain soldiers were beheaded -- increasingly, the hallmark of jihad. "Attackers behead 2 soldiers in southern Thailand," from AP, February 20:

PATTANI, Thailand (AP) — Suspected Muslim insurgents ambushed a military convoy and beheaded two soldiers in southern Thailand on Friday in the second such attack this month, police said.

More than 20 gunmen armed with automatic rifles ambushed a group of five pairs of soldiers traveling on motorcycles after they finished escorting teachers to school in Yala province, said police Col. Somphien Phuwaphongphitak.

An Islamic separatist insurgency in Thailand's three southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat has led to the deaths of more than 3,300 people since early 2004. More than 30 people, both Buddhist and Muslim, have been beheaded since the violence began.

Somphien said a 10-minute gunbattle broke out after the ambush, and the teams of soldiers became separated. Later, the bodies of the two soldiers were found with their heads cut off.

On Feb. 2, suspected insurgents killed two paramilitary troops in Pattani province and cut off the head of one.

As has been the case with virtually all the violence in the south, no one took responsibility for the attacks.

The insurgents target Buddhists and also Muslims who they believe have collaborated with the government [i.e., "apostates"].

The attacks — which include drive-by shootings and bombings — are believed intended to frighten Buddhist residents into leaving the only predominantly Muslim areas of Thailand, which is 90 percent Buddhist.

A massive counterinsurgency effort has recently slowed the pace of attacks but has shown little sign of ending the violence.

"Sectarian violence"

According to a retired Pakistani official, "frustrated" people are unwittingly undergoing "Talibinization." "Over 30 Dead in Pakistan Bombing," by Pir Zubair Shah for the New York Times, February 20:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful explosion blamed by police on a suicide bomber killed more than 30 people and injured at least 50 on Friday in the Pakistani city of Dera Ismail Khan, according to residents and Pakistani television reports..

The bombing, which targeted the funeral of a Shiite Muslim man who had been shot in the city a day earlier, set off a chain reaction of chaos in the city of about a million people on the edge of Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas.

Enraged mobs attacked local security forces, ransacked shops and surrounded hospitals as members of the funeral procession struggled to secure treatment for the wounded, according to the mayor, Abdur Rauf.

Local police officers were unable to deal with the unrest, Mr. Rauf said, adding that he had asked the Pakistani Army to send soldiers to help cope with the situation..

“I heard a huge explosion,” said Athar Shah, a resident reached by telephone. “We saw dead bodies and blood. We took the injured to the hospital.” But the main hospital for civilians did not have a doctor on duty, Mr. Shah said. When the wounded were taken to the military hospital in the city, staff there said they could not treat so many people.

In recent years, Dera Ismail Khan has witnessed persistent strife between Shiites and Sunnis, with six suicide attacks in recent months.

Terik-e-Taliban, the umbrella group of the Pakistani Taliban, has deployed suicide bombers against Shiites in North West Frontier Province and in the Kurram region of the tribal belt.

The last suicide attack, on January 4, killed seven people.

Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier of the Pakistani Army who was previously in charge of security in the tribal areas, said of the violence on Friday showed the pent-up frustration of ordinary people who felt the authorities offered them no protection.

“The government needs to look into this aspect of Talibanization more specifically,” he said.

A message from the "most wanted al-Qaeda fugitive in Yemen," whose name, "al-Wahishi," somewhat appropriately means "savage" or "barbarian." "Al-Qaeda leader urges Yemeni tribes to rise up against government," from the Earth Times, February 19:

Sana'a, Yemen - The leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser al-Wahishi, called on Yemeni tribes on Thursday to rebel against the government and to confront security forces pursuing al-Qaeda members in their areas. In an audiotape posted on Islamist web sites, al-Wahishi linked the clampdown on Jihadists in five desert provinces to the deployment of Western navy forces in the Gulf of Aden to fight piracy.

"The parties have gathered in the land of faith and wisdom. French, British and Western crusaders, have come to the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden to surround the Island of Islam (Arabian Peninsula) from the sea," al-Wahishi said.

He further accused Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh of "opening the country to this flagrant invasion to please them (the West)."

Al-Wahishi appealed to the tribes to get ready to fight in "the war," by preparing landmines, explosive devises and traps.

He further called on the peoples of Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf countries to "relieve" their brothers in Yemen through backing their fight.

This was the second message by al-Wahishi as the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that experts say is based in Yemen and includes militants from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

He is the most wanted al-Qaeda fugitive in Yemen, and his name is on a list of 85 al-Qaeda suspects issued by Saudi authorities last week.

Al-Wahishi's first appearance in a video last month prompted Yemeni security forces to launch a nationwide manhunt in pursuit of fugitives believed to be linked to al-Qaeda.

In the video, al-Wahishi threatened to carry out attacks against US and Western interests in the Arabian Peninsula.

Magic Madrassa Bus or Dawa Trolley?

Note the standard dissimulation tactics below, in an update on this story. "SF: Islamic Circle of North America kicks off bus ad campaign," from KPIX, February 19:

The Bay Area Chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America will launch a bus ad campaign in San Francisco on today to encourage people to break stereotypes about Muslims.

People can expect to see the hot line (877) WHY-ISLAM and the Web site www.whyislam.org on the sides of more than 140 buses because the ICNA wants to make a point.

"This is our complaint: We want to give the right picture of Islam. It is not about terrorism. It is about peace,'' ICNA representative Mariam Chan said.

Between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. eastern time, anyone can call the hot line with questions about Islam. The Web site also offers free brochures. Chan said a common misconception is that Muslims are terrorists.

"If one Muslim person is not right, don't blame Islam from the few number of presentations,'' Chan said. "So many Christians have problems. You would not say it's allowed in Christianity.''

Here's the problem, Ms. Chan: Devout followers of any religion try to emulate the founder of that faith and observe the teachings he was said to originate or transmit. There is no comparison in this regard between Jesus and Muhammad, or the four canonical Gospels and the Qur'an and ahadith -- no, not even the sahih, or "sound" ahadith. Islamic apologists attempt to paper over this gap by trying on one hand to make Muhammad appear more Christ-like (with respect to the Gospels' portrayal), all while arguing that Jesus was really more like Muhammad than those pesky Gospels let on.

The campaign is a national educational outreach program. The ICNA has also paid for billboards and other bus ads throughout the country to encourage a more authentic point of view on the faith.

The kick-off will take place near Justin Herman Plaza at 77 Steuart Street in San Francisco at 11 a.m.

An update on this story, found buried in a set of Associated Press news briefs -- hence the highly unusual headline. "MINNESOTA: Man faces life ... Mercury in fish ... etc," via the Grand Forks Herald, February 19:

Imams lose complaint: The U.S. Department of Transportation said an airline didn’t discriminate against six imams when it removed them from a flight at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in 2006.

The department’s assistant general counsel, Samuel Podberesky, informed the Council on American-Islamic Relations of the department’s conclusion in a Jan. 14 letter.

But the department did fault US Airways for refusing to book the men on another flight after the FBI cleared them.

The letter is among several exhibits entered last week in a lawsuit the imams filed against the airline and the airport in federal court in Minneapolis. The trial is scheduled for August.

The men claim they were discriminated against because they appeared Middle Eastern and some of them prayed before boarding the flight.

The full story on their behavior can be found here.

Hey, now, mass-murderers have feelings too. But it doesn't mean young students should be encouraged to empathize or identify with them. At best, it's creepy, and in horrendously poor taste. At worst, it could validate the supposed grievances of the 7/7 bombers in the eyes of students, thus inviting a more passive response to the jihad against Britain in its various forms, and reinforce and reward the feelings of Muslim students who might see themselves following in the bombers' footsteps.

"UK withdraws controversial terrorism lesson plan," by Raphael G. Satter for the Associated Press, February 19:

LONDON (AP) — Britain's government apologized Thursday for endorsing a lesson plan which asked students to think like suicide bombers.

Britain's government-run Teachernet Web site pointed teachers to a lesson plan about the deadly attacks which suggested that students think about the bombings from the perspective of the people who carried them out.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families described the site as a "one-stop-shop" for British teachers looking for lesson plans and teaching aids. He acknowledged that the lesson about the bombings was inappropriate for schoolchildren and said it had been pulled from the site.

"We've apologized," he said, speaking anonymously in line with official policy.

The lesson plan, called "Things Do Change," examines life in multicultural Britain. The focus is on the "golden rule" — treating others as you would want to be treated — but it also touches on the London bombings, in which four British Muslims killed themselves and 52 others aboard subway cars and a double-decker bus.

Among the lessons' suggested features was: "A brief presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the perspective of the bombers."

The Times Educational Supplement identified the lesson plan's author as Sail Suleman and quoted him as saying it was an attempt to get children to think about — and challenge — extremism.

"Why do young people go out and do what the bombers did?" Suleman was quoted as saying. "Was it pressure from individuals they were hanging out with? Hopefully, we'll encourage pupils to stay away from those individuals."

But the teaching material drew anger from those touched by London's deadliest attack since World War II.

"I can't see why anyone would think it is a valuable exercise to encourage children to put themselves in the position of men who treated people in such an inhuman way," Jacqui Putnam, a survivor of the bombings, was quoted in The Daily Telegraph's Friday edition.

Thailand's jihadists continue their persistent, random acts of violence to advance the cause of what, we're told, is a Religion of Peace. Funny how that keeps happening. "2 soldiers killed in Yala ambush," from The Nation, February 20:

Yala - Two soldiers were killed when their patrol unit was ambushed by Muslim insurgents Friday morning.

The ambush happened on Kasode-Buesu Village Road in Tambon Bannang Sata of Bannang Sata districtr at 8:30 am, police said.

The two slain soldiers were identified as Sgt Major 2nd Class Samarnmit Phichit and Pvt Piyachat Chukraithai.

Police said the two were part of a patrol unit of ten soldiers on five motorcycles. The unit was routinely patrolling the road to provide safety for teachers when they were fired at.

Poor, poor Muzzammil

The poor thing is "almost in shock." Almost! Here is an appalling farrago attempting to portray a man who beheaded his wife as a victim -- and in the process, of course, to exonerate Islamic teaching for any responsibility for this horrific murder.

Moderate Beheading Update: "Suspect ‘almost in shock’ over wife’s beheading," by Fred O. Williams for the Buffalo News, February 19 (thanks to Soren):

Under arrest in his wife’s brutal death, Muzzammil Hassan is “almost in shock,” his attorney said Wednesday following a court appearance in Orchard Park.

“He’s having difficulty coping with this,” attorney James Harrington said.

Poor fellow. He beheaded his wife, and now he is having trouble coping. What suffering he has been through!

Hassan, 44, appeared briefly in the Orchard Park courtroom Wednesday for the first official proceeding since he was arrested last week and charged with seconddegree murder. His wife, Aasiya, was found beheaded at the office of their business in the Village of Orchard Park.

Tall and stout in a tan suit, he was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, blinking through his glasses at the approximately two dozen people gathered....

“If and when he’s indicted, he’ll plead not guilty,” said Harrington, adding, “It’s too early to know what approach we’ll take, but we’re exploring everything.”

He must have been crazy! Maybe...Islamophobia drove him to it!

Assistant District Attorney Colleen Curtin Gable said her office would seek an indictment against Hassan within 45 days on a charge of seconddegree murder. The first-degree charge is reserved for special circumstances, including torture or the death of police.

Conviction on second-degree murder carries penalties ranging from 15 years to life in prison, to 25 years to life, she said....

Why not first degree murder? A beheading is likely to have been premeditated.

Harrington said that a history of domestic violence will be part of the case.

“They had their problems,” he said.

Orchard Park police said they had been called to the couple’s home on Big Tree Road because of domestic disputes previously. The most recent occasion was Feb. 6, the day Aasiya Hassan filed for divorce and obtained an order of protection barring Muzzammil Hassan from the house.

Although Hassan told police where to find his wife’s body, he has not confessed, Harrington said. Hassan went to Police Headquarters last Thursday evening and said his wife was dead at their business office, a Muslim-oriented television channel on Thorn Avenue.

Obligatory exoneration of Islam:

Harrington rejected a connection between the beheading of Aasiya Hassan and the couple’s Muslim religion and culture.

“No, it does not [have any bearing],” he said, adding, “I think the media is doing a very great disservice to the Muslim community.”

How? Who? What media? What mainstream media story has said the first thing about Islam or the culture of honor killing in connection with this case?

The brutal nature of the crime has raised questions about whether it was a so-called “honor killing,” a possibility that the district attorney’s office is investigating. Harrington called questions about the extreme violence of the act inappropriate.

Advocates for women — some of them Muslims — have called for the community to acknowledge religious and cultural traditions that stigmatize divorce and heighten the danger of violence in divorce cases.

That at least is good. Calling the Islamic community to account for the cultural and religious traditions that justify honor killing is the only way to prevent more honor killings in the future. But what the mainstream media gives with one hand, it takes away with the other:

Meanwhile, the Imams Council of Greater Western New York on Tuesday issued a statement calling it “unfair to vilify the Islamic faith or Muslims” in the homicide.

“To generalize the issue is misleading and masks the real problem that women globally are being abused and domestic violence is on the rise. We must all unite in condemning anyone, of any faith or culture, who harms the innocent and recognize that the causes of domestic violence are not limited to any religion or culture.”

No. False. Wrong. It is not "vilify[ing] the Islamic faith or Muslims" to note that honor killing is widely accepted in Islamic culture, and that honor crimes frequently get lighter penalties than other forms of murder in Muslim countries. This manifests cultural attitudes that must be confronted, or more women will get murdered. It's that simple. These disavowals of responsibility by Muslim imams are only ensuring that more women will be victimized as was Aasiya Hassan.

Ahmadinejad famously avowed at Columbia University that there were no gays in Iran. And why not? Because they kill them. Yet all too many gay rights activists in the West are far more exercised about Pat Robertson than about Sharia.

"Iranian lesbian granted asylum in the UK," by Caroline Gammell for the Telegraph, February 16 (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

Pegah Emambakhsh, an Iranian lesbian who fled her home country after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death in Tehran, has been granted asylum in the UK.

Pegah Emambakhsh fled to the UK in 2005 to escape stoning and has been fighting against deportation ever since.

The 41-year-old lost her battle last year, but was supported by human rights organisation, gay rights groups, politicians and the Friends of Pegah campaign group was established.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has told Miss Emambakhsh that she will reconsider her case.

Her supporters described the move as a "historical victory"....

Nostalgic for the good old days. "Spanish soldier arrested over Islamist videos," from Reuters, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish soldier and his Russian girlfriend were arrested on Tuesday for posting videos on the Internet calling for Islamist attacks in Spain, the National Police said.

Christian Peso Ruiz and Maria Choubina, both 24, were arrested in the city of Granada in Andalusia over the videos, which called for the recovery of territories in Spain -- known as Al Andalus -- which were under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, the police said in a news release.

"They wanted to use the Internet to distribute messages to encourage people in the Muslim world to carry out terrorist attacks in Spain, mixing nostalgic calls for the liberation of Al Andalus with praise of terrorists," the police said....

The Saudis, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, Dubai, and now Bangladesh. This is getting to be quite the jihad house party.

"Bangladeshis involved in Mumbai raids," from Press TV, February 19 (thanks to James):

Bangladesh has officially admitted that a terror outfit operating from its soil may have been involved in last year's attacks on Mumbai.

"Since terrorist attacks have been happening in the region in the past few months, even in Mumbai, there are cross-border linkages of these terrorists," Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Hassan Mahmoud said on Thursday.

Mahmoud noted that the banned militant outfit, Harkat-ul-Jihad, continues to function in his country.

Why? Does no one, anywhere, have the will to move against these groups?

This is the first time a Bangladeshi official has pointed to a Dhakan hand in the attack on India's financial hub.

However, the minister claimed that the members of the group were trained outside before being transported to his country. "Terrorists from outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad were trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan before coming to Bangladesh," he said.

Earlier, Islamabad's highly anticipated probe into the Mumbai attacks had suggested that Bangladeshi militants were involved in the planning process.

The Awami League-led government in Dhaka had strongly condemned the Pakistani claim of links between a terror outfit in Bangladesh and the terrorists involved in the Mumbai carnage.

Pakistan's interior ministry has said "a part of the conspiracy" to attack Mumbai was hatched in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi.

Pakistani media reports say that the attacks were planned in Dubai and home-grown Indian militants also provided the logistic support for the siege....

And that means this for the people in the Swat Valley. And this. And this. Western governments ought to oppose the rule of Islamic law on human rights grounds. But ignorance and political correctness, of course, prevent that.

More on this story. "US privately backs Pakistan's 'Sharia law for peace' deal with Taliban," by Dean Nelson, Javed Siddiq and Emal Khan in the Telegraph, February 17 (thanks to Cyntino):

American officials have privately backed Pakistan's "Sharia law for peace" deal with Taliban militants in the Swat Valley despite publicly criticising it as a "negative development".

The deal, under which Sharia law will be introduced in the Malakhand and Kohistan districts of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province if Taliban militants end their armed campaign in the Swat Valley, has been met with alarm by Nato chiefs and British and American officials.

Nato fears the deal would create a new "safe haven" for extremists,

No kidding, really?

said a spokesman on Tuesday night, while a statement from Britain's High Commission in Islamabad said: "Previous peace deals have not provided a comprehensive and long-term solution to Swat's problems. We need to be confident that they will end violence, not create space for further violence."

President Barack Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan voiced the greatest concern about the strength of Taliban militants in Swat as he ended his first visit to the region since taking up his post.

"I talked to people from Swat and they were, frankly, quite terrified. Swat has really deeply affected the people of Pakistan, not just in Peshawar but in Lahore and Islamabad," he said, while a Defence Department official described the deal as a "negative development".

On Tuesday night however, US officials in Islamabad privately backed the deal as an attempt to drive a wedge between Swat's Taliban, which is focused on its demand for Sharia law, and the al-Qaeda-linked Taliban led by Baitullah Mehsud, the notorious commander who controls much of North and South Waziristan and other tribal areas along the Afghan border....

Anybody want to guess where this is going, even in modern, moderate, secular Bosnia, where everyone knows there is no jihad or Islamic supremacism?

“It is yet another step in an obvious attempt to Islamicize the city.”

"Islam classes cause uproar," by Amra Hadziosmanovic for Agence France-Presse, February 10 (thanks to Morgaan Sinclair):

SARAJEVO – The tiny students, some in their first year at a Sarajevo kindergarten, are led away from their classmates by a woman peering out from a headscarf who will give them a lesson on the basics of Islam.

“Kids have been asking me why they are being separated and what a religious class is,” said a teacher, who asked not to be named. “It was so difficult at the beginning.”

The “bula” – an intermediary between an imam and the family – grabs their attention with animal pictures on a laptop. She then goes on to explain how the Prophet Muhammad traveled from Mecca to Medina.

The lesson seems innocent enough for 3- to 6-year-olds. But the decision by the Muslim-led county council to allow religious instruction in Sarajevo kindergartens has met a chorus of outrage from critics who fear it is part of an attempt to “Islamicize” Bosnia’s capital....

“All of this will just deepen divisions among people here, and that is wrong,” said Helena Mandic, a non-Muslim mother who leads a group of parents challenging the decision.

Muslims account for around 40 percent of Bosnia’s 3.8 million inhabitants. Some 31 percent are Christian Orthodox Serbs and about 10 percent Roman Catholic Croats.

Religious instruction in state schools is optional, and has been offered in primary and high schools throughout the country for the three main confessions since the end of the war.

It was offered for the city’s 2,000 youngest students after a survey found that one-third of the parents were also ready to enroll the kindergarteners in such classes.

The county education ministry defends the initiative, saying it is in line with a religious freedom act in force since 2004.

“We would have been violating that law if we did not organize religious teaching,” said Srecko Zmukic, an official with the ministry.

Each faith has been invited to prepare a curriculum, but so far only Islamic classes have been organized in Sarajevo, where the weekly 30-minute lessons are funded by the city’s Muslim government.

The Catholic Church is expected to prepare its program soon but its Orthodox counterpart as yet has shown no interest, Zmukic said....

At the end of the year, the head of the Sarajevo public kindergarten network, Arzija Mahmutovic, banned New Year’s celebrations and “Grandfather Frost,” a secular version of Santa Claus, ending a cherished, decades-long tradition.

The decision triggered public protests, pressuring Mahmutovic into allowing parents to organize New Year’s celebrations in kindergartens by themselves only two days before the holiday.

Nedim Dervisbegovic, a journalist and Muslim father of three, said the developments were worrying for the future of Sarajevo, a multiethnic city though overwhelmingly Muslim.

“It is yet another step in an obvious attempt to Islamicize the city,” he charged, adding, “I wonder what will be the next.”

So do I.

Kerry in Gaza

Which may have been received by John Kerry, who is willing to "listen and learn." "Hamas 'sends Barack Obama letter,'" from the BBC, February, 19:

The Palestinian group Hamas has sent a letter addressed to the US president via a US politician visiting Gaza, a senior UN official has said.

UN relief agency chief Karen Abu Zayd told the BBC the letter had been received by the UN and passed on.

She did not say if Senator John Kerry had accepted it, and there were no details about the letter's contents.

The US views Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, as a terrorist organisation and will not deal with it.

A former presidential candidate, Mr Kerry was visiting Gaza with US congressmen Brian Baird and Keith Ellison in the first such visit to the Hamas-run Strip since 2007.

The men are not likely to meet Hamas.

Correspondents say their visit appears to be more humanitarian than political.[...]

Earlier he [Kerry] said: "[The visit] does not indicate any shift whatsoever with respect to Hamas... what it indicates is our effort to listen and to learn."...

Just so that everyone is aware who is calling the shots here. "Iran considers offer of US talks," from AFP, February 19 (thanks to News4U):

Iran is considering holding face-to-face talks with Washington but first needs to see a concrete shift in US policy, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says.

"We are considering this offer. It would be good if the Americans' policy changed not only in words but in deeds," Mottaki said during a visit to neighbouring Azerbaijan on Thursday.

"We need to wait to see differences in (US President) Barack Obama's policy compared to that of George Bush. If the United States makes steps towards Iran, counter-steps will be made by Iran as well," he told journalists in comments translated into Azerbaijani.

Asked what changes Iran was looking for, Mottaki replied: "They know well."

Sure. Everyone knows. First, abandon Israel to the jihadist wolves.

Can now be heard. When I originally posted it, many wrote to me saying that the audio link wasn't working. It appears to have been fixed and can be heard here.

And why not? Why shouldn't the Assad regime be encouraged by the White House's lifting of sanctions against Syria, and by all the other conciliatory signals coming out of Washington these days? It's time to step up the jihad, boys!

"'Syria building chemical weapons plant,'" by Yaakov Katz for the Jerusalem Post, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Syria has been conducting extensive construction work on a chemical weapons facility in the country's northwest, satellite images obtained by the defense analyst group Jane's reveal....

Al-Safir is home to a chemical weapons production facility and a missile base that holds a significant part of Syria's long-range Scud D ballistic missiles, according to foreign reports. The Scud D has a range of 700 kilometers and al-Safir is reported to have several dozen underground fortified bunkers where the launchers and the missiles are stored.

"Smiling and swaying to the music"

All while clueless to the more deep-seated reasons behind "Muslim anger." More on this story. "Clinton seeks to improve US image with Muslims," by Matthew Lee for the Associated Press, February 18:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged a new American openness to ideas from abroad, especially the Muslim world, during a visit Wednesday to Indonesia.

Anti-U.S. protests were held in several cities, with some Islamic hard-liners setting tires on fire and others throwing shoes at caricatures of Clinton, but the rallies were small and scattered.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, is the second stop in Clinton's inaugural overseas trip as the top U.S. diplomat. She said that was "no accident," with the trip designed to show support for the country's hard-won democracy as well as its efforts to fight terrorism while respecting human rights.[...]

Indonesia, often held up as a beacon of Islamic democracy and modernity, has personal ties for President Barack Obama, who spent four years here as a child.

Among those who turned out at the airport to welcome Clinton were 44 children from his former elementary school, singing traditional folk songs and waving Indonesian and U.S. flags.

Clinton smiled and swayed to the music.

"I bring greetings from President Obama, who has himself said and written about the importance of his time here as a young boy," Clinton said. "It gave him an insight into not only this diverse and vibrant culture, but also the capacity for people with different backgrounds to live harmoniously together."

Wirajuda agreed, saying, "We have proven here democracy, Islam and modernity can go hand in hand."

Though most of the country's 190 million Muslims practice a moderate form of the faith, public anger ran high over U.S. policy in the Middle East and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration, fueling a small but increasingly vocal fundamentalist fringe.

The militant group Jemaah Islamiyah has carried out a series of suicide bombings targeting Western interests in Indonesia since 2002, killing more than 240 people, many of them foreign tourists. But experts say a crackdown has severely weakened the movement; the last attack occurred more than three years ago.

Security was tight for Clinton's visit, with 2,800 police deployed in the capital along with members of the army, according to local police. Witnesses saw scattered protests and at least five people were detained by police following a rowdy rally by 200 Muslim university students in front of the U.S. Embassy.

Some protesters sets tires on fire in a city on the capital's outskirts and others screamed "Hillary is terrorist."

One of Clinton's goals in Indonesia is to stress the growing importance of a region that often felt slighted by the Bush administration...

Gotcha again, kuffar

"Qatada issued a 1995 fatwa or religious edict justifying the killing of converts from Islam, their wives and children in Algeria. In a 1999 sermon he called for the killing of Jews and praised attacks on Americans." Pay some more money, Eurodhimmis!

"Britain: Muslim cleric receives court compensation," from AKI, February 19 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Amman, 19 Feb. (AKI) - Radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada has been awarded 2,500 pounds (3,600 dollars) in compensation by the European Court of Human Rights. The court's judges ruled on Thursday that his detention without trial in the United Kingdom under anti-terrorism laws had breached his human rights.

After his arrest last year, he was subjected to a domestic curfew and then detained in London's Belmarsh high security prison.

On Wednesday, the upper house of the British parliament , sitting as Britain's highest court, unanimously ruled that Abu Qatada could be deported from the UK to his native Jordan where he faces jail for terrorism....

The 48-year-old cleric, once described by a judge as 'Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe' is still in London's Belmarsh prison. Britain's interior ministry has long campaigned for Qatada's deportation....

Rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the Brtitish ruling, saying there was a real risk that Qatada would be tortured.

Qatada was first arrested in the wake of Al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks on the United States amid allegations that he was one of the most influential Islamist preachers in Europe.

The Jordanian father-of-five, whose real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, claimed asylum when he arrived in Britain in September 1993 on a forged passport.

Qatada issued a 1995 fatwa or religious edict justifying the killing of converts from Islam, their wives and children in Algeria.

In a 1999 sermon he called for the killing of Jews and praised attacks on Americans. The same year, Qatada was convicted in his absence of planning terrorist attacks in Jordan.

This man hates you, kuffar

When the Archbishop of Canterbury calls for Sharia in the UK, this is what he is asking for, although he almost certainly does not realize that. Anjem Choudary, who believes that no non-Muslim can be innocent, and thus that any attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims are justified, is working from traditional canons of Islamic law in calling for this.

Why is Anjem Choudary, who is openly calling for the overthrow of the British state, treated any differently from how a Nazi sympathizer would have been treated in London in 1942?

"Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary calls for people who get drunk to be flogged," by Ben Leach for the Telegraph, February 19 (thanks to Twostellas):

Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary has called for people who get drunk to be flogged.

The lawyer, who recently praised the Mumbai terror attacks, said anyone becoming intoxicated by alcohol should be given 40 lashes in public. He claimed alcohol was "the root of all evil".

The 41-year-old made the remarks on his website Islam4UK, which argues that Britain should become an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law....

He wrote: "Under Islam, all harmful intoxicants will be banned unequivocally, regardless of their classification or their profitability in retail marketing.

"The Final Messenger Muhammad condemned the manufacturing, transporting, retailing and consuming of alcoholic beverages over 1,400 years ago and equated it with being one of the roots of all evils.

"Islam additionally imposes 40 lashes in public for deliberate intoxication, followed by 80 lashes in public if repeated for a second time."

Mr Choudary argued that alcohol should be "removed from society".

He also wrote that everything would be "sound" and "put right" if Sharia law was introduced in the UK, adding: "Islam is undeniably the only real solution for Britain's problems."

And even though the daughter -- her father died during the "stress-jihad" -- is clearly in the right, guess who the (overwhelmingly Muslim) police are siding with? "Daughter Fights Muslim Tenant and Police for Family Farm," from Right Side News, February 17:

The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just learned that a rich Muslim tenant has robbed his Christian landowner of several acres of farmland he is renting in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Distressed by the situation, the elderly Christian landowner died, and his daughter is now trying to recover the family farm, but police have refused to pursue the case.

This is another example of how Muslims in Pakistan specifically target their criminal activities against Christians because they know the justice system is prejudiced against non-Muslims.

Mehnga Masih, a Christian farmer, owned 11 acres of agricultural land in the village Chak 51 GB of Faisalabad district, and rented five acres of the land in 1998 to a Muslim farmer, Zahoor Ahmad Khan, for eleven years. Their contract provided that the land would remain the sole property of Mehnga Masih and Khan would only use it for producing crops.

After a few years, however, Khan cut down several trees so he could build a farmhouse and hired some men to work from his new farmhouse, none of which was allowed based on his contract with Mehnga. To make matters worse, Khan then tried to build a mosque on Mehnga's property.

Mehnga reminded Khan that he could not build without permission, but Khan retorted that he was the owner of the land and could do anything he wanted. Mehnga successfully stopped him from building the mosque by gaining the support of his neighbors, but Khan refused to take down the farmhouse he had built.

Mehnga's daughter, Josephine Akhtar Mehnga, told ICC, "That was a shocking thing for us and we smelled that Khan was planning something wrong and wanted to grab the land." In the meantime, however, Mehnga became seriously ill and died. Josephine is convinced that the stress over Khan's activities drove her father to his grave.

After Mehnga's death, Josephine discovered that Khan had forged documents to say that he owned all 11 acres of the Christian family's farm.

In 2005, Josephine and her brothers made an official request for police action against Khan, but the police refused to follow up on the application, and so Khan became more emboldened in his forged claim to the land...

A press release from the Philadelphia chapter of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI):

CONTACT: Moshe Phillips, Director of Public Relations, info@phillyafsi.com

IN WAKE OF BEHEADING GROUP CALLS ON VERIZON TO DROP ISLAMIC TV NETWORK

(PHILADELPHIA, PA) The Philadelphia chapter Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) has called on Verizon to discontinue broadcasting a radical Islamic TV network in the U.S. immediately.

"Last week's tragic beheading of Aasiya Zubair Hassan by her estranged husband Muzzammil Hassan calls into question Verizon's vetting of Bridges TV. Muzzammil Hassan founded the pro-Islamic Bridges TV propaganda network in 2004 and Verizon carries it on their Fiber-Optic Television nationwide," explains Hillel Bluestein, chairman of the Philadelphia chapter of AFSI.

"AFSI has been monitoring Bridges TV since 2007 and it is nothing more than a sanitized, American adjusted, Islamists' broadcast created as a propaganda effort to portray American Muslims as peace-loving citizens while depicting U.S. policy in the Middle East as dangerous and terroristic," states Bluestein. "Verizon and the FCC must completely re-evaluate Bridges TV and take appropriate and immediate measures to remove it from the airwaves."

AFSI also calls on the FCC to look into the financing of Bridges TV and investigate what laws may have been broken in the foreign financing behind this extremist propaganda effort. AFSI requests clarification as to whether U.S. taxpayers unknowingly financed Bridges TV through the NPR/PBS linked Democracy Now! program that has long aired on Bridges TV. Bluestein insists that the "knee-jerk" reaction that must have been involved in airing this Islamic propaganda may have overlooked the way Bridges TV was financed. "It is time we end the defensive posture most broadcasters have assumed in regard to information on Islam and Muslims," states Bluestein. "We cannot bend over backward in fear of offending Islamic groups in America especially when the material they offer is truly dangerous to our nation's interests."...

In other words, the overwhelming majority of Muslims in Britain. Yet "opponents say the strategy would brand the vast majority of British Muslims as extremists and alienate them even further." If a Muslim believes in all the above, he/she has already alienated themselves from UK society; and so, it is a moot point for the UK to worry about "further alienating" them.

"Anti-terror code 'would alienate most Muslims,'" by Vikram Dodd for the Guardian, February 17:

The government is considering plans that would lead to thousands more British Muslims being branded as extremists, the Guardian has learned. The proposals are in a counterterrorism strategy which ministers and security officials are drawing up that is due to be unveiled next month.

Some say the plans would see views held by most Muslims in Britain being classed by the government as extreme.

According to a draft of the strategy, Contest 2 as it is known in Whitehall, people would be considered as extremists if:

• They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.

• They promote Sharia law.

• They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.

• They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.

• They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Contest 2 would widen the definition of extremists to those who hold views that clash with what the government defines as shared British values. Those who advocate the wider definition say hardline Islamist interpretation of the Qur'an leads to views that are the root cause of the terrorism threat Britain faces. But opponents say the strategy would brand the vast majority of British Muslims as extremists and alienate them even further.

The Guardian has also learned of a separate secret Whitehall counterterrorism report advocating widening the definition of who is considered extremist. Not all in Whitehall agree with the proposals and one official source said plans to widen the definition were "incendiary" and could alienate Muslims, whose support in the counterterrorism effort is needed. There were also fears it could aid the far right.

Contest 2 is still being finalised by officials and ministers. Those considered extreme would not be targeted by the criminal law, but would be sidelined and denied public funds. Ed Husain, of the Quilliam Foundation thinktank, said the root causes of terrorism were extremist views, even if those advocating the views did not call for violence.

Husain, once an extremist himself, said: "Violent extremism is produced by Islamist extremism and it's only right to get into the root causes."

Inayat Bunglawala, a former spokesman for the Muslim Council of Great Britain, said such plans would affect many British Muslims. Bunglawala, who now runs Engage, which tries to get Muslims to participate in politics and civic society, said: "That would alienate the majority of the British Muslim public. It would be counterproductive and class most Muslims as extremists."

In a speech in December, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the government's counterterrorism strategy had to include challenging nonviolent extremist groups that "skirt the fringes of the law ... to promote hate-filled ideologies".

The Contest strategy was put in place in 2003 as the UK beefed up its response to the threat of al-Qaida inspired terrorism.

But the security service's assessment shows no drop in those they consider dangerous and the UK's terror threat level remains at severe general.

The Home Office said: "We don't comment on leaked documents."

Yet another blow to the prevailing wisdom. "Kosovo Albanian with suicide vest arrested," from Serbianna, February 16 (thanks to Islam In Action):

A Kosovo Albanian from the city of Kacanik has been arrested in a cafe in the southern village of Strpce in Serbia’s province of Kosovo report police spokesman Arber Beka.

The arrested Albanian wore a suicide vest loaded with explosives.

He was arrested in the cafe called Kvatro around 8:00 pm today. Police and NATO troops have surrounded the perimeter and are investigating.

The arrest came after a cafe patron spotted that one of the three Albanians who just walked into the cafe had wires under his jacket.

The police was immediately called in and after a search, the police found explosive in a suicide vest on the body of Arben Husi, one of the 3 ethnic Albanians who came into the cafe.

In addition to the explosives, the police found a grenade and a Kalashnikov....

My column in Human Events today:

“We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.”

So said the Pakistani Sheikh Muburak Gilani, leader of the jihad terrorist group Jamaat ul-Fuqra. And the way that he and his organization are “dealing with evil at its roots” is to set up jihad terror training camps all over the United States -- often under the noses of government and law enforcement officials who are either indifferent or too hamstrung by political correctness to do anything about it.

Sheikh Gilani is no shrinking violet, and Jamaat ul-Fuqra is a force to be reckoned with both in the United States and elsewhere. Journalist Daniel Pearl was on his way to interview Gilani when he was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002. The following year, a member of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, Iyman Faris, pled guilty to plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security included the group among “predicted possible sponsors of attacks” on American soil. And in 2006, the Department of Justice reported that Jamaat ul-Fuqra “has more than 35 suspected communes and more than 3,000 members spread across the United States, all in support of one goal: the purification of Islam through violence.” That means, of course, violence against unbelievers.

All the more reason to stem the uncontrolled tide of immigration until governments decide what is truly a "moderate" Muslim (more specifically than "not as extreme as the next guy"), and figure out who is already within their borders. "Europe jihadist push goes underground," by William MacLean for Reuters, February 18:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Prisons and private homes have taken over from mosques as recruiting hubs for Islamist radicals in Europe, a shift that cannot be tackled simply by short-term government security measures, an academic said on Wednesday.

Under pressure from state surveillance and disapproval from local communities, activists who once trawled high-profile mosques for recruits increasingly use more discreet venues including makeshift prayer halls and bookshops, said Peter Neumann, a political scientist at Kings College, London. "This pattern of withdrawal from open agitation is consistent across Western Europe," said Neumann, author of "Joining al Qaeda," a report on radicalisation in Europe published by an independent British-based think-tank.

"A lot of open activities that used to go on at mosques are now taking place in private flats and apartments, as mosques themselves become more vigilant and clamp down," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a security conference in Belgium.

"It's been driven underground. It's much more difficult for people like Abu Hamza to be operating out in the open, although it doesn't mean they have gone away," he told Reuters. [...]

Giving an example of the trend, the report, aimed at policymakers, said: "Mosques in Spain continue to be frequented by extremists, but potential recruits are now invited to private study group sessions as soon as a promising relationship has been established."

Neumann said radicalisation and recruitment within prisons was likely to worsen, noting that before 2001 no European country with the exception of France had a significant Islamist militant prisoner population. Now there were hundreds of such prisoners in Britain and Spain alone, he said.

"Recent years have seen the emergence of radical Islamic prison gangs which -- although not always overtly political in outlook -- are highly aggressive in their rhetoric," he said.

Neumann said such gangs provided inmates with a protective social network and a sense of self-esteem, the report says.

European security services, trying to strike a balance between protecting citizens and preserving civil liberties, had yet to formulate a full response to the trend, Neumann said.

"Sometimes they don't know yet what to do about it. They have awareness (of the trend) but it doesn't necessarily mean they have all the right solutions," he said....

Indeed.

In any event, the ban on kaffiyeh headscarves came as "an attempt to diffuse tension between Jewish and Muslim students, after three students wore shirts to school saying 'RIP Israel'." (Weren't there any consequences even for that?)

Wearing the scarves was politically motivated, and designed to intimidate. But no, those scarf-bereft students are the real victims here. Victims of bitter headscarf-phobes clinging to guns and religion. "Pennsylvania High School Rescinds Ban on Muslim Scarves," by Diane Macedo for Fox News, February 18:

A Pennsylvania high school is permitting Muslim students to wear scarves known as kaffiyehs in school just a day after ordering two students to remove them for class.

More details on the nature of the scarves would be helpful, but they are likely the distinctively "Palestinian" variety like that which Yasser Arafat sported. Still more provocative would be the widely-available "Al-Quds" scarf shown here.

Gateway High School officials met with parents Wednesday after seniors Mohammad Al-Abbasi, 18, and Ahmad Al-Sadr, 17, left school Tuesday after refusing to take off the checkered scarves, believed by some to be a symbol of terrorism.

District spokeswoman Cara Zanella told FOXNews.com the ban was an attempt to diffuse tension between Jewish and Muslim students, after three students wore shirts to school saying "RIP Israel."

The students removed the shirts when ordered to do so but the incident led to a petition from Jewish students saying they felt threatened, Zanella said.

A student then wrote an article in one of the local newspapers about Muslim dress, reportedly caling the scarves "hate" clothing.

"As a result then the tensions started to escalate between the two factions," Zanella said. "So the principal went back to the students and said, 'We're trying to get everyone on the same page here. Could you agree not to wear the scarves for the time being because the tensions are escalating?'"

The students agreed and complied until the incident Tuesday.

In response the principal gathered the students in question Wednesday along with parents, school officials and a number of faith based organizations to find a resolution to the matter.

"It was agreed upon today in the meeting that the students would be allowed to wear the scarves," Zanella said. "They also wanted the students to speak in a group session with one another — the 35 Jewish students that signed the letter to the principal, the students who were wearing the scarves, and the student that did the article."

That meeting was also held Wednesday morning and Zanella said "everyone came out of the meeting with a new sense of respect for the different cultures."

"I think everyone there recognized there's some tensions in the school and also amongst the community,” Al-Abbas’s mother Loretta Riggs told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. “We recognize the need for further education and further dialogue. We were very happy that the school district acknowledged this. They're willing to hold such future dialogues."

Bummer, man. "Taliban drugs factory wrecked," by Thomas Harding for the Telegraph via The Age, February 19 (thanks to JE):

BRITISH forces have seized heroin worth £50 million ($A111.2 million) and killed at least 20 Taliban fighters in a daring raid that dealt a significant blow to the insurgents in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said.

In an operation that involved weeks of planning, 700 troops from the Royal Marines, Special Boat Service and army swooped on a Taliban drug factory and arms stronghold in the Upper Sangin Valley in Helmand province.

Snipers in hilltop positions and Warrior armoured vehicles sealed off escape routes as two waves of commandos and special forces in helicopters swept in.

At least 20 Taliban were killed as they attempted to fight off the commandos, who pushed through the stronghold. Large vats of opium were abandoned....

After a month of work and no pay, he dared to ask for his paycheck. "Christian milkman murdered by Muslim employers," by Daniel Blake for Christian Today, February 18:

A Christian milkman has been murdered in Pakistan after demanding his pay cheque from his Muslim employers, according to International Christian Concern.

Ashraf Masih, 30, from the village of Shajwal was hired two months ago by three Muslim men to collect milk from neighbouring farms and houses.

In January, after working for one month Ashraf came to collect his wages. However his employers, brothers Muhammad Arfan, Muhammad Nadeem and their nephew Muhammad Imran, said that they would pay him two months wages after one more month.

With the need to support his family becoming more urgent, Ashraf returned on 1 February and again demanded his wages.

The three Muslims reportedly responded angrily to Ashraf's request, saying, “You are Esai [a derogatory term for Christians] and you demanded your pay from Muslims, what courage you have. We will finish you right now. Then go to your Esa [Christ], He will give you everything.”

The three men then killed Ashraf and fled the scene.

Babu Victor, a Catechist of the Catholic Church in Pakistan, told International Christian Concern (ICC) that a formal request had been made for the police to investigate the case. The police have begun an investigation but have not yet found the killers.

If Somalis are leaving the U.S. to wage jihad in Somalia, Somali jihadists are returning to the U.K., just waiting to roost.

More on this story: "Why Somalia must rise up UK agenda," by Jonathan Rugman for Channel 4 News, February 17 :

I've just come up for air after several weeks investigating claims that dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from training camps in Somalia.

The security services believe that they may end up using the skills they have learned in Somalia to commit acts of terror here in the UK.

Nobody knows just how many have been there and come back...

In October 2003 I started not one, but two daily weblogs: Jihad Watch and Dhimmi Watch. The rough idea at the outset was to report on violent jihad activity at Jihad Watch, and at manifestations of dhimmitude by Western officials, along with the institutionalized mistreatment of non-Muslims (and women, since that is an inseparable issue) under Islamic law at Dhimmi Watch.

It is over five years later now, and this system has been working well enough, but for two problems:

1. Since Dhimmi Watch is not the main page of the site, many people even to this day don't know that it is there, and do not read the posts there. Fewer people read what is there in any case.

2. The rapid acceleration of the stealth jihad in recent years has blurred the distinction between the two sites. Is the jihadist war on free speech a Jihad Watch or a Dhimmi Watch issue? In 2003 or 2004 I would probably have treated it at Dhimmi Watch, since it is an attempt to impose dhimmi restrictions upon the Free World; however, since it is a foremost front of the global jihad today, in 2007, 2008 and 2009 I have opted to treat it at Jihad Watch.

And these two considerations led me some time ago to the conclusion that two separate weblogs are not needed. After working out the technical issues involved, they've now been combined. The Dhimmi Watch archives will remain available on the left side of the front page, and all links will remain intact. We will, moreover, continue to report and comment on the same things that we have always reported and commented upon. We will just do it all on this single page.

Mixed loyalties?

Surely they would show this same zeal and alacrity if their host country, the U.S.A., needed them to serve in the military -- you know, to fend off, say, another terrorist attack? More on this story."US-Somali youth join Jihad in Somalia," by Abdi Hassan for the Jerusalem Post, February 17:

Dozens of Somali children have left the United States in secret to join the Islamist fight against the foreign forces in Somalia.

The largest group comes from Somali families in Minneapolis and Minnesota.[...]

Abdinur Hussein, a Somali national who lives in Minnesota, the state with the largest Somali community in the U.S., believes that more than 500 youths might have gone to Somalia to fight alongside Islamist rebels.

However, some Somali parents in the US consider reports of children leaving for Somalia to fight a jihad are exaggerated.

Fos 'Ali is a mother of eight, who says she does not believe these reports are accurate, as she hears them only from some American Somalis. [...]

The mosques' leaders regularly receive calls accusing them of pushing the disappeared children into joining Islamist fighters in Somalia. Most of the accusations have been directed at the Abubakar Alsiddiq mosque in Minneapolis.

Speaking at a news conference at the mosque, imam Sheikh Abdirahman Ahmed told thousands of Somalis and their American neighbors that the accusations were baseless and it was shameful to accuse the imams of recruiting children to fight in Somalia.

"We teach people religion in our mosque, but it has nothing to do with what these people are framing us for doing," Ahmed said...

And waging a Somali-jihad against kuffar -- be they Somali apostates or Ethiopian infidels -- is not part of the "religion" you teach? Sure.

Trying to understand

While she expressed "concern" that the Pakistani government relented to demands for sharia, State Department spokesperson Gordon Duguid made the "curious statement here that Islamic law is within the constitutional framework of Pakistan."

"Situation in Pak is a concern: Hillary," by Lalit Jha for the Press Trust of India, February 18:

Washington, Feb 18 (PTI) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the entire situation in Pakistan is "a concern" and warned that extremists there posed a direct threat to the country as well as to the security of US, Afghanistan and a number of other nations in and outside the region.

Clinton was however cautious in her response to the peace deal struck by Pakistan with the Taliban agreeing to impose Islamic law in Swat valley saying Islamabad's efforts still needed to be "thoroughly understood" before making any comments.

She said US will "thoroughly study" the deal but voiced concern over the situation in Pakistan.

"The entire situation in Pakistan is a concern," Clinton told the ABC news in an interview, her first as the Secretary of State to a TV news channel.

"Obviously, we believe that the activity by the extremist elements in Pakistan poses a direct threat to the Government of Pakistan, as well as to the security of the United States, Afghanistan, and a number of other nations not only in the immediate region," Clinton said, according to a State Department transcripts of her media encounter in Tokyo.

Clinton was in the Japanese capital on the first leg of her four-nation Asian tour, her first overseas trip after assuming office as the US' top diplomat.

Clinton's guarded reponse on the Pakistan-Taliban truce came even as State Department spokesperson Gordon Duguid came out with a curious statement here that Islamic law is within the constitutional framework of Pakistan. PTI

"Just say no to democracy"

He was originally jailed in Pakistan for sending thousands of jihadis to battle the Americans in Afghanistan. Maybe if the Pakistani government hadn't released him in 2008, he wouldn't now be actively working for its destruction. More on this story: "'Democracy is a system of Kufr’: Sufi Mohammad," from Geo Pakistan, february 18:

MINGORA: The chief of Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM), Maulana Sufi Mohammad has said the concept of democracy is against the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah.

In an exclusive interview with Geo news, TNSM chief said he regarded democracy a system of Kufr (unbelief). Maulana Sufi said he would remain in the troubled Swat valley till restoration of peace...

Eight Islamophobes on trial in Britain: "TERROR TRIAL: Accused 'aimed to cause death on unprecedented scale,'" by Mhairi Macfarlane for This Is Local London, February 17 :

A GROUP accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners wanted to cause mass murder in the name of Islam, a court heard.

The jury at Woolwich Crown Court were told that eight men, including four from Waltham Forest, planned “heavy casualties upon an unwitting civilian population”.

Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said: “To them, the identities of their victims had no relevance, be it their race, colour, religion or creed.

"What they intended to bring about together and with others was a violent act, which would have had global impact."

The court heard that Abdulla Ahmed Ali, also known as Ahmed Ali Khan, 28 of Prospect Hill, Walthamstow, and Assad Sarwar, of High Wycombe, were the ringleaders in the plot to smuggle improvised explosive devices disguised as soft drinks on to passenger jets bound for north America....

He's stayin'

Thumbing his nose at the spineless dhimmis: "the extremist could still remain in the country for many months if he takes his case to the European Court of Human Rights." And he's doing that, which could keep him in the UK for years.

"Radical preacher Abu Qatada will 'stay in country' despite deportation order," by Tom Whitehead in the Telegraph, February 18 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Radical cleric Abu Qatada will stay in Britain for months despite a House of Lords ruling that he should be deported to Jordan where he faces terror charges.

The Law Lords said Qatada, dubbed "Osama Bin Laden's right hand man in Europe", could be sent back to Jordan where he faces terror charges after overturning a Court of Appeal decision.

But the extremist could still remain in the country for many months if he takes his case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The judgment is a victory for the Home Office in its long-running campaign to remove Qatada from Britain, which has cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds already.

The Law Lords also ruled in favour of the Government over its attempts to deport two other men to Algeria.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said a deportation order will be served on Qatada immediately.

However any attempts to remove him would be put on hold if the case goes to Europe.

Ms Smith said: "I'm delighted with the Lords' decision today in the cases of Abu Qatada and the two Algerians 'RB' and 'U'.

"It highlights the threat these individuals pose to our nation's security and vindicates our efforts to remove them.

"My top priority is to protect public safety and ensure national security and I have signed Abu Qatada's deportation order which will be served on him today.

"I am keen to deport this dangerous individual as soon as I can."

In a statement, Qatada's lawyer confirmed his intention to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The move is likely to delay any moves to deport him for months and even years....

The mujahid

What to do with a life sentence: dawah and jihad.

"Cop killer Kamel Bourgass plots poison terror strike from cell - Exclusive," by Jeremy Armstrong for the Mirror, February 17 (thanks to Mackie):

Osama bin Laden's "master poisoner" is planning terror outrages from his jail cell.

Home Office documents seen by the Mirror reveal Kamel Bourgass is recruiting extremist prisoners to communicate with undercover al-Qaeda operatives.

Bourgass, 33, is already serving life for murdering a police officer.

Held in segregation at a topsecurity jail, Bourgass is being monitored by secret services after evidence was found of a plot involving a "quantity of cyanide".

Reports suggest he was using other inmates at Wakefield prison, West Yorks, their relatives and friends to link with al-Qaeda terrorists in London, where the poison was hidden. A source said: "Bourgass has tried to use cyanide before and appears intent on masterminding another attack, even from behind bars.

"He was taken out of circulation on the wing because we believe he was using others to get information to al-Qaeda operatives on the outside.

"Even locked up he remains a real threat to the public."

He is also linked to Abu Musabal-Zarqawi, who beheaded Briton Ken Bigley in Iraq. Convicted of killing Det Con Stephen Oake, 40, during a police raid on a flat in Manchester in 2003, Bourgass is still described in Home Office reports as a "risk to life and state"....

Now in jail, offender assessments reveal Bourgass "refused to co-operate" with the authorities for the past 13 months.

He is said to be prepared to "use weapons and extreme violence", and a report continues: "He has extreme beliefs, re. links to a terrorist cell in London and possession of explosives."

One document states: "There have been reports he has been involved on the wing in discussing extremist views, hence the recent move to segregation."...

Hadith Qudsi 19:5: "The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance."

The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur'an.

Muhammad also said:

(1) “Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance.”

(2) “On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress.”

(3) “Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage.”

(4) “This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones.” Someone asked, “When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?” and he said, “When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful.”

(5) “There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ….” -- 'Umdat al-Salik r40.0

"Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious." -- The Ayatollah Khomeini

"Taliban patrol Charsadda bazaar," from The News International, February 18 :

CHARSADDA: Armed Taliban patrolled Harichand Bazaar in the jurisdiction of Mandani Police Station and removed cassette and CD players from the vehicles on Tuesday.

Sources said that several Taliban equipped with arms patrolled Harichand Bazaar, a town of Charsadda district located near the boundary of semi-tribal and infamous Sakhakot, removed music equipment from the vehicles and smashed them. They also directed the people not to listen to music and barbers not to shave off beards.

Taliban, the sources added, asked women to wear veil (burqa) or else stern action would be taken against them. Taking prompt action, the Mandani police arrested a Talib, identified as Habibul Haq son of Maulvi Muhammad Alam, resident of Kalakot village of Swat district, and shifted him to an undisclosed location.

During preliminary interrogation, the militant has said that the aim of their patrol in Harichand Bazaar was to launch struggle for the enforcement of Shariah in other areas after implementation of Nizam-e-Adl in Malakand division.

Hammam: Just a metaphor

It's just a "harmless and widely used Arabic metaphor." Of course. Just ask Muzzammil Hassan.

"SKorea slams AFC chief over 'beheading' comment," from AFP, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SEOUL (AFP) — South Korea's football body has demanded an apology from Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Mohammed Bin Hammam for what it called insulting comments.

The Korea Football Association (KFA) said that "if necessary" it would take joint action with other AFC members and file a complaint with world football's governing body FIFA.

In a recent television interview, the KFA said, Bin Hammam made insulting remarks against KFA chief Cho Jung-Yeon by saying he was ready to "cut Cho's head off."

It said the AFC chief had also accused Cho and some other Asian football leaders of supporting the candidacy of Bahrain's Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa for a seat on FIFA's executive committee.

Shaikh Salman is expected to challenge Bin Hammam for the seat in May when the Qatari's term expires.

"We strongly criticise Bin Hammam's groundless remarks insulting us and other AFC members," KFA spokesman You Young-Cheul told AFP.

"The KFA wants an explanation and apology from Bin Hammam over his remarks, which are improper as AFC head."

Bin Hammam has since described his quote regarding Cho as a "harmless and widely used Arabic metaphor" meaning an attempt to thwart someone's progress....

Yeah, sure, that's it.

Instead of standing up to jihadist intimidation. Malmö, of course, is infamous as a jihadist enclave.

"No fans allowed for Israel tennis match," from The Local, February 18 (thanks to Josephine):

Sweden's upcoming Davis Cup tennis match against Israel will be held behind closed doors, Malmö city council ruled on Wednesday.

The match was scheduled to be played from March 6th to 8th at the Baltiska Hallen venue, which can hold 4,000 spectators. Police had said the match could go ahead and that the public could be admitted.

Despite this, Malmö council's sports and recreation committee voted on Wednesday to keep the public out, arguing the security risk would be too great if spectators were allowed.

The decision to ban the public was made after a Social Democrat and Left Party-led motion to have the match played in an empty hall was passed by five votes to four.

The Social Democrats and Left Party cited security concerns for their decision to vote in favour of a spectator ban, as proposed by the head of the sports and recreation committee, Bengt Forsberg (SocDem).

But local Moderate Party representatives were furious at the outcome of the vote, arguing that the match could have gone ahead with spectators and heightened security.

"I don't think we should allow anti-democratic forces decide how we run sporting events," John Roslund, a Moderate Party member of the committee, told The Local....

Uh, yeah.

Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and at Touro College, New York, details Obama's alarming decision to participate in the antisemitic, jihadist-enabling railroading of Durban II. "A Foreign Policy of Obsequiousness," at The Corner, February 17:

Yesterday in Geneva, President Obama unveiled the new look of America’s foreign policy — obsequiousness. It was Day One for his emissaries to the U.N. planning committee of the Durban II conference. This is the racist “anti-racism” bash to be held in Geneva in April. The U.S. and Israel walked out of the first go-round in Durban, South Africa in September 2001. Ever since, the U.S. government has refused to lend any credibility to the Declaration adopted after they left. That is, until yesterday.

U.S. representatives were addressing a human-rights negotiating committee with an executive consisting of a Libyan chair, an Iranian vice-chair, and a Cuban rapporteur. Russian Yuri Boychenko was presiding over Monday’s “human rights” get-together. Before them was a draft document which participants plan to adopt in finished form at the conference itself. The draft now contains mountains of offensive references to limits on free speech, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish provisions, and incendiary allegations of the victimization of Muslims at the hands of counter-terrorism racists.

Here is how the American delegates responded to a proposal they understood was incompatible with U.S. interests (“Brackets” denote withholding approval at any given moment in time.): “I hate to be the cause of unhappiness in the room . . . I have to suggest this phrase remains in brackets and I offer my sincere apologies.”

Having watched U.N. meetings for the past 25 years, I can’t remember a U.S. representative in a public session so openly obsequious, particularly in the presence of such specious human rights authorities. And yet the U.S. delegates appear happy to be there and convey the marching orders of their new commander-in-chief. ...

Read it all.

This morning. Here is an mp3 of my appearance on Bill Bennett's Morning in America this morning:

Robert Spencer on Bill Bennett's Morning in America, February 18, 2009

Catch me again this afternoon at 3PM EST on the Joyce Kaufman Show, and at 7PM EST tonight on WVOX's "Evil Conservative Radio Show" with Christopher Logan of Islam In Action.

Ignore him at your own risk

And now, a word from Snoozeweek.

Bob Dylan: "Mavis, I've had the blues."

Mavis Staples: "Oh, Bobby, don't tell me you got the blues."

Bob Dylan: "Yeah, I've been up all night, laying in bed, having insomnia, reading Snoozeweek."

Mavis Staples: "Snoozeweek? That ain't gonna get rid of no blues. Let's do some singing. Sing about it, you know..." -- Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples, "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking," 2003

Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff would have served everyone better by singing about it, you know, rather than turning in this pseudo-journalistic piece of propaganda.

"The Flying Dutchman: Free-speech hero or an anti-Islamic publicity hound? Geert Wilders is coming to America," by Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, February 17 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

A member of the Dutch Parliament who was banned last week from entering the United Kingdom because of his inflammatory anti-Islamic views is about to be welcomed to the United States by some notable conservatives.

Note the implication: "inflammatory anti-Islamic views" are just fine with "some notable conservatives." The possibility that what Wilders has said is accurate, and that it is only characterized as inflammatory by those who want to silence free discussion of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists, doesn't enter the minds of Hosenball and Isikoff.

Geert Wilders—who has publicly compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf"—is scheduled to make public appearances in Washington next week, including a Feb. 27 press conference at the National Press Club. Wilders is seeking to promote his movie "Fitna," an incendiary short documentary film that depicts Islam as a religion of terrorists.

"Inflammatory" and now "incendiary." So much for objective reporting at Snoozeweek. Anyway, here yet again, it is not Fitna that "depicts Islam as a religion of terrorists." It is the jihad terrorists themselves -- their own words are in the film, using Islamic texts and teachings to incite Muslims to violence. Wilders is simply reporting on this. This crucial and all-important distinction continues, for some reason, to elude most commentators, and it certainly eludes Hosenball and Isikoff.

The chief sponsor of Wilders's National Press Club event is Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration Pentagon official who now runs the Center for Security Policy, a prominent neoconservative think tank. Others who hope to meet with Wilders include David Horowitz, a well-known conservative activist who promotes campaigns to fight Islamic extremism.

Note the use of the scare word "neoconservative."

But Wilders's U.S. tour seems to be testing the limits of free speech even among hard-core conservatives. Some seem to be keeping their distance—apparently fearful of associating with a right-wing political figure widely seen in Europe as a dangerous extremist and self-promoter. The organizers of next week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington—a splashy gathering with prominent speakers like GOP Chair Michael Steele and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee—have yet to decide whether Wilders will be welcome to speak.

"Some seem to be keeping their distance—apparently fearful of associating with a right-wing political figure widely seen in Europe as a dangerous extremist and self-promoter." Or apparently fearful of upsetting the Norquistian Islam-Is-A-Religion-of-Peace orthodoxy that prevails at CPAC and elsewhere among conservatives, and prevents all too many from coming to a full understanding of the jihad threat and how it must be confronted.

"People are afraid to deal with him and the issue [of Islamic extremism] in general," said Robert Spencer, who runs a blog called Jihadwatch. Horowitz said he was disappointed that Wilders—or somebody allied with his cause—had not been booked on a panel at the CPAC meeting. "How is it possible that a conservative conference does not have a single panel on the threat from radical Islam?" he complained to NEWSWEEK.

I don't have a tape of my conversation with Hosenball, but of course I didn't say "Islamic extremism," and at least Hosenball and Isikoff were kind enough to put this in brackets. In reality I said something like "the global Islamic jihad," but that was too much for Snoozeweek.

David Keene, the president of The American Conservative Union and an organizer of the conference, at first told NEWSWEEK that he could not accommodate Wilders because all the speaking slots were booked. But after conferring with Gaffney over the weekend, he said he would seek to find time for a brief presentation. "If we can free up five or 10 minutes, we'll see if we can let him speak," Keene said....

Five or ten minutes for the foremost exponent of free speech in our time, when it is under threat as never before. Keene's, or someone's, priorities are seriously out of order. Wilders should be front and center at CPAC, and the defense of free speech its central theme.

As an example of what he sees as the timidity of conservatives, Spencer—who wrote a book called "The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion"—said that an article he recently coauthored with Wilders was turned down by a number of conservative publications before it was eventually posted on National Review's Web site.

Spencer said it's not that conservatives are afraid of being targeted by Islamic extremists. Instead, he contended they were fearful of being accused of being anti-Islamic or racist for associating in any way with the Dutch lawmaker.

Indeed, because Islamic advocacy groups in the West constantly portray the opposition to the jihad as a racial issue, when in reality race has nothing to do with it. Opposition to a belief system and ideology that would extinguish freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and the equality of rights of women and non-Muslims is not racist.

But all that, of course, completely eludes Hosenball and Isikoff:

That is not an unreasonable fear given Wilders's history. The leader of a right-wing Dutch political faction called the Party for Freedom, Wilders has transformed himself into a political performance artist, pursuing a high-profile, high-risk personal crusade against what he asserts are deeply rooted violent tendencies in Islam. When Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker (and descendant of the painter) was murdered by an Islamic extremist in 2004, Wilder used the crime to rail against Islam and Muslim immigrants. He received death threats and claims he was forced to go underground, and once even sought temporary refuge in a jail cell.

He "claims" he was forced to go underground. I have met Wilders on several occasions, and never was he unaccompanied by a squad of bodyguards. Perhaps Hosenball and Isikoff would say he just "claims" they are bodyguards, and that Theo van Gogh only "claims" to have been murdered by an Islamic jihadist?

Two conservative British politicians had invited Wilders to screen his "Fitna" film last week at Britain's House of Lords. But before he departed for Britain, he received a letter from British immigration authorities advising him that the Home Secretary, Britain's internal affairs minister, had banned him from entering the U.K. on the grounds that his presence "would pose a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat to ... community harmony and therefore public security in the U.K."

No mention, of course, of the veiled threats issued by Lord Ahmed. The British government was cravenly caving in to the prospect of violence from Muslims if Wilders entered the country, instead of standing up to them and declaring that the public order would be preserved. But unsurprisingly, Hosenball and Isikoff don't see any cowardice there at all.

Despite the letter, Wilders flew into London's Heathrow Airport last Thursday—accompanied by a group of journalists he'd apparently tipped off

Cheap shot. The letter from the British authorities was public on an international scale before Wilders flew to Heathrow. No journalists worth their salt needed to be tipped off.

—only to be turned away. He was put on the next plane back to Holland. His rejected efforts to enter the United Kingdom—along with the threats against his life—have prompted some conservatives to champion Wilders as a martyr for free speech.

But critics say it is the height of irony, if not hypocrisy, for Wilders to present himself as a champion of free speech given that he has openly called for banning the Koran.

In reality, there is no irony or hypocrisy involved in this at all. Wilders was merely calling for consistency in the application of Dutch laws that restrict speech that incites to violence, but which have never been applied to the Qur'an or to the hate-filled imams who preach jihad and Islamic supremacism in obedience to Qur'anic dictates. Full explanation here.

In a recent New York Times op-ed, the writer Ian Buruma, who wrote a book about the Theo van Gogh case, said that Wilders has brought much of his trouble on himself by crossing the line from criticizing the radical elements within Islam to insulting one of the world's largest faiths. "If Mr. Wilders were to confine his remarks to those Muslims who do harm freedom of speech by using violence against critics and apostates, he would have a valid point," Buruma wrote. "Mr. Wilders, however, refuses to make such fine distinctions. He believes that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim."

Wilders: "I have a problem with Islamic tradition, culture, ideology. Not with Muslim people."

Buruma's recommendation: Rather than hailing Wilders as a courageous free-speech champion, or prosecuting him (as a Dutch court recently threatened to do), the best approach is far simpler: Ignore him.

Sure. Just ignore the jihadist assault on free speech, and it will go away.

The Muslim Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." -- "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.

What does that have to do with Esam Omeish? Everything. He was President of the Muslim American Society. And what is the Muslim American Society? The Muslim Brotherhood.

"In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation's major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members." -- Chicago Tribune, 2004.

"Omeish for Delegate?," by Garren Shipley at NVDaily.com, February 17 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

Elections for vacant seats in the House of Delegates are always interesting, but the Democratic nomination fight in the 35th District looks like it'll be interesting indeed.

Esam Omeish, a pediatric surgeon from Northern Virginia, has joined the race to succeed Del. Steve Shannon, D-Vienna. The 35th District includes the areas of Fairfax County just north and west of the city of Fairfax. Shannon is running for Attorney General.

Omeish, the president of the Muslim American Society at the time, came into the political limelight nearly two years ago after he was appointed to the Commission on Immigration by Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine.

The appointment didn't sit well with Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, a fellow member of the commission. The society was too closely connected the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian group that gave rise to Hamas, for his taste. Gilbert wrote to Kaine and asked him to reconsider the appointment.

A spokesman for the governor at the time dismissed Gilbert's concerns as "innuendo, moving dangerously close to slander," and challenged Gilbert to offer proof. Omeish resigned less than a day later, after online videos came to light in which Omeish accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians and exhorted Muslims to "the jihad way."

Omeish later defended both the Muslim American Society and his comments after his resignation, saying in a press release that MAS "is an American organization, completely transparent and above-board, and committed to the civic engagement of Muslims for the betterment of all of American society."

His call to jihad "was in the context of his public criticism of the Lebanon invasion and the oppression of Palestinians" and was not a call for violence....

Oh, that makes it all right. Sheesh, this guy must think the American public is extraordinarily ignorant, gullible, and foolish. We'll see if he's right.

Watch his call for jihad here (thanks to Isabella):

Awakening to the futility of Land for Peace deals? Not quite

Or does he? "Peres on pullout: We should have done things differently," by Ronen Medzini for Ynet News, February 18 (thanks to Writer Mom):

President Shimon Peres made a surprising statement Wednesday, saying that while he supported the 2005 Gaza pullout, he now sees himself "as one of the people who were wrong. We should have done things differently."

He spoke at a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations meeting in Jerusalem.

A subsequent statement made by the President's Office later said that Peres did not mean he was against the disengagement in hindsight, but rather against the way the move was carried out and the lack of political and security coordination with the Palestinian side at the time....

Yeah, that would have solved everything.

In the feature story at FrontPage this morning I consider the question, "How “moderate” was Muzzammil Hassan after all?" But one thing must be made clear: MPAC's Khalid J. Qazi said that "domestic violence" had no place in Islam, and so I answered his claim in those terms. In reality, however, this was not a simple case of domestic violence, it was an honor killing. Phyllis Chesler explains the difference here.

Muzzammil Hassan founded Bridges TV in 2004 to combat the negative perceptions of Muslims that he thought were dominating the mainstream media. According to a Reuters story at the time, Aasiya “came up with the idea in December 2001 while listening to the radio on a road trip.” Muzzammil Hassan explained: “Some derogatory comments were being made about Muslims that offended her. She was seven months pregnant, and she thought she didn’t want her kids growing up in this environment.”

Bridges TV originally declared that its intention was to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.” However, there were indications at the outset that it might not have been as moderate as many assumed. Bridges TV from the beginning had ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case, and Islamicity.com, which retails rabid anti-Semitic literature. In 2006 Arab News reported that Hassan was trying to raise money for the network from Saudi investors.

Once this accommodation is granted, what will stop the granting of a request to put the Qur'an alone up top, rather than lump it together with Scriptures that Muslims consider corrupted?

"Libraries put Bible on top shelf in a sop to Muslims," by Steve Doughty for the Daily Mail, February 17 (thanks to H.):

Librarians are being told to move the Bible to the top shelf to avoid giving offence to followers of Islam.

Muslims have complained of finding the Koran on lower shelves, saying it should be put above commonplace things.

So officials have responded with guidance, backed by ministers, that all holy books should be treated equally and go on the top shelf together.

This means that Christian works, which also have immense historical and literary value, will be kept out of the reach and sight of many readers.

The guidance was published by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, a quango answering to Culture Secretary Andy Burnham.

It said Muslims in Leicester had moved copies of the Koran to the top shelves of libraries, in keeping with the belief that the Koran is the all-important word of God.

The report said the city’s librarians consulted the Federation of Muslim Organisations and were advised that all religious texts should be kept on the top shelf.

‘This meant that no offence is caused, as the scriptures of all the major faiths are given respect in this way, but none is higher than any other,’ the guidance added.

Critics said such a move implied religious works should be treated as objects of veneration rather than as books to be read. Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said:

‘Libraries and museums are not places of worship. They should not be run in accordance with particular religious beliefs.

‘This is violating the principles of librarianship and it is part of an insidious trend.’...

Quite so.

What happened to the old one?

"Clerics urge new jihad over Gaza," from the BBC, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

At a weekend meeting in Istanbul, 200 religious scholars and clerics met with senior Hamas officials to plot a new jihad centred on Gaza.

The BBC's Bill Law was the only Western journalist at the meeting.

In a hall crowded with conservative Sunni Muslim sheikhs and scholars, in a hotel close to Istanbul's Ataturk Airport speaker after speaker called for jihad against Israel in support of Hamas.

The choice of Turkey was significant. Arab hardliners were keen to put aside historic differences with the Turks.

As one organiser put it: "During the past 100 years relations have been strained but Palestine has brought us together."

Many delegates spoke appreciatively of the protest by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stormed out of a Davos debate on Gaza two weeks ago.

Irony Alert:

The conference, dubbed the Global Anti-Aggression Campaign, also gave impetus to Sunni clerics concerned about the growing power of Hezbollah, the Shia movement backed by Iran, which rose to international prominence in its own war with Israel in 2006.

"Gaza is a gift," the Saudi religious scholar Mohsen al-Awajy told me. He and other delegates repeatedly referred to the Gaza war as "a victory".

"Gaza," he continued, "gives us power, it solves our differences. We are all now in a unified front against Zionism."

In closed meetings after sessions delegates focussed on the creation of a "third Jihadist front" - the first two being Afghanistan and Iraq. The intensity of the Israeli attack had "awakened all Muslims," Mr Awajy claimed.

"Palestine is a legitimate theatre of operations for jihad (holy war)," he added....

Man of courage

A former FBI special agent sounds the alarm about the stealth jihad. The Muslim Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words to "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

"Islamic subversion alleged by speaker," by Brian Mosely for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, February 17 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

A former FBI special agent told law enforcement and Homeland Security personnel that a network of Islamic organizations are working to incrementally implement Islamic law in the United States.

During a presentation at the Bedford County Emergency Management Agency, former FBI agent John Guandolo briefed members about groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which he claims is working with other Islamic groups to slowly implement Shariah, also known as Islamic law, which encompasses all areas of life.

Guandolo worked in the FBI since 1996, including nine years as a member of its SWAT team. After 9/11, he worked in the Bureau's Washington Field Office's Counterterrorism Division, developing expertise concerning Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood organizations and the Islamic movement in the U.S.

He now works with Stephen Coughlin, former Islamic Expert for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to advise leaders at the federal level and also brief local law enforcement about the Islamic threat at home.

Coughlin was fired from his position with the Joint Chiefs following a report revealing opposition to his work by officials within the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, according to a Washington Times report dated Jan. 4, 2008.

Coughlin had run afoul of a key aide to England, Hasham Islam, who accused him of being a Christian zealot or extremist "with a pen," according to defense officials, the report states.

Muslim Brotherhood

Every major Muslim organization is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, the former FBI agent said, which he said was formed to overthrow America and establish Islamic law.

"They're having great success of implementing Shariah law, I could give you a thousand examples," Guandolo said.

He said small concessions like installing foot baths, and colleges forced to have separate swimming times for Islamic men and women so not to offend Muslims, are other parts of the strategy.

But Guandolo said that federal leadership is reluctant to act against these Islamic organizations due to political correctness and the threats of lawsuits.

He said that Muslim groups will demand concessions on matters by saying, "You have to do this; you have to do this or I will be offended."

"The solution to this is you," Guandolo said. "If you are looking to DHS, the FBI and Congress to solve this ... you're going to be woefully disappointed."

Indeed. Read it all.

Doesn't Sufi Muhammad know that only venomous Islamophobes believe there is any incompatibility between Islam and democracy?

"Sufi wants Islamic rule worldwide," from the Daily Times, February 18 :

LAHORE: Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Muhammadi (TNSM) chief Sufi Muhammad, who signed a controversial peace deal with the NWFP government on Monday, said he hated democracy and wanted supremacy of Islam over the entire world.

“From the very beginning, I have viewed democracy as a system imposed on us by the infidels. Islam does not allow democracy or elections,” he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview held a few days before the government accepted his demand of enforcing sharia in the region. “Had the government accepted our demands in 1994, we would have not seen the violence we are seeing today,” he added. Sufi Muhammad’s son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah, has fostered the violence in the name of Islam.

Sufi Muhammad said he was against shedding the blood of Muslims, however, added the government should have talked to the Taliban instead of taking military action. He pledged to work for complete peace in Swat if the government enforces Islamic laws, a demand which has now been met.

“I believe the Taliban government formed a complete Islamic state, which was an ideal example for other Muslim countries. Had this government remained intact, it could have led to the establishment of similar Islamic governments in many other countries,” he said.

He said it.

Before he beheaded her

No kidding, really?

Moderate Beheading Update: Possibility of 'honor killing' mulled in Orchard Park slaying," by Fred O. Williams for the Buffalo News, February 17 (thanks to Axel):

The gruesome death of Orchard Park resident Aasiya Zubair Hassan— who was found decapitated—and the arrest of her estranged husband are drawing widespread attention, as speculation roils about the role that the couple’s religion may have played.

Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was arrested Thursday and charged with second- degree murder after telling police his wife was dead at the office of their television station in the Village of Orchard Park.

While Muslim leaders have urged against applying cultural stereotypes to the crime, advocates for women linked the killing to attitudes in Muslim societies.

“This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men,” said Marcia Pappas, New York State president of the National Organization for Women.

She decried the scant national media attention paid to the story, which broke the same day as the commuter plane crash that killed 50 people in Clarence.

While domestic violence affects all cultures, Muslim women find it harder to break the silence about it because of a stigma, she said.

“Too many Muslim men are using their religious beliefs to justify violence against women,” she said....

Nadia Shahram, a matrimonial lawyer in Williamsville, said that some Muslim men consider divorce a dishonor on their family.

A teacher of family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, Shahram said that “fanatical” Muslims believe “honor killing” is justified for bringing dishonor on a family.

While it has not been determined whether Aasiya Hassan’s death had anything to do with fanatical beliefs, the community should address the attitudes that make divorce particularly difficult for many Muslim families, Shahram said.

“I have not had one [case] where the husband wanted to settle outside of the court system,” she said.

In some interpretations, the Quran allows husbands to punish “disobedient” women, Shahram said, adding that this is a minority view.

This is a false statement. This is not a minority view. Qur'an 4:34 tells men to beat their disobedient wives after first warning them and then sending them to sleep in separate beds. It is worth noting how several translators render the key part of this verse, وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ, waidriboohunna.

Pickthall: “and scourge them”
Yusuf Ali: “(And last) beat them (lightly)”
Al-Hilali/Khan: “(and last) beat them (lightly, if it is useful)”
Shakir: “and beat them”
Sher Ali: “and chastise them”
Khalifa: “then you may (as a last alternative) beat them”
Arberry: “and beat them”
Rodwell: “and scourge them”
Sale: “and chastise them”
Daryabadi: "and beat them"
Asad: “then beat them”

Pickthall, Yusuf Ali, Al-Hilali/Khan, Shakir, Sher Ali, Khalifa, Daryabadi and Asad are Muslims. Are their translations all incorrect? These are mainstream Muslim translations of the Qur'an, and we are supposed to believe that the idea that the Qur'an tells men to beat disobedient women is a "minority view"?

This is the kind of obfuscation that will only perpetuate this abuse. It can only be ended by confronting it, and speaking honestly about its causes.

Don't miss my friend Phyllis Chesler's illuminating elucidation of the difference between domestic violence and honor killing.

This morning I was on the Garrison show, which airs Monday through Friday from 8:30-11:30AM EST on 93.1 FM, WIBC in Indianapolis. Former Jerusalem Post Publisher Tom Rose was sitting in as guest host for Greg Garrison, and Tom and I had a good, wide-ranging discussion about the stealth jihad in America and related matters. Toward the end of the hour and for some time thereafter, producer Todd Meyer participated in this highly revealing text message exchange with a Muslim listener:

Listener: 10:44am

The Prophet (peace be upon him) stated Christian, Muslim & Jew shall all go to Heaven as they all worship the same God-Islam is the MOST tolerant of the 3-Shame

Listener: 10:49am

You will never speak of barbaric Israelis who run over Muslim families with bulldozers

Meyer: 12:15pm

This is the producer texting you back. Two questions: Do you denounce all the extremists in Islam that cut heads off or homicide bomb themselves and other innocents? Do you condemn the actions of Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Muslim Brotherhood? A simple yes or no.

Listener: 12:53pm

Producer Todd, your multi-faceted and loaded question requires more than a simple yes or no answer. Oversimplifying a belief system makes it easy to write off...I do not condemn those who defend their way of life within their homeland according to Islam, no. [Email me] for polite debate on this

Listener: 1:01pm

Producer Todd, much of what you call extremism is in many places rather desperation. In Morocco there is no threat therefore no extremism as in Gaza

Meyer: 1:39pm

No, it is a simple yes or no answer. You talk of being barbaric? Please! If you cannot admit that Islam has been corrupted by violent extremists, then you are part of the problem as an enabler. Please call the show if you would like the polite debate.

Listener: 1:52pm

Todd, I cannot call as I work in a noisy environment but I thank you for the conversation-you have reinforced my opinion of the mentality behind the show

Listener: 1:53pm

........Perhaps I may elicit a response via email. True Muslims do not condone violence against innocents. Forced retaliation however is another matter.

Meyer: 2:04pm

Ah, there's the rub - the word innocents. I'm guessing that's a pretty narrow definition? I have two more questions for you: What - in your opinion - should be the punishment for some who leaves the Islamic faith and converts to Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism? And what should happen to a person that denounces Islam or draws cartoon pictures of Mohammad?

Listener: 2:17pm

Mr. Todd, if you hold nothing so sacred as to wish death upon those who would defile or dishonor it, then you are lost and will never understand.

Meyer: 2:35pm

And there we have the TRUE answer - finally! I live in the United States where freedom of speech is a protected right. You never did answer the conversion question, but I believe it will be the same as your last answer. No further correspondence is needed on this end.

A refusal to condemn Hamas and Hizballah and an affirmation of the death penalty for apostasy from Islam -- all courtesy a Muslim radio listener in Indianapolis, Indiana, this morning.

Further Comments by David G. Littman, twenty years after the Rushdie Fatwa:

Following my three statements at the UN Commission on Human Rights soon after the 1989 Rushdie fatwa, I again referred to this “greatest freedom of opinion and expression issue of our time” at the subsequent Sub-Commission (August 11, 1989), when I quoted Patrick Henry:

Sir, I have no doubt that the Sub-Commission, composed of independent experts, will wish to address itself to this burning issue – the death threats have not been withdrawn and are regularly reiterated – and that all of its members would be ready to rise as a body, as would most of us here present, remembering the ringing words of the renowned American patriot Patrick Henry, pronounced in 1775 at the historic Virginia Convention, 214 years ago: I know not what course others may take; but as for me: Give me liberty, or give me death

Fifteen years later (2004), I drafted a 3000 word written statement for AWE that was accepted by the friendly UN Secretariat because it was submitted under 3 items of the agenda. It showed how virtually nothing was done by the ‘international community’ to officially condemn this “chilling death sentence which still haunts and troubles the world”. The AWE text is reproduced below exactly as published by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights almost exactly five years ago. AWE continued, almost year after year, to raise this matter, without any results – exactly as we have continued to raise other similar matters, particularly a key request to the UN and the Organization of the Islamic Conference – to add a line to its ongoing sponsoring, with other States of the resolution: “Combating defamation of Religions”, which should “condemn all calls to kill in the name of God or religion – any religion.” This had the same result – no reaction, but such a lapsus speaks volumes to all who see and hear.

On October 6, 2005, after speaking (Bat Ye’or also) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to
12 colonels and 100 majors (Advanced Operational Arts Studies Fellowship: School of Advanced Military Studies: Graduate School of the Command & General Staff College)
on Human Rights and Creeping Islamism at the United Nations, our visit coincided with a lecture by Salman Rushdie at the University of Kansas. The academic director who had invited us – hearing of my interest to meet Rushdie – was able to arrange that we were invited to the private dinner for him and others. I was thus able to give Rushdie, personally, AWE’s written UN statement on: The 'Rushdie Affair'/Rushdie syndrome: the right to life and the human rights mechanisms, and we had a chat. At that same dinner, the British professor of 19th century history who had organized the dinner made an extraordinary comment – with Rushdie nearby – on hearing Bat Ye’or’s response to a query on the eventual entry of Turkey into the European Union. She stated her opposition, as “this would lead to the Islamization of Europe.” The professor of history’s terse rejoinder was astonishing: “What’s wrong with that?” My reaction was to inform him – as an NGO at the UN – that this would seem to suggest that he was recommending the stoning of women, the cutting off of hands for minor theft, the marriage of girls at nine, as in Iran and other Muslim countries where strict shari’a legislation was applied, and more of the same. He denied that was what he meant, but felt uncomfortable. His remark was politically correct, but it did not seem to appeal to anyone present, including Rushdie, who had just published an IHT piece.

The written statement follows in full, and can be found on the net:

Hoping to communicate more effectively

Of course, that's just what the Bush Administration tried to do -- and ended up taking the advice of Muslim Brotherhood operatives, and enabling jihadists to gain access to high levels of government. Will this initiative work out better as guided by Obama and Hillary? I doubt it.

More on this story. "Clinton Vows to Reach Out to Islamic World," by Glenn Kessler for the Washington Post, February 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

TOKYO, Feb. 17 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday the Obama administration will make "a concerted effort" to restore the image of the United States in the Islamic world and will seek to "enlist the help of Muslims around the world against the extremists."

Clinton, who on Wednesday will travel to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, told students at Tokyo University that "this is one of the central security challenges we face -- as to how to better communicate in a way that gets through the rhetoric and through the demagogy and is heard by people who can make judgments about what we stand for and who we truly are."

Clinton's remarks came in response to a question about the "prejudice" in the United States against Muslims because of terrorism, a term she rejected forcefully, pointing to the history of Christians. "I am a Christian," she said. "Through the centuries we have had many people who have done terrible things in the name of Christianity. They have perverted the religion." [...]

Alyssa A. Lappen is a freelance investigative journalist. She has served as a senior fellow of the American Center for Democracy, a senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance, and associate editor of Forbes. She is also a great friend of Jihad Watch, and we've featured her work here on numerous occasions. Today she interviews another great friend of Jihad Watch, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, about the premier front on which we have to defend Western civilization against the global jihad today: the freedom of speech.

From "The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology," By Alyssa A. Lappen for Right Side News, February 17:

[...] AAL: Why do you think mainstream newspapers and broadcast media do not cover the influence of the Qur'an, Islamic jurisprudence and theological edicts on Islam's basically totalitarian goals?

Atlas: It is auto censorship and fear. Also, everyone is worried all about insulting Islam. Reporting even the smallest factoid earns an onslaught of charges of bigotry and racism. The net result is that you cannot even call an honor killing an honor killing and not get that kind of charge.

You can have a whole article on how a father, brothers and husband in a Muslim family are going to kill their sister or mother or niece. Yet the reporter will not even call the deed an honor killing. That line [of reporting leads] to the door. [Reporters get fired for it.] That is the problem. We saw that tendency with the [Kurt Westergaard Mohammed] cartoons. And that was [in September 2005] before Muslims were really on the march here. But even back then, in late 2005, I went to a panel discussion about the cartoons at New York University. They were going to show the cartoons so we could talk about them. But then the hosts decided at the last minute not to show the cartoons. I got there and the easels were black. That was March 2006. That is the level that we're at now. At the one college where a school newspaper printed the cartoons, the university fired or suspended the student publisher. A couple of publishers were courageous enough to admit, "Look, we do not want to be targeted." But that is now standard operating procedure.

AAL: A more current example is the failure to report Obama's executive order giving $20 million and refugee status to "resettle" people from Gaza, in other words, Hamas.

Atlas: They haven't reported that, no. The Arab narrative has taken over. The reporting in December and January said that Israel was targeting innocent civilians. But the only evidence was to the contrary. In fact, we have proof that Hamas shoots its own people in their homes. They literally shoot people in the streets, to punish them, or make it look like Israel targeted homes. Israel was hit from inside mosques and by mortars from a UN school and foreign press offices. Hamas hijacks ambulances to transport terrorists.

But U.S. newspapers don't report it. This is auto-censorship. It is enormous. It shows where the sympathy lies. I see it as Islamic apologism. To their [Muslims'] credit, on even the smallest insult, their push-back is huge. They are winning. Mohammed said, "War is deceit," and they are doing an awfully good job so that very few in America even recognize the risk. [...] U.S. newspapers tell people not to believe their eyes. I tell people to believe their eyes and I am excoriated for it. The most highly visible example of that is Geert Wilders, [whom Holland is prosecuting for hate speech, for producing Fitna, and Great Britain denied entry last week to speak in the House of Lords]. Here is a man who cites Qur'anic verse, and they want him in jail.

But meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people can march and call for the death of Jews and it's not hate, from London, to Paris, to Amsterdam, to Fort Lauderdale, and New York. Those death marches should have been on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story of every cable news and net. And it is almost unthinkable that the police would escort the jihadists to the Israeli embassy and at the same time be harassed and have shoes thrown at them. This is the apex of civilization. And where are the Muslims counter protesting not in our name? Where are they? I want them. Where are all those moderate Muslims?...

There is much more. Read it all.

Moderate Beheading Update: "Muzzammil Hassan receives award from CAIR-PA Chairman Iftekhar Hussain and CAIR National Chairman Parvez Ahmed," from CAIR-PA (thanks to Steve).

Of course, CAIR didn't know he was going to behead his wife. But if, say, Geert Wilders had given an award to some anti-jihadist who ended up beheading his wife, do you think the media would have been as indifferent as they have been in this case?

Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal calls for liberals and conservatives to defend Geert Wilders and freedom of speech. The WSJ has not always been this understanding of what is at stake in the Wilders case -- this piece is a welcome departure from the paper's previous stance. Still, this Stephens piece is thoroughly wrongheaded in several ways, and the WSJ has more ground to cover to be consistent in its defense of free speech: explanations below.

"Geert Wilders Is a Test for Western Civilization: If Rushdie should be defended, why not the Dutch pol?," by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal, February 17 (thanks to Mackie):

Twenty years ago, Andres Serrano put a plastic crucifix in a glass of urine, photographed it and called it art. Conservatives in particular weren't pleased: not with Mr. Serrano, not with his picture, and not with the National Endowment for the Arts, which had forked over $15,000 in taxpayer money to support this uretic gesture.

Also 20 years ago: On Valentine's Day, 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, condemning him to death for supposedly blaspheming Islam in his novel, "The Satanic Verses." Iran later upped the ante by severing diplomatic ties with Britain and putting a bounty on Mr. Rushdie's head. The fatwa remains in effect today by order of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

These twin anniversaries come to mind following the British government's decision last week to ban Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders from British soil as an "undesirable person." Mr. Wilders is also being prosecuted for hate speech in his native Holland, where he faces up to 16 months in prison if convicted. His alleged crime involves making a short film called "Fitna," which draws a straight line between Quranic verses and acts of Islamist terror. Mr. Wilders has also called for banning the Quran, which he labels a "fascist book" on a par with Hitler's "Mein Kampf."

Here again: as Fitna itself shows, it is not Wilders who "draws a straight line between Quranic verses and acts of Islamist terror," it is the jihad terrorists themselves. This crucial and all-important distinction continues, for some reason, to elude most commentators.

Whatever else might be said about Mr. Wilders's travel ban and prosecution, it helps put into context the events of 1989. In the case of Mr. Serrano, liberal Americans went into a lather about defending his rights to artistic expression and freedom of speech against the parochial leaders of the religious right, men like Jesse Helms and Pat Robertson. Never mind that the worst of their threats involved withholding public funding; fundamental things were said to be at stake.

As for the Rushdie affair, after some initial hesitation most of the liberal intelligentsia on both sides of the Atlantic rallied to his cause. True, there were some dissenters: Jimmy Carter called "The Satanic Verses" a "direct insult to those millions of Muslims whose sacred beliefs have been violated" while feminist Germaine Greer declared that she "[refused] to sign petitions for that book, which was about his own troubles."

On the whole, however, the West held firm. A joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of the European Community insisted that "fundamental principles are at stake," adding that they "remain fully committed to the principles of freedom of thought and expression within their territories."

Fast forward to Mr. Wilders's situation and what's remarkable is that his most serious detractors -- those that aren't themselves Islamists or spokesmen for supposedly mainstream Muslim organizations -- tend to fall to the political left. In Holland, leaders of both the Socialist and Labor parties support the prosecution. In Britain, it's the Labour government of Gordon Brown that has enforced the travel ban. In Germany, the leftish Der Spiegel calls Mr. Wilders "pushy" and accuses him of making "hate-filled tirades." Elsewhere he is described as a "racist," an "Islamophobe," and so on.

There is actually nothing remarkable about this at all. Jimmy Carter and Germaine Greer certainly can't be said to be on the Right in any sense -- and Stephens correctly pointed out above that they were among those who would not defend Rushdie's freedom of speech against the mullahs. Fundamental principles are indeed at stake, and the Left is once again, as it did in the Rushdie affair, showing that it is no friend of free speech.

For his part, Mr. Wilders says he hates Islam as an ideology, not Muslims as individuals, and categorically parts company with the neo-fascist European right typified by the late Jörg Haider. He has also traveled extensively in the Middle East; even Der Spiegel admits "he is not a dull racist and xenophobe."

But irrespective of Mr. Wilders's politics -- and I wouldn't be the first to point out that his calls to ban the Quran square oddly with his sense of himself as a champion of free speech -- his travails are no less significant than Mr. Rushdie's. And they present a test for both liberals and conservatives.

As explained previously at this site, there is no inconsistency at all in Wilders's statements about banning the Qur'an. His call for such a ban was actually a call for consistency in the application of Dutch laws that restrict speech that incites to violence, but which have never been applied to the Qur'an or to the hate-filled imams who preach jihad and Islamic supremacism in obedience to Qur'anic dictates.

But Stephens is quite correct that the Wilders case is a test for both liberals and conservatives, and so far both are largely failing.

For liberals, the issue is straightforward. If routine mockery of Christianity and abuse of its symbols, both in the U.S. and Europe, is protected speech, why shouldn't the same standard apply to the mockery of Islam?

Excellent question.

And if the difference in these cases is that mockery of Islam has the tendency to lead to riots, death threats and murder, should committed Christians now seek a kind of parity with Islamists by resorting to violent tactics to express their sense of religious injury?

This question manifests Stephens' ignorance of or unwillingness to face the difference in the fundamental teachings of Christianity and Islam, and also displays the moral equivalence that remains so fashionable among the intelligentsia. It's possible, of course, that some Christians might resort to violence, just as it is possible that any group in certain circumstances might resort to violence. But the question itself seems to arise from an assumption that jihadists resort to violence solely as a tactic, because they know it is effective, not as a matter of conviction -- and so others will see that it is effective and resort to it as well. This assumption completely ignores the moral imperatives involved on both sides: the Muslims who commit violence in such contexts can and do point to numerous passages in the Qur'an and Sunnah to justify violence against unbelievers and blasphemers; Christians (despite common and false claims that the Old Testament contains open-ended and universal mandates to wage war against unbelievers) cannot find any justification in their core religious texts and teachings for such violence. Thus while violent Muslims will find such violence morally justified according to their lights, violent Christians will have a much harder time finding such justification.

This to a great degree accounts for the fact that we see so much violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, and so little by Christians in the name of Christianity (even historically, the Crusades were not based on core Christian teachings, but on political calculation) -- but it is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that Stephens and others have not yet deigned to notice.

The notion that liberals can have it both ways -- champions of free speech on the one hand; defenders of multiculturalism's assorted sensitivities on the other -- was always intellectually flimsy. If liberals now want to speak for the "right" of this or that group not to be offended, the least they can do is stop calling themselves "liberals."

I don't care what they call themselves, but I do care about consistency, and share Stephens' view that they should be consistent.

For conservatives, especially of the cultural kind -- the kind of people who talk about defending Western Civ. -- Mr. Wilders's case should also provoke some reconsiderations. It may not be impossible to denounce the likes of Mr. Serrano while defending the likes of Mr. Wilders. But a defense of Mr. Wilders is made a lot easier if one can point to the vivid difference between a civilization that protects, even celebrates (and funds!), its cultural provocateurs and a civilization that seeks their murder.

Nonsense. Arrant nonsense. It is perfectly possible to denounce the likes of Mr. Serrano and defend the likes of Mr. Wilders. The differences are these: I detest Serrano's work. Do I believe it should be outlawed? I do not. Do I believe it should receive taxpayer funding? I do not. Do I believe Serrano should be killed? No. Fined? No. Imprisoned? No. Now: I support Wilders's work, and recognize that others view it the way I view Serrano's, although I do not accept the comparison. Should they be working to outlaw Wilders's work and have him fined, imprisoned, or killed? No.

Get the difference? Free speech in both cases. The offended have no right to tyrannize the offenders.

This is no small point. Western civilization is not simply the "Judeo-Christian tradition." It is also the civilization of Socrates and Aristophanes, Hume and Voltaire, Copernicus and Darwin; of religious schismatics and nonbelievers. This is the civilization that is now required to define itself, oddly enough, by the case of a flamboyant Dutch politician with inconsistent ideas and a bouffant hairdo. If he can't be defended, neither can Mr. Rushdie. Or Mr. Serrano. Liberals and conservatives alike, take note.

True, with the exception that his sneering and inaccurate dismissal of Wilders should be noted and repudiated by all genuine defenders of free speech.

One of the earlier suspects who was arrested said: "We didn't do this for ourselves, but for our religion. Our religion is being destroyed. Let this be a lesson to enemies of our religion."

An update on this story. "Turkey: Two More Arrested In Malatya Murders," from Compass Direct, February 12:

ISTANBUL, February 12 (Compass Direct News) – A Turkish court has charged two more men for instigating the murder of three Christians in Malatya in 2007 – a former volunteer worker at the Christian publishing house where they were killed, and an ex-journalist suspected of ties to a group that tried to engineer a political coup.

The arrests add growing evidence to the belief that the murders resulted not just from five troubled youths incited by religious or nationalist anger, but from a larger plan to create chaos in the country and kill specific people.

A judge ordered the arrest of former journalist Varol Bulent Aral, 32, on Feb. 4 on suspicion of instigating the murder. The Malatya court had subpoenaed Aral multiple times to testify about his role in the killings, but he did not appear until last October after being arrested for other charges.

Plaintiff attorneys representing family members of the murder victims believe Aral incited the suspected ringleader of the attacks to murder by convincing him foreign missionaries were connected to the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, a domestic outlawed terrorist organization.

Aral has been connected to Ergenekon, an ultranationalist cabal of retired generals, politicians, journalists and mafia members under investigation for conspiracy in various murders. Over 100 people have been detained in connection with the network since July 2008....

Senselessly murdered by a prison convert to Islam

Far from ameliorating criminal impulses, here, once again, is more evidence that prison conversion to Islam only exacerbates criminal tendencies. "Jailhouse Islam Behind Cop Killing?" from my My-Fox-Philly, February 16:

PHILADELPHIA - The fact that Rasheed Scrugs allegedly announced he was going to kill a cop and then shot Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski with a gun hidden inside his coat pocket has detectives digging deeper on Scrugs.

They're still gathering evidence and trying to unravel why Friday night's senseless murder happened, Fox 29's Dave Schratwieser reported.

"Pawlowski didn't stand a chance," Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said Monday, as Philadelphia continued to reel over the killing.

A key witness went public Monday with the chilling words he heard the gunman say before the shooting.

"If you call the cop, I'll kill you and kill the cop," said Manuel Dias, who works in a newsstand at Broad Street and Olney Avenue, repeating what he told detectives.

Police believe Scrugs planned to shoot officers when they answered a 911 call about a fight on the highway at Broad and Olney at 8:20 p.m.

"This individual was very violent and was bent on killing someone," Ramsey said.[...]

Ramsey told Fox 29 News that police are now trying to determine if Scrugs -- who also goes by the alias Rasheed Abdulghaffer -- may have converted to a radical form of "jailhouse Islam" during his years in prison.

Ironically, Ramsey said he was briefed by FBI agents on Friday about this radical form of Islam. That was just hours before Pawlowski was shot.

Ramsey said there's a growing concern among law enforcement.

"This is a radical form where certainly committing crime and killing police officers and so forth is part of it," Ramsey said.

Police experts and the FBI are now researching whether Scrugs and Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski' accused killers -- Howard Cain and Levon Warner, who are accused of wearing Muslim clothing during that murder -- were schooled in jailhouse Islam.

"Since Steve Liczbinski got killed, this issue has really been something that has struck home here in Philadelphia," Ramsey said...

According to the professor: "One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this 'confetti' all over them, and then will do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration." Well, considering the "real celebration" that took place around the Islamic world on 9/11, he's probably right.

"On Al-Jazeera TV, Kuwaiti Prof Suggests a Biological Attack on White House, Prays for Bombing of Nuclear Plant on Lake Michigan," from MEMRI, February 16 :

Following are excerpts from a speech by Kuwaiti Professor Abdallah Al-Nafisi, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 2, 2009.

Abdallah Al-Nafisi: "Four pounds of anthrax - in a suitcase this big - carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S., are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour, if it is properly spread in population centers there.

"What a horrifying idea. 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings, and so on.

"One person, with the courage to carry four pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this 'confetti' all over them, and then will do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real 'celebration.'

"But despite his statements and some potential evidence — he was captured with a bag of various currencies and passports from several countries — some legal experts say it may be difficult for the United States to bring charges against him under the law as it stood in 2001."

"Gitmo detainee: 'I do pose a threat'" by Peter Finn and Julie Tate for the Washington Post, February 16:

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba — In a small room at Guantanamo Bay, plain white except for an American flag hung on the wall, Abdul al Rahman al Zahri sat shackled in front of three military officers at a hearing to determine whether he continued to pose a threat to the United States and its allies.

Zahri, a Yemeni captured in Afghanistan in 2001, was clear on that point. “I do pose a threat to the United States and its allies,” he said, according to a transcript of the 2006 hearing. “I admit to you it’s my honor to be an enemy of the United States. I am a Muslim jihadist, and I’m defending my family and my honor.”

Zahri may have been unambiguous about his state of mind, but the question of whether he can be charged with any crime is murkier. Complicating matters for the administration is the fact that he has made sometimes flatly contradictory statements about his loyalties, at one point condemning bin Laden as a “heretic.”

Zahri said he heard the call to jihad outside a mosque in Yemen in early 2001, and he decided to go to Afghanistan as a trainee to eventually fight Russian forces in Chechnya, according to military documents. Within a week, he met bin Laden at an al-Qaida guesthouse, one of 10 meetings that military officials allege he had with terrorist leaders.

“The detainee stated he attended a meeting prior to 11 September 2001 in which an upcoming operation was discussed,” according to military documents.

Zahri went to the front lines in Afghanistan to fight the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance, where he was wounded, captured and eventually sent to Guantanamo. But despite his statements and some potential evidence — he was captured with a bag of various currencies and passports from several countries — some legal experts say it may be difficult for the United States to bring charges against him under the law as it stood in 2001.

“His statement that he is a jihadist and wants to stand against America — exactly what law does that violate?” asked Benjamin Wittes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of “Law and the Long War.” “I cannot be confident that these facts — even if proven — would amount to a prosecutable case.”

Wittes and others have suggested that some system of detention may be needed for prisoners who cannot be prosecuted but are too dangerous to release. Human rights advocates, however, disagree.
“Contrary to many of the naysayers, the U.S. has adequate tools at its disposal to prosecute those who provided material support to terrorism in late 2001 and beyond,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch.

Zahri has refused to meet with his attorneys, who said they were unable to discuss his case in any detail because much of the material about him remains classified. But they raised the possibility that his statements may have been coerced and cautioned that his sometimes contradictory remarks — condemning bin Laden at one hearing and pledging fealty to him at another, threatening the United States and then saying he has “no issue” with America — make anything he has said at Guantanamo Bay unreliable.

“We are concerned that some of the statements may have been given under questionable circumstances, either physical or mental,” said Vicki Werneke, an assistant federal public defender in Ohio who is representing Zahri in habeas proceedings in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Zahri, too, has said that his statements cannot be proven, and, military officials said in documents, he sees it as his mission “to waste our resources investigating his lies.”

Yes, indeed; for, as Islam's prophet declared, "War is deceit."

"Pragmatism"

"We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy."

"Danish soldiers negotiating with Afghan Taliban: report," from AFP, February 16 :

Danish soldiers in Afghanistan have begun negotiating with the Taliban to try to break the deadlock there, a newspaper reported Monday, as a poll suggested most Danes considered the war unwinnable.

Troops had holding talks with the Taliban as wiping out the insurgency was proving so difficult, a Danish officer told the Jyllands-Posten daily.

"We have already held several meetings with local chiefs where the Taliban were represented," Lieutenant Colonel Bjarne Hoejgaard told the paper after a six-month mission in Afghanistan.

"We cannot get around it. We must intensify the dialogue and the negotiations with the Taliban if we want to have peace in Afghanistan, because we cannot eliminate the enemy," he added.

Hoejgaard insisted the meetings were not about negotiating a truce with the most extreme elements, but were aimed at creating more security for Danish soldiers by entering into dialogue with more moderate, local Taliban.

"The more local Taliban we kill the more enemies we create," Hoejgaard said.

The report came as a new poll showed that 55 percent of Danes believed the war against the Taliban insurgency could not be won...

Unlike other mujahidin ("holy warriors") who are in the habit of raping men and shaming them into becoming suicide-bombers (i.e., "martyrs"), this jihadist appears to simply be a serial rapist, with no "nobler" motives (i.e., shaming others into martyrdom). "Suspected al-Qaeda rapist held," from News 24, February 16:

Fallujah - A suspected al-Qaeda terrorist implicated in the rape of four Jordanian women has been arrested in Iraq after he crossed the border from Syria, police said on Sunday.

"We arrested the criminal Saadi Nayef Ali, an al-Qaeda terrorist chief, outside a restaurant north of Fallujah, just after he returned from Syria, where he was hiding," police commander Yusuf Dhari told AFP.

Ali, 26, originally from the former rebel bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, confessed to having killed at least 11 people, Dhari said, and to having information about the rape of the four women on a highway in 2006.

From the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (thanks to Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi):

Feb. 10, 2009: Queen Elizabeth congratulates the Islamic Republic for "national" day. In a brief notice on her official website, the Queen of England sent her greetings to the ruling clerics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She is the only foreign leader we know of who has ever referred to the anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution as Iran's "national" day. For the record, the Islamic Republic itself has decreed April 1 - not February 10 - as its "independence day," because that was the day in 1980 that the Islamic Republic regime was officially decreed. Many Iranians consider their true independence day to be August 5, the anniversary of the 1906 constitutional revolution).

Iranians have long suspected the British government of interfering in Iran's internal affairs; some have accused Britain of conspiring with Khomeini in 1979 to bring down the Shah. The Queen's statement could have been written by modern Iranian novelist Iraj Pezeshkzad, whose comic hero, dear Uncle Napolean, saw a British hand behind every ill of Iranian society.

Still crazy after all these years

The Land-for-Peace delusion never seems to die, no matter how often it is made clear that jihadists will take advantage of any concession by Israel to strengthen their position further, and that they will continue to press on until Israel as a whole is obliterated. As the Hamas Charter says, quoting Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"Livni: Give up half of 'Land of Israel,'" by Aron Heller for Associated Press:

JERUSALEM – Tzipi Livni, who hopes to be appointed Israel's prime minister-designate, said Monday Israel must give up considerable territory in exchange for peace with the Palestinians, drawing a clear distinction with her rival, Benjamin Netanyahu.

She told a convention of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations, "we need to give up half of the Land of Israel," using a term that refers to biblical borders that include today's Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

She explained that such a withdrawal would be for the good of Israel, to maintain it as a Jewish state....

Bat Ye'or, a hero of our age, with Spencer

In "Geert Wilders and the Fight for Europe" in National Review, February 16, the renowned historian Bat Ye'or discusses the 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference's (OIC) efforts to criminalize free speech, and the Wilders case and its implications for Europe and the free world in general:

[...] In its efforts to defend the “true image” of Islam and combat its defamation, the organization has requested the UN and the Western countries to punish “Islamophobia” and blasphemy. Among the manifestations of Islamophobia, in the OIC’s view, are European opposition to illegal immigration, anti-terrorist measures, criticism of multiculturalism, and indeed any efforts to defend Western cultural and national identities. The OIC has massive funding from oil sources, which it lavishly spends on the Western media and academia and in countless “dialogues.” It influences Western policy, laws, and even textbooks through pressures brought by Muslim immigrants and by the Western nations’ own leftist parties. Hence, we have seen Kristallnacht-like incitements of hate and murder against European Jews and Israel conducted with impunity in the cities of Europe — where respect for human rights is supposed to be one of the highest values.

Geert Wilders is the latest victim of this enormous world machinery. His crime is maintaining that Europe’s civilization is rooted in the values of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and the Enlightenment — and not in Mecca, Baghdad, Andalusia, and al-Kods. He fights for Europe’s independence from the Caliphate and for its endangered freedoms. He had received serious death threats even before Fitna was released.

Many Muslims in the West support him, but Geert Wilders’s principal weapons are his courage and his willingness to resist even his own government, which is slowly submitting to the OIC’s pressures. Wilders’s enemies pretend that he is an insignificant personality who makes “provocative” statements only in search of fame. In fact, if his motivation were self-interest, he could do far better by courting the OIC’s favors — as so many Europeans are doing, consciously or unconsciously — rather than risking his freedom and indeed his life.

Read it all.

Sharia is inevitable; accept it, UK

According to this "Christian" clergyman, "a number of fairly senior people" in the UK now agree with him that "parts" of sharia should be enshrined in the UK. "Archbishop of Canterbury: Society is coming round to my views on sharia," by Martin Beckford for the Telegraph, February 16:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has defended his controversial comments about the introduction of Islamic law to Britain and claimed that public opinion is now behind him.

On the anniversary of the interview in which Dr Rowan Williams said it "seems inevitable" that some parts of sharia would be enshrined in this country's legal code, he claimed "a number of fairly senior people" now take the same view.

He added that there is a "drift of understanding" towards what he was saying, and that the public sees the difference between letting Muslim courts decide divorces and wills, and allowing them to rule on criminal cases and impose harsh punishments.

However critics insist that family disputes must be dealt with by civil law rather than according to religious principles, and claim the Archbishop's comments have only helped the case of extremists while making Muslim women worse off, because they do not have equal rights under Islamic law.

The Archbishop, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, faced calls to resign last February when he said it was likely that elements of the religious principles based on the Koran, concerning marriage, finance and conflict resolution, would be enshrined in British legislation one day.

But in July he was supported by Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, who was then the Lord Chief Justice, while it later emerged that five sharia courts are already operating mediation systems under the Arbitration Act, and that the Government allows Islamic tribunals to settle the custody and financial affairs of divorcing couples and send their judgements to civil courts for approval.

When asked at a recent conference of Anglican leaders in Egypt whether he feels he has been vindicated, Dr Williams replied: "It's been quite interesting to see how a number of fairly senior people have observed that certain kinds of limited aspects of Muslim law are imaginable within a British legal framework, without upsetting the apple cart of undermining human rights.

"People are maybe beginning to distinguish the general question of Muslim law, and the extremes of appalling practice which disfigure it in so many parts of the world or the extremes of trying to push Sharia law upon an entire society.

"So I think there is a drift of understanding of what I was trying to say, perhaps I like to think so."

But Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: "He has started a process which is deeply dangerous, damaging to Britain and to Muslim women in Britain.

"It was a wicked move because it undermines the progressives and gives succour to the extremists.

"How does the Archbishop of Canterbury know, sitting in Lambeth Palace, that a woman in Bolton has volunteered to give up half her inheritance to her brother?"

Neil Addison, a barrister who specialises in religious discrimination cases, said: "I think the Archbishop has failed to give a justification for sharia law. What's the advantage it would bring to British Muslims and to British law?

"I believe his speech was deeply harmful to British Muslims because it helps the separation of them from the rest of society.

"What he was asking for was sharia dealing with wills and divorce, which are public areas of law, not private ones."

Violating sharia and paying the price, as with this story, where impoverished Sudanese women were assaulted and jailed for selling alcohol.

"Three women arrested in Niger over sale of alcohol," by Francis Falola for The Punch, February 16:

Three women and a man were on Sunday arrested in Niger State over sales of alcohol at prohibited places.

The state government, under Dr. Babangida Aliyu, which upheld the operation of the Islamic legal system, Sharia, restricted the sales and consumption of alcohol in the state.

The Secretary of the Niger State Liquor Licensing Board, Alhaji Ahmed Bala, who spoke with our correspondent in Minna on Sunday, said the four persons were arrested at Maitumbi and Chanchanga areas of Minna, the state capital.

He added that while the three women were arrested for the sale of liquor, the man was arrested for the consumption of alcohol at a prohibited place.

According to him, “During the operation, over 350 cartons of assorted drinks and several drums of locally brewed alcoholic drinks, popularly called burukutu and ogogoro, were destroyed.”

Bala said the operation was the first to be embarked upon by the board this year, adding that the suspects would soon be charged to court as soon as the police concluded their investigations.

He said the law prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol at unauthorised places was in force and advised the people to obey the Sharia legal system....

A Muslim man who was double-parked in front of a mosque has been arrested and charged with "assaulting a police officer, defeating the ends of justice, causing an obstruction to traffic, inciting violence and resisting arrest." Not to worry: "Local Muslims have vowed to ensure that the ... officer involved is disciplined."

"Muslims in clash with cops," by Nivashni Nair for The Times, February 16:

TENSIONS between local Muslims and the Port Shepstone municipal police have reached fever pitch — a well-known Muslim businessman was arrested and allegedly “treated like a terrorist” for double-parking outside the town’s mosque on Friday.

Local Muslims have vowed to ensure that the Hibiscus Coast Protection Services officer involved is disciplined.

Husain Motala, 30, who says he spent four hours in police cells after he was arrested for double parking, claims a white officer, whose name is known to The Times, told him that “Muslims think that we have too much money so we can do what we want, but he was going to get us”.

The trouble began when Motala double-parked his car outside the mosque during Friday prayers as he was unable to find a space.

“When I came out , I saw that the officer had given me a ticket for double-parking. I then heard him radio other officers telling them to focus the CCTV camera on the scene because things were going to get out of hand. I identified myself and apologised for double-parking,” said Motala.

Motala was then told that the car would be impounded.

He said the officer then insulted him and called in back-up of 12 police vehicles and 35 traffic officers, and closed the road.

“Others had now begun to come out of the mosque and tried to intervene, but the officer began pushing them. I did not even touch or speak to the officer badly,” Motala said.

A tow-truck driver was arrested for “obstructing justice” after allegedly refusing to remove Motala’s car because it was not abandoned .

Motala was also charged with assaulting a police officer, defeating the ends of justice, causing an obstruction to traffic, inciting violence and resisting arrest.

Motala and the tow-truck driver were given bail of R5000 each and will appear in court today.

Motala plans to sue the officer for defamation and racism.

Community leader Ismail Asmal said local Muslims were “very angry”.

They are pledging money for Motala’s defence.

Victor Chetty, head of the Hibiscus Coast Protection Services, was unavailable for comment.

A spokeswoman for the KwaZulu-Natal police, Director Phindile Radebe, confirmed that Motala was arrested and that he had been charged.

Jahanam's Angels (note the turban)

In whatever era or place, here are the Sunnis and Shias at it once again -- this time in the guise of "bikers" warring in Sydney, Australia.

"Religious divide drives bikie war," by Dylan Welch for SMH.com, February 16:

AN ANCIENT religious enmity is at the centre of a new conflict in the Sydney bikie scene, with a new gang comprised mainly of Sunni Muslims warring with a group of bikies with a Shiite Muslim background.

While detectives continue to investigate the February 4 bombing of a Hells Angels clubhouse in Crystal Street, Petersham, police and other sources are indicating that the city chapter of the Comanchero is involved in an escalating feud with a new club, Notorious.

The president of Notorious is a Lebanese-Australian with a long-standing association with a bikie from a colourful Sydney Sunni Lebanese family. The two are among Sydney's original "Nike" bikies - sporting white sneakers, fashionable T-shirts and clean-shaven instead of the traditional boots, dirty vests and bushy beards - and both are from Sunni families from Sydney's west.

Notorious is considered by gang squad detectives to be the prime suspect in the Crystal Street bombing. One of its mottos is "Only the dead see the end of war" and its "colours", or coat of arms, is a turbaned skeleton holding twin pistols with "Original Gangster" beneath it. Today is the first time the club's colours have been revealed publicly.

On the other side of the conflict is the president of the Comanchero City Crew, a Beirut-born Shiite who grew up in the St George area. Comanchero has been one of the motorcycle gangs that have embraced the new breed of "Nike" bikie, and have been recruiting from the Lebanese and Islander communities for several years.

Traditionally, Lebanese Muslim migrants to Sydney have been geographically and religiously divided. The Sunni majority live in Sydney's west and south-west, mainly around Auburn and Bankstown, while the Shiite minority live in the St George area. "The two groups have no love lost between them," a senior police source told the Herald.

They have been fighting since the Sunni bikie, one of Sydney's most well-known gangsters, became president of the Nomads Parramatta chapter in the late 1990s.

In 2006, he was jailed over a Newcastle shooting. The following year, the Parramatta chapter's Granville headquarters was bombed, allegedly by the Comanchero, and the chapter subsequently disbanded.

A few of its members formed Notorious, probably at the request of the Sunni bikie.

"[The Sunni bikie] left the Nomads while he was on remand," said an investigator who has watched the two groups for years. "He was telling people he was planning to start up his own club. Around about the same time, Notorious appeared."

Unlike the Sunni bikie and the Notorious president, the Comanchero City Crew president was born in Beirut and grew up in Sydney's southern suburbs. He appeared on television in 2005 following the Cronulla riot and Maroubra reprisal violence, when he met members of the Bra Boys to calm tensions.

When the Herald asked the president of the Hells Angels city chapter about the bombing, he was succinct: "I've got nothing to say, thank you."

But bikie sources said the Angels believe Notorious may be responsible for the attack, which closed down Crystal Street for a day and damaged seven neighbouring businesses.

Neither police nor the Hells Angels have established why Notorious may have attacked the club, though the senior police source offered a simple answer: "They're just bloody crazy."

In the latest violence, a Comanchero member was shot in the leg when he was confronted by five Hells Angels at a park in Silverwater on February 7.

Maybe he got a copy of a Dinesh D'Souza book to review in the course of his work.

But no, the unending jihadist violence can never, ever have anything to do with the Qur'an and ahadith. There's just got to be another explanation, so... how about exposed kneecaps?

"Afghan TV stations find censorship line is blurry," by Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, February 14:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The young Afghan woman in a headscarf spends all day staring at other women's bodies and Hindu idols on her computer screen, then covering them up.

It's Laila Rastagar's job to turn Indian and Korean soap operas into family viewing in this conservative Muslim country. Dual flat-screen monitors illuminate the 22-year-old's face in the dark cubicle as she draws a blurry square with her mouse to obscure a collarbone, then a kneecap, then a Buddha statue.

She's one of a crew of such editors employed by Tolo TV, Afghanistan's most popular station, to censor shows in an attempt to balance its programming at the intersection of radical Islam, traditional values and the West.

Television has flourished in Afghanistan since the hard-line Taliban regime was ousted in 2001. Eleven private stations and one state channel now broadcast in the capital. More than 80 percent of city residents own televisions, along with more than 20 percent of rural dwellers, according to the Asia Foundation. For the rest, there are kebab restaurants with flat-screen TVs and teahouses with smaller sets playing in the corner.

But in recent years government regulators have gone after more Afghan TV stations for their content, reflecting an increasing desire to control Afghan culture as extremist violence has worsened. Some stations have gone more conservative and others more defiant as the culture war builds over what's legal, and what's Afghan. The baseline of acceptability can be hard to define in a country that has swung from miniskirted university students in the 1970s to mandatory burqas under the Taliban and now is trying to settle somewhere in between.

Tolo TV removes what it thinks will spark anger. Uncovered knees and low necklines are off limits, along with the nape of the neck, the upper back, the sliver of stomach left exposed by an Indian sari, teens dancing together in a disco and a kiss on the cheek. References to religions other than Islam are blotted out. [...]

Afghanistan's government tried to ban a number of Indian soap operas in April, saying the shows were too risque and did not represent Afghan culture. Most networks complied, even though the shows are large moneymakers. Tolo refused and said the ministry did not have the right to ban entire shows, only offensive parts. The issue has gone to the courts and litigation is pending.

The media laws in Afghanistan are vague, commanding broadcasters to stay "within the framework of Islam." Self-censorship can be the best way to pre-empt angry letters from a government-established oversight commission. [...]

But the information ministry says stations like Tolo are the problem — run by Afghans who grew up abroad and have now returned en masse. More than five million Afghans have flooded back into the country since 2002.

"This is a society that has not yet emerged from war. And our young generation who grew up maybe in Pakistan, in Iran, they don't have knowledge of our culture," Information Minister Abdul Karim Khurram says.

Khurram says Tolo's owners are "drugging the people" with low-quality entertainment shows while providing fuel to extremist insurgents....

Just like Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" led to all those suicide bombings by Christian conservatives. No, wait...

"New weapons" combating Muslim violence: Irony

After all, "a lot of them [Muslim youth], even the ones in trouble, keep some kind of connection with the mosque." Maybe that's why they are violent and anti-social in the first place?

"Imams to help police in bid to keep young Muslims away from gang culture," by David Leask for News.Scotsman.com, February 15:

A NEW weapon will be unveiled this week in the war on teenage gangs: Muslim Imams.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that several Islamic clerics will join police and youth workers in an innovative new scheme to wean young Muslims away from trouble.

The Imams – most Scottish-born – will take to the streets starting this week, targeting a dozen teenagers believed to be on the edge of the embryonic Asian gang culture on Glasgow's Southside.

Their allies, including workers from Youth Counselling Services Agency (YCSA), a support group for young Asians, reckon the clerics will be able to command more respect from youngsters than other professionals, including the police.

They will launch their programme just days after the first serious youth disorder in Pollokshields, home to Scotland's biggest Muslim community, since last summer. Four Asians – three young men and a youth – were last week charged with assault after an alleged attack on white men when a snowball fight reportedly escalated into serious violence.

Pollokshields, especially its poorer eastern end, has seen a rise in anti-social behaviour over the past decade, but has not yet been gripped by the gang culture that dominates many other inner city areas. Youth workers, however, fear that youth crime, while less serious than elsewhere, is growing much faster.

Adeel Ibrahim, a YCSA worker with frontline experience of dealing with young offenders, said: "We really have to nip this in the bud. There is not a lot of drinking here. So if we have the trouble we have without alcohol, imagine what it will be like if they start drinking."

Two teenagers have died in Pollokshields in the past decade. First, 15-year-old Imran Khan lost his life after being stabbed in 1998 in a gang fight. Then, in 2004, another 15-year-old, Kriss Donald, died after being kidnapped and tortured by a notorious Asian gang. Donald's killers were the first men in Scotland sentenced for a racially motivated murder.

There has been little racial tension in Pollokshields since Donald's killing, but some young Asians are drifting into a gang culture similar to that of their white neighbours and schoolfriends. The whiter end of Pollokshields has long had its gang, Young Shields Mad Skwad. Some Asians have flirted with various loose affiliations including, in the past, the Young Shields or Black Shields, and, more recently, the Shields Paki Kru.

The Imams and the YCSA, backed by groups such as Glasgow Community and Safety Services, have set their sights firmly on youngsters lured by the gang lifestyle.

Omar Ansari, a youth leader at YCSA, said: "We are targeting a specific group of people who are causing most concern, people who are excluded or isolated from the wider community. The Imams will be a great help – we need all the skill sets we can get.

"The main thing is that they know a lot of the young people because a lot of them, even the ones in trouble, keep some kind of connection with the mosque. If the Imam doesn't know that young person, it's very likely the person will know the Imam."

The Imams about to take part in the scheme, from mosques such as Pollokshields' respected Masjid Noor, have gone through all the usual channels, securing Disclosure Scotland background checks like any other person who wants to work with young people.

Most are Scottish-born and have a clear understanding of the kind of third-generation Pakistani Scots they will be dealing with. They all know they can't afford just to preach to youngsters: they have, they stress, got to find some common language.

An update on this story. "Afghan court upholds sentences in Quran trial," by Rahim Faiez and Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, February 15:

KABUL (AP) — An appeals court in Afghanistan upheld 20-year prison sentences Sunday for two men who published a translation of the Quran that drove religious leaders to call for their execution.

The controversial text is a translation of Islam's holy book into an Afghan language without the original Arabic verses alongside. Muslims regard the Arabic Quran as words given directly by God. A translation is not considered a Quran itself, and it is believed a mistranslation could warp God's word.

And gee whiz, people are already "misunderstanding" the Qur'an right and left!

A host of Muslim clerics in this conservative Islamic state have condemned the translation — which was published in 2007 and handed out for free — as blasphemous and accused its publishers of setting themselves up as false prophets.

Critics have said the trial illustrates the undue influence of hard-line clerics in Afghanistan's fledgling legal system.

The appeals court found the men guilty of modifying the Quran — a crime punishable by death. However, the three-judge panel reiterated a lower court ruling giving the men 20 years each.

The prosecutor had asked for the death penalty for the two men — Ahmad Ghaws Zalmai, a former spokesman for the attorney general, and Mushtaq Ahmad, a Muslim cleric who signed a letter endorsing the translation.

Chief judge Abdul Salam Qazizada invoked Islamic Shariah law when reading out the sentence, saying death would not have been an extreme punishment.

"He who commits such an act is an infidel and should be killed" according to some interpretations of Shariah law, Qazizada said.

Qazizada did not explain why they didn't issue a harsher verdict.

Zalmai's lawyer, Abdul Qawi Afzeli, said both men plan to appeal again, pushing the case the Supreme Court.

The appeals court reduced the sentence of the owner of the print shop that published the book to 15 months, which he has already served, from five years. Three other men charged with trying to help Zalmai flee the country were sentenced to just over seven months, also time already served.

The "Al-Qaeda Pipeline" branches out. "Somali radicals 'importing terror to UK' say intelligence analysts," by Jonathan Rugman for the Times Online, February 16:

Dozens of Islamic extremists have returned to Britain from terror training camps in Somalia, the British security services believe.

Intelligence analysts are worried that they may attempt to launch attacks in this country or use the kudos from having trained and fought in Somalia to try to attract new recruits. The issue was raised by Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, in his first interview last month.

In the US, the outgoing head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, has said that Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in late 2006 “catalysed” expatriate Somalis around the world.

An investigation for Channel 4 News, to be broadcast tonight, also reveals that a suicide bomber who grew up in Ealing is thought to have blown himself up in an attack in Somalia that killed more than 20 soldiers.

The incident is the first reported case involving a Somali based in Britain and will add to pressure on Scotland Yard and the Home Office to tackle the problem within the Somali community, which, at about 250,000 people, is the biggest in Europe.

“Pakistan rightly gets the most attention in terms of external threats,” a senior counter-terrorism source said. “But we believe we should focus more on the Horn of Africa and Somalia in particular.” [...]

Case study: From business student to suicide-bomber

Case study: When poverty and lack of education/opportunity don't cause terrorism:

The British Somali who became a suicide bomber had abandoned a business studies course at Oxford Brookes University (Jonathan Rugman writes). The 21-year-old from Ealing, West London, reportedly blew himself up at a checkpoint in the southern Somali town of Baidoa in October 2007 after crossing into Somalia by foot from Kenya.

News reports at the time said that the Somali Prime Minister was staying at a nearby hotel but escaped. Somali jihadist websites claimed that more than 20 Ethiopian soldiers were killed. The bomber was a member of al-Shabaab – The Youth – militia, which is fighting to impose Islamic law. Its brutal tactics include decapitating alleged spies with knives. Six aid workers were reportedly killed by the group last December.

It is not clear whether Britain's security services are aware of the Ealing student's case. His family, who still live in London, want his name withheld to avoid reprisals.

The man had recorded a martyrdom video in which he urged Somalia's refugee diaspora to join him in his jihad. “Oh my people, know that I am doing this martyrdom operation for the sake of Allah,” he said. “I advise you to migrate to Somalia and wage war against your enemies. Death in honour is better than life in humiliation.”

Sheikh Ahmed Aabi, a moderate Somali religious leader in Kentish Town, northwest London, said that he knew of the Ealing case and had heard from other families of sons travelling to Somalia to join warring Islamist groups. “I'm hearing it from parents,” he said. “They say they [their children] are joining the jihad. I am hearing there are a lot of people. This is a big problem facing our community.”

And what is Aabi doing about it?

Jihad Watch obtained a copy of the trailer, too!

More mainstream media idiocy about the jihad threat. "CBS Tries to Discredit Homegrown Jihad Documentary," by Ryan Mauro at Pajamas Media:

On Wednesday, February 11, 2009, the Christian Action Network premiered Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Camps Around the U.S. at Washington, D.C.'s Landmark Theater. The crowd of 160-175 people left the theater with their jaws dropped, only moving their mouths to thank the members of CAN for their hard work. The robust Q&A session brought only positive remarks and constructive questions about the networks of an organization known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a group led by a Pakistan-based cleric named Sheikh Mubarak Gilani with at least 35 radical Islamic compounds here in the United States under the name "Muslims of America."

A key feature of the documentary, which is available at ChristianAction.org, is the "Soldiers of Allah" videotape, on which Gilani is seen instructing his followers on how to hijack cars, set off explosives, murder guards, and use various other terrorism tactics as part of what he admits is "one of the most advanced courses in Islamic military warfare." This is followed by an open invitation for interested Muslims to contact any of his Muslims of America compounds in the United States to receive such training. He even warns the viewers of the tape to not allow it to fall into non-Muslim hands and not to make illegal copies.

The compounds are in isolated areas all over the country from Washington down to California, to Tennessee and Michigan, and New York all the way down to Georgia. While the Christian Action Network manages to identify some of these camps and is even seen visiting some of them in the film, Sheikh Gilani has mentioned having sites in many states that have not been located by CAN.

These are not simply isolationist Muslims seeking to get away from the sinful ways of American society. The camps have websites that are devoted to Sheikh Gilani, hailing him as a miracle-worker that is a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. One site in Red House, Virginia, even has a street named "Sheikh Gilani Lane." Gilani, while espousing to be a man opposed to terrorism and extremism, has made such statements as "Jews are examples of human Satans" and "We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are in America."...

Read it all.

The courageous warrior Pamela Geller has just posted at Atlas Shrugs a harrowing collection of photographs of honor killing victims. Scroll and scroll, and it just keeps going -- so many victims, and still these photographs represent only the tiniest fraction of honor killing victims worldwide. I've posted three here; there are many, many more.

Note that the vast majority of the victims pictured were living in America or elsewhere in the West. Yet the West, with all its humane values, did not save them -- it was too busy sacrificing at the altar of multiculturalism to waste its time with a few murdered women.

Question: as Pamela continues to collect photographs of honor killing victims in the West, if she were to update her post in this future, how much longer will it be in five years? Ten years? And will anything, anything at all, be done in the interim to call the Islamic communities in the West to account and demand that they repudiate traditional Islamic laws exempting from punishment a parent who kills a child, and work against the shame/honor culture that perpetuates these honor murders?

What do you think?

Mark Steyn at The Corner notes that the mainstream media paid far more attention to the launching of the moderate Muslim Bridges TV than it has to news that the founder of that network has beheaded his wife.

Just asking, but are beheadings common in western New York? I used to spend a lot of time in that neck of the woods and I don't remember decapitation as a routine form of murder. Yet the killing of Aasiya Hassan seems to have elicited a very muted response.

When poor Mrs Hassan's husband launched his TV network to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims, he had no difficulty generating column inches, as far afield as The Columbus Dispatch, The Detroit Free Press, The San Jose Mercury News, Variety, NBC News, the Voice of America and the Canadian Press. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle put the couple on the front page under the headline "Infant TV Network Unveils The Face Of Muslim News".

But, when Muzzammil Hassan kills his wife and "the face of Muslim news" is unveiled rather more literally, detached from her corpse at his TV studios, it's all he can do to make the local press - page 26 of Newsday, plus The Buffalo News, and a very oddly angled piece in the usually gung-ho New York Post, "Buffalo Beheading: Money Woe Spurred Slay".

Oh, really? He beheaded her for some goofy clause in the insurance policy? Not exactly:

An upstate TV exec who set up a channel promoting Muslims as peace-loving people was stressed about his failing business in the days before he allegedly chopped off his estranged wife's head, a friend of the couple said today.

Ah.

"He was worried about the station's future," said Dr. Khalid Qazi, a friend of the couple and president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, who last spoke to the Hassans a week ago...

"Domestic violence is despicable, and Islam condones it in no way whatever," he said.

"Murders are being committed in the US every day by people of all faiths."

Well, maybe. But for sheer news value you'd think this one might stand out. Look at this picture. That's the very definition of "moderate Muslim". Look at the late Aasiya Hassan, beautifully coiffed, glossy-lipped. On countless occasions since 9/11, I've found myself at lunch or dinner in New York, London, Washington, Paris or some other western city, sitting next to a modern Muslim woman like Mrs Hassan telling me how horrified she is at how hijabs and burqas, honor killings and genital mutilation, forced cousin marriages and the disproportionate number of Muslim wives in European battered women's shelters, how all these have come to define Muslim womanhood in the 21st century. Yet Aasiya Hassan ended up no differently - all because her husband's TV network had a cashflow problem?

The media's lack of curiosity is in marked contrast to their willingness to propagandize for the launch of Mr Hassan's station. It also helps explain why the US newspaper business is dying....

If we give them what they're fighting for, then they won't fight us, right? Right, genius. That's called "surrender."

Goodbye to any vestiges of equality of rights for women and non-Muslims in Malakand. More on this story: "Pakistan imposes Islamic law in Taliban stronghold," by Saeed Shah in The Guardian, February 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are "trying to take over the state".

Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts.

Malakand is part of North West Frontier province, a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.

Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.

"This is definitely a surrender," said Khadim Hussain of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a thinktank in Islamabad. "If you keep treating a community as something different from the rest of the country, it will isolate them."

Javed Iqbal, a retired judge, speaking on Pakistani television, said: "It means that there is not one law in the country. It will disintegrate this way. If you concede to this, you will go on conceding."...

Yes. There is a lesson for the West in that also.

Muhammad said, "If anyone changes his religion, kill him" (cf. Bukhari vol. 9, bk. 84, no. 57).

Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Egyptian Christian's recognition struggle," by Christopher Landau for the BBC, February 13 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Maher al-Gohary has converted from Islam to Christianity. In spite of facing death threats, he's engaged in a legal battle to have his changed religion recognised on his official Egyptian documents.

We drive through the chaotic streets of Cairo to meet Mr Gohary's lawyer at a petrol station.

His client lives in hiding, and doesn't disclose his address.

He faces threats to his life - as a result of abandoning Islam for Christianity.

When we meet, in a small first floor office on an anonymous Cairo street, Maher al-Gohary is matter-of-fact about the dangers he faces.

The problem is that some judges rule according to their beliefs, not according to law
Nabil Ghobreyal, lawyer

"I am afraid. Many, many people can kill me and my daughter anytime," he says.

I asked him whether he felt these threats to his life were serious.

"Yes," he replied. "Anyone may kill us in the street."

His teenage daughter, also a Christian, sits at her father's side.

She, too, has been warned about the consequences of religious conversion.

"While I was going to school, someone stopped me and told me if my father does not go back to Islam, they will kill him and kill me," she tells me....

From Palestinian Media Watch (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater):

After having three puppet hosts, Mickey Mouse look alike, the bee and the rabbit, die on TV, Hamas childrens television has introduced a fourth puppet host. The new one, a bear named Nassour, appeared Friday on Hamas TV promising to be a Jihad fighter, declaring war on the Zionists.

Expect CAIR, MPAC and the rest to dispatch deprogrammers to Gaza immediately, to teach these people that the idea of jihad as warfare is an invention of wicked Islamophobes, and represents a comprehensive Misunderstanding of Islam.

(See here for Part I; to read with hyperlinks, see the Pajamas Media version, where this essay was originally posted.)

War is eternal

The fact that Islam legitimizes deceit during war cannot be all that surprising; as the saying goes, all’s fair in love and war. Moreover, non-Muslim thinkers and philosophers, such as Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, all justified deceit in war. The crucial difference, however, is that, according to all four recognized schools of Sunni jurisprudence, war against the infidel goes on in perpetuity — until “all chaos ceases, and all religion belongs to Allah” (Koran 8:39). In its entry on jihad, the definitive Encyclopaedia of Islam simply states:

The duty of the jihad exists as long as the universal domination of Islam has not been attained. Peace with non-Muslim nations is, therefore, a provisional state of affairs only; the chance of circumstances alone can justify it temporarily. Furthermore there can be no question of genuine peace treaties with these nations; only truces, whose duration ought not, in principle, to exceed ten years, are authorized. But even such truces are precarious, inasmuch as they can, before they expire, be repudiated unilaterally should it appear more profitable for Islam to resume the conflict.

Moreover, going back to the doctrine of abrogation, the vast majority of the ulema agree that Koran 9:5, famously known as ayat al-saif — the “sword verse” — has abrogated some 124 of the more peaceful Meccan verses.

The obligatory jihad is best expressed by Islam’s dichotomized worldview that pits Dar al-Islam (the “realm of submission,” i.e., the Islamic world), against Dar al-Harb (the “realm of war,” i.e., the non-Islamic world) until the former subsumes the latter. Internationally renowned Muslim historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) articulates this division thusly: “In the Muslim community, holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. The other religious groups [specifically Christianity and Judaism] did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense. … But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations.”

This concept is highlighted by the fact that, based on the ten-year treaty of Hudaibiya (628), ratified between Muhammad and his Quraish opponents in Mecca, ten years is, theoretically, the maximum amount of time Muslims can be at peace with infidels. Based on Muhammad’s example of breaking the treaty after two years (by citing a Quraish infraction), the sole function of the “peace treaty” (or hudna) is to buy weakened Muslims time to regroup before going on the offensive once more. Incidentally, according to a canonical hadith, Muhammad said, “If I take an oath and later find something else better, I do what is better and break my oath.” The prophet further encouraged Muslims to do the same: “If you ever take an oath to do something and later on you find that something else is better, then you should expiate your oath and do what is better.”

After negotiating a peace treaty criticized by Muslims as conceding too much to Israel, former PLO leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Yasser Arafat, speaking to Muslims in a mosque and off the record, justified his actions by saying, “I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraish in Mecca.” In other words, like his prophet, the “moderate” Arafat was giving his word only to annul it once “something else better” came along — that is, once Palestinians became strong enough to renew the offensive.

Most recently, a new Islamic group associated with Hamas called Jaysh al-Umma (Islam’s army) stated clearly, “Muslims all over the world are obliged to fight the Israelis and the infidels until only Islam rules the earth.” Realizing their slip, they quickly clarified: “We say that the world will not live in peace as long as the blood of Muslims continues to be shed.” Which is it — until Muslim blood stops being shed in Israel or “until only Islam rules the earth”?

These are all clear instances of Muslims feigning openness to the idea of peace simply in order to buy more time to build up their strength.

Here, then, is the problem: If Islam must be in a constant state of war with the non-Muslim world, which need not be physical, as the ulema have classified several non-violent forms of jihad, such as “jihad-of-the-pen” (propaganda) and “money-jihad” (economic); and if Muslims are permitted to lie and feign loyalty, amiability, even affection to the infidel, simply to further their war efforts — what does one make of any Muslim overtures of peace, tolerance, or dialogue?

This is more obvious when one considers that, every single time Muslims “reach out” for “peace,” it is always when they are in a weakened condition vis-à-vis infidels — that is, when they, not their non-Muslim competitors, benefit from the peace. This is the lesson of the last two centuries of Muslim-Western interaction, wherein the former have been militarily inferior and thus beholden to the latter.

One wonders if the reverse would hold true. If, for example, the Palestinians suddenly became stronger than Israel and could annihilate it, if Israel reached out for peace or concessions, would the (overwhelmingly Muslim) Palestinians grant it? In fact, the answer to this question is evident in all those countries where non-Muslim groups live as minorities among Muslim majorities: while living in constant social subjugation (according to Koran 9:29) they are also sporadically persecuted and killed — such as the Christian Copts of Egypt who, after merely assembling for prayer in a condemned factory, found 20,000 rioting Muslims surrounding them, screaming the Muslim war cry, “Allah Akbar,” while throwing stones at them.

"A virtual world governed by the rules of Islam"

Yet the founder of Muxlim.com insists that "We are not a religious site, we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle." In Islam, what's the difference, as "religion" and "lifestyle" are one and the same? More on this story.

"MIDDLE EAST: Virtual Muslim world bans drinking, sex," from the LA Times, February 14:

Ever wanted to experience life in the Muslim world but didn't have enough money to fly to Cairo?

The first-ever virtual version of the Muslim world was recently launched online.

Muxlim Pal lets you adopt an animated avatar and interact with others online in a virtual world governed by the rules of Islam.

You can shop, socialize in a beach cafe and, of course, pray at a mosque.

Aimed at Muslims and non-Muslims, the website aims to foster understanding and communication between East and West.

According to Finnish-based company Muxlim.com, the website hopes to bring Muslim communities worldwide closer, especially Muslim youth in the West.

"We are not a religious site, we are a site that is focused on the lifestyle," said Mohamed El-Fatatry, founder of Muxlim.com, in an interview with the BBC.

"This is for anyone who is remotely interested in the Muslim culture and the Muslim lifestyle," he added.

In another interview with Agence France-Presse, El-Fatatry estimated that 98% of Muxlim.co's users are Muslims. He said the site had about 1.5 million visitors a month from 190 countries, half from the United States.

The virtual Muslim world bans drugs, drinking, sexual behavior, killing and other crimes, making it different from such popular virtual worlds as Second Life and The Sims.

Such limitations ensure that the game does not breach Muslim restrictions and appeals to all age groups. "We are not trying to segregate anybody; we are trying to build a platform for Muslims to have a voice and dialogue with others," El-Fatary told AFP.

Joining the site is free of charge and registered users get some virtual money at the start to pamper their character with clothes, food and even decorations for their rooms. More services and premier features can be acquired as users swap real cash for virtual money.

Developers hope to add several other features by the time of the virtual world's full launch later this year.

Skeletons from al-Qaeda's closet emerge: "Iraqi army finds 10 bodies in mass grave," from AFP, February 15:

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The Iraqi army has uncovered 10 bodies in a shallow mass grave north of the capital believed to date back about two years to a period when Al-Qaeda terrorised the area, the military said on Sunday.

Army spokesman Major General Mohammed al-Askari said the skeletons were found on Saturday in Al-Taji, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Baghdad.

"The graves and the bones date back to about two years ago and are believed to be the work of Al-Qaeda," he told AFP...

Even though the U.S. government said that he "was one of three potential pilots recruited by the al Qaeda to carry out a Sept.11-style attack on the U.S. west coast in 2002."

"Malaysia frees suspected al Qaeda pilot - report," from Reuters, February 14:

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has released three men held under suspicion of terrorism, including one believed to be linked to a foiled plot in 2002 to crash an aircraft into a U.S. building, a newspaper said on Saturday.

Syed Hamid Albar, the minister in charge of security, confirmed that the three men linked to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant network, including Malaysian Zaini Zakaria, had been freed on Friday, the Star newspaper reported.

Zaini, who security officials suspected had taken part in a so-called "second-wave" of attacks on the United States following the Sept.11, 2001 attacks, had been detained without trial under Malaysia's Internal Security Act since 2002.

Syed Hamid did not give further details, the newspaper said. The minister confirmed the report to Reuters but did not give details or say why the men had been freed.

The U.S. government had said Zaini was one of three potential pilots recruited by the al Qaeda to carry out a Sept.11-style attack on the U.S. west coast in 2002. Zaini later backed out of the operation which the U.S. government said they had derailed.[...]

The Jemaah Islamiah has been blamed for a series of bomb attacks around southeast Asia in recent years, including the nightclub attacks in Bali, Indonesia that killed 202 people in October 2002.

The black flag of jihad

"For over 1300 years this magnificent superpower dominated world affairs and introduced a law and order that lifted the masses from the darkness of man-made law and into the light of al-Islam." And institutionalized discrimination against and the subjugation of non-Muslims and women. Yet its reestablishment is "inevitable."

In the West we're constantly told that only "Islamophobes" claim that there is any political or supremacist agenda within Islamic tradition and teaching. Conferences like this one, however, show otherwise. Where is Lord Nazir Ahmed? Shouldn't he be telling these people that they have misunderstood Islam, and that they should renounce all intentions to impose Islamic law in the UK or anywhere else in the West, and should live as loyal subjects of the British Crown? Why is his ire focused exclusively upon Geert Wilders, for daring to call attention to the violent and supremacist texts and teachings of Islam and the ways in which some Muslims are carrying out those violent and supremacist directives? Shouldn't he be working instead to change the minds of those Muslims who teach the things to which he apparently objects so strenuously?

Anyone going to be in Middlesex on March 1? Go to this conference, pick up a shahada flag, and record the talks! Non-Muslims can attend, and "are welcome to embrace Islam as well." But you might not want to go as a couple, as "strict segregation will be enforced." And if you do go, be very, very careful. The atmosphere is not likely to be very welcoming.

From Islam for the UK (thanks to J.):