May 2009 Archives

Does Obama really think that strong-arming a reliable U.S. ally about these settlements will end the jihad against Israel? Or does he just not care, and is willing to throw Israel to the wolves?

"‘Obama committed to ejecting Jews from Judea-Samaria,’ says Abbas," from Israel Today, May 31 (thanks to Islam In Action):

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday told reporters in Cairo that he is convinced that US President Barack Obama is firmly committed to finally ejecting the Jews from Judea and Samaria.

Abbas spoke to the press after briefing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his visit to the White House late last week, during which Obama apparently agreed with his guest that existing Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria must not even be allowed to experience “natural growth.”

“When the American administration talks about Israel's duty to stop the settlements - including natural growth - it is a very important step,” noted Abbas....

Yes, it is. And in no sense one that free people should applaud.

"The most compelling question, though, and always the most elusive, is why?" It is only elusive because the Islamic community in Canada, like Islamic communities all over the West, is in total denial about the phenomenon of honor killing, and Western authorities are too ignorant and cowed by political correctness and multiculturalism to call those communities to account and demand that they do something to counter this phenomenon -- institute transparent, inspectable programs teaching against the attitudes and assumptions that lead to these killings would be a start, but no one is even asking for that.

An update on this story. "Ottawa man guilty of 'honour killings': Jury convicts man for murders of sister and her fiance," by Terri Saunders for The Ottawa Sun, May 31 (thanks to Sounder):

OTTAWA - A man who killed his sister and her fiance because they brought dishonour on his family was sentenced to life in prison yesterday with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Hasibullah Sadiqi, 23, said nothing after a jury of seven men and five women found him guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in the Sept. 19, 2006 gun slayings of his sister, Khatera Sadiqi, 20, and her fiance, Feroz Mangal, 23. The couple were shot to death while they sat in Khatera's car in the Elmvale Mall parking lot just before 1 a.m.

"Your crimes have shocked and bewildered the people of almost every community in the nation's capital," said Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford, who sentenced Sadiqi immediately following the verdict. "The forfeiture of your liberty for the rest of your life only seems just."

Members of Mangal's family, including three of his brothers, wept in the courtroom when the verdict was confirmed by Rutherford. Hameed Mangal told the court his family's lives have not been the same since the killings....

Over the course of the month-long trial, the jury heard from witnesses that Hasibullah Sadiqi was angered by the fact his sister had decided to get engaged to Mangal without seeking the permission of her father, from who she was estranged. Khatera had also begun living with Mangal and his family, another decision which witnesses said upset Hasibullah.

On the evening of Sept. 18, 2006, the couple went for dinner and to a movie with a group of friends that included Hasibullah. Khatera and Mangal drove Hasibullah to where his car was parked near the mall at the end of the evening. Before they could drive away, Hasibullah walked to his car, pulled a loaded Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum handgun from underneath the seat, walked back to Khatera's car and shot the couple at close range. Khatera died at the scene; Mangal was taken to hospital but died 10 days later when he was removed from life support.

In a victim impact statement read to the court by assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors, Khatera's mother, Nasima Fayaz wrote about how there remain unanswered questions despite the conclusion of the trial.

"The most compelling question, though, and always the most elusive, is why?" Fayaz wrote. "In this instance, why were two clean-living, law-abiding young people so shockingly removed from this world? Can anyone convincingly answer this question?"

'TWISTED' VALUES

At the start of the trial, Moors told the jury the shootings were planned and deliberate -- an "honour killing" designed to restore honour to the Sadiqi family through the spilling of Khatera's blood. Hasibullah considered Khatera's actions to be contrary to the family's Afghan heritage, Moors said....

"And prosecutors contend in the affidavit the [terrorist] efforts [targeting Washington and Georgia] were conducted "in purported defense of Muslims or retaliation for acts committed against Muslims in the United States and in foreign nations." Looks like prosecutors will be relying on the ol' "grievances-breed-terrorism" canard.

An update on this story. "Trial looms for suspect in alleged jihad plot," by Greg Bluestein for AP, May 31:

ATLANTA (AP) — Armed with a handheld video camera, a Georgia university student drove with a friend in April 2005 to Washington, D.C., and captured scenes of the Capitol, the Pentagon and other locations.

Investigators say Syed Haris Ahmed, now 24, wasn't a tourist but a wannabe terrorist who wanted to send the videos of potential terror targets to an overseas contact. He was attending the Georgia Institute of Technology at the time.

The charges, along with an allegation that Ahmed went to Pakistan and tried to join a terrorism group a few months later, are central to a federal terrorism case against him that is set to begin Monday.

His attorney, Jack Martin, contends the federal charges are little more than "imprudent talk" and that investigators have no evidence that Ahmed, who was born in Pakistan, has committed any terrorist act.

U.S. Attorney David Nahmias, however, considers it one of his most important cases since he took charge of the office in 2004 and contends Ahmed was at the center of a plot to carry out "violent jihad" against civilian and government targets in Washington and Georgia.

Ahmed and his friend Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, both U.S. citizens who grew up in the Atlanta area, have pleaded not guilty to the charges. Sadequee's trial is scheduled to begin in August.

Federal authorities said they began to build the case after the pair hopped a bus to Toronto in March 2005 and met with at least three other targets of an FBI investigation. Authorities say they brainstormed strikes against targets that ranged from military bases to oil refineries and included a plot to disrupt the Global Positioning System satellite network.

A few months later, authorities say they drove Ahmed's pickup truck to Washington where they made the "casing" videos of the Capitol, the World Bank, a Masonic temple and a fuel depot. And they were accused of discussing an attack against Dobbins Air Reserve Base in suburban Atlanta.

Authorities also said they have evidence of more than just talk.

The two were accused of receiving "rudimentary paramilitary training" in northern Georgia in late 2004 and early 2005. And officials said Ahmed traveled to Pakistan in July 2005 to seek out Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based group linked with attacks in the disputed state of Kashmir.

Nahmias has said there is no evidence the two posed an immediate threat to the United States, but stressed that their path could eventually have led to violence.

And prosecutors contend in the affidavit the efforts were conducted "in purported defense of Muslims or retaliation for acts committed against Muslims in the United States and in foreign nations."

In court papers, Martin has accused investigators of preying on Ahmed's devotion to Islam to coax a confession and then reneging on a promise not to arrest him if he told the truth.

Martin also has cast doubt on whether prosecutors have enough evidence for a conviction. While the indictment discusses meetings, conversations and training exercises, nowhere does it say the two men obtained or tried to obtain weapons or explosives to commit terrorism.

"The case is more about talk," Martin said after a hearing.

The trial is expected to last about a week, and at the end, the federal judge will likely hear directly from Ahmed. The suspect waived his right to a jury trial this month specifically because he wants to make a public statement.

"I consider the opportunity to give the statement more important than anything to me right now," he said at a recent hearing.

Part 3 of the YouTube version of "Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations?" (Part 1; Part 2)

About Obama's upcoming Cairo speech, one Afghani lawmaker says "One speech will not work, but it's good for a start. When you pay homage to others and respect them, you enliven their spirit." In short, the world's Muslims are waiting to see if Obama's "symbolic" prostrations will morph into real prostrations, unwarranted concessions.

"ANALYSIS - Muslims want more than fine talk from Obama," by Alistair Lyon for Reuters, May 31:

BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama has awoken hope for redress of grievances in the hearts of some of the more than a billion Muslims scattered in diverse communities across the globe.

To win their minds, sceptical after a "war on terror" waged by his predecessor George W. Bush that many saw as an assault on Islam, Obama must follow his speech to the Muslim world this week with evidence of real change in U.S. policy and outlook.

That, at least, is a common thread stressed by politicians and analysts from Muslim-majority countries -- as is the urgency of U.S. action to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

From Kuala Lumpur to Kabul, from Ramallah to Riyadh, the messages for Obama throb with that central concern, along with a yearning for a break from the divisive, militaristic, pro-Israel stance many Muslims associate with the eight-year Bush era.

"It's not too late to repair relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world," said Tifatul Sembiring, president of an Islamist party in Indonesia, home to the world's largest Muslim population. "But Obama has to give us some proof that there will not be another opportunistic war, such as happened in Iraq."

Sembiring, who leads the PKS (Partai Keadilan Sejahtera or Prosperous Justice Party), homed in on the Palestinian issue.

"Are they (the Americans) serious about creating a real solution for Palestine? We are waiting for justice on this."

Obama's best chance to win over Muslims and Arabs was to use Washington's leverage on its Israeli ally, said Saudi political analyst Turad al-Amri. "By pressuring Israel, Obama will win in more than one area -- in terrorism, the Iran file, Lebanon."

The U.S. president has said Israel must halt all settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, a demand that sets him on a collision course with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

DEEDS NOT WORDS

For PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat, Obama's task was to ensure creation of a Palestinian state. "People of this region don't want to hear words any more. They want to see deeds," he said.

In Kabul, Afghan lawmaker Sabrina Saqib said Obama's roots, as a black American with a Muslim father, meant he understood deprivation and would work to settle the Palestinian issue.

"One speech will not work, but it's good for a start," she said of Obama's planned address on Thursday. "When you pay homage to others and respect them, you enliven their spirit."...

Read it all for more Muslim expectations.

Supported by (no surprise) "leftists." More on this story. "Muslims in fresh Athens demo over alleged Koran insult," from AFP, May 30:

ATHENS (AFP) — More than 1,000 Muslim migrants and leftists demonstrated in Athens Friday over an alleged police insult to the Koran, a week after two similar protests degenerated into clashes with anti-riot police.

The protest was called by leftist and anti-racist groups after a police officer allegedly tore up some sheets of paper with extracts from the Muslim holy book belonging to an Iraqi migrant during an identity check last week.

"We want this officer put on trial, and we ask the government to protect our prayer sites in Athens," said Zuri, a Moroccan protester.

"But we intend to set a good example and refrain from violence, Islam is a religion of peace," he said.

Scores of police on foot and on motorbikes were mobilised to maintain order and keep the migrants who marched on parliament from coming into contact with a few dozen neo-Nazi militants staging a street gathering a few blocks away.

The far-right group was commemorating the fall of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Greece's main Muslim and migrant organisations distanced themselves from the migrant demonstration, preferring to take judicial action instead.

"Our problems can be solved by dialogue, not demonstrations," said Ahmet Moavia, head of the Greek Migrants' Forum.

"The real agenda is migrants' rights in Greece which include issues of religion," he told AFP...

There is no Muslim outrage about this book yet, but the fear of it is palpable enough for the Sunday Times to write an article about it. And if that outrage does indeed materialize, this will be yet another case, as here and here and here, of Muslims becoming outraged over accurate representations of Islamic texts and teachings. "Fears of Muslim anger over religious book," by Christine Toomey in The Sunday Times, May 31 (thanks to Twostellas):

An academic book about religious attitudes to women is to be published this week despite concerns it could cause a backlash among Muslims because it criticises the prophet Muhammad for taking a nine-year-old girl as his third wife.

Why is there no Muslim backlash against the Bukhari hadith collection (the collection of Islamic tradition that Muslims consider most reliable), which reports the same thing in no less than five places? Find it at 5.58.234; 5.58.236; 7.62.64; 7.62.65; and 7.62.88.

The book, entitled Does God Hate Women?, suggests that Muhammad's marriage to a child called Aisha is "not entirely compatible with the idea that he had the best interests of women at heart".

Not entirely, indeed. And the response Muslim women deserve is not outrage at the book, but reform where child marriage is rampant, and reform of other elements of Islam that oppress women. But nothing seems much less likely.

It also says that Cherie Blair, wife of the former prime minister, was "incorrect" when she defended Islam in a lecture by claiming "it is not laid down in the Koran that women can be beaten by their husbands and their evidence should be devalued as it is in some Islamic courts"....

Indeed, she was wrong. Wife-beating is in Qur'an 4:34 and the devaluing of testimony is in Qur'an 2:282. So now there will be a "backlash" because truth rather than falsehood is revealed?

Continuum's book may cause a backlash because it sets out to be a factual examination of religious attitudes to women. British writer Jeremy Stangroom and his American co-author Ophelia Benson, whose previous books on philosophy and science have received favourable reviews, cite ancient Islamic scholars to support their case. They roundly attack previous attempts to "soft-soap" the controversial episode in Muhammad's life. In the aftermath of 9/11, the authors argue, a wave of political correctness aimed at building bridges with the Muslim world has meant accusations of "Islamophobia" have been used to silence debate about the morality of social conduct, past and present....

Quite so. Read it all.

"We're disappointed. All of the understandings reached during the [George W.] Bush administration are worth nothing."

"Israel to U.S.: 'Stop favoring Palestinians,'" by Barak Ravid for Haaretz, May 31 (thanks to Mackie):

Tensions between Washington and Jerusalem are growing after the U.S. administration's demand that Israel completely freeze construction in all West Bank settlements. Israeli political officials expressed disappointment after Tuesday's round of meetings in London with George Mitchell, U.S. President Barack Obama's envoy to the Middle East.

"We're disappointed," said one senior official. "All of the understandings reached during the [George W.] Bush administration are worth nothing." Another official said the U.S. administration is refusing every Israeli attempt to reach new agreements on settlement construction. "The United States is taking a line of granting concessions to the Palestinians that is not fair toward Israel," he said.

The Israeli officials attributed the unyielding U.S. stance to the speech Obama will make in Cairo this Thursday, in which he is expected to deliver a message of reconciliation to the Arab and Muslim worlds....

Herzog spoke to Mitchell and his staff about understandings reached by former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon with the Bush administration on allowing continued building in the large West Bank settlement blocs. He asked that a similar agreement be reached with the Obama government....

Good luck with that.

Because it attacks "innocents" -- in this case, fellow Muslims. No word from Geelani on the propriety of attacking Infidels. "Syed Ali Geelani denounces ‘Taliban in Pakistan,’" from Dawn, May 30 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SRINAGAR: ‘Acts of terrorism’ by Taliban extremists in Pakistan are un-Islamic, a politician campaigning for Kashmir's independence from India said Saturday.

Referring to Thursday's spate of bomb attacks in Pakistan's northwestern cities, in which 15 people were killed, Syed Ali Geelani told reporters that, ‘such attacks are forbidden in Islam as innocents are killed.’

‘Islam is a religion of peace and such attacks defame the religion,’ said the 79-year-old Geelani, who supports a two-decade insurgency against India's rule over half of Kashmir.

Geelani, who heads a faction in the region's main separatist alliance, the Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, called on the Taliban to lay down their arms and hold peace talks with Pakistan's government.

‘Taliban leadership needs to give up violence and adopt peaceful means to get their demands addressed,’ Geelani said, warning that killings of ‘innocent people cannot be tolerated.’...

Part 2 of the YouTube version of "Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations?" (Part 1 here; thanks to Ran-for-Sanity).

An imam was involved. Why didn't he instruct the plotters about the true, peaceful Islam? "Taliban target Britain on 'orders' from al-Qaeda," by Duncan Gardham for the Telegraph, May 29 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

A Taliban-trained terrorist was part of a cell sent to bomb Britain as revenge for their presence in Afghanistan, it has emerged.

The terrorist informant has told prosecutors he was trained by Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistan Taliban, and was planning a series of suicide attacks with 11 other men.

The informant, known as "Ahmed", told investigators the bombers were to work in pairs using a "device carried in a backpack with a third person to detonate a remote control" in order to ensure the bombers went through with their mission....

It is claimed the attacks were to begin on the Barcelona underground system and then spread to the other European countries with a presence in Afghanistan, thought to include Britain, according to new documents.

The information echoed claims made by British security services that a terrorist cell was sent to Manchester from the Taliban heartland in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas.

British investigators believe that the cell, which was allegedly planning attacks on the Trafford and Arndale shopping centres over the Easter holidays, had connections with al-Qaeda, and Spanish prosecutors say their cell may also have had links with al-Qaeda....

The 10 men arrested in the north west are fighting deportation on national security grounds after Government lawyers accused them of being members of a "UK-based network linked to al-Qaeda involved in attack planning".

Spanish police found chemicals including nitrocellulose and potassium perchlorate along with batteries, timers and cables in the raids.

They also found "materials for indoctrination" relating to attacks against Nato forces in Afghanistan and books and DVDs.

Spanish prosecutors submitted documents laying out their case earlier this month and Dolores Delgado Garcia, a prosecutor at Spain's National Court, told the Daily Telegraph she believed the Barcelona cell was inspired by speeches by Osama bin Laden about the "loss of Andalucia" once part of the Muslim Ottoman empire.

"Al-Qaeda has been targeting Spain because of its historic associations with Andalucia," she said. "But other cities in Europe where countries have troops in Afghanistan were also targets."...

They have named Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 40, an imam at a mosque in Raval, as the leader of the cell along with Elia Mohammad Ayud Bibi, 64, while three others, Afees Ahmed, Qadeer Malik and Iqbal Sabih, were allegedly the bomb-makers.

The suicide bombers are said to have included Mohammed Shoaib, Mehmooh Khalid, Imran Cheema and ur-Rehman Aqeel Khalid.

Their other targets are said to have included Germany, France and Portugal.

See a pattern?

Feigning outrage and claiming discrimination -- it's a very effective tactic to deflect criticism and scrutiny.

"Florida Case Angers Muslim Groups," by Joel Millman for the Wall Street Journal, May 30 (thanks to Twostellas):

A federal immigration judge denied bail Friday to a 23-year-old engineering student from Tampa who has been charged by the U.S. government for engaging in terrorism.

The defendant, Youssef Megahed, has already been acquitted by a federal jury of related charges. But now, he faces essentially the same charges again in an immigration court, where if he is found guilty he faces deportation back to his native Egypt.

The case has inflamed Muslim immigrant groups, and has become a cause célèbre in Egypt, where President Barack Obama makes a much anticipated trip next week. The issue: Whether an immigrant defendant who is acquitted in one U.S. court can be detained and then retried in an immigration court, without invoking protection against double jeopardy, which forbids prosecutors from trying defendants more than once on the same evidence.

The undergraduate from the University of South Florida was arrested in 2007 in South Carolina with a companion, another USF student from Egypt named Ahmed Mohamed, driving a car that allegedly had explosives in the trunk. Mr. Megahed's companion explained the lengths of PVC pipe and chemical compounds were simply home-made fireworks that Mr. Mohamed planned to detonate for fun during a vacation. Mr. Mohamed later agreed to plead guilty to a federal charge of providing material support to terrorism -- and submit to a 15-year sentence -- while six charges of transporting explosives were dropped.

Mr. Megahed decided to fight those charges in court and was acquitted April 3 on four criminal counts stemming from the arrest. He had already served nine months in jail before making bail prior to the opening of his trial in March in Tampa.

But three days after the acquittal, Mr. Megahed was arrested a second time by federal agents at a local Wal-Mart store where he was shopping with his father. Mr. Megahed was charged under the Immigration and Naturalization Act as someone a U.S. official "knows, or has reason to believe, is engaged in or is likely to engage" in terrorist activity. He was also designated for deportation to Egypt, the country he emigrated from in 1998, when he was 12 years old....

More on this story. "Police training program upsets Seattle Muslims," from Associated Press, May 30 (thanks again to Twostellas):

A Seattle police training program has upset some Muslims because it comes from a Jewish group they accuse of spreading fear about Islam.

The racial awareness program, "Perspectives on Profiling," was produced by the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles. It's known for Holocaust education work and tracking down Nazi war criminals.

Muslim critics are unhappy about films on Islamic extremism the Wiesenthal Center has distributed.

Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says the group "has an anti-Muslim agenda."...

Nothing, of course, about CAIR's unindicted co-conspirator status, etc.

Right now they're talking about restricting free speech in connection with dissent from the stimulus bill. Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform (of all things), writes this: "Update on Recovery Act Lobbying Rules: New Limits on Special Interest Influence," from the Whitehouse.gov Blog, May 29 (thanks to James):

Following OMB’s review, the Administration has decided to make a number of changes to the rules that we think make them even tougher on special interests and more focused on merits-based decision making.

First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.

Second, we will focus the restriction on oral communications to target the scenario where concerns about merit-based decision-making are greatest –after competitive grant applications are submitted and before awards are made. Once such applications are on file, the competition should be strictly on the merits. To that end, comments (unless initiated by an agency official) must be in writing and will be posted on the Internet for every American to see.

Third, we will continue to require immediate internet disclosure of all other communications with registered lobbyists. If registered lobbyists have conversations or meetings before an application is filed, a form must be completed and posted to each agency’s website documenting the contact.

OMB will be consulting with agencies, outside experts and others about these principles and will publish detailed guidance, but we wanted to update interested parties on the outcome of the initial review. We consulted very broadly both within and outside of government (including as reflected in previous posts on the White House blog) and we are grateful to all those who participated in the process.

In "White House moves to restrict criticism of stimulus projects" at the Washington Examiner, May 30 (thanks again to James), Mark Tapscott explains the implications:

This is the Camel's nose under the tent, being poked because of special circumstances. Let government restrict political expression - i.e. lobbying of government officials regarding policy - in one small, supposedly specialized area and not long after the specialized area starts expanding. Eventually, all political expression regarding all policy will become subject to government regulation.

More on this as it develops. And trust me, it will develop.

With the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) making an all-out international effort to restrict free speech about Islam, including speech designed to alert non-Muslims to the motives and goals of the global jihad movement, and Obama making conciliatory gestures toward the OIC, it is not at all difficult to look down the path and see the day coming when it will Sharia provisions restricting speech about Islam will be in place in the United States of America, and it will be illegal to speak about the Islamic supremacist agenda.

Most, of course, will dismiss such concerns the way they always dismiss them: with a wave of the hand and an invocation of the First Amendment -- as if the First Amendment were some kind of inviolate shield that cannot itself ever in any way be impeached or impugned. Would that it were so. But the Obama Administration is already showing how little it cares for free speech and open dissent. And with an Obama-compliant Supreme Court judging cases that challenge their actions and interpreting the First Amendment for us, what's to stop the Administration from playing ball with the OIC and building wonderful new bridges with the Islamic world in this way?

Even though "the sheriff's office was complying with workplace health laws governing face masks authorized for use in jail emergencies." More Muslim attempts for special accommodation in non-Muslim lands -- while non-Muslims can forget about mere equality in Islamic lands. "Muslim fired by sheriff's office files suit," by Gary Grado for the East Valley Tribune, May 29:

A Muslim man has filed a religious discrimination suit against Maricopa County and Sheriff Joe Arpaio alleging he was fired from his job as a jail detention officer over a fight to wear a beard.

Sinan Fazlovic alleges in the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix that when he was hired the sheriff's office had no problem with his beard, which he wore in accordance with religious tenets.

It became a problem when he met personally with Arpaio while he was in the training academy in 2005.

Fazlovic's superiors made him shave the beard under orders from Arpaio and then later upheld the decision by saying he would need to be clean shaven for a self-contained breathing apparatus to fit snugly on his face, the suit alleges.

Detention officers sometimes have to wear the devices in emergency situations.

Chief of Custody Gerard Sheridan said the sheriff's office was complying with workplace health laws governing face masks authorized for use in jail emergencies.

"The sheriff's office is committed to providing a safe environment for employees and inmates," Sheridan said.

The sheriff's office then created a new policy forbidding facial hair.

Fazlovic alleges he sought a special accommodation for which he was denied and told he would need to change jobs in order to wear a beard.

He grew his beard anyway and over the next year he sought other jobs in the sheriff's office. He sought to keep the same pay as a detention officer to no avail and he filed grievances, the suit claims.

He was fired July 27.

As the list below shows, the slaves were variously beat, terrorized, blinded, raped, and so forth. But there is one thing they all experienced: they were all forced to convert to Islam (i.e., "Islamized"), revealing their tormentors' priorities.

"232 Sudanese Slaves Liberated," from Christian Solidarity International, May 29:

CSI Urges President Obama to Help Stamp out Slavery in Sudan

WASHINGTON, May 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a report on the liberation of 232 Sudanese earlier this month. The slaves - Christian and traditionalist members of the Dinka tribe - were liberated, with CSI's support, from Arab masters in Darfur and neighboring Kordofan. The released captives were then repatriated to their homeland in Southern Sudan by Arab retrievers working in association with local Arab-Dinka Peace Committees. The enslavement of these Black non-Muslim Sudanese took place during jihad raids undertaken by Arab militias backed by Sudan's Islamist government during the late North-South civil war (1983-2005).

Interviews with all 232 slaves conducted by CSI representatives reveal a clear pattern of physical and psychological abuse. The liberated slaves reported having been subjected to beatings, death threats, rape, female genital mutilation, forced conversion to Islam, racial and religious insults and work without pay. Some slaves reported witnessing the execution of fellow captives.

Among the interviewed slaves were:

Achan Mawien Guat - pregnant 17 year-old: Enslaved, Raped, Circumcised, and Islamized.

Peter Akot Dut Hol - 19 year-old Christian: Enslaved, Islamized, Father Murdered, Mutilated and Terrorized.

Majok Kon Maliith - 17 year-old: Enslaved, Islamized, Terrorized, Beaten, and Blinded in one Eye.

Mary Atak Geng Baak - 18 year-old Christian: Enslaved, Islamized, Sexually Abused, Terrorized, and Economically Exploited.[...]

Slavery persists in Sudan, despite the signing in January 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Islamist Government of Sudan (GOS) and the secular, Southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLM). The Agreement failed to include a mechanism for overseeing the liberation of slaves and their safe repatriation...

Raymond just posted the story about the Saudis crucifying a young man. The Reuters story says: "Saudi Arabia says it is implementing Islamic sharia law to the letter..."

Indeed. The Qur'an recommends crucifixion as a punishment for those who "spread corruption in the land":

"The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom." -- Qur'an 5:33

"Saudi Arabia says it is implementing Islamic sharia law to the letter and that sharia ensures full rights for Muslims and non-Muslims." "Saudi Arabia puts executed on display as deterrent," from Reuters, May 29:

RIYADH, May 29 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia executed a man for double murder on Friday and displayed his body in public as a deterrent, state media said.

The body of the man, beheaded by sword, was put on a cross in the Saudi capital Riyadh, state news agency SPA said, quoting the interior ministry.

Rights activists said authorities only rarely use this form of deterrent in a bid to stop crimes spreading.

Ahmad Adhib bin Askar al-Shamalani al-Anzi had been convicted of killing a man and his 11-year old son in a shop in Riyadh, SPA said.

Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally, usually carries out executions by public beheading for murder, rape, drug smuggling and, increasingly, armed robbery.

Saudi Arabia says it is implementing Islamic sharia law to the letter and that sharia ensures full rights for Muslims and non-Muslims, who must abide by the laws of the desert country....

“'This wasn’t collateral damage. It was human sacrifice by the Taliban. Deliberate civilian murder.'... If not enough women and children were killed, the Taliban made plans to use grenades to ensure an international outcry over civilian deaths."

"B-1 Video Shows Taliban ‘Human Sacrifice,’ Military Claims," by Noah Shachtman for Danger Room, May 29:

Earlier this month, a series of American airstrikes on a village in western Afghanistan killed dozens and dozens of people — including at least 25 civilians. Now, U.S. forces are weighing the release of a classified video, taken from a B-1 bomber involved in the battle. The military is convinced that the footage will justify American troops’ actions during the firefight — and show that the Taliban committed “human sacrifice” in the village of Garani. Human rights groups say the video may only reinforce just how questionable those airstrikes really were.

“There is indeed video from a B-1 bomber,” U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus tells National Public Radio. “What it will prove is that the targets of these different strikes were the Taliban.”

[...]

A B-1 bomber, flying far overhead, dropped four one-ton munitions onto a pair of large mud-brick compounds. Villagers say more than 160 civilians, mainly women and children, had taken shelter inside the buildings, which were near a mosque and residential compounds. According to the military, observation from forces on the ground and the video from the B-1’s weapons sight show that the buildings were on the outskirts of the village, and packed with Taliban. The video shows two groups of fully-grown adults going inside the compounds. Radio traffic confirmed the the insurgents’ presence. Additional footage shows women and children streaming into other buildings that were not bombed, the military says.

The U.S. also claims it has intelligence showing that the “Taliban’s deliberate planning to create a civilian casualty disaster for us,” Lt. Commander Christine Sidenstricker, a spokesperson for U.S. Forces Afghanistan, tells Danger Room. The militants planned to draw U.S. fire onto buildings crammed with innocents, she says. If not enough women and children were killed, the Taliban made plans to use grenades to ensure an international outcry over civilian deaths. American intelligence also shows Taliban fighters congratulating themselves on forcing survivors to lie to doctors — and on taking American compensation money meant for the victim’s families, Sidenstricker adds. “This wasn’t collateral damage. It was human sacrifice by the Taliban. Deliberate civilian murder.”...

Many Western analysts, even at the highest levels, seem to think that if a country is holding more or less free elections, then it attained "freedom," and that that in itself will be, in very large part if not in full, an effective antidote to the problem of "terrorism." Yet in Iraq, Shi'ites in particular used the electoral process to advance their agenda of establishing a Shi'ite state in Iraq, and now Hizballah acknowledges that they, too, regard elections as a useful tool in their jihad. The next time someone tells you that Hizballah is moderating, and that its participation in the electoral process is an indication of that, remember this one.

"Hizbullah Official: Elections Part of Jihad Battle," from Israel National News, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

(IsraelNN.com) Lebanon's June 7 parliamentary elections are part of "part of our jihadist and political battle in Lebanon" and an opportunity for obtaining support for the line of the resistance, said Hizbullah political council chairman Ibrahim Amin Al-Sayyid. His comments were translated by MEMRI from an Iranian News Agency report....

A "reconciliation" coerced by arrest: You've got to hand it to the proponents of Sharia and its subjugation of women and non-believers: They can outdo Orwell himself. An update on this story. "Egypt: Two Copts rearrested in Abu Fana murder," from Compass Direct News, May 29:

ISTANBUL, May 29 (Compass Direct News) – Police this month released two Copts wrongfully arrested for killing a Muslim during an attack on Abu Fana monastery in Egypt in May 2008, but then re-arrested them as part of an intimidation campaign against Christians, their lawyer said.

More worrisome to the Christians in custody is that their fate most likely will be decided outside of the justice system, in “reconciliation meetings.” The state prosecutor investigating the case has not announced the results of his findings on the true identity of the murderer, as he is awaiting the outcome of the out-of-court talks between Copts and local Muslims.

Brothers Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo have been incarcerated for a year. On May 3 the two brothers were released on bail, but the Minya State Security Services issued a new detention order and had them arrested on May 20 for “security reasons.” Egyptian security forces can incarcerate people without reason according to provisions in criminal law.

A criminal court in Cairo ordered the release of the Fawzy Abdo brothers twice, but each time the interior ministry issued another arrest order. Advocacy groups say the interior ministry is working with local police and the investigating officer to keep them detained, force a confession and make the Copts look guilty in the Abu Fana attack.

“Police arrested them for reasons of ‘security concerns’ in spite of no evidence,” said Ibrahim Habib, chairman of United Copts of Great Britain. “They are comforting Islamists by scapegoating Christians.”

The two men worked as building contractors on the walls of Abu Fana monastery in Upper Egypt when nearly 60 armed Muslim residents attacked it in May 2008. The attack left one Muslim dead and four Christians injured, and two of three monks briefly kidnapped were tortured.

Five days after the attacks, security forces arrested the Fawzy Abdo brothers, charging them with murder. In November they were sent to El Wadi El Gadid Detention Camp near the Egypt-Sudan border and tortured as authorities tried to extract a false confession of murder, their lawyer said.

Minya Gov. Ahmed Dia el-Din claimed the Muslim murdered at Abu Fana was killed by one of the brothers from 80 meters away. But the Coptic brothers’ lawyer, Zachary Kamal, told Compass that an autopsy showed a bullet fired from a short distance.

The two men have faced extreme conditions in prison such as solitary confinement and broken teeth from beatings, and they have not been allowed to see their families, who are undergoing extreme hardship. Refaat Fawzy Abdo has six children and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo has seven; both Christians are the breadwinners of their households.

Reconciliation Instead of Justice?

Reconciliation meetings with area Muslims continue with the participation of Coptic businessmen, the diocese of Mallawi, a member of Parliament and attorney Kamal, all under the auspices of the police.

Such meetings are somewhat customary in Egypt, in which different parties come together to settle legal matters out of court. They carry a social purpose of restoring faith and communal harmony in the face of sectarian tensions.

Kamal said he was not opposed to a reconciliation meeting instead of normal judicial channels, but that terms of the discussion were unacceptable. Authorities want the brothers to admit to the murder of the Muslim and the Copts to pay compensation to the victim’s family.

“They want the Copts to accept guilt, but that means they will carry the blood of the victim the rest of their lives,” Kamal said.

Other Copts worry that the meetings are a substitute for administrative justice, and that police are using the brothers as a bargaining tool to force Abu Fana’s monks to drop charges against local Muslims and call off the investigation of the attack...

And Islamic clerics stormed the courtroom to demand a guilty verdict, in an update on this story (scroll down to the second half of the article). "Pakistan: Islamic radicals storm 'blasphemy' hearing," from Compass Direct News, May 29:

ISTANBUL, May 29 (Compass Direct News) – Radical Pakistani Muslims in a town outside of Lahore this month overran a courtroom in hopes of swaying a judge in a “blasphemy” case against a Christian couple, and a member of the prosecution later threatened to kill the wife.

Some 50 molvis (Muslim clergy) on May 14 burst into the courtroom in Mustafabad, where a bail hearing was taking place in the case against Munir Masih and his wife Ruqiya Bibi, according to the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS).

“Nobody could stop them as they rushed into the court,” said CLAAS’s Tahir Gull, sole representative for the accused. “They said, ‘No non-Muslim has the right to keep a Quran in his house, they have done this so they are liable to be punished.’”

Masih and Bibi, both in their 30s, were originally accused under section 295-B of Pakistan’s penal code with defiling the Quran by touching it with unwashed hands on Dec. 8 of last year. Masih was taken to prison and remained there until Jan. 22, when a Muslim neighbor who had asked him to store some of his possessions, including his Quran, testified on his behalf and the case was dropped.

The complainant, Mohammad Nawaz, subsequently filed another accusation on Feb. 12, this time under 295-C, blasphemy against Muhammad, Islam’s prophet. This charge carries a death sentence, whereas defiling the Quran calls for life imprisonment.

Despite pressure from the crowd of clerics, Judge Shafqat Ali – also a molvi – granted the couple bail. Following the hearing, however, a member of the prosecution team approached Bibi outside the courtroom and threatened to kill her.

“Ruqiya was waiting outside the court,” said Gull, “and one man came and said, ‘Whatever the decision, we will kill you.’”

A prosecution lawyer read portions of the Quran while presenting his case, he added.

“He was not explaining the law in which the accused were charged,” said Gull. “He was trying to influence the court religiously.”

Charges of blasphemy are common in Pakistan and particularly incendiary, often leading to strong shows of religious zeal. It is not uncommon for sections 295-B and 295-C of the Pakistani penal code to be invoked in retaliation for personal grievances.

“It is very easy to grab any person for religious reasons,” said Parvez Choudhry, chairman of Legal Aid for the Destitute and Settlement, who specialize in blasphemy cases. “There are many personal cases involving property, or money, or business that motivate the complainant against the accused person. All the cases are falsely charged.”...

Building on S&P's new Sharia-compliant index. "Sharia ETF poised for launch," from the Globe and Mail, May 29:

Islamic financial services company UM Financial Inc. has teamed up with Jovian Capital Corp. (JOV-T 7.500.456.38%) in a bid to list Canada's first sharia-compliant exchange-traded fund (ETF).

On Wednesday, Standard & Poor's launched the S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index. In compliance with Islamic law, the index avoids firms involved in financial services, alcohol, gambling and pork products.

As if there existed a compartmentalized Sharia that excludes the many nastier aspects of the system (beheadings, amputations, inequality of men and women, believers and unbelievers before the law), which, we're endlessly assured, are just "cultural."

The proposed product from UM and Jovian would be based on the S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index so the two firms are in discussions with Standard & Poor's to get a licence for the new index to start the Islamic ETF later this year. Eventually, "the goal is to launch a family of ETFs," UM chief executive officer Omar Kalair said yesterday.

The sharia ETF would target Canada's Muslim population (which numbers about one million), as well as foreign investors, Mr. Kalair said in an interview.

Jovian's BetaPro Management unit is a provider of leveraged and other ETFs, while its AphaPro Management unit has actively managed ETFs. "Any product launched would come from BetaPro," Mr. Kalair said.

In recent years, sharia-compliant ETFs have popped up in various countries including Britain, India, Singapore, Dubai, Malaysia and South Africa. In March, a sharia gold ETF was launched in Dubai.

Barclays Canada, which administers the iShares ETFs and is the largest ETF provider in the country, "has no plans to go down this route," said Oliver McMahon, its director of product development. "It's not in our existing product pipeline."

Jasmit Bhandal, a spokeswoman for Standard & Poor's in Canada, said there have been talks with ETF, mutual fund and structured products providers for use of the S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index, but nothing is final. But a licence with an ETF provider is typically an exclusive one, she said.

A couple of sharia-compliant mutual funds are sold in Canada, but both have less than $2-million in assets.

A Toronto-based investment firm, frontierAlt Management Ltd., launched Canada's first sharia-compliant mutual fund, frontierAlt Oasis Canada, in 2007. The firm also later started sharia-compliant funds frontierAlt Oasis World and frontierAlt Global Income funds, but these were closed last fall because it was no longer cost effective to run them, said Taras Hucal, president of frontierAlt Management.

The two Oasis stock funds invested in firms in the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes. The income fund invested in sukuk, which is similar to conventional bonds, but pays out a share of revenue from a designated pool of assets or services rather than interest. Islamic principles prohibit receiving interest income.

Sharia Alert. As was the case the last time the jihadists took over, it hasn't taken long for them to move against music and, in general, fun, in their drive to impose "order."

"Somalia: Islamists in Kismayo Ban Filming In Weddings & Music," by Abdinasir Mohamed for Somaliland Press, May 29:

Mogadishu, 29 May 2009 (Somalilandpress) - The Islamic Administration in Kismayo, Lower Jubba [southern Somalia] has banned ways wedding celebrations are conducted in the town and have imposed various restrictions meant to align it with the teachings of Islam and change the way these celebrations are conducted.

Sheikh Abdirashid Ma’alin Ahmad alias Abu Yonis who is among officials of the Alshabaab militants Administration in Kismayo said there will be no music or dancing by men and women in weddings that are held in the town since it involves men and women who are not allowed to mingle and is against the teachings of Islam.

“Escorting of couples with a convoy of vehicles has also been banned as it creates unnecessary traffic jam in the town. We will not allow more than three cars which we will ensure that they are carrying the immediate relatives of the two couples. The Administration will not also be allow any filming of the wedding,” said Abu Yonis.

He warned that certain measures that are in line with the Islamic Shariah will be taken against those found to be violating these restrictions imposed by the Administration.

The restrictions imposed on the way weddings are conducted in the town banning dance, music and filming during the event has been received with mixed reactions by residents of the town.

Many bachelors in the town who were looking forward to get married have said that they are in favor of the restrictions as it will completely eliminate some of the expenses they would have incurred. Women in the town have received the news with dismay saying that it is too restricting and favors the men.

A few years ago I was an expert witness in a case against the Byron Union School District in California, where public school students had been made to memorize and recite prayers and portions of the Qur'an, and to make affirmations of Islamic faith in the course of answering test questions -- questions would be worded "True or False: Muhammad is the messenger of Allah," instead of "True or false: Muslims believe that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah." But the parents who brought the suit lost the case; the court ruled that it was all just role play, a recognized pedagogical tool, and consequently was nothing to be concerned about.

The same controversy appears to be playing out in this case: was the teaching mandating prayer to Allah, or just leading students in a role-playing game? Officials here again say it was the latter, but some parents aren't so sure. And if it was just role play, why was the teacher fired?

"Teacher sacked after 'making pupils kneel and pray to Allah' during RE lesson," from the Daily Mail, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A teacher has been sacked after parents claimed that their children were forced to pray to Allah during a religious education lesson.

Alison Phillips was accused of giving two pupils detention after they refused to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during the class.

However, an investigation by the school concluded that there was no truth in the allegation.

Parents were outraged after stories emerged that the two boys, aged 11, were allegedly punished for not wanting to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said children should not be forced to take part in the exercise, which included wearing Muslim headgear, was a breach of their human rights.

But governors at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent, denied Mrs Phillips made pupils pray or that two boys were put into detention for refusing to do so.

The school suspended the teacher last July after receiving complaints and a lengthy disciplinary process was carried out.

A statement released on behalf of the school by Cheshire East Council said: 'It can be confirmed that following a long and rigorous disciplinary process, a member of staff at Alsager School has been dismissed from her post.

'The member of staff was suspended in July 2008 following parental complaints and newspaper reports relating to an RE lesson.

'In reaching this decision, the governing body wish to make very clear that they were completely satisfied that at no point did that member of staff make children pray to Allah or put boys in detention for refusing to do so.

'The RE lesson in question contains an element of role play which complies with acceptable practice.'

At the time of the alleged incident, one parent - Sharon Luinen, said: 'This isn't right, it's taking things too far.

'Being asked to pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that came away thinking they were being disrespectful.'

Another parent, Karen Williams, said: 'I am absolutely furious and I don't find it acceptable.

'I haven't got a problem with them teaching my child other religions and a small amount of information doesn't do any harm.

'But not only did they have to pray, the teacher had gone into the class and asked them watch a short film and then said "we are now going out to pray to Allah".'

The grandfather of one of the pupils in the class added: 'It's absolutely disgusting, there's no other way of putting it.'

Parents had claimed that their children were made to bend down on their knees on prayer mats which the teacher had got out of her cupboard.

This is good to see, and it is the sort of thing we should have been seeing much, much more of all over the Western world if the conventional wisdom about Islamic terrorism being the result of the hijacking of the religion by a Tiny Minority of Extremists™ really were true.

One of the moderates said: "We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves. The community decided to move them on because the police won't. We have asked them, but they did nothing." That reflects poorly on the UK police, and provides yet another example of official Britain's generally supine response to the domestic jihadist challenge.

And in line with the deeply ingrained nature of Islamic antisemitism, the worst insult the "extremists" can think of to throw at the "moderates" is "Get back to your synagogue" -- i.e., you're acting like Jews.

"Extremists behind anti-war protest driven off the streets by moderate Muslims," from the Daily Mail, May 29 (thanks to Jean):

Muslim extremists behind a protest against soldiers on a homecoming parade have been driven off the streets today by members of their own community.

Fights broke out and traffic ground to a halt when moderate Muslims confronted a group of about 12 men who regularly preach from a stall in Bury Park - the heart of Luton's Muslim community.

After Friday prayers, more than 200 members of local mosques turned on the group who sparked outrage in March when they disrupted a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment through the town centre....

Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting 'Shame on you' and 'Get back to your synagogue'.

One police officer and two community support officers struggled to hold them apart until more officers arrived.

Buses and cars were unable to move as the crowd spilled into the road.

Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on.

He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists.

Mr Latif said: 'We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves.

'The community decided to move them on because the police won't. We have asked them, but they did nothing.

'I don't know if they will be back. We have been the victims twice over - from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right wing extremists.

'This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.'...

"The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Does it not ever occur to anyone in the Obama White House that however much it might be in the interests of the United States and Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," it may not be within the power of the United States or Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"? The Obama White House seems to be unshakably committed to the proposition that the Palestinians are just passive reactors to Israeli aggression, and that peace will come as soon as the Israelis decide to get on with it.

The Obama White House does not ever seem to consider the proposition that the Palestinians might fight on until they achieve the total destruction of Israel, and that the jihad doctrine of Islamic supremacism mandates that they pursue no other course.

Quotes from "Netanyahu: 'What the hell do they want from me?,'" from Foreign Policy, May 28.

This letter is far from perfect, and contains some highly questionable assertions and recommendations. Helping Pakistan in its war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda? We have been doing that for years, and have only ended up helping the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, via double dealers in the Pakistani government. Calling on Obama to support a two-state solution in whatever form is to call upon him to support the destruction of Israel, and in any case he already favors the two-state solution -- and asking him to boast about America's disastrous jihad-enabling policies in the Balkans is just as bad. However, the letter does call the President to pursue a path that would be considerably more realistic and responsible than the one he has been pursuing and is likely to continue to pursue.

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As you prepare to address the “Muslim world” on June 5th from Egypt, we ask that you remain mindful of the power of your words. You have the ability to inspire the countless individuals who wither under the control of repressive governments, encourage Middle Eastern governments to engage important issues, and remind the world of America’s commitment to protecting religious freedom for all people of faith, including Muslims.

The Middle East has historically been a place of religious pluralism and cultural diversity. However, groups espousing extremist ideologies based upon Wahabbism and Khomeinism have marginalized and repressed both non-Muslim and Muslim women, youth, reformists, pro-democracy advocates, human rights activists, as well as ethnic and religious minorities. Groups such as the Taliban and al Qaeda, whose ideology is intent on dividing humanity between Muslims and non-Muslims, have killed countless individuals, including Muslims, in an effort to overthrow Middle Eastern governments and weaken other non-Muslim governments.

Based on these facts, we urge you to call upon all governments to join the international community in declaring al Qaeda and the Taliban a threat to humanity, and urge them to fight these radical Islamists.

We also ask you to urge Middle Eastern governments to relentlessly lend their support to the marginalized, weak, and oppressed segments of their societies by recognizing the universal importance of basic human dignity.

In a recent opinion piece published in The Washington Post, Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu proclaimed that “repression cannot be rewarded; the voices of those it has silenced must be heard as if the walls of their jails did not exist.” It must be made clear that the United States will stand with all those that are oppressed around the world, from the Baha’is in Iran to the imprisoned blogger in Egypt.

Countless dissidents can attest that their lives improved when their plight was raised publicly by leaders in the West. The pressure put on the Egyptian government by Members of Congress and the Administration following the imprisonment of famed Egyptian dissident Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim helped lead to his eventual release in 2003, after almost three years in prison. We therefore ask you to raise the individual cases of dissidents that languish in the prisons, and others that face persecution, to assure them that they are not forgotten by the American people. We ask you to advocate for the region’s struggling religious minorities as is consistent with our own rich tradition of religious freedom.

We ask you to call upon the governments of the Middle East to commit to defend freedom and democracy in pluralistic Lebanon, and to call for a stop to political assassinations and a disbarment of militias within their borders. We urge you to ask the Arab League to help the mostly Muslim population of Darfur, which is subjected to a genocide at the hands of a regime whose president is under indictment by the International Criminal Court. We urge you to ask them to help Pakistan in its war against the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations. We ask you to call on the Organization of Islamic Conference to abandon its goal of imposing so-called “Defamation of Religions” laws which will repress reformists and groups seeking democracy in Muslim and non-Muslim societies alike.

We urge you to ask the governments of the Middle East to commit to a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via a two states solution based on a mutual recognition between Israel and any Palestinian state-to-be. The starting point for this should not be Israeli concessions, but the recognition of Israel and its right to exist.

Please remind your audience that while the international community is committed to help Muslim minorities around the world, including those in India, Russia, China, and the West, at the same time we must ensure that all other minorities inside the "Muslim world" are granted their basic rights. We urge you to ask them to discuss the root causes of what they call “Islamophobia,” particularly the rise of radical Islamist ideologies, which have generated tensions and violence worldwide among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. We urge you to ask them to help Egypt fight the scourge of terrorism and stand by its own Coptic minority, often targeted by extremists’ violence. We urge you to ask them to speak out against radical Islamists all around the world and not condone their behavior with complacency.

We urge you to highlight the contributions of the American people to ameliorate suffering in Muslim communities around the world. For example, the United States military saved countless lives in the hours and days immediately following the tsunami that ravaged Indonesia. Similarly, our military forces were the first on the scene to deliver humanitarian relief and medical treatment to Pakistan in 2005 when that country was hit by a terrible earthquake. In fact, your Administration recently announced $100 million in aid to provide relief to the Pakistani people who are affected by the effort to rout Taliban extremists in that country. These are efforts of which the American people can be proud, and which your speech could rightly highlight.

Similarly, your speech can remind the Muslim world of U.S. efforts in the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts to prevent Muslim massacres and ethnic cleansing, as well as American efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan which liberated 50 million people, mostly Muslim, from the jaws of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and the cruel violence of the Taliban terror regime.

Mr. President, you have a great opportunity to engage and inspire Middle Eastern governments and Muslims around the world with your words. We urge you to consider including these important recommendations in your speech.

Sincerely yours,

Frank Wolf
Member of Congress

John Shadegg
Member of Congress

Sue Myrick
Member of Congress

Ted Poe
Member of Congress

Zack Wamp
Member of Congress

Trent Franks
Member of Congress

Dan Burton
Member of Congress

Paul Broun
Member of Congress

Yesterday I headlined my post about this mosque bombing, "Islamophobes bomb mosque in Iran, killing 15 -- no, wait..." I was, of course, being sarcastic. But now an Iranian official is essentially saying the same thing, and Jalal Sayah is serious.

"Iran official accuses US over mosque bomb," from the BBC, May 29 (thanks to JE):

A provincial official in Iran has accused the United States of being behind Thursday's bombing of a mosque that killed at least 19 people.

Jalal Sayah, deputy governor of Sistan-Baluchestan province, said three people had been arrested following the attack.

"According to the information we obtained they were hired by America and the agents of arrogance," he said.

Some 60 people were hurt in the attack during evening prayers at the mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan's capital, Zahedan....

Hotel caves to Islamic intimidation. Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "Muslim Group Shuts Down Conservative Conference," from Newsmax, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The manager of a prominent Nashville hotel cancelled a contract with a conservative foundation to hold a conference this weekend on radical Islam, apparently after learning that the group would feature a keynote address by controversial Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders.

Muslim groups succeeded in preventing Wilders from screening “Fitna,” his 15-minute movie on radical Islam, in the House of Lords this February, on claims it was insulting to Muslims, and dogged him during a recent U.S. tour as well.

Thomas A. Negri, managing director of Loew’s Vanderbilt Hotel and Office complex in Nashville, told Newsmax on Wednesday that he had taken the extraordinary step of cancelling the conference at the last minute “for the health, safety and well-being of our guests and employees.”

Negri refused to say why he felt the conference would adversely affect the “health, safety and well-being” of the hotel’s guests and employees, except to refer to the website of the New English Review, the group organizing the conference.

The website features articles that warn about radical Islam written by activists, journalists and scholars, including former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, and former Muslim scholar, Ibn Warraq.

One article, written by a retired U.S. army intelligence officer, Jerome Gordon, warns of the growing problems caused by the recent influence of several thousand Somali Muslim refugees who have come to work for a nearby Tysons Food plant to replace illegal Hispanic meat packers....

Heroes all. Our own Hugh Fitzgerald is also speaking at that conference.

Close down Gitmo! Bring the prisoners stateside!

"Jordan: Four arrested for terror plots," from the Jerusalem Post, May 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Four Jordanians arrested in Jordan in April had planned to perpetrate terror attacks in Israel in retaliation for Operation Cast Lead, DPA reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, judicial sources told the news organization that the four were expected to be charged with illegal possession of arms.

The suspects were named as Sakhr Abu Zaid, Hassan Talaq, Mohammad Abu Ourah and Osama Abu Kabir, the report continued, adding that Abu Kabir had been incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay prison for several years.

The IDF launched Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 in an effort to stop incessant Palestinian rocket fire against southern Israel. Over 1,000 Palestinians - many of them gunmen - were killed during the operation. Ten IDF soldiers and three Israeli civilians were also killed....

I have received several emails from people saying they were not able to view my debate with Hamid Dabashi from the ISI website. Here's a YouTube version, the first of seven parts.

"Pigs being beaten with iron bars, piglets being stabbed and animals being kicked alive into bulldozer buckets"

An update on this story. "Cairo accused of conspiring with Islamists to cull 'unholy' pigs: Egypt's pig killing spree causes sectarian tension," by Mustafa Suleiman and Mona Moussly for Al Arabiyya, May 28:

CAIRO/DUBAI ()

As an Egyptian church refused to hand over its pigs to the authorities without compensation and an online video showing pigs being tortured surfaced, tensions over the government’s anti-swine flu measures continued to prompt allegations of discrimination by the Christian community.

For most countries swine flu is simply a health issue. But in Egypt the virus has raised concerns over government discrimination against the Coptic Christian population – who make up 10-12 percent of the population -- who accuse the authorities of threatening their livelihood and purposely attacking them.

Although no cases of swine flu have been reported in Egypt, since the news of the virus broke, Cairo has ordered a mass culling of the country's 250,000 pigs, which are found in the city slums and which pose a serious risk to a nation already suffering from an outbreak of bird flu.

Al-Soryan Monastery said it would not give up its remaining 330 pigs to Egypt's national committee for swine flu unless the government compensated them for the huge financial loss.

"Pigs and other animals represent the economic independence of the monasteries in which they are raised," Bishop Abdul-Maseeh, professor of theology at the Egyptian church, told Al Arabiya.

"We have agreements with the biggest hotels in Egypt," he said. "There's no way the government will just kill them and the monasteries bear such huge financial losses."

Conspiring with Islamists

Thousands of swine breeders, nearly all Copts, have protested, rioted and slammed the government's decision to slaughter all pigs, a measure the World Health Organization (WHO) criticized as "unnecessary" and that several right groups slammed as an attack on the minority population.

"They were not so radical against the birds [during the bird flu scare] as they are now against the pigs,” Inspire, a U.K.-based Christian monthly magazine, quoted the president of the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights Egypt as saying. “We would like to ask them, ‘Why?’ Is there a special reason?”

Egypt's minister of agriculture and land reclamation, Amin Abaza, denied accusations of discrimination and said health conditions at pig farms, which are located in city dumps, were unbearable.

Arab intellectuals, both Christian and Muslim, have accused President Hosni Mubarak's government of conspiring with the Islamist opposition Muslim Brotherhood, which opposes rearing pigs "on Islamic land."

"The Copts are victims of the flu without ever having been contaminated," said Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun, adding that the government "clearly acted under pressure from Islamists" when it ordered the mass cull.[...]

Earlier this month a video of pigs being culled surfaced on YouTube and caused outrage at the way the animals were slaughtered.

The clip posted by Egypt’s independent newspaper al-Masry al-Youm showed gory images of pigs being beaten with iron bars, piglets being stabbed and animals being kicked alive into bulldozer buckets...

According to some supporting a gay Muslim program. So what if Muhammad, Allah's Messenger and most perfect of all creation, condemned homosexuals to death, and they are being actively persecuted in jihadi hotbeds such as Iraq? "Gay Muslim story for EastEnders," from BBC, May 28:

EastEnders is to tackle a storyline which will feature a Muslim man embarking upon a gay affair.

Newcomer Syed Masood, played by Marc Elliott, will fall for openly gay man Christian Clarke (John Partridge) and the pair will share an on-screen kiss.

The plot is expected to hit TV screens from next month.

"I think EastEnders would be doing the programme a disservice if they didn't give a voice to various communities," Elliot told the BBC Asian Network.

"I think that's really important because I think London is a very ethnically diverse multicultural place, and EastEnders has a job to reflect that in the storylines it gives people and the characters they have on board."[...]

However, the gay storyline has been criticised by Asghar Bokhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

"The Muslim community deserves a character that represents them to the wider public because Islamophobia is so great right now," he said.

"There's a lack of understanding of Muslims already and I think EastEnders really lost an opportunity to present a normal friendly Muslim character to the British public."

But the show's executive producer Diedrick Santer said it was important to tackle issues which reflect real life.

"It's really important that on EastEnders we give the Masoods big stories.

"Sometimes there's a danger of being too careful with black or Asian characters that we might go into territories that might offend.

"But it seems to me if we steer away from any controversy, they don't stand a chance of being a great EastEnders family - they'll just be in their kitchen unit making curries for years and years and that's not going to be very interesting."

Yusuf Wehebi from Imaan - an organisation that supports gay Muslims - agreed with him.

"It is high time that the invisible minority became a visible minority," he said.

"It is entirely possible to be Muslim and gay and there's many of us in Britain today."...

Some interesting Fox News opinions on the Taliban and truces: "Truces Mean Nothing to Nuts," by Greg Gutfeld for Fox News, May 28:

On Tuesday, the Pakistani Taliban decided that it wants a peace deal — kind of like the one they had originally before they ramped up killing and maiming people in awful ways (which to them, is basic yard work.) And then, quickly and appropriately, they got their hairy asses handed to them on a goat.

No wonder they're up for a truce!

And here we find another lesson on how the world really works: Truces mean nothing to people consumed by fanatic ideology. And a resident fool, I'm willing to suggest it's the very unwillingness to compromise that makes them fanatics! And vice versa.

The Taliban, for example, want their Sharia law — along with their unmanageable beards, their institutionalized abuse of women and gays, their barbaric notions of justice — and nothing is ever going to shake this twisted worldview from their lice-infested heads.

Well, there is one way: death.

The latest round of fighting eliminated roughly 1,100 Taliban from our pleasant, noisy orb — a development that transcends all language barriers and religious differences. The simple ultimatum — "stop hurting people or face death" — is the only way you can talk to freaks that hate you and want you dead.

In this strange new world, it helps to be reminded of this: While the symbolism of an "unclenched fist" soars in speeches, it makes little impact when you want to hit someone.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Hitler.

"(Kenya) became the enemy of Islam ... and must (be) ready (for) Alqaeda attacks and revenge any time." Amazing: al-Qaeda attacks Kenya over the years, killing 240 people, and it wants "revenge" because Kenya has detained Somali jihadis.

"Norway embassy in Kenya threatened with attack," from Reuters, May 27 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

NAIROBI, May 27 (Reuters) - Norway's embassy in Nairobi and two Kenyan media organisations have received emails threatening attacks, the Norwegian ambassador and one of the media groups said on Wednesday.

Two bomb attacks in the last 12 years have killed 240 people in Kenya. Both were blamed on al Qaeda.

"Yes it is true we have received an email with some threats," said Elisabeth Jacobson, Norwegian ambassador to Nairobi. "Of course it's a reason for concern and we have informed the Kenyan police," she said.

The email, seen by Reuters, said Norway had backed what it said was a Kenyan bid to claim waters of the coast of neighbouring Somalia for oil exploration and that Kenya had detained Somali "mujahideen".

"(Kenya) became the enemy of Islam ... and must (be) ready (for) Alqaeda attacks and revenge any time," the message said.

Jacobson declined further comment on the threats...

The Swedish publication The Local wants to consider these jihadists "Swedes," but it is doubtful that they consider themselves as such.

"Swedes killed in fighting in Somalia," from The Local, May 29 (thanks to Lazy Buddha):

Several young men who left Sweden to join the radical Islamic militant group al-Shabaab in Somalia have been killed in battle, according to Sweden’s security service Säpo.

Säpo estimates that about 20 people have left Sweden to train and fight with al-Shabaab, a militant group with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

So far, a handful of people with Swedish passports have also been killed in the fighting, Säpo reports.

“For the time being, it is believed there are ten or so Swedes on the ground in Somalia. They are either taking part in the violence or in training camps, but there may be more as of yet unknown cases. What worries us is that it’s ongoing and growing,” said Säpo counterterrorism analyst Malena Rembe to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

The recruits aren’t only Swedes with Somali backgrounds, but are also individuals of mixed ethnicity, according to Rembe.

Some of them are leaving Sweden without telling their relatives what they are planning to do.

“These are people who are going down on their own initiative. They see themselves as a part of a global struggle and want to contribute,” said Rembe....

In the featured article at FrontPage today I discuss the 65-year sentences given to the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, once the nation's largest Islamic charity:

In a major blow to terrorism financing on American soil, the founders of the Holy Land Foundation, once the nation’s largest Muslim charity, were both sentenced this week to sixty-five years in prison for funneling at least $12.4 million in charitable contributions to the terrorist group Hamas. The decision, which can still be challenged by appeal, also has important implications for the nation’s most prominent Islamic organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as well as for American Muslims in general.

The HLF founders, Shukri Abu Baker and Ghassan Elashi, were convicted in November 2008 of aiding a terrorist organization by sending money to Hamas. The two were also convicted of tax fraud and money laundering.

Nevertheless, the defendants maintained that the HLF was really a charity organization. So far from funding terrorism, they were distributing urgent financial aid to needy individuals and orphans in the West Bank and Gaza – a claim that reprised the now-defunct HLF’s purported mission of aiding “human suffering through humanitarian programs that impact the lives of the disadvantaged.”

The Soviets had kept the jihad in check, and after the fall of the Soviet Union it took some time for the global jihadist resurgence to reach Central Asia, but it is there now.

Meanwhile, the analysis in this story, that poverty causes terrorism, has been disproven by study after study. But that never seems to get through to anyone.

"Islamic extremism on the rise again in Central Asia," from Asia News, May 28 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Tashkent (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A police man was killed and others injured in a suicide attack in the city of Andijan yesterday. Unknown gunmen also fired at Uzbek policemen in Khanabad on the border with Kyrgyzstan. Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), on offshoot of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan accused in the past of various attacks in Central Asia, and have reignited fears of a rise in Islamist militancy in the Ferghana Valley, an area that borders on several countries.

Kyrgyz sources said that four policemen were killed in Khanabad when they tried to stop a car that was trying to drive through a border checkpoint into Kyrgyzstan, something that Uzbek authorities have denied. Uzbekistan said instead that it is in perfect control of its territory and that Uzbek troops are patrolling the border.

Whatever the case may be, such incidents are a sign of widespread instability and violence in the Ferghana, a valley that is divided between the two countries and Tajikistan that has been affected by significant social unrest since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is also one of the poorest areas of Central Asia with high unemployment and limited social assistance from governments.

Making matters worse the circumstances “could make the population susceptible to radical groups who provide a means of channelling this discontent,” said Matthew Clements, Eurasia editor in the Country Risk Department for Jane's Information Group.

Although unemployment is high in Uzbekistan and millions of Uzbek men and women have left the country for seasonal jobs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and even impoverished Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the Uzbek government continues to claim that unemployment is less than 1 per cent....

Overtures to the Islamic world continue, all based on the bedrock assumption that if the U.S. shows enough good will, that good will eventually will be reciprocated. Or at very least, a marriage of convenience can be sustained at least for awhile. And certainly many such marriages have been entered into and sustained. But the fact remains that the doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism, insofar as they are held by the officials in the country in question (and it would be hard to find a Muslim country where there are no such people at high levels) will always prevent these marriages of convenience from becoming real alliances, and indeed, will act as a corrosive upon them.

"Libya-US: Libyan Interior Minister Meets With US Ambassador," from ANSAmed, May 28 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - TRIPOLI, MAY 28 - Libyan Interior Minister Abdel Fatah Yunis Al-Obaidi has recently met in Tripoli with Gene Cretz, the US Ambassador to Libya. Cretz said he was willing to promote relations between the two countries and highlighted recent developments in bilateral agreements signed by Libya and the U.S. Cretz also said that the US is ready to exchange technical experience with Libya, specifically in sectors involving combating crime, controlling drug trafficking and terrorist activities, and said that he is ready to organise specific training courses in these fields. The US Ambassador then underlined the importance of facilitating procedures in order for Libyan and American citizens to enter and leave the country and to allow for visas to be granted faster, as mutually agreed upon. Minister Al-Obaidi stressed the developments in relations between the two countries.

There was, of course, no corresponding gift to Netanyahu -- only challenges to make various accommodations.

"Obama, Abbas talk peace," by Farah Stockman for the Boston Globe, May 28 (thanks to James):

WASHINGTON -- President Obama received Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House today with a valuable welcoming gift: a toughly-worded, categorical US demand for Israel to stop settlements in Palestinian territories.

But hours before the two men met, the Israeli government flatly rejected the demand. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that "normal life in those communities must be allowed to continue," meaning that some construction will continue in existing settlements.

Obama and Abbas appeared to see eye to eye, speaking of the need for increased support from Arab governments to support the peace process by showing good faith in their promise to recognize the existence of the Jewish state if Israel strikes a peace deal with Palestinians.

But nowhere was the confluence of views so striking as in the Obama administration's position on settlements, which the president outlined directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week at the White House.

After meeting with Abbas, Obama told reporters he stands firmly behind "core principles" toward peace, including a two-state solution, Israel "stopping settlements," and Palestinians preventing attacks on Israel.

"I am confident we can move this process forward," if all sides live up to prior obligations and negotiate in good faith, the president said.

And what makes him think that the Palestinians will do that when they have never done it before?

"Senior U.S. officials said the Taliban received significant donations from Pakistan -- where sympathy for the group is widespread in the country's Pashtun community -- and Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait."

Tiny Minority of Extremists Alert. And with respect to the involvement of Gulf nations, this story again demonstrates the urgency of achieving as much energy independence as possible, as quickly as possible. "Taliban's Foreign Support Vexes U.S.," by Yochi J. Dreazen for the Wall Street Journal, May 29:

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials recently concluded that the Afghan Taliban may receive as much money from foreign donors as it does from opium sales, potentially hindering the Obama administration's strategy to rehabilitate Afghanistan by stopping the country's drug trade.

Gen. David Petraeus, who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a recent interview that the Taliban has three main sources of funding: drug revenue; payments from legitimate businesses that are secretly owned by the armed group or that pay it kickbacks; and donations from foreign charitable foundations and individuals.

"You have funds generated locally, funds that come in from the outside, and funds that come from the illegal narcotics business," he said. "It's a hotly debated topic as to which is the most significant and it may be that they are all roughly around the same level."

Gen. Petraeus estimated that the Taliban raise a total of "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars" each year from the three sources, and said the U.S. doesn't have precise figures.

The Taliban have depended in part on foreign support for decades. In an interview last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said some Afghan militants could draw on "external funding channels" created in the 1980s for wealthy Muslims -- with U.S. support -- to funnel money to Islamic fighters battling the Soviet military. "It wouldn't surprise me if those channels have remained open," he said.

Two senior U.S. officials said the Central Intelligence Agency has identified individuals and charities suspected of providing the bulk of the Taliban funding, but declined to name them, citing continuing operations to disrupt the money flows.

Senior U.S. officials said the Taliban received significant donations from Pakistan -- where sympathy for the group is widespread in the country's Pashtun community -- and Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Pakistani Ambassador Hussein Haqqani said his government had frozen hundreds of bank accounts tied to the Taliban and other extremist groups and said the effort is a "work in progress."

"The extremist networks continue to find new financing schemes and methods to evade law enforcement," he said.

A senior Saudi official here said his government regularly arrested citizens suspected of funneling money to armed groups such as the Taliban but questioned the extent of the practice. The official said Saudi charities are barred from sending money outside the country.

That official's attempt to make the Saudi government look diligent in its counterterror efforts exposes another angle: If they're "regularly" arresting citizens suspected of funding "armed groups," they've sure got a lot of people "misunderstanding" Islam's purported message of peace and tolerance.

"If the Americans have actionable intelligence on Saudis who are supporting the Taliban, they should provide us the intelligence, and we will act on it," he said.

Officials from the Kuwaiti Embassy declined to comment....

The article states that "Shariah law, based on the teachings of the Koran, does not allow for investment into companies that deal in pork, alcohol, gambling or pornography," and hey, that sounds nice, doesn't it? But here is the problem: Efforts to compartmentalize Sharia are undertaken for Western consumption, in order to give the impression that there is a core set of "friendly" values within Sharia, while the nastier things we hear about are just -- you know -- "cultural." However, Islamic law itself is not broken down as such, and the notion that such seemingly innocuous practices are available to be ordered off the Sharia menu à la carte serves to advance the legitimacy of the entire body of laws.

"Canadian index allows investors to follow Shariah law," from CTV, May 27:

Standard & Poor's is launching a Shariah compliant version of the S&P/TSX 60 that will exclude companies that don't meet criteria outlined within Islamic law.

Shariah law, based on the teachings of the Koran, does not allow for investment into companies that deal in pork, alcohol, gambling or pornography.

Banks are also excluded because investors are not allowed to earn profit from interest.

"Companies which have high levels of debt or high levels of interest earnings are also screened out," Alka Banerjee, Vice President of Standard & Poor's Index Services, told CTV.ca in an interview from New York on Wednesday.

At present, companies which have debt less than 33 per cent of their market capitalization are allowed within the index.

A Shariah Supervisory Board, comprised of Islamic scholars, determines if a company qualifies.

Banerjee said Shariah-compliant indexes are still in their infancy but interest is growing.

"A lot of Islamic investors would like to invest along their religious beliefs as well as the rise of petro-dollars in the Middle East, as well as the prosperity in southeast Asian has all led to a demand for Shariah indices and other kinds of products," Banerjee said.

Including the Canadian launch, S&P now has Shariah compliant indices in 52 markets.

Other markets include the S&P 500 Shariah, S&P Europe 350 Shariah, S&P Japan 500 Shariah and S&P CNX Nifty Shariah to name just a few.

The S&P/TSX 60 Shariah Index currently has 25 companies that meet the board's requirements.

"This number can change month-to-month," Banerjee said.

Some of the companies that made the cut include EnCana Corp, Research in Motion, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Barrick Gold Corp., Suncor Energy Inc., Goldcorp Inc. and Petro-Canada.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about this issue. Arabic-speaking Christians have used the word "Allah" for the God of the Bible for centuries -- some sources say since before the advent of Islam. But a Malaysia court now says the word is the property of Muslims only.

Islamic Tolerance Alert and an update on this story: "Malaysia court refuses to let Church use ‘Allah,’" from Dawn, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian court refused to let the Roman Catholic Church use the word ‘Allah’ even temporarily Thursday, upholding a government ban that has become a symbol of religious tensions in this Muslim-majority country.

The federal government blocks non-Muslims in Malaysia from translating God as ‘Allah’ in their literature, saying it would confuse Muslims in this multiethnic, Muslim-majority country.

Christian groups say the ban is unconstitutional, arguing that the word ‘Allah’ predates Islam.

The High Court rejected an appeal by the church’s main publication in Malaysia, the Herald, to have the ban suspended while waiting for a court decision on the ban’s legality, said Herald lawyer Porres Royan....

The Taliban launches another attack on Peshawar, even as they ask to return to the truce they failed to observe in the first place, so they can regroup and fail to observe it some more. "Bombs, gun battle, rock Pakistan's Peshawar," by Alamgir Bitani for Reuters, May 28:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Two bombs exploded in a market in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Thursday, killing six people, and gunmen on rooftops ambushed police as they arrived at the scene.

Militant violence in nuclear-armed Pakistan, an important U.S. ally, has surged since mid-2007, with attacks on the security forces, as well as on government and Western targets, and the Taliban threatened more on Thursday.

Pakistan is vital for U.S. plans to defeat al Qaeda and cut support for the Afghan Taliban, and the United States has been heartened by a military offensive against the Taliban in their Swat bastion, northwest of Islamabad.

But there have been eight militant attacks since the army began battling militants in the region in April, and there is a danger the violence could erode public support for the campaign.

Shortly after the bombs exploded in Peshawar, a suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary post in another part of the city, killing three soldiers, a hospital official said. A wounded soldier said earlier five comrades had been killed.

The attacks came hours after the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide car-bomb and gun attack in the city of Lahore on Wednesday that killed 24 people, saying it was revenge for the Swat offensive.

"We were looking for this target for a long time," Hakimullah Mehsud, a commander loyal to Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, said by telephone.

In Peshawar, the two bombs were planted on motorbikes in the Storytellers Bazaar in the old city and caused extensive damage. Six people were killed and about 70 wounded, provincial government minister Bashir Ahmed Bilour told Reuters.

Soon afterward, gunmen on rooftops began firing at police in lanes below. Television showed policemen firing back while colleagues strapped on bullet-proof vests. Police later said two gunmen had been killed and two suspects detained. [...]

The military released on Wednesday what it said was a tape of an intercepted telephone call between the Taliban spokesman in Swat, Muslim Khan, and an unidentified militant in which Khan says soldiers should be attacked.

"Strikes should be carried out on their homes so their kids get killed and then they'll realize," Khan said on the tape, which was broadcast by media.

The unidentified man on the tape said orders had gone out to strike wherever possible....

Whoever turns out really to have done this, do you think there will be worldwide protests at the desecration of the mosque? Or are such protests reserved only for when American or Israeli troops respond to fire that comes at them from mosques?

"Iran mosque bombing kills 15 worshippers," from AFP, May 28 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

TEHRAN (AFP) — A bomb blast at a Shiite mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday killed 15 worshippers and wounded 50, the provincial governor general told state television.

The evening explosion struck the Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan, the restive capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, which has a subtantial Sunni minority, the official IRNA agency reported.

"The bomb exploded at the time of evening prayer and killed a number of worshippers," Ali Mohammad Azad, the governor general of the province bordering Pakistan and Afghansitan told state television.

"So far 15 people who were killed have been identified and 50 others have been wounded. They have been transferred to city hospitals."

Fars news agency reported a higher toll, saying 20 people were killed and 55 wounded.

It said the mosque is the second biggest Shiite mosque in Zahedan and is also a "gathering place for revolutionary Shiites."

The agency said no group had so far claimed responsibility for the bombing, and that security and police services were in control of the area....

"I told them that there are restrictive rules in Islam for waging holy war. Jihad must be under the umbrella of the state and should be approved by one's parents." Unfortunately, probably many of the Muslims who hear this message know that in Islamic law defensive jihad becomes obligatory upon every individual Muslim when a Muslim land is attacked -- which is why jihad groups today couch their appeals and justifications in terms of defensive jihad. To wage defensive jihad a Muslim needs neither state direction nor the approval of one's parents. But this kind of thing goes down well with Western non-Muslims, and that's all that matters.

"Syria Tries Rehabilitating Extremists," by George Baghdadi for CBS News, May 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

Alarmed to see suspected terrorists coming out of its jails even more dedicated to radical Islam than they went in, Syria offered a few-month-long, soft approach rehabilitation program to turn the vulnerable youths away from fanaticism and jihad....

The rehabilitation program, which was adopted last year, enlisted 60 state-backed clerics to counter radical teachings with moderate passages from the Quran, Islam's holy book. The government would not say whether the program was still underway.

"I was asked by the government last summer to talk to these people, to cleanse their minds from radical ideologies and try to fit them back into the Syrian society," Sheik Mohammad Habbash Habbash, one of the program counselors, told CBS News.

"I told them that there are restrictive rules in Islam for waging holy war. Jihad must be under the umbrella of the state and should be approved by one's parents," he said.

"My lectures to four different groups were on how Islam views jihad, how Islam forbids people to go for fighting if that was not under the directives of the ruler," said conservative sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Khateeb, another program counselor.

"The state here is following this issue. It is keen that the people are educated enough in the right way so that they are not influenced by wrong teachings and corrupted ideals," he added....

It is a crime, apparently, to cast Islam in a negative light, and once again those who commit this crime are not violent Islamic jihadists, but those who speak about the actions or motivations of those jihadists.

"Christian couple convicted for anti-Muslim booklets," from AFP, May 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

SINGAPORE (AFP) – A Christian Singaporean couple were found guilty of sedition on Thursday for distributing evangelical publications that cast Islam in a negative light, court officials said.

Ong Kian Cheong and his wife Dorothy Chan had been charged with distributing a seditious publication to two Muslims in October and March 2007 and sending a second such booklet to another Muslim in December that same year, a district court official told AFP.

The publications were found to have promoted feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims, the Straits Times said on its website....

The sedition charge carries a jail term of up to three years or a fine of up to 5,000 Singapore dollars (3,437 US) or both....

The National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) says it was all a frame-up: the diabolical FBI first persuaded these innocent Muslims that their religion mandated violence against unbelievers, and then involved them in this plot to blow up synagogues.

Well, that makes sense. After all, who ever heard of a Muslim arriving on his own accord at the idea that his religion teaches violence against unbelievers?

"US Muslim Women: NY Synagogue Bomb Plan was FBI Plot," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, May 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

...[NAMAW] said that the FBI is “creating the illusion that all Muslims are either terrorists or potential terrorists, thereby substantiating the use of racial and religious profiling on Muslims and Arabs.

“The FBI, posing as Al Qaeda-backed militants to brainwash and coax 'vulnerable' men into the walking trap of their own foiled terrorist plot, causes grave concern to the representatives of Muslims in American society," the organization said in a statement....

They also charged that the FBI informant “persuaded these men into believing that their religion obligated them to carry out acts of violence in the United States in retaliation for U.S. war crimes being carried out in the Muslim world.'

Terence Kindlon, a lawyer who defended the last terror suspect to be tried in New York State, told the Times of London, “It is almost as if the FBI cooked up the plot and found four idiots to install as defendants.”

Referring to nearly 100 law enforcement officers involved n the arrests, he added, “Did they really need all those men in ninja suits with M16 rifles to arrest four idiots? Somewhere, someone in Al-Qaeda must be laughing.”

Yes, Kindlon. At you.

Read it all.

He did it because of the dope, doncha know. He was high, that's all, and just having some fun by trying to bring down an airplane. What's the big deal? I mean, who ever heard of a Muslim trying to crash an airplane as part of his jihad?

"Man jailed for shining laser at landing plane," from the Belfast Telegraph, May 28 (thanks to Twostellas):

A man was jailed today for shining a laser at a passenger plane preparing to land.

Hossein Hosseiny briefly illuminated the cockpit of the Dublin to Cardiff aircraft which was carrying 52 people on board on the evening of March 8.

The pilot said the actions of the 21-year-old father-to-be from the Countisbury Avenue area of Llanrumney, Cardiff, caused a "momentary loss of concentration" during his approach to the runway due to a "dazzling green light".

The incident was reported immediately by the pilot to air traffic control and Hosseiny, a failed asylum seeker from Afghanistan, was arrested soon after in the nearby Porthkerry Park area of Barry.

Prosecutor David Thomas told Cardiff Crown Court that, during a search, officers found Hosseiny in a car intoxicated with a friend. Cannabis was also found in the vehicle which Hosseiny later admitted supplying to his friend.

In interview, the defendant told the police he had taken to selling cannabis as a means of funding his own habit.

At a previous court hearing, Hosseiny pleaded guilty to endangering the safety of an aircraft and supplying drugs....

Not that he has ever accepted the principle of a Jewish state. In any case, I expect that the contrast between this meeting and Obama's chilly meeting with Netanyahu will be marked, and we will see considerably more warmth and enthusiasm -- and considerably less talk of responsibilities and obligations -- from the sainted new American President.

"Mideast: Abbas To Meet With Obama Today, Wants Assurances," from ANSAmed, May 28 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - WASHINGTON, MAY 28 - U.S. president Barack Obama will be meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas today at the White House for talks bound to focus on the need for Palestinians to receive reassurances on the U.S. commitment to the "two-state" solution, and the pressure on Israel to stop its enlargement of settlements in the West Bank.

The talks will inevitably be influenced by the negative outcome of the meeting at the White House a few days ago between Obama and Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu, which highlighted the differences of opinion between the two leaders on the direction to be taken to resume peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. On the eve of his meeting with Obama, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas reiterated that premier Netanyahu must agree to the principle of a Palestinian state before peace talks can resume.

One of Abbas's spokesmen has said that the Palestinian president intends to stress to Obama the need to "to move from speaking to acting" as concerns Tel Aviv's promises to block the expansion of settlements. U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton reiterated yesterday that the Obama administration has asked Israelis to freeze their settlements in the West Bank "without any exceptions". However, within the Palestinian delegation there is much scepticism over the ability of the United States to effectively intervene in the new Israeli government, which seems to have set aside for the time being the commitment made in Annapolis (by the previous government) to move in the direction of a two-state solution, one Israeli and one Palestinian, as the only way to peace.

Meanwhile in the UK, Muslims get to go around screaming through loudspeakers that Jesus was a Muslim. "Pakistan: Pastors arrested for use of loudspeakers," from Compass Direct News, May 27 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Police claim amplified Easter Sunday service defamed Islam.

ISTANBUL, May 27 (Compass Direct News) – Nine pastors from two neighboring villages in Pakistan could face prison time for using loudspeakers to broadcast prayers and sermons from their churches on Easter Sunday. Martinpur and Youngsnabad, 150 kilometers (93 miles) east of Lahore, are majority Christian villages. The nine pastors who lead congregations there say that local Muslim security forces have twisted the law to solicit a bribe....

The ulema would like Muslims to limit their use of Facebook -- even though it certainly has its uses. "Indonesia: Muslim edict issued against Facebook," from Adnkronos, May 27:

Jakarta, 27 May (AKI) – Around 700 ulama or Islamic religious leaders have issued an edict to limit use of the popular Internet networking site Facebook in Indonesia. However, it seems that many people from the country, which has the world's largest Muslim population, use Facebook often and it is growing in popularity....

"Angered by a recent upsurge in Christian evangelism in the area, church members said, radical Muslims had sent several threats to the Christians warning them to stop their activities." Sounds similar to recent events elsewhere in the Muslim world.

"Tanzania: Radical Muslims drive church from worship place in Zanzibar," from Compass Direct News, May 26:

Authorities do nothing to help threatened Christians.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 26 (Compass Direct News) – Worship in a house church near Zanzibar City, on a Tanzanian island off the coast of East Africa, did not take place for the third week running on Sunday (May 24) after Muslim extremists expelled worshippers from their rented property. Radical Muslims on May 9 drove members of Zanzibar Pentecostal Church from worship premises in a rented house at Ungunja Ukuu, on the outskirts of Zanzibar City.

Angered by a recent upsurge in Christian evangelism in the area, church members said, radical Muslims had sent several threats to the Christians warning them to stop their activities. The church had undertaken a two-day evangelism campaign culminating in an Easter celebration. On the morning of the attack, more than 20 church members had gathered for Saturday fellowship when word reached them that Muslim extremists were about to attack.

As the radical group approached, the Christians fled in fear of their lives. “The group was shouting, saying, ‘We do not want the church to be in our locality – they should leave the place and never come back again,’” said one church member who requested anonymity.

"[T]he attack targeted the 'nest of evil' in Lahore, and was a 'humble gift' to the mujahideen." "TTP claims Lahore suicide bombing," from The News, May 28:

ISLAMABAD: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing on rescue 15 police building that killed 24 people, a US specialist Islamist monitoring group said.

A group calling itself "Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)" made the claim in a Turkish-language statement posted on Turkish jihadist websites through an organisation called Elif Media.

The Islamist monitors SITE cited the group as saying the attack "targeted the 'nest of evil' in Lahore, and was a 'humble gift' to the mujahideen who suffer beneath the attacks of Pakistani forces in Swat."

It specified that a vehicle laden with 100 kilos of explosives was blown up outside a security building in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province in Pakistan, destroying the building and injuring hundreds more.

"TTP asks Muslims in Pakistan to stay away from areas where the enemy is 'taking advantage' of them, so that they are not harmed by jihadi attacks," SITE added. The blast was the third deadly attack to rock the country's liberal cultural capital in as many months.

A top security official told media after nightfall that 24 people died, including 13 policemen, civilians and security officers....

They did warn that, "If we now kill schoolgirls, you shouldn't be surprised." "Taliban blow up girls’ school in Hangu," from the Daily Times, May 26:

LAHORE: The Taliban destroyed a girls’ school in Hangu on Monday, a private TV channel reported. According to the channel, the Taliban had planted explosives at the government school in Shahidkhel area in the wee hours of the morning, and the consequent blast destroyed the entire building. No casualties were reported.

In the featured article at Human Events this morning, I discuss jihadist recruitment in prisons, which should be a chief concern of law enforcement officials in the wake of the Bronx synagogue jihad plot, and the implications of all this for the Gitmo inmates.

Should we bring Guantanamo inmates to U.S. prisons, as the Obama administration has proposed? FBI Director Robert Mueller doesn’t think that it would be wise to house such prisoners even in the ultra-high security Supermax facility: “The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others.” Radicalizing others is a real possibility: two of the four Muslims, James “Abdul Rahman” Cromitie and Onta “Hamza” Williams, who were arrested last week for plotting to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down an airplane, converted to Islam while in prison. When they went to prison, both were Baptists.

This really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. Mueller sounded the warning some time ago, saying that America’s prisons were “fertile ground for extremists.” And a new Rand Corporation study, released just this month, has found that Islamic jihad groups have long targeted prisons as key centers for recruitment.

Rabbi Weiss's words are yet another example of the denial that is almost universal among analysts of the jihad threat today: in most circles, if you don't affirm that Islamic jihad supremacism as it is manifested today all over the world has nothing to do with the true, peaceful Islam, you won't even get in the door.

So there is nothing unusual about what he says here, but as Pamela Geller observes here, it was a tremendous missed opportunity. The Rabbi had an opportunity to tell the world, at a moment when the world was watching, about the global jihad; about how Sharia mandates the conversion of Jews and Christians to Islam, or their subjugation as dhimmis, or their death; and about Islamic antisemitism and the need for all the groups that the Islamic jihadists have in their sights to join together to resist them.

Instead, he parroted the party line, and lulled back to sleep people who were awakened or should have been awakened to a threat to their freedoms and their very lives. The only ones who ultimately benefit from this are the Islamic jihadists, who can continue to work and count on the ignorance and indifference of most of the populace.

Pamela has further trenchant observations here, and Andrew Bostom, as noted here earlier, wrote in the Daily News about Islamic antisemitism. Also, I explained here why jihadists love attacking Jews. The dangers of ignoring or denying this should be obvious.

"Riverdale rabbi: Don't blame Islam for terror plot to bomb synagogues," by Tanyanika Samuels and John Lauinger for the New York Daily News, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

In the Bronx neighborhood targeted by a terror plot, a prominent rabbi cautioned Sabbath worshippers Saturday against condemning the Muslim religion.

"We dare not condemn Islam over this one act," Rabbi Avi Weiss told congregants at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.

Weiss' temple was not targeted in the alleged conpsiracy [sic], but two other Riverdale synagogues were.

The four Jew-hating suspects were homegrown jailhouse converts to Islam - not hardened extremists trained in some Middle Eastern camp.

Weiss said that fact "reminds us that Islamic fundamentalism has spread here and attracted congregants."...

"This cell was caught, but how many others are out there?" he questioned.

The foiled attack should send a sobering message to people of all faiths, Weiss said, noting the suspects appear to have randomly selected their targets.

"It could have been any synagogue. It could have been any temple," he said.

"We dare not forget that an attack against any house of worship is an attack against every house of worship."

And yet people from only one house of worship seem interested in attacking others.

In the recent case, it was a load of pro-Shi'ite books from Iran that was destined for the bottom of the Helmand River. Ironically, the Afghan government has thus ignited sectarian strife by supposedly aiming to prevent it. And the question remains: are they concerned about Shi'ite Islam as a vehicle for Iranian influence, or simply because it is not Sunni Islam? Beyond that, there are several points of interest:

First, transparency is a prized attribute of a functional government, at least in the Western sense; it does not co-exist well with official corruption. But when a society and a government believes it is permissible to lie or equivocate in order to smooth things over or guard against non-believers (cf. Qur'an 3:28), there exists a disastrous precedent for how the government may do business when officials think no one is looking.

Second, the principle is expandable: What else will the government suppress in order not to "insult" this or that brand of Islam? Quite a bit, if the case of Syed Parwez Kambakhsh is any indication. And that begs the question of what kind of government Western forces are spending untold amounts of blood and treasure to prop up.

Above all, however, the story belies the harmony that would supposedly break out under a pure Islamic state: To say nothing of unbelievers, there could be no harmony as long as everyone was not in agreement about the "purity" of said state, and its fidelity to and enforcement of Sharia law. Even without the sense of entitlement of the "true believers" to govern and the call for open-ended warfare against unbelievers, stories like this make quite a case for the separation of religion and state.

From our Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss department: "Afghan gov't destroys books it says insult Sunnis," by Amir Shah and Heidi Vogt for the Associated Press, May 27:

KABUL – The Afghan government quietly dumped more than 1,000 Shiite texts and other books from Iran into a river after a local governor complained that their content insulted the country's Sunni majority.

The move appeared to be an attempt by President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government to smooth over a potential thorn in relations between the Muslim sects.

Whoops.

But instead of burying the issue along with the books at the bottom of the Helmand River, the government was facing condemnation Wednesday from Shiite leaders after news leaked a month after the dumping.

"It is a humiliation for all Shiites," said Mohammad Akbari, a prominent Shiite member of parliament. He said a joint commission of Sunni and Shiite leaders should have reviewed any complaints about the books.

Merchants who'd ordered the books for shops in Kabul said there was nothing offensive about their content and that they were destroyed simply because of prejudice against Shiites, who make up about 20 percent of the population.

The dispute highlights the continuing tension between Sunnis and Shiites in Afghanistan despite efforts by the government to preach tolerance across the sectarian divide.

Shiites were persecuted under the largely Sunni Taliban regime that ruled the country until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Since then, the two sects have settled into an uneasy coexistence, with the post-Taliban constitution giving Shiites the right to create some laws that apply only to them.

The latest episode started six months ago when a container full of books arrived in western Nimroz province from neighboring Iran, said the governor's spokesman, Haaji Nazir.

Nestled among boxes of computer and English instruction manuals were more than 1,000 history and religious books promoting Shiite Islam, Nazir said. Iran is a mostly Shiite country.

"Books like these are more dangerous than Taliban bullets," Gov. Ghulam Dastagir Azad told The Associated Press.

But the Kabul booksellers who ordered the books said ethnic prejudice motivated the governor, a Sunni from the country's dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Many Afghan Shiites are ethnic Hazaras.

"He has no respect for the Hazara people," said Mohammad Ibrahim Sharyati, who said he lost about 2,600 books worth about $40,000.

After seizing the books, authorities in the western province held them at a customs warehouse and sent samples to the Information and Culture Ministry in the capital for a ruling.

A commission found that at least some of the books were "dangerous to the unity of Afghanistan" because they contained interpretations of religion that are offensive to Sunnis, said Deputy Culture Ministry Aleem Tanwir.

"They included incorrect statements about the advice of Prophet Muhammad, and this is very dangerous for our Sunni community," Tanwir said.

"We contacted the governor of Nimroz and we told him that he cannot allow these books in Afghanistan," Tanwir said, adding that the books carried propaganda from Iran.

He said the ministry agreed to the idea of dumping the books in the river along the Iranian border as an alternative to burning, because it is against Islam to burn a book that contains the name of the prophet....

Read it all.

“They are not investigating it as they would if the attack had been on a mosque.”

"Suspected Al Qaeda, Taliban Militants Destroy Pakistan Church, Christians Say," from Worthy News, May 26 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (Worthy News)-- Suspected Muslim militants with links to the terror groups Al Qaeda and the Taliban attacked a historic church in northwestern Pakistan and burned Bibles and other Christian books, but police are reluctant to investigate the case and detain suspects, Christians said Tuesday, May 26.

The destruction of the St. George Grecian Church was discovered by workers renovating the building, said the church's pastor Ijaz Masih in a statement distributed by rights group International Christian Concern (ICC).

Masih said that shortly after he presided over a Sunday service, workers “were shocked when they arrived” in the morning of May 12, “and found the church's cross broken in pieces, the altar demolished and partially burned, Bibles and hymnbooks burned and torn apart, and the pews reduced to ashes.”

He said attackers also ransacked bathrooms and cemented over a plaque inscribed with the names of the donors responsible for the original construction of the building.

ICC quoted local Christians as saying they were “astounded” that the attackers could sneak into the church and vandalize it without being noticed by anyone in the neighborhood. “They are especially concerned because the church is located within a military zone and thus is considered to be in a very secure location.”

Ijaz said he had started as the pastor of St. George Church two years ago, and that the Christians in Bannu Cantt had been living peacefully with their Muslim neighbors. He believes the attack was carried out by “radical Muslims linked to the Taliban or Al Qaeda with the goal of provoking a clash between local Christians and Muslims.”

A Christian advocacy group in Pakistan, the Center for Legal Aid, Assistance, and Settlement (CLAAS), said that although police have registered the attack, “they are not investigating it as they would if the attack had been on a mosque.” There was no immediate comment from police, although the government has pledged to crackdown on Islamic extremists....

"Clash of Civilizations"

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute recently posted a video of a debate I had with Columbia University’s Hamid Dabashi, entitled, “Islam and the West: Clash of Civilizations?” In part due to Dabashi's adamant and passionate position, I consider this one of the more meaningful debates I have engaged in.

Intellectual successor to the late Edward Said, Dabashi, according to his website, is “Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York, the oldest and most prestigious Chair in Iranian Studies…. Professor Dabashi has written 18 books, edited 4, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews in major scholarly and peer reviewed journals on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam…”

Prior to our debate, ISI took Dabashi and me to dinner. I found him to be an affable man, even if we went on to strongly disagree over any number of issues in our debate.

"Jurors found him guilty on 34 charges, including support of Hamas, money laundering and tax fraud."

An update on this story. "Holy Land Foundation chief sentenced to 65 years," by Jason Trahan for the Dallas Morning News, May 27:

DALLAS — One of the founders of the Holy Land Foundation was ordered to serve 65 years in prison Wednesday morning as sentencing began for five men convicted on charges in the largest terrorism financing case in American history.

"I did it because I cared, not at the behest of Hamas," Shukri Abu Baker, 50, of Garland, told the judge during a long address to the court where he explained why he founded what was once the nation's largest Muslim charity organization.

U.S. District Judge Jorge Solis, after cutting him off over the objections of his defense attorney, told the convicted man, "You didn't tell the whole story. Palestinians were in a desperate situation, but that doesn't justify supporting Hamas."

Another defendant, Mohammad El-Mezain, 55, was sentenced to 180 months in prison, followed by three years of supervisory release after serving that time. Jurors found him guilty of providing support to Hamas, having been acquitted on 31 other charges in 2007.

The sentences come six months after a federal jury in Dallas convicted the men on Nov. 24 of funneling more than $12 million to the Palestinian group Hamas.

It has been illegal to offer Hamas support since it was designated a terrorist organization by the Unites States in 1995.

The group has taken credit for hundreds of suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians.

The across-the-board convictions on 108 separate charges were a major victory for the Bush administration following a 2007 mistrial of the same five men on nearly identical charges.

The men were not accused of violence.

Rather, Holy Land contributed money to, among other things, agencies that supported survivors of suicide bombers.

Sometimes Holy Land officials sent those families money directly.

Holy Land's supporters say the prosecution was a politically motivated product of Bush's "war on terror" and a prime example of post-Sept. 11, anti-Islam hysteria.

Their lawyers portrayed them as pious Muslims who only wished to help their Palestinian brethren in need.

The government's case, which was streamlined for the second trial, chronicled the founding of Holy Land in the late 1980s by Hamas supporters as the group's primary source of fundraising in the United States.

Evidence showed that Holy Land organizers' openly pro-Hamas rhetoric at fundraising rallies in the early 1990s was toned down after President Bill Clinton designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Baker was born in Brazil in 1959, moved to Palestinian territory as a child and lived in Kuwait before coming to the U.S. in 1980. He served as Holy Land's CEO. Jurors found him guilty on 34 charges, including support of Hamas, money laundering and tax fraud.

The sentencings were expected to take most of the day.

"In Swat valley's capital, Mingora, the business and administrative hub of the district, the military said troops carried out house-to-house searches, while clashes in the area left eight insurgents dead." Now the Taliban's "concern" for the people of Mingora makes sense.

"Swat capital to be clear of Taliban in days: Pak," by Lehaz Ali for AFP, May 27:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistan vowed Wednesday to wipe out the Taliban from a key district capital within three days, as fierce fighting raged during a month-long offensive to crush the insurgents.

Around 2.4 million people have fled fighting as soldiers struggle to wrest back the northwest Swat and two nearby districts from the Taliban, who advanced last month to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of the capital Islamabad.[...]

In Swat valley's capital, Mingora, the business and administrative hub of the district, the military said troops carried out house-to-house searches, while clashes in the area left eight insurgents dead.

"Mingora city will be cleared of militants in next 2-3 days," it announced in a daily briefing update on the offensive...

In "Stop ignoring Islam's antisemitic doctrine: Bronx bomb plot reminds us of a core religious problem" in the New York Daily News, May 27, Andrew Bostom tells some truths about the Bronx synagogue bomb plot that have been largely ignored in the mainstream media.

"These were people who were eager to bring death to the Jews and the Jewish community." Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder provided this apt characterization of the four converts to Islam whose plans to bomb a Bronx synagogue and a Jewish community center were thwarted.

Richard Williams, uncle of the arrested plotter Onta "Hamza" Williams, lamented that his nephew, a Baptist who converted to Islam, "…wasn't raised this way. All this happened when he became a Muslim in prison." Indeed, Warith Deen Umar, a Muslim chaplain who worked for 25 years in the New York State prisons and was considered a highly influential cleric, reportedly boasted that this vast incarceration system was, "...the perfect recruitment and training ground for radicalism and the Islamic religion." During his chaplaincy, Umar also repeatedly gave sermons fomenting Jew hatred, witnessed by prison staff.

But beyond all this, the obvious question persists - although dutifully avoided by our learned religious, media and political elites in this sorry age of Islamic correctness: What Islamic teachings might these American Muslim converts have learned, whether in prison, or elsewhere, which caused them to target their American Jewish neighbors, specifically, for mass killing? Simply put, it is impossible to comprehend this ugly phenomenon without understanding the core, mainstream Islamic theology - still unreformed and unrepentant - which has inspired hatred of Jews since the advent of Islam?

For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, has served as the academic shrine - much as Mecca is the religious shrine - of the global Muslim community. Al Azhar University and its mosque represent the pinnacle of Islamic religious education.

A front page New York Times story published Saturday Jan. 10, 2009, included extracts from the Friday sermon (the day before) at Al Azhar mosque by Egyptian-government appointed cleric Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef. Referencing well-established antisemitic motifs from the Koran (citations provided, below), Sheikh Youssef intoned:

"Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at [Koran 1:7] and whom he cursed [Koran 5:78] so he made monkeys and pigs [Koran 5:60] out of them. They killed prophets and messengers [Koran 2:61/3:112] and sowed corruption on Earth. [Koran 5:33/5:64] They are the most evil on Earth. [Koran 5:62 /63]"

In authoritative classical and modern Koranic interpretations, the Koran's central antisemitic theme - its eternal curse for "prophet killing" and violating Allah's commands - is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60 and 5:78, which describe the Jews' transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). The Muslim prophet Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (sacred collections of Muhammad's words and deeds)....

There is much more. Read it all.

"Mr. Obama: reconciliation cannot be separated from reciprocation. The Islamic World must not demand from us that which they are unwilling to return to us and to extend to their own citizens of other religions. I hope you help them understand reconciliation is a two-way street." As Obama prepares to demonstrate his respect for the Islamic world, he would do well to in fact ponder this interconnection between reconciliation and reciprocation.

"A Message to President Obama From Christian Copts of California: Reconciliation With the Islamic World is a Two-Way Street," from Earth Times, May 27:

LOS ANGELES, May 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On June 4, 2009, Mr. Obama will be traveling to Cairo, the Egyptian Capital, to deliver a message to the Islamic World. The speech is expected to address ways to mend the differences between the Islamic World and the United States. The hope is for the speech to bring some kind of reconciliation between the two.

The relationship between the United States and the Islamic World has suffered serious setbacks in recent years. The Muslim World has been voicing feelings of grievances against the USA. As a result many Muslim radical groups emerged with agendas opposing the USA. The groups perpetrated a series of major attacks against Americans and U.S. interest worldwide. [...]

Of course, it is crucial for the USA to listen to the Islamic World's point of view. I hope somebody tells them it is equally crucial for them to listen to America's point of view. Historically the USA has done sufficient favors for the Muslim World to earn respect rather than such vehement hatred. Somebody needs to remind them the USA has been good to them. A large part of U.S. foreign aid has been going to Islamic countries.[...]

Ironically, some of such are neighboring Muslim nations. Somebody needs to remind the Muslim World that polite reciprocity for generous kindnesses shown is supposedly an Islamic custom.

Internally, Muslims seeking residency on USA soil have been welcomed with open arms. American Muslims enjoy the same freedoms, equality and justice every American citizen expects. There are no restrictions on their religious practices and they are free to expend efforts to convert as many Americans as they can to Islam. Mosques, Islamic centers and schools are freely built allover the country. Such freedoms are most definitely not offered to those of other faiths within the boundaries of the Islamic World.

An example is Egypt, the capital of the Islamic World, where Mr. Obama has chosen to deliver his speech. Egyptian Muslims seeking to convert to Christianity or to any other faith are not permitted to do so. Christians need presidential decrees to build new churches and governor's approval to repair existing ones. There have been instances where Christians were arrested for praying in their homes without a permit. Egypt's Christians number around 15% of the nation's total population. Yet, they are represented by less than 1/2 % of elected parliamentary representatives. An imposed quota on some jobs limits the hiring of Christians to 2% or less. Many high ranking jobs are completely out of reach of Christians.

Mr. Obama: reconciliation cannot be separated from reciprocation. The Islamic World must not demand from us that which they are unwilling to return to us and to extend to their own citizens of other religions. I hope you help them understand reconciliation is a two-way street.

No surprise, since five years ago, Uzbekistan was predicted to be the "New Terror Central." "Islamic Jihad admits responsibility for attacks in Khanabad," from Interfax, May 27:

Moscow, May 27, Interfax - The Islamic Jihad group has said it was responsible for the attacks in the Uzbek town of Khanabad on Tuesday.

The Islamist organization issued a statement in the wake of the attack: "several editor's offices received a statement from a person who claimed that he represented the Islamic Jihad," the Uznews.net website reports.

The authors of the statement claimed that "a group of Mujahideen of the Maveranahr unit of the Islamic Jihad organization carried an armed attack on the departments of police and the National Security Service in the town of Khanabad, Andizhan region."

"Mujahideen completed their mission and successfully, without losses, returned to their quarters," the statement reads.

The statement "was written in correct Uzbek language using Cyrillic script," the Uznews.net website said.

According to the statement, the attack was revenge against Uzbek authorities for "the murder of innocent Muslims."

Islamic Jihad also took on responsibility for explosions which took place in the Andizhan region on May 26.

According to the Uznews.net, a total 16 people were killed in the May 26 events in Khanabad and the Andizhan province. Sources in Andizhan said that more than one explosion rocked Andizhan, the website reports. A second explosion occurred in the Istanbul shop where, according to one of the theories, "one or several armed suspects were hiding and soldiers were called in to neutralize them," the website reports.

Speak out against religious apartheid, Mr. President!

The story says he will attend no public events, but why not? As long as he wants to show the Islamic world that he respects Muslim culture, why not pay his respects to the local culture? No visit to Riyadh would be complete without a stop at Chop-Chop Square!

Or maybe he could use the occasion of the visit to stand up for human rights against Sharia, but I won't be holding my breath.

"Obama Adds Saudi Arabia Stop to Mideast Trip," by Michael D. Shear for the Washington Post, May 26 (thanks to James):

President Obama will travel to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for a previously unannounced visit during which he will discuss Mideast peace with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, press secretary Robert Gibbs said today.

The visit will take place the day before Obama is to deliver a speech in Cairo, Egypt. In the speech, he is expected to speak broadly to the Muslim world and also discuss his hopes for peace in the region.

Gibbs said that Obama will hold no public events in Riyadh but will have a private dinner with the King and will spend the night in the city before heading to Egypt...

"They have confessed to having strangled Amandeep and smashed his face with stones.”

Islamic law, of course, forbids a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man, although a Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman -- thus ensuring that non-Muslim communities are forever diminishing as the House of Islam expands.

"Missing schoolboy murdered; body found with face smashed," from Express News Service, May 27 (thanks to G.S.):

Mumbai: A 14-year-old schoolboy from Kurla’s Bailbazar area was found murdered at Khalapur in Raigad district, bringing alive memories of the Adnan Patrawala and Mukeem Khan kidnap and murder cases.

Police said the body of the boy, Amandeep Banwait, was found in a ditch near a highway in Khalapur, face smashed beyond recognition. Using a tailor’s tag on the shirt as clue, Khalapur police traced the boy’s family.

Two college boys and a student of Class XII have been held in connection with the murder. Police inquiries reveal they were against the closeness of Amandeep with a girl, said to be the sister of two of the suspects....

Police enquiries with residents of the neighbourhood led them to the suspects. “Some residents told us they had heard of an affair between Amandeep and the cousin of two of the suspects. They said they had seen him and the girl’s elder brother warning Amandeep to stay away from her,” said Padhalkar.

Fahad, his brother, reported to be a minor, and their friend Salim have been held. “We arrested the three. They confessed that when Amandeep hadn’t paid heed to their warnings, they plotted to murder him. A day before abducting him, Fahad and Salim rode to Khalapur in a motorbike to ‘finalise’ the spot and on May 18, Amandeep was lured into accompanying them for a ‘sightseeing’ trip. He was taken to Khalapur. They have confessed to having strangled Amandeep and smashed his face with stones,” police added....

A much-needed review of an important new book, Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War by Moorthy S. Muthuswamy. "BOOK REVIEW: Reversing U.S. policy in AfPak," by Diana West in the Washington Times, May 27:

As the U.S. military slogs on, confused, trying to win the "trust" of the Afghan people; as the Obama administration, illogically, attempts to explain its way through Pakistan's "uneven" record of fighting jihad to a new $7.5 billion aid package (on top of $12 billion spent by the Bush administration), it is great luck to come across a book like Moorthy S. Muthuswamy's "Defeating Political Islam: The New Cold War." It contains all the answers to the questions looming over our widening and deepening presence in "AfPak," and more.

In short, the United States fails to understand Pakistan - whose army, not incidentally, sports the motto "Faith, piety, and holy war in the path of Allah" - for what it is: a member state of what the author calls "the axis of jihad," which also includes Saudi Arabia and Iran. These three nations - with their arm's-length proxy armies of the Taliban, al Qaeda and Hezbollah - are the most aggressive purveyors of what the book describes as "political Islam," the jihadist creed based on Islamic doctrine that is destabilizing the world, from India's Kashmir region to Britain's old mill towns, from all of Israel to Parisian banlieues.

This destabilization is happening in plain sight, but incredibly, few see it as clearly as Mr. Muthuswamy. Nearly eight years after Sept. 11, 2001, such blindness marks the epic negligence of our leadership, beginning with former President George W. Bush. On Sept. 12, 2001, the brand-new "war president" embarked on what may be remembered as his most successful campaign: his "Islam is peace" offensive, which to this day confuses our policies, not to mention our people.

Mr. Muthuswamy, an Indian-born, U.S.-educated nuclear physicist, draws the opposite inference from the "Islamic trilogy," including the Koran, the Hadiths (traditions of Muhammad) and the Sira (biography of Muhammad). He instead argues that "extremism - not moderation - is the mainstream among Islamic traditions." Such a viewpoint stands the basis of post-Sept. 11 security policy on its head, from constructive engagement with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission (whose "major blunder," Mr. Muthuswamy believes, was exonerating Saudi Arabia), to coalition-building efforts with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Working with "moderates" in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, he explains, hasn't weakened political Islam in these nations. While it may have temporarily deflected jihadist attacks on the West, he writes, "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have continued to direct jihad at Israel, India and others. With political Islam as their guide, these societies have changed little since 2001." As a result, Mr. Muthuswamy argues, it is high time to reverse the bizarre U.S. policy that, in effect, holds political Islam in the same esteem that the Islamic world does.

This is the PC or "politically correct" policy that informs not only our engagement with "axis of jihad" nations but also our occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Muthuswamy writes: "As an occupying power in need of local cooperation, America could in no way afford to totally discredit political Islam, since it represented mainstream Muslim religious institutions. ... America's best chance of weakening political Islam and achieving true liberation in these areas, as it did with the former Soviet Union-based communist movement, is to function as a non-occupying power."

"True liberation"? Doubtful. But "weakening political Islam"? You bet. Taking this paradigm of the "non-occupying power" and other lessons from the Cold War, Mr. Muthuswamy urges, for example, a propaganda campaign against political Islam akin to that waged against communist ideology. It would target "educated Muslims" in the West, he writes, who "would benefit from the local media and the government propaganda machinery willing to discredit the theological roots of political Islam."...

Read it all.

Once again, it doesn't seem to occur to this writer that "Islamophobia," if any irrational hatred of Muslims actually exists at all, is caused by Islamic jihadists doing evil and justifying it in the name of Islam -- not by "negative coverage."

If Muslims around the world don’t want Islam to be perceived as encouraging violence, they should take these five steps:

1. Stop committing violent acts.

2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur’an and Sunnah.

3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when they think no non-Muslims are around. For example, the imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, executive director of ministerial services for the New York City Department of Correction, was secretly recorded a few years ago while speaking at an Islamic conference in Arizona. Muslims, he said, invoking Qur’an 48:29, must be "compassionate with each other" and "hard against the kufr [unbelief]." In Britain, Hamid Ali, imam of the mosque frequented by the July 7 bombers, praised the bombers and called their terror attack "good" in a conversation secretly recorded by an undercover journalist. Publicly, he had condemned the attacks. In a mosque in the Czech Republic, a Muslim secretly filmed by a documentary filmmaker says Islamic Shari’a law, including the stoning of adulterers, should be adopted by the Czech Republic. Cleveland imam Fawaz Damra, who has since been deported for failing to disclose his ties to terror groups, signed the Fiqh Council of North America’s condemnation of terrorism, despite having declared at an Islamic conference that "terrorism, and terrorism alone, is the path to liberation."

Do such incidents mean that every Muslim who professes to have adopted Western notions of pluralism and the equality of dignity and rights of non-Muslims and Muslims is dissembling? Of course not. But they do mean that non-Muslims are perfectly justified in being suspicious of Muslim protestations of moderation and opposition to terror. Consequently deeds, not just words, are needed. To conclude my five recommendations, genuinely anti-terror Muslims should:

4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.

5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

"Islamophobia’s impact on the world," by Faraz Omar for the Saudi Gazette, May 27 (thanks to Maxwell):

“It just seems now that all we ever get in the media is Muslims and Islam. The working class seems to have been forgotten. (Some) 25 years ago, I didn’t know what a Muslim was or that Muslims followed Islam. Now we can’t escape hearing about Muslims.” – A disgruntled reader commenting on a recent Guardian piece

NEGATIVE coverage of Islam and Muslims in the media is no secret and it’s making people averse to Islam, not to mention the amount of hassles innocent Muslims are facing with authorities in non-Muslim countries. The revelations of how MI5 is blackmailing British Muslims; the case of award-winning Pakistani writer, Mohammed Hanif, being detained for over two hours at New Zealand airport last week; the case of Indian actor Mammootty being grilled for two hours at New York airport earlier this month; and the dramatic arrest and subsequent release of 12 Muslim students in Britain over suspicion of terrorism last month are examples of what is happening everyday around the world.

Further, communities are totally disconnected from the reality and truth about Islam and Muslims. A joint survey by Gallup and Coexist Foundation published in the first week of May 2009 found that European Muslims are more loyal than other citizens to their respective countries. But only a small percentage of non-Muslim citizens trusted Muslim citizens for their loyalty. For example, 76 percent of British Muslims believed in the integrity of the justice system as opposed to 55 percent of the general populace and 82 percent of them said British Muslims were loyal citizens, but only 36 percent of their neighbors believed Muslims were loyal citizens. What a total disconnect!

And of course, there are no reasons for this mistrust. It is irrational and springs out of nowhere.

After 9/11, negative reporting of Islam took an unprecedented shift. What were once extreme abusive criticisms by a selected minority of right-wing neoconservatives began to be accepted in the mainstream media. The Pentagon invested heavily in information warfare. The 2003 Pentagon document “Information Operations Roadmap” signed by the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (declassified in 2006) revealed US military plans for psychological operations, including: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks. (BBC, Jan. 27, 2006) The objectives were clear and the investment was huge. Islamophobia entered every medium of communication, from major media outlets to bloggers, movies to soap operas and popular sports to video games – nothing was spared.

Result? The Guardian reported a UK study in 2007 that “91 percent of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative.” Research into a week’s news coverage found only 4 percent of the 352 articles positive....

This statistic came out in the New York Times last week, and then the Times reporter seemed to backpedal on it. Now the Pentagon has reaffirmed it.

"One in 7 who leave Guantanamo involved in terrorism," from Reuters, May 26 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seventy-four, or one out of every seven, terrorism suspects formerly held at the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorism, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

Of more than 530 detainees transferred from the U.S. base in Cuba, 27 are confirmed and 47 suspected of "reengaging in terrorist activity," according to a written Pentagon summary.

The total of 74 has more than doubled since May 2007, when the Pentagon said about 30 had gone back to terrorist activity, and increased slightly since January, when the figure stood at 61....

Citing information from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon provided the names and brief details of 15 former detainees it said had been confirmed as having returned to terrorism and 14 suspected of doing so.

The list included former detainees accused or convicted of terrorist offenses in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Russia.

Among the more recent cases mentioned were two men repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2007, Abu Sufyan al-Azdi al-Shihri and Mazin Salih Musaid al-Alawi al-Awfi, said to have announced in a video message in January that they were leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a new group.

Among those accused of the most serious offenses was Said Mohammed Alim Shah, also known as Abdullah Mahsud. Repatriated to Afghanistan in 2004, he blew himself up to avoid capture by Pakistani forces in July 2007, the summary said.

According to a Pakistani official, he directed an April 2007 suicide attack that killed 31 people, it said....

And "demand" an apology. More on this story. "Greek Muslim associations sue policeman," from SETimes.com, May 26:

ATHENS, Greece -- Muslim associations in Athens have filed a lawsuit against a policeman who allegedly desecrated a copy of the Koran last week, media reported on Monday (May 25th). Last Thursday, the policeman allegedly took a Koran from a customer during a police check at an Athens coffee shop, ripped it apart, threw it on the floor and stomped on it. Police say the officer did not know it was Islam's holy book.

The Pakistani community in Greece called on the government to assume responsibility for the incident and demanded an apology from authorities. The incident prompted two days of protests by hundreds of Muslims in central Athens. Violent clashes with police on Friday injured at least 14 people and damage several businesses; 46 people were arrested.

"And left despite her refusal." This account tries to imply that, by going against her wishes, this young jihadi was behaving erroneously. In fact, he almost certainly was aware of that centuries old ruling that, when jihad becomes an individual obligation (i.e., defensive jihad, deemed a fard ayn), the permission of the father is not required for any young would-be jihadis. If that's the case, obviously the permission of the mother is moot.

"Saudi Arrested in Pakistan Asked Mother's Blessing to Perform Jihad…And Left Despite Her Refusal," by Turki Al-Saheil for Asharq Alawsat, May 25:

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat- The mother of Fawzi al-Rashidi, one of the four Saudi nationals arrested by Pakistani authorities whilst disguised as a woman, could not convince her son to turn away from what he described as performing "Jihad for the sake of God" on Afghan soil.

Naif al-Rashidi informed Asharq Al-Awsat that his brother Fawzi, who appeared on television screens last week dressed in traditional brown Pakistani garments had attempting to obtain his mother's blessing to join the ranks of the fighters along the Pakistani – Afghan border.
Naif told Asharq Al-Awsat "Fawzi would sit next to my mother and insist that she allow him to go and perform Jihad. He was attempting to go with her consent, but her position was clear on this issue, and she said that she would not forgive him if he went there."

However Fawzi, who gave a false name to the Pakistani authorities after he was arrested in Pakistan's tribal region along with three other Saudi nationals, did not heed his mother's repeated calls against travelling to Afghanistan. According to Naif al-Rashidi, his brother Fawzi did not have a history of ideological fanaticism or religious extremism during his youth, and that he dropped out of education after completing Middle School.[...]

Naif al-Rashidi told Asharq Al-Awsat that his brother Fawzi, who used to work for a private company selling Japanese cars, would publicly repeat that he was going to perform Jihad as people had "guaranteed his entry into Paradise."...

Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca ("The people of sunna and consensus"). Reading this report, however, one would think they're just another "armed" Somali group, with no Islamist overtones. "Somali Armed Group Says It’s Poised to Defeat Al-Shabab," by Peter Clottey for the Voice of America, May 26:

A Somali armed group has vowed to defeat hard-line insurgent groups, including al-Shabab, which aim to topple the new government. The Alhu Sunna Waljamaca armed group claims it would have destroyed al-Shabab a long time ago if President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had taken its advice soon after he was elected leader of the government.

On Monday, President Sheikh Sharif pleaded with the international community to help his administration ward off Islamist rebels who have reportedly drawn in hundreds of foreign fighters to their ranks.

Al- Shabab refuses to recognize the new Somali administration, vowing to topple the government.

Sheik Abdulkarim Rasik is a leading member of the al-Sunna armed group. He told VOA that the group needs the support of the president to destroy al-Shabab.

"The country has been at war for almost 20 years and when the president came to Mogadishu, we talked. And we told him that it was better for him to obey the Alhu Sunna Waljamaca because they know the problem of these groups, especially Shabab or Hizbul Islam," Rasik said.

He said the current administration has so far failed to adhere to warnings of the group despite holding negotiations with the president and his ministers.

"The president has not accepted our suggestion. Although we were continuing our fighting in the central regions… we succeeded, I think," he said.

Rasik said the risk of the government being toppled by al-Shabab and other foreign fighters would be minimal if the administration had listened to them.

"The president realizes the problem and now he is facing a lot of challenges. So we think and know that this is not progress, because the situation is deteriorating day after day," Rasik said.

He said the new administration is now realizing that the threat of the government being overthrown is growing rapidly.

"The president is fed up and they (foreign fighters) are determined to topple this government. And they think they are succeeding in the fighting of their war," he said.

Rasik said all the administration needs is to ask for help from the armed group to help ward off the insurgents.

"If the president needs help or support from us, we will support if Allah wills. But he may change because he and al-Shabab were in the same group when they were in the ICU (Islamic Courts Union)," Rasik said.

Rasik said Alhu Sunna Waljamaca is capable of defeating the Islamic insurgents and other foreign fighters, including al-Shabab...

However, the Taliban now claims to be concerned for the "safety of civilians" in the Mingora region -- where it once ordered the killing of women seen in the market place. "Taliban will avoid combat in Mingora," from the Daily Times, May 26:

ISLAMABAD: The Taliban urged Mingora residents on Monday to return to the town where they promised not to attack the security forces because of concern for the safety of civilians. Asked if that meant a ceasefire, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said, “No... Our aides will remain there in Mingora.” “We will fight for the enforcement of sharia law till the last drop of our blood,” he told AFP

I promise not to be. But many of the learned analysts will be -- after all, why doesn't Obama's Moderate Taliban rise up and put a stop to this sort of thing?

"'If We Now Kill Schoolgirls, You Shouldn't Be Surprised,'" by Matthias Gebauer and Shoib Najafizada in Spiegel, May 26 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Responding to threats from the Taliban, at least 10 girls' schools have shut down near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Visiting the schools is a dangerous proposition -- a trip leading directly into the heart of Islamist territory.

When the deputy director of Aqtash High School talks of the government, he isn't referring to Hamid Karzai's central government in Kabul. Nor does he refer to the provincial administration in Kunduz. "The Taliban are our government," Bashir says. "They have taken over our region, their commanders give the orders here."

Bashir is standing in a dusty classroom on the ground floor of his modern school, roughly half an hour from Kunduz by car. As recently as just one month ago, he says, some 400 girls were still coming to the school in three daily shifts to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Figures and formula are still scrawled across the blackboard.

But now, the girls' classrooms have been left to deteriorate. The desks and chairs are still laid out in neat rows, but a film of dust has collected, and Bashir stands helplessly in the middle of the room. "Parents in Aqtash are afraid to send their girls to school anymore, after the death threats," he explains. The school director speaks quietly and carefully. He too is afraid, and several of his teachers double as informants for the Taliban. The bearded fighters, he says, would certainly not like it if they knew a reporter was at the school in Aqtash. "You should leave quickly if you want to get out of Aqtash alive," he whispers.

'Apprehended and Killed'

Bashir's warning is hardly an exaggeration. Not 30 minutes after our arrival in Aqtash, located 15 kilometers northeast of Kunduz just off the main north-south arterial, a group of a dozen Taliban fighters, armed with AK-47s, gathers in front of the blue arch at the entrance to the school. "What do you want here?" one of the fighters calls. "This is our region, the Islamic Emirate of North Afghanistan."

Memo to Honest Ibe Hooper of CAIR: Shouldn't that be the Misunderstanders of Islam Emirate of Afghanistan?

Anyway, read it all.

In Sharia court a woman’s testimony is worth half as much as that of a man. Says the Qur’an: “Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember” (2:282).

Islamic legal theorists have restricted the validity of a woman’s testimony even further by limiting it to, in the words of one Muslim legal manual, “cases involving property, or transactions dealing with property, such as sales” (’Umdat al-Salik, o24.8).

Otherwise only men can testify. And in cases of sexual misbehavior, four male witnesses are required. Not just witnesses who can testify that an instance of fornication, adultery, or rape happened: these witnesses must have seen the act itself. This peculiar and destructive stipulation had its genesis in an incident in Muhammad’s life, when his wife, Aisha, was accused of infidelity. The accusation particularly distressed Muhammad, since Aisha was his favorite wife. But in this case as in many others, Allah came to the aid of his Prophet: he revealed Aisha’s innocence and instituted the stipulation of four witnesses for sexual sins: “Why did they not produce four witnesses? Since they produce not witnesses, they verily are liars in the sight of Allah” (Qur’an 24:13).

Consequently, it is very difficult to convict men of what the Sharia considers to be sexual crimes (zina). As long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they will get off scot-free, because the woman’s testimony is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man, she may end up incriminating herself.

"Bangladeshi single mother caned over paternity row," from AFP, May 26 (thanks to Religion of Peace):

DHAKA (AFP) — A 22-year-old unmarried Bangladeshi woman who was caned 39 times for alleging a neighbour was the father of her son is fighting for her life in hospital, police said.

The case has shocked the impoverished Muslim-majority nation, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ordering the woman to be shifted from her village home to the capital for proper medical treatment.

Local police chief Moshiur Rahman told AFP that the woman, from Comilla, 70 kilometres (43 miles) east of the capital Dhaka, had angered Islamic clerics when she told friends that a neighbour had fathered her six-year-old son.

They called her and the alleged father to appear before a makeshift Islamic court, but the man denied the paternity claim, Rahman said.

"He held a Koran in one hand and swore to the village clerics that he was not the father of the boy. The village court found him not guilty," he said.

"They also issued a fatwa that the woman should be caned 39 times for lying."

The woman, seriously injured after the caning, was admitted to a local hospital but was later shifted to the country's largest hospital in Dhaka on the orders of the Prime Minister, Rahman said.

Two of the clerics have been arrested for repression of women, he said, and DNA testing had been arranged to determine the father of the child.

In other words, can we just have the deal you offered us before we tried to take over the whole country? But this time the Pakistani government is saying No Dice.

"Taliban seek return to peace deal in Pakistan," from CNN, May 26 (thanks to DJ Martyr):

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- The Pakistani Taliban -- under pressure in fighting with the military -- said Tuesday it wants to return to a peace deal that recently collapsed.

That collapse sparked the ongoing massive military operation, a Taliban spokesman said Tuesday.

Taliban militants in Swat Valley have announced that they are willing to disarm if the Pakistani government allows sharia, or Islamic law, to be implemented in the region, a spokesman for Taliban mediator Sufi Mohammed said.

The government rejected the offer, saying the Taliban must pull out of Swat or face arrest, state information minister Syed Sumsam Ali Shah Bukhari said Tuesday. According to Bukhari, the offer shows that the Taliban's morale is down and they are retreating....

Think this can't happen in the West? Geert Wilders is already on trial in The Netherlands for insulting Islam. But this can't happen in the United States -- we have the First Amendment, right? Sure. But the Organization of the Islamic Conference is pushing hard at the UN to criminalize what it considers to be insults to Islam, including truth-telling about how jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to gain recruits among peaceful Muslims. All it would take would be one President who wants to cozy up to the UN and the OIC, and who pushes legislation classifying Islamorealism as "hate speech" -- and a compliant Supreme Court that would specify that such "hate speech" was not protected under the First Amendment.

Couldn't happen? I hope you're right.

"Turkish author on trial for insulting Islam," by Ibrahim Usta for AP, May 26 (thanks to James):

ISTANBUL (AP) — A Turkish author on trial over accusations that his latest book insulted Islam denied the charges Tuesday and insisted he was respectful of religion.

Nedim Gursel faces up to a year in prison if found guilty on charges of humiliating religious values and inciting religious hatred in his novel "The Daughters of Allah."...

A case against him began last year after a citizen complained that the novel — set in the 6th century and describing the advent of Islam — was blasphemous. Gursel has repeatedly said his book, published in Turkey last year, is fictitious and that he did not intend to offend....

"A source in federal law enforcement told Fox Chicago that the case is similar to one that unfolded in New York yesterday" -- that is, May 21, when the Bronx synagogue plot was foiled. Bronx synagogue plot background here. "Police Raid Apartment, 2 In Custody," from MyFoxChicago, May 22 (thanks to Pamela):

Glenda Johnson saw so many police and plain clothed federal agents on her block that she thought someone had been shot.

"The police was so crowded, you couldn't even walk past. They was in trucks, they was in cars, they was in regular cars. It looked like someone had killed someone," said Johnson.

That swarm of badges consisted of the FBI, Chicago Police and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. In their sights were two buildings on the 6300 block of North Artesian. People who live in a six flat there say the feds were very interested in its basement, specifically, two storage lockers....

“They was looking for someone who lives in this building. So I was like ‘what's the cause?’ They said ‘we don't want to say yet, but it's a life and death situation.’ I was like ‘wow,’” said Johnson.

A source in federal law enforcement told Fox Chicago that the case is similar to one that unfolded in New York yesterday.

Choi notes (via Pamela) that the raid took place on the same street where a Muslim was arrested for threatening a Jewish school a few months ago.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was recently quoted saying that American prisons were "fertile ground for extremists." And a 2006 study, "Out of the Shadows," said that "tight-knit communities of Muslims in prison are ripe for radicalization, and could easily become terrorist cells."

That study is three years old. Mueller's warning is not brand-new either. It is not only that already existing “tight-knit communities of Muslims in prison” are “ripe for radicalization, and could easily become terrorist cells.” It is also that there are numbers of people who, already alienated from society and already dangerous to it, find their solace not in a turn to Christianity, where the outcome is likely to be far different, but in an acceptance of Islam. For Muslim missionary activity goes on unmonitored and unchecked all because the Bureau of Prisons, and the FBI and the CIA and others whose duty it is to recognize and thwart dangers to this country, dangers to its legal and political institutions and physical dangers to its citizens, are afraid to recognize that what Islam inculcates in these prisoners gives them an ideological framework, a justification, for their hostility to the circumambient “Infidel” society. Islam offers them a view of the universe in which the central theme is Us and Them -- Muslims against all non-Muslims, with the duty of every Muslim to promote and protect only Islam, to be loyal only to fellow Muslims, to do whatever it takes to engage in the “Jihad” or “struggle” to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam. And that “struggle” can, but need not where it is ineffective, include violence.

How big is the problem? According to a report in The Times, 30,000 to 40,000 prisoners, mostly black, convert to Islam every year. What has been done since the problem has been identified? What members of Congress, what people who are responsible for protecting us, have not only identified this problem, or part of it (as the authors of the 2006 study above did) but suggested ways for it to be dealt with? It is not enough to take at face value the claims of this or that Muslim chaplain who ostentatiously expresses his “horror” at, say, the just-publicized case of the four would-be Muslim terrorists, three of whom, apparently on their Spiritual Search, were easy prey for Muslim missionaries and became Muslims. That did not mean they had to do more than repeat the Profession of Faith, and one doubts that they knew a great deal about many aspects of Islam, including its ban on music and on most forms of artistic expression. And of course they would have had Islam presented to them as a vehicle for carrying their resentment against America or Amerikkka, rather than as a vehicle of Arab supremacism.

True to form, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) jihadists claim they are only responding to aggression -- despite the fact that the Filipino government allowed them to establish Sharia in the southern part of the country.

"Muslim rebels bomb bridge, attack village in southern Philippines," from Deutsche Presse Agentur, May 26 (thanks to Religion of Peace):

Manila - Muslim separatist rebels bombed a bridge and attacked a village in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes, an army spokesman said.

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Ponce said Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels set off an improvised explosive device before dawn at Lintokan Bridge in Datu Piang town in Maguindanao province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.

Ponce said the rebels then swooped down on the nearby village of Reina Regente, looting homes, local stores and farms before torching at least eight houses.

More than 250 residents were forced to flee their homes as fighting erupted between MILF guerrillas and responding soldiers.

'The flow of relief goods has been hampered because of the MILF's terrorist acts,' Ponce said, noting that heavy vehicles have not been allowed to pass across Lintokan Bridge following the bombing.

More than 27,000 residents have remained in evacuation centres in Maguindanao province after fleeing their homes amid fierce fighting between the MILF and the military last year, he said.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied the rebels had started the hostilities, saying, 'We have forces in the area and they will fire back when attacked.'

The MILF is the largest Muslim rebel group fighting for a separate Islamic state in the southern region of Mindanao...

In "The Halimi Cover-Up" in Israel National News, May 26, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs discusses the strange silence surrounding the trial of the killers of Ilan Halimi -- a silence that is sadly typical when it comes to incidents of violence in the West committed by Muslims who claim inspiration from the Qur'an and other Islamic texts:

The abduction and murder in Paris of a young Jewish man by a gang of Muslim immigrants calling themselves the Barbarians shocked the whole of France in 2006. But now that the accused are on trial - silence.

A French judge has ordered the latest issue of the magazine Choc ("shock") removed from the shelves. The cover showed a man with duct tape completely covering his head, except for a small opening around his nostrils. His nose is bloody. His hands are also bound with duct tape.

It was a photo of Ilan Halimi, the 23-year-old Parisian Jew who was kidnapped and tortured for 24 days by the Barbarians. His captors took the picture and sent it to his family. A lawyer for Halimi's family had complained about the magazine, but Choc's editor-in-chief Paul Payan responded: "Of course, we understand the anguish of the parents and, of course, we share their anguish.... But what's so harrowing is not the publication of this photo. What's harrowing is what it represents, what happened, the reality behind it."

And it gets worse. The New York Times reported last week that "in the two and a half weeks since 27 people went on trial [in Paris] for the brutal 2006 kidnapping, torture and killing of a young Jewish man, little has filtered out about the proceedings." Worse still, the little that has emerged indicates that French government and law enforcement have done everything in their power to obscure the Islamic Jew-hatred that led these Muslims to commit this crime.

The corrupt media, aligned with the jihad forces, has long blacked out the truth about Halimi's homemade concentration camp and the inconceivable horrors that were suffered by this French Jew, chosen by Islam's soldiers for unimaginable torture. They covered up the religious aspects of this depraved barbarity. Law enforcement did as well.

No one said anything about the Koran's statement that the Jews are the Muslims' worst enemies. No one referenced Muhammad's words: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'" Never was there heard anything about the Islamic tradition that says: "When judgment day arrives, Allah will give every Muslim a Jew or Christian to kill, so that the Muslim will not enter into hell fire."

Ilan's uncle, Rafi Halimi, reported that "the gang phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background."...

Read it all.

In her May 22 column "Is It All About Britney?" (thanks to Boneshack), columnist Mona Charen takes down Dinesh D'Souza's ridiculous 2006 book The Enemy At Home, which I discussed here and in many other places at Jihad Watch.

In his book "The Enemy at Home," Dinesh D'Souza shows little patience with the leftists who reacted to 9/11 by declaring that America had it coming. And yet, his book is a variant on that theme. It was our cultural decadence, our foul popular movies, music and pornography, D'Souza argues, that enraged traditional Muslims worldwide and moved some to violence....

For the sake of argument, let's stipulate that America's cultural exports in the form of movies and music are the principal cause of Muslim hatred of the United States. This cultural rot did not set in, D'Souza acknowledges, until after the 1960s. Yet the godfather of the radical movement that spawned Osama bin Laden was the Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, who formed his fanatical beliefs after living in the United States in the late 1940s .

Qutb was offended by everything about America, from its food to its delight in football and money, and particularly by what he saw as sexual libertinism. "Jazz is the American music," Qutb wrote, "created by Negroes to satisfy their primitive instincts — their love of noise and their appetite for sexual arousal." Attending a church social in (dry) Greeley, Colo., in 1949, Qutb was revolted by what he saw: "Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips, and the atmosphere was full of love."

So the America Qutb despised was one that most conservatives consider pretty tame. Yet it was to his eyes a sewer. This suggests the cultural divide between American conservatives and Muslim conservatives is more like a chasm. D'Souza speaks approvingly of traditional Muslims seeking to "preserve the innocence of their children," perhaps forgetting that throughout large swaths of the Muslim world, child brides are quite acceptable. When Khomeini took power in Iran, the marriage age for girls was reduced to 9. It has since been increased all the way to 13.

There are other troubling aspects of traditional Muslim family life that D'Souza glosses over. The tradition of honor killing — husbands, brothers and fathers killing their female relatives who engage in immodest behavior — is widespread and uncontroversial in Muslim lands and even in Muslim communities in Europe. Temporary marriage permits Muslim men to "marry" any number of women, for as little as a couple of hours — a barely disguised form of prostitution, which they piously condemn in the West. Rape victims are stoned to death, and so forth.

But even if the radical Muslims are truly enraged by American decadence and see it as an assault on traditional Muslim values — by what stretch of the imagination do they take to suicide attacks as a response? That's some movie review. Besides, no one holds a gun to their heads and forces them to buy the output of Paramount and Time Warner. One can easily imagine a country in the Middle East excluding such things, unencumbered as they are by a First Amendment....

Yes. Read it all.

In FrontPage this morning I discuss Muslim condemnations of the Bronx synagogue jihad plot:

The Muslims who were arrested last week for plotting to blow up two Bronx synagogues and bring down an airplane have exposed yet again the virulence and ugliness of Islamic anti-Semitism. Said one plotter: “If Jews were killed in this attack ... that would be all right.” Plotter James “Abdul Rahman” Cromitie, a jailhouse convert to Islam, said: “I hate those mother-------, those f------ Jewish b------ .... I would like to get [destroy] a synagogue.”

Muslim groups were quick to condemn the plot. Quick to issue statements were the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and New York Muslim leaders.

Fozia Khan of the American Muslim Women’s Association said: “We believe that violence has no place in our community and is in no way a part of the tenets of Islam. Unfortunately, incidents of this kind hamper our efforts to create harmonious relationships with other religious organizations within our community.”

Since Fozia Khan’s holy book calls for warfare against Jews and Christians until they submit as inferiors to Islamic rule (Qur’an 9:29), and mandates the beheading of unbelievers (47:4), among many other belligerent passages, her assertion that violence “is in no way a part of the tenets of Islam” could bear some elucidation. None, however, was forthcoming from her. Khan complained: “In recent years, we as an organization have had to condemn far too many acts of violence committed in the name of Islam. We would like to stress that the people who commit these acts are misguided and confused and ignorant or unaware of Islam’s ideology of peace and tolerance.”

So why not teach them? One might wonder why Muslim groups don’t become more proactive, and institute programs in mosques and Islamic schools in the West (as well as in the Islamic world) to teach Muslims why the views of Osama bin Laden et al are wrong, and how the true Islam eschews violence against and hatred of unbelievers. Yet CAIR, ISNA, MPAC and the rest have never instituted or even called for such a program. They are ready with the condemnations after arrests or explosions, but why wait passively? Why not act to head off jihadist activity by Muslims?

Yesterday a Jihad Watch reader wrote to me taking issue with an article I posted here at Jihad Watch four years ago, "The Golden Rule and Islam," by Ali Sina of Faith Freedom, author of Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography of Allah's Prophet. "All religions," Sina argued, "invariably, are based on the Golden Rule. Islam is not." Here is the letter I was sent responding to Ali Sina's article:

Islamic Text on the Golden Rule: The Quran: “Serve God, and join not any partners with Him; and do good- to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need, neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your side, the wayfarer (ye meet), and what your right hands possess [the slave]: For God loveth not the arrogant, the vainglorious” (Q:4:36)

(In fact the Quran goes beyond saying the Golden Rule by stating in more than four places that "Return evil with Kindness." (13:22, 23:96, 41:34, 28:54, 42:40))

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh):
“None of you have faith until you love for your neighbor what you love for yourself” (Sahih
Muslim)

“Whoever wishes to be delivered from the fire and to enter Paradise…should treat the people as he wishes to be treated.” (Sahih Muslim)

"None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself"(Forty Hadith-Nawawi)

“None of you is a believer if he eats his full while his neighbour hasn’t anything.” (Musnad)

“Do unto all men as you would wish to have done unto you; and reject for others what you would reject for yourselves.” (Abu Dawud)

“Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.” (Farewell Sermon)

“There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm.” (Ibn- Majah)

I asked Ali Sina for a response, and he very kindly sent me this:

Hello Robert,

The Quran is a book of double standards. Indeed there are exhortations to Muslims to be kind to the poor, the traveler, the orphan and the sick. This is to be expected. If you want to start a religion you must preach something good or you’d not find anyone to believe you. You cannot preach only evil. In order to attract followers you must teach things that people like and can easily identify as good. Once they accept you as a prophet, guru or their spiritual guide, then you can do whatever you want and get away with it.

The difference between a true spiritual teacher and a conman is in their consistency. There are several teachings of Muhammad that can be compared to those of Jesus, but the teachings of Jesus are consistent while those of Muhammad are not. Even a criminal can give you good advises, this does not mean this criminal is a good person.

When I was young there was a radio show in Iran called A City within Our City. Every week the producer interviewed a prison inmate on death roll and the criminal would tell the story of his life and what brought him to crime. At the end of the program the producer would ask, whether the criminal had any advice for young people. These criminals often had the best advices. They knew exactly the difference between right and wrong. I recall thinking, if only someone complied the advices of these criminals he could write the best book of guidance. Good words are dime a dozen. If they are not accompanied by good actions they are worthless. In fact the difference between a great man and a conman is in how much their word and deed differ. Even Obama came to power by giving good talks. His entire life however he befriended conmen, terrorists and hateful people. Demagogy is the domain of all charlatans and they are good at it.

We find similar good exhortations in the teachings of Jim Jones who actually based his religion on “social justice”. He even adopted children from many races to set the example.

The problem with the good teachings of Muhammad is that they are reserved for fellow Muslims. When the hadith says “None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself,.” it is talking about the fellow Muslims. The brotherhood in Islam does not extend to everyone. The Quran (9:23) states that the believers should not take for friends and protectors (awlia) their fathers and brothers if they love Infidelity above Islam. In fact there are many verses that tell the Muslims to kill the unbelievers and be harsh to them. A clear example that Islam is not based on the Golden Rule is the verse (48:29): “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah; and those who are with him are strong against Unbelievers, (but) compassionate amongst each other.” This is the perfect definition of fascism.

There are many other verses that show the brotherhood in Islam is not universal. The non believers have no rights and should not be treated in the same way that Muslims are to be treated. The entire Quran is a breach of the Golden Rule. The Quran tells Muslims to slay the unbelievers wherever they find them (2:191), do not befriend them (3:28), fight them and show them harshness (9:123), smite their heads (47:4), etc. Are these verses compatible with the Golden Rule?

Islam is the only doctrine that calls upon its believers to do evil to others for the simple fact that they are not believers.

According to Muslims it is not the Golden Rule that defines the good and bad, it is Muhammad who does it. They believe that what is good for Islam is the highest virtue and what is bad for Islam is the ultimate evil. This is the definition of good and evil in Islam. This is the ethos of all cults. From Asahara’s “Aum Shinrikyo” to Jim Jones’ “People’s Temple”; from Sun Myung Moon’s “Unification Chruch” to David Koresh’s “Davidian Branch”, the recurring theme is that the cult’s interests override the human understanding of right and wrong. In order to advance the interest of the cult, which is regarded as the ultimate good, everything, including lying, and even murder and assassination are permissible. The end is deemed to be so lofty that it justifies the means. This is the same idea of fascism where the glorification of the state and the total subordination of the individual to it are enforced.

None of the verse quoted above have anything to do with the Golden Rule.

Verse 13:22 tells the believers to be patient and generous with their money. This is what all cults demand from their followers. The more sacrifice the cultist makes the more he or she can be manipulated. Verse 23:96 asks Muslims to repel evil, whereas the definition of evil for Muhammad was contradicting him. Verse 41:34 is a Meccan verse where Muhammad and his followers were the underdogs and here he preached patience and said repel evil with good so your enemy becomes as friend. Could he have done anything else? These orders changed when Muhammad came to power. In Medina Muhammad banished and massacred entire populations just because he suspected that they may not be friendly to him. 28:54 is a repetition of 23:96 and 42:40 says whoever forgives and amends, he shall have his reward from Allah. However, Muhammad never forgave those who mocked him. As for Muhammad’s unforgiving nature it is enough to recall the fate of Oqba the man who when Muhammad was in Mecca used to mock him and when he was captured in the Battle of Badr, Muhammad ordered his decapitation. He ventured to expostulate, and demand why he should be treated more vigorously than the other captives who were kept for ransom. ‘Because of your enmity to God and to his Prophet,’ replied Muhammad. ‘And my little girl!’ cried Oqba, in the bitterness of his soul, ‘Who will take care of her?’ – ‘Hellfire!’ exclaimed the heartless conqueror; and on the instant his victim was hewn to the ground. ‘Wretch that he was!’ continued Muhammad, ‘and persecutor! Unbeliever in God, in his Prophet, and in his Book! I give thanks unto the Lord that has slain you, and comforted mine eyes thereby.’

How do you reconcile the claim that Muhammad in his farewell sermon said, “Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.” With the fact that in his deathbed he said, “No two religions are allowed in Arabia” and ordered the forced conversion, expulsion or ethnic cleansing of the Jews and Christian and the murder of Pagans?

The sura 9, which is the last words of Muhammad, is a manifesto of discrimination and human rights abuses. This sura alone is proof that Islam is against the Golden Rule

The first requisite to feel the pain and suffering of others is to accept that they have feelings like us and they also feel hurt the way we do. If we deny such feelings on others we do not feel any remorse in abusing them. Muhammad claimed all those who disbelieve in Allah are the worst creatures. He even said that all non-believers will end up in hell where they will be tortured for eternity. How then Muslims can treat equally those whom they believe to be worst than beast and that deserve eternal punishment?

There is nothing in the Quran and Hadith that would make us believe that Islam is compatible with the Golden Rule.

Common sense analysis -- such as is sadly lacking in Washington -- on the jihad threat. "If the Terrorists Misinterpret Islam …," by David Steinberg for Pajamas Media, May 25:

[...] The world’s current conflicts: an Islamic revolt in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq; an Islamic butchery in Sudan; an Islamic civil war in Somalia; an Islamist civil war in Sri Lanka; an Islamic invasion into Chad (perpetrated by the Sudanese butchers); an Islamic insurgency in Thailand; an Islamist insurgency across all of Northeast Africa (the Maghreb); an Islamic separatist movement in Kashmir; an Islamist insurgency in the Philippines; and a sustained Islamic belligerency against Israel involving Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. [...]

First, we withheld judgment on the religion of the attackers. President Bush stood on rubble and promised “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” But he also stated, again and again, that we are not at war with Islam, simply with a perverted form of the great religion. It was a subjective, anti-intellectual conclusion. It was not based on reason, and the correct response regarding liberalism’s stance toward Islam should have been: “We have not reached an answer yet.”

The left took a similar stance, if only initially — they withheld judgment on the religion of the attackers but then chose to blame Western policy towards Islamic lands for motivating the terrorists. Subjective is not a descriptive enough word for this. Essentially, that was the end of the Left’s investigation — which, stunningly, is exactly what Leftism required.

The non-Left liberals? Those with any connection to the beliefs of the classical liberal have spent the past decade asking the questions they are required to ask:

• Do societies ever turn to terroristic, totalitarian behavior solely because of outside oppression, or do the movements arise from within?


• Is Islam as it is practiced by terrorists and aggressive Islamic countries a new phenomenon? Or does it predate contact with the West?


• Is it possible for one religion/culture to be more worthwhile to humanity as a whole than another?


• Is it racist to think Islam is inherently violent?

These questions researched, the next step was to thoroughly examine the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira, and the accepted interpretations of such by Islamic scholars and leaders.

• Quite simply, what was Mohammad’s life like? How does it compare, objectively, to other prominent religious figures? How did subsequent Islamic leaders interpret Mohammad’s teachings, and — most importantly — how did they act in response? If Islam as interpreted by the terrorists is not true Islam, what is the strain of moderate Islam called? Who are its leaders and its followers? What is their literature? Where is it practiced?

Almost eight years following 9/11, eight years to address these questions, and I am hard-pressed to find any sort of sizable leftist group of voters who know a bloody thing about the contents of the Koran.

The classical liberals? We’ve done what was required of us in the name of defending liberty. Feel free to challenge our bulletproofed conclusion, but we promise your failure:

If the terrorists misinterpret Islam, then so does Mohammad.

The evidence concerning Islam is as much logic and reason as any government can ever hope to get regarding an international crisis. As an Islamic leader chases the bomb, we do not intend to wait for the illiberal, unreasoned, irrational half-thinkers of the left to simply ask a proper question.

Because they never will.

Read it all.

Years of activity by Iran and by Hizballah in Latin America, encouraged by radical, anti-U.S. leaders, will likely come back to haunt the region. One they're there, getting Hizballah cells in particular to leave will be ugly if a future regime decides they are no longer welcome -- for example, if they are implicated in jihadist attacks in the Western Hemisphere, or if they become involved in local anti-government activities. And there are many possibilities for disaster beyond that. While Chávez and Morales see Iran as an ally against a common enemy (the U.S.) in the short run, at the end of the day, infidels are infidels in the eyes of Islamic law and foreign relations, and Iran has its own agenda to advance in the area. "Foreign Ministry document: Venezuela sends uranium to Iran," by Herb Keinon for the Jerusalem Post, May 25:

In a sign the Foreign Ministry may be switching its focus from dealing primarily with the Palestinians to more "classic" functions involving the rest of the world, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon will travel to South America next week to attend the meeting of the Organization of American States.

Ayalon's visit to Honduras will be a prelude to a visit there later this year by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has also said he will travel to Africa by the end of the year.

Ayalon told The Jerusalem Post that in the last few years Israel had not paid sufficient attention to Latin America, and that his trip was the beginning of efforts to rectify that situation.

He said that Israel had numerous business and political interests in South America, one of which is to "raise the flag" regarding inroads made both by Iran and Hizbullah in the region.

He pointed out that Hizbullah has "sleeper cells" in South America, including those believed to be responsible for the bombings in the early 1990s of the embassy and the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires. [...]

Another official, however, took a somewhat different view, saying that Lieberman was indeed focusing more attention on South America and Africa than in the past, but that this was primarily due to a feeling that it was urgent to counter Iran, which was making inroads in both continents.

According to a Foreign Ministry document that was published on Ynet on Monday, Iran and Hizbullah are indeed making deep inroads into South America. According to the document, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela was not only helping Iran bypass UN Security Council economic sanctions, but also, along with Bolivia, was providing the Iranians with uranium.

According to the document, Iran moved into Latin America in 1982, through Cuba, and eventually opened a number of embassies in the region, in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Uruguay. Teheran developed extensive economic ties with these countries that continue to this day.

Chavez was also responsible for Iran's developing ties with the leftist, anti-American bloc in Latin America made up of Bolivia, Nicaragua and - increasingly - Ecuador, according to the document.

Iran recently opened new embassies in Bolivia and Nicaragua, and Bolivia as well as Venezuela broke off diplomatic ties with Israel after Operation Cast Lead earlier this year.

Israeli concern about Teheran's inroads into Latin America is not new, and emerged at a meeting then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni held with her visiting El Salvadoran counterpart in November, during which she warned that South America was fast becoming a platform for spreading Iranian ideology.

"Iran is searching for openings, and countries it can penetrate, to compensate for the vulnerability created by the [economic] sanctions [against it]," Livni said at the time. "We are witness to the disturbing phenomenon of Iranian infiltration into South America, so much so that Latin America has become a convenient base for spreading Iranian political and economic ideology. The strengthening of ties between South American guerrillas and the Iranian terrorism activists is plain to see."

After Bush declined the offer in 2006. When will the long-winded letters start? "Ahmadinejad Renews Call for Open Debate with US President," from the Fars News Agency, May 25:

"As I invited the US president to a debate in (my address to) the United Nations during my visit to New York in the past, I repeat my call for a debate (with the US president) to study the root causes of global problems and management and collective participation in (the establishment of) sustainable security and peace," Ahmadinejad told foreign reporters in a press conference at the presidential office here in Tehran today.

"The human being and powers should change their view about world management as this is the only way to establish sustainable peace," Ahmadinejad said, and added, "And a major part of this change should take place in the kind of look that the dominant ruling systems have over the world, and a new system should be created in the world equations."

Ahmadinejad offered Bush a televised debate before he traveled to the United Nations in 2006, a proposal that was spurned by the White House which said the suggestion was not serious.

"They say Seattle police should not be undertaking training sponsored by a group they believe is spreading fear of Muslims, regardless of how good the training is." In short, they are angry that the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which, among other things, ignited Muslim rage when it built the Museum of Tolerance atop a centuries abandoned Muslim grave, produced the program.

"Muslims criticize producers of Seattle police training program," by Janet I. Tu for the Seattle Times, May 25:

Saying it's not going to take sides in someone else's feud, the Seattle Police Department is going ahead with a racial-awareness training program that has raised concerns among some local Muslims.

They are troubled not by the content of the training program but by the organization that produced it: the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a 32-year-old Los Angeles-based Jewish human-rights organization perhaps best known for its Holocaust education work.

They accuse the Wiesenthal Center of spreading fear toward Islam by producing or promoting films about extremism within Islam. And they, like many other Muslims elsewhere, are also angry at the center for building a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem partially on top of what once was an ancient Muslim cemetery.

"The center has an anti-Muslim agenda, to be frank," contends Arsalan Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The Wiesenthal Center disagrees.

The disputed land on which the Jerusalem museum is being built has been used as a parking lot for about the past 50 years, according to the center. And Liebe Geft, director of the center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, says the films in question take on anti-Semitism and the dangers of a small subsection of Islam, not Islam as a whole.

The center "does not condemn Islam. It actively confronts Islamophobia," Geft said.

The Seattle Police Department got caught in the middle when it began looking for a training program for employees on race issues.

It found Perspectives on Profiling, a Wiesenthal Center program geared toward people in law enforcement. The program features interactive exercises and vignettes on CD-ROM of real-life scenarios officers might encounter.

The goal is to make officers more conscious of what and how they think about race, and how their thinking might affect the split-second decisions they make on the streets every day.

The department considered other programs but "this was far and away the best quality," said Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer. The cost was also "remarkably low," he said: about $18,000.[...]

That decision disappoints a local coalition composed of mainly Muslims, but including people of other faiths as well.

They say Seattle police should not be undertaking training sponsored by a group they believe is spreading fear of Muslims, regardless of how good the training is...

What's the big deal about Shariah Finance? No one seems particularly concerned about it, but they should be. Here is an illuminating presentation on a key aspect of the stealth jihad: "Law Offices of David Yerushalmi present Shariah-compliant finance 'disclosure' seminar for online viewing," from DavidYerushalmi.com, May 15:

As Shariah-compliant finance continues apace, professionals and policy specialists continue to ignore a fundamental danger: the lack of disclosure of all the material facts relevant to a post-9/11 investor. This presentation is intended as an in-depth analysis of this critical failure in the current regulatory framework.

The Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C., has prepared this online presentation to assist legal professionals, policy specialists, SEC regulators, Treasury officials, and investors to understand that the Black Box of Shariah compliant finance (SCF) presents a real and present danger not just to our Western financial institutions built on disclosure and transparency, but to our very system of governance and our way of life.

This presentation is entitled: Shariah-compliant Finance: Benign? or Belligerent? It is timely and important for two reasons: first, the interest and investment in Shariah-compliant finance in the West continues to grow, and second, the fragile state of our financial system of late is due to the catastrophic impact of toxic financial products designed as highly sophisticated black box solutions to undisclosed market risk.

Be sure to read it all.

"Unrest in Greece's community of Muslim immigrants is something new, analysts say. 'For so many years, they've been scared and defensive,' said Takis Geros, a lecturer of anthropology of the Middle East at Panteion University. 'To suddenly come out in broad daylight with their faces exposed and trash 75 cars indicates a massive change in attitude.'" More on this story.

"Muslim anger ignites violent new response," by Iason Athanasiadis for the Washington Times, May 25:

Far-right-wing vigilantes burned a makeshift mosque in Athens over the weekend after Muslim immigrants in Athens attacked police with rocks and bottles over an incident in which a policeman reportedly defaced a Koran.

Although Greece has a history of political violence from radical leftists and anarchists, sectarian bloodletting represents an entirely modern phenomenon.

The latest incident began with a policeman who made an identification spot check on an immigrant from Iraq. When word spread that the policeman had ripped and stomped on the suspect's Koran, things got ugly.

Chanting "God is great" and waving leather-bound copies of Islam's holy book, about 1,000 Muslim immigrants demonstrated with a march on Parliament Friday.

When the crowd dwindled to about 300, remaining protesters began throwing rocks and bottles at police and smashing windows at a luxury hotel in central Syntagma Square, according to an account by the Associated Press.

Far-right-wing vigilantes replied over the weekend by setting fire to a Muslim prayer hall. Taken together, the incidents represent some of the worst sectarian violence witnessed in modern Greece.

A spokesman for the Greek police claimed that the policeman did not rip up a Koran, but a folded and glued sheet of paper containing unidentifiable writing in Arabic.

"The isolated and under-inquiry incident does not excuse rioting by individuals committed to damaging citizens property and seriously disturbing the citys social and economic life," said Christos Markogiannakis, the deputy interior minister. "The state will not permit such radical behavior."

Unrest in Greece's community of Muslim immigrants is something new, analysts say.

"For so many years, they've been scared and defensive," said Takis Geros, a lecturer of anthropology of the Middle East at Panteion University. "To suddenly come out in broad daylight with their faces exposed and trash 75 cars indicates a massive change in attitude."

Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Muslim Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia cross into Greece illegally every year from neighboring Turkey or by sea...

There is no telling who did this at this point. It could have nothing at all to do with jihad.

So why am I posting it?

Because New York Islamic jihadist Youssef al-Khattab, who calls for genocide and has threatened others, hates Starbucks (and how very interesting that he has removed the video to which Jawa linked).

Also, jihadists in London hate Starbucks.

And Sheikh al-Qaradawi hates Starbucks.

Worth watching.

"Explosion outside UES Starbucks," by Scott Curkin for WABC-TV, May 25 (thanks to the Jawa Report):

NEW YORK (WABC) -- An explosive device blew out the windows of a Starbucks coffee shop in a blast that rocked an Upper East Side neighborhood.

The loud blast was heard at the intersection of Third Avenue and East 92nd Street just before 4 a.m.

The explosion took place on 92nd and 3rd avenue.

Police are still looking for the person who left the device outside of the Starbucks.

The time of day echoed that of a pattern of unsolved early morning blasts that have occurred outside the British Consulate, the Mexican Consulate and the Armed Forces recruiting booth in Times Square over the past two years....

UPDATE: Islam in Action has al-Khattab's Starbucks video.

SECOND UPDATE, 3PM PDT: Pamela has photos, plus telling new details, including a noteworthy statement from New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Even though, as this story notes, the last time the Filipino government conceded to sharia law, the more violence came out of it. "Creation of more Shariah courts across the country pushed Philippine lawmaker tables bill for more Sharia courts," by Gilbert Felongco for the Gulf News, May 24:

Manila: A southern Philippines lawmaker is pushing for the creation of more Sharia courts in the country.

Representative Pax Mangundatu believes the move will help Filipino Muslims attain more access to legal services.

Mangundatu, of the first Congressional District of Sultan Kudarat province, said although government permitted Sharia courts, the number of these tribunals were mainly concentrated in the areas in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

"The Sharia courts are only in limited areas of Mindanao and the ARMM. This situation is inconvenient and difficult for Filipino Muslims in solving their personal legal problems," the lawmaker said.

The areas included under the ARMM are the provinces of Maguindanao, Lanao del Sur, Sulu, Basilan, Sharif Kabunsuan and Tawi-Tawi. They also include the cities of Basilan and Marawi.

To address Filipinos Muslims' lack of access to legal services in areas within the ARMM and even those outside the autonomous region, Mangandatu tabled House Bill 6,337.

The bill aims to strengthen the Sharia district court system by establishing Sharia courts in areas where there are large concentrations of Filipino Muslims.

In proposing the creation of a system of Sharia courts, Mangandatu cited Presidential Decree 1,083.

Presidential Decree 1,083 stipulates that the State shall consider the custom, traditions, belief and interest of Filipino Muslims in implementation of government policies.

According to the government, there are an estimated eight million Muslims out of a population of 85 million people.

Mangundatu said his proposals on the creation of Sharia courts aim to help Filipino Muslims resolve their legal conflicts in relation to their distinct personal and family laws.

When monks were abducted, tortured, and forced to spit on the cross. "Two Christian Copts Detained for Third Time in Egypt," by Mary Abdelmassih for AINA, May 21:

(AINA) -- Two Christian Copts, brothers Refaat and Ibrahim Fawzy Abdo, who were falsely accused last May of killing one of the militant Muslim raiders on the Abu Fana, Monastery, have been detained for a third time.

In spite of having been released again by a court ruling this month and the Ministry of Interior losing its appeal against this ruling, Minya State Security Services issued a new detention order, and the brothers were transferred back yesterday for the third consecutive time, to the New Valley detention camp. They were awaiting the implementation of the Court verdict to release them at the Minya prison.[...]

Nader Shoukry of Copts-United says: "The state security is now putting pressure on the families of the Coptic Abdo brothers to leave town, which they rejected, since it is not possible after detaining the brothers for a whole year, to also make their families homeless."

The majority of Coptic activists believe that the Coptic brothers, who have been detained for almost a year, despite being released twice by the courts, have been pushed into this case by the State Security, as 'scapegoats' to draw the attention from the scandal of the Arab attack on the 4th century Abu Fana Monastery last May; a scandal which shocked the world and gave rise to angry Coptic demonstration in all the western cities...

Today is a rather unusual Memorial Day, in that as we remember those who have fallen to preserve the American Republic, the new President is proceeding for the most part according to the assumption that conflicts never need to be solved with wars. All we need to do is understand each other a little better, show the opposition a willingness to give, to compromise, build a few schools, teach our children not to hate, show some respect, and antagonisms and furious hatred will melt away, and all manner of thing will be well.

Unfortunately, sometimes an antagonist may understand his enemy quite well, and receive his largesse, and note his respect, and yet still want to kill or subjugate him for reasons of one's own -- reasons that don't proceed from the Kumbaya-singer's actions at all.

Barack Obama has never shown any sign of having considered this possibility. And he is by no means alone in his apparently unshakable conviction that all conflicts can be solved through negotiated concessions. This is so much a part of the air they breathe in Washington and in all the other capitals of the West that it would be unthinkable even to question it. It isn't even a matter of daring -- no one would ever even get the idea to ask, "What if we offer the opposition everything they have ever demanded and more, and implement state-of-the-art aid and infrastructure packages, and conform to all their foreign policy and cultural demands, and they still hate us?"

They would regard this is an impossibility. The Muslim on the international stage -- be he Ahmadinejad, or Khaled Meshaal, or Abu Qatadah, or any other -- is as far as Obama and the rest are concerned just a reactor, not an actor. He has no power to act apart from the West. He just reacts to what we do. He is, ultimately, at our mercy, and it is up to us and us alone to pacify him. Could he hate us for reasons that are quite independent of what we may be doing or not doing to him? Inconceivable!

The unconscious paternalism of this is ironic, coming as it does from the most besotted of relativist multiculturalists, but in any case, the fact of Memorial Day, and the reality of those who died in this nation's conflicts, shows it all to be false. Sometimes there are disputes between peoples that can't be smoothed over by any amount of negotiation, any package of concessions, anything. And in that case, a nation thus attacked has to fight. If it cannot or will not do so, it will cease to exist.

Today Obama and others who believe we have moved beyond wars, beyond fighting, control the nation's policymaking and decision-making apparatuses. They control the mainstream media. And they have declared the conflict with the global jihad to be essentially over. However, the jihadists themselves have not gotten that memo. We still face a foe, a foe found in virtually every corner of the globe, who believes war and fighting, and the subjugation of those who believe differently, is his religious duty. He will not be pacified. He will fight on as long as he is able. And wherever he succeeds, he will destroy the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the equality of rights of women with men, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. He will destroy the principle of non-establishment of religion, and will establish a state that denies people essential rights on the basis of their religious beliefs.

A huge adjustment in our political and military culture is called for if we are going to defend ourselves effectively from this scourge. It is a matter of will. And part of the the will that we must summon to fight and defend ourselves involves remembering that we are only here to fight this battle today, and only free, because others fought and died throughout history for our nations, our peoples, and the principles of genuine freedom for which we stand.

So let us not just honor them today, but, each in our way, seek to emulate them.

Just after the Pope praised efforts for a Palestinian state comes this show of gratitude from Palestinian Muslims. "PA Muslims Desecrate Christian Gravestones," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, May 25:

Palestinian Authority Muslims went on a rampage Sunday and desecrated 70 Christian graves two weeks after the pope praised efforts for a new PA state and tried to appease Muslim anger over previous disputes between the two religions.

The vandals smashed gravestones and knocked metal and stone crosses off graves in the village of Jiffna, near Ramallah, home to approximately 900 Christians and 700 Muslims. Greek Orthodox Church official George Abdo told Reuters the head and hand of a statue of Madonna also was severed....

Sunday’s anti-Christian attack follows years of harassment from Muslims that has escalated a lengthy exodus of Christians from Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The areas enjoyed strong economies from 1967, when Israel took over administration of the areas following the Six-Day War, until 2000, when PA terrorists launched the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada.

However, the PA and foreign news agencies have blamed Israel for harsh economic conditions that have chased away Christians. Reuters told its readers that “[Arab] officials say many Christians have emigrated in recent decades. Most cite economic hardships under Israeli occupation, though some also voice fears of less tolerant forms of Islam growing among Palestinians.”

The news agency also quoted Issa Kassissieh, an advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, as saying that the attack was "an isolated act against Christian symbols” and that "Palestinian Christians and Muslims have always lived in harmony in the Holy Land.”...

Dhimmis always say that. If they say anything else, they could be targeted.

Read it all.

You're never too old to resist. "Hero cruise ship Britons fight off armed Somali pirates with deckchairs and tables," from the Daily Mail, May 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

British pensioners on a cruise ship bravely fought off machine gun-armed Somali pirates by hurling deckchairs and tables at them.

The holidaymakers were enjoying a midnight Mozart concert onboard MSC Melody when pirates armed with Kalashnikovs attempted to board it using grappling hooks and ladders.

But passengers forced them back to their boats by throwing chairs and tables over the stern of the ship as Israeli security guards onboard the cruise liner fired warning shots....

They left Islamic countries, or their parents did, for the West. But in the West -- abetted by multiculturalism -- they maintained or imbibed Islamic sensibilities, and returned to the jihad when the call to do so went out. "The daily said security officials have seen more than 290 fighters from Britain, the United States, Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia enter Mogadishu in recent weeks."

"US anti-terror authorities see Western fighters in Somalia," from AFP, May 24 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A US counter-terrorism official on Saturday said US nationals had likely joined the ranks of insurgents in Somalia, where Islamist rebels are waging a bitter war against the Western-backed government.

"There is reason to believe that nationals of Western countries, including the United States, have joined up with terrorist groups in Somalia," the official said....

The daily said security officials have seen more than 290 fighters from Britain, the United States, Canada, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia enter Mogadishu in recent weeks.

The violence also comes as evidence grows that some Western-based Muslims have funded jihadi groups operating in Somalia.

Last week a naturalized Canadian man of Somali descent pleaded guilty to conspiracy and providing material support to the extremist network Al-Qaeda.

Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, 35, who lives in Minneapolis in the US state of Minnesota, gave material support to Al-Qaeda by providing training at camps, supplying personnel and providing funds to the group.

In March 2000, according to his plea agreement, Warsame joined an Al-Qaeda training camp near Kabul, and months later traveled to the Faruq training camp where he met Osama Bin Laden....

Senator Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told a hearing on the issue that Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, "has radicalized and recruited young Somali men" in Minneapolis to return to Somalia for training and fighting.

"Perhaps as many as 20 Somali-American teenagers and young men have vanished from their homes in Minneapolis and turned up in Somalia," Lieberman said....

Here is a poor quality video of my appearance on Fox News this morning discussing how jihadists are recruiting in prisons all over the country. If anyone has a better quality video, please let me know!

And as is so often the case when jihadists rampage in Muslim countries, the local police did nothing. "Terrorists Attack ISKCON Temple in Chittagong, Bangladesh," from ISKCON News Weekly, May 23 (thanks to Religion of Peace):

On May 18, ISKCON News Weekly received a distraught message from an obviously emotional monk at ISKCON’s Nandankanan Sri Sri Gour Nitai Ashram in Chittagong, the main seaport of Bangladesh.

On May 14 at 3pm, the devotee said, he and his peers were busy preparing for a weekend festival when fifty to sixty terrorists burst into the temple, brandishing knives and iron bars. They first destroyed the kitchens, devotee accommodation, and Gaura Nitai deities. Then, as the devotees ran into the temple courtyard in a panic, the attackers poured boiling water on them from the balcony, badly burning many.

The terrorists also stole ten to twelve thousand taka (Bangladesh’s monetary unit) from the temple donation box, as well as a further ten thousand from individual residents. Devotees phoned the nearby police station again and again, but to no avail.

“Their negligence of duty came at a terrible cost,” Chinmoydham Dasa said in his message to ISKCON News. “Many devotees were injured and had to be brought to the hospital’s emergency room.”

By the time the police finally arrived, the terrorists had caused 80,000 taka worth of damage. Neither did they seem remotely intimidated by the presence of law enforcement. And it was soon clear why. When the terrorists threatened the devotees, “You must all leave now and hand the temple over to us!” the police remained silent, not voicing any defense....

Some background here.

Cleansing his "honor."

"'Honor' Murder in Beit Jan," from Israel National News, May 23 (thanks to Religion of Peace):

(IsraelNN.com) A resident of Beit Jan arrived at the Carmiel police station on Saturday night with his badly wounded daughter, aged 23. The man told police he had shot the young woman in an “honor” attack, because her behavior violated the tenets of Islam....

The young woman died shortly thereafter.

No one is forcing you to stay in this hell, Mr. Mohamud.

"Minneapolis Imam Decries ‘the Hell of Living in America,’" by Patrick Poole for Pajamas Media, May 22:

As the FBI has ongoing investigations in numerous cities across the country looking into the disappearances of possibly dozens of young Somali men who have left the country to presumably join the jihad and train in terror camps back home, attention has recently been focused on one Minneapolis imam. Hassan Mohamud (Jamici) has been singled out by some in that community as being one of the radicalization influences in the Twin Cities.

Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in the country. In an interview with USA Today, Mohamud denied any connection to the missing men. But the findings of one recent news report by the Minneapolis Fox News affiliate is sure to keep Mohamud in the spotlight.

According to that Fox News report, the imam appeared in a fundraising video posted on YouTube (now since removed) for his mosque, the Islamic Daw’ah Institute in St. Paul. In his appearance he encourages viewers to donate to the mosque’s project, which he says “can save you from the hell of living in America.”...

He was also asked about the following comments he had made two years ago when he was interviewed by Minnesota Law & Politics magazine about the legitimacy of suicide bombings for an article:

L&P: The Quran equates the taking of an innocent life with killing all of humanity, yet some Muslims say suicide bombings are justified. Can you explain this contradiction?

HM: There are scholars who say that there is one place where suicide is not prohibited. It’s an exceptional case for them because they have no other means. It is Palestine. This is because it is the only means they have to free their country. Otherwise, any other places in the world, suicide means becomes prohibited.

Read it all.

"Imam Questioned About Controversial Statements," by Tom Lyden for MyFox9.com, March 18 (thanks to Patrick Poole):

ST. PAUL, Minn. - An Imam is being questioned about comments he made about the United States in a YouTube video.

Many credit Imam Hassan Mohamud, from the Islamic Da'wah Center in St. Paul, for saving youth's lives from sin.

But other question comments he made on a YouTube video meant to raise money for the center. "This is a project that can save you from the hell of living in America," Mohamud said in the video....

"The hell term is a religious term," said Mohamud. "It has the meaning of suffering and pain."

Uh huh.

Over the years Russia has again and again shown itself to be dangerously short-sighted in aiding the global jihad. Here is yet another example. "Russia sees Hamas taking more 'realistic' path," from the Associated Press, May 24 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

Russia's foreign minister said Sunday that Hamas is following a more "realistic" path after Israel's crushing war against the Palestinian terror group controlling the Gaza Strip....

Russia, which has sought to boost its role in the Middle East, has chosen to engage the group, unlike the other members of the Quartet of Mideast peacemakers _ the United States, the United Nations and the European Union. It has invited Hamas leaders to Moscow for talks, including political leader Khaled Mashaal, whom Lavrov met Saturday in Damascus.

"We noticed a more realistic evaluation of the situation, the responsibility that Hamas feels not just for what happens in Gaza but for the fate of the entire Palestinian people," Lavrov said in remarks broadcast Sunday on Russia's state-run Vesti-24 television.

'Hamas won democratic elections'

Lavrov also met with Syrian President Bashar Assad to discuss a proposed Middle East peace conference that Moscow wants to host. The conference would include an effort to restart peace talks between Israel and Syria....

Lavrov said he pressed Hamas to try to maintain a halt to rocket fire. "The ideal thing would be to conclude a formal truce," Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency quoted him as saying....

Lavrov defended Russia's engagement with Hamas, saying that all sides must be included in peace efforts and that shunning Hamas helped lead to the Gaza crisis, according to RIA-Novosti.

"This should have been done much earlier, when Hamas won elections in 2006 that everyone accepted as democratic, free and honest. But because of political prejudice, most Western countries did not recognize the Hamas government," Lavrov said.

And they should stand firm in that.

The Israeli flag will remain, as Netanyahu refuses to play the dhimmi at Obama's behest. "Bibi Rejects Obama's 'UN Flag at Kotel'; Star of David to Remain," by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu for Israel National News, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel). The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the president put forward the proposal during his visit to the White House last month.

Prime Minister Netanyahu declared, "The flag that flies over the Kotel is the Israeli flag... Our holy places, the Temple Mount -- will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”...

I was on Fox News a little after 7AM Pacific time this morning to discuss jihadist recruitment in prisons with Eric Shawn.

The segment doesn't seem to have made it anywhere onto the Internet, but if it does, I will post it here.

Who will surely assimilate there about as well as their counterparts in DC. "Belgium still ready to take in Guantanamo inmates," from GEO, May 22:

BRUSSELS: Belgium's foreign minister says his government remains committed to taking in several detainees from Guantanamo Bay when the U.S. military prison closes down.

Speaking to La Premiere radio during his current trip to Washington, D.C., Karel De Gucht says it remains to be seen how many former inmates may be taken in.

De Gucht says in Friday's broadcast that he spoke to the White House's national security adviser Gen. James Jones about the issue. He says the matter is complicated by the free travel regulations within the European Union, which would allow the former prisoners to change their country of residence without informing the authorities.

Belgium first offered to accept ``a certain number'' of prisoners freed from Guantanamo when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Brussels in March.

So says an Egyptian security chief; apparently Egyptian al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri does not count. "Egypt arrests Qaeda cell over deadly Cairo bombing," by Samer al-Atrush for AFP, May 23:

CAIRO (AFP) — Egypt said on Saturday that police have arrested seven members of an alleged Al-Qaeda-affiliated cell over a Cairo bazaar bombing three months ago that killed a teenaged French tourist.

The interior ministry said those arrested over the February attack were a French woman of Albanian origin, a British man of Egyptian descent, two Palestinians, a Belgian man of Tunisian descent and two Egyptians.

"(Police) were able, through information received and surveillance, to identify a group, some of them Egyptians and others foreigners, affiliated with Al-Qaeda... and seven of them were arrested," it said in a statement.

An Egyptian minister had on Monday announced the arrest of suspects over the February 22 attack in the famed Khan al-Khalili bazaar, but gave no details on the number detained.

A French girl was killed and 24 people, mostly tourists, were injured in the bombing, the first deadly attack on tourists in Egypt since 2006.

The ministry said members of the cell, which called itself the Islamic Army of Palestine and was led by two Egyptians living abroad, were found in possession of weapons and explosives.[...]

Egypt saw a spate of deadly bombings, which killed dozens of tourists and Egyptians, in Sinai resorts on the Red Sea between 2004 and 2006 which the authorities blamed on militants loyal to Al-Qaeda.

On May 10, a small bomb hidden in a car detonated outside a Cairo church, without causing casualties. A security official told AFP that it was similar to the one used in the Khan el-Khalili attack, but police were not linking the two.

A security official told AFP that police believed the Khan el-Khalili attack was the first in Egypt with organisational links to Al-Qaeda.

"This is a big issue, it's the first time we can say Al-Qaeda is in Egypt," he said...

Somali jihad update: "At Least 7 Die In Suicide Attack As Clashes Intensify In Somali Capital," by Mayur Pahilajani for AHN, May 24:

Mogadishu, Somalia (AHN) - At least seven people were killed in Somali capital city of Mogadishu after a suicide bomber attacked as the government forces and hardline Islamist fighters clashed in the central region of the war-torn country.

According to reports, a bomber rammed a truck laden with explosives at the gate of a military base and detonated it in front of the guards.

The attack killed a civilian and six government security personnel. At least seven people were wounded, who were taken to a nearby hospital.

The deadly blast was carried out two weeks after the intense fighting with the Islamist insurgent groups like Al-Shabab and Hisb-ul-Islam groups.[...]

The Islamist militants reportedly have fired mortar bombs at the AU peacekeepers and the presidential palace as fighting rages on Saturday night.

The government troops have reported that the militants are backed by foreign fighters. The AU peacekeepers have called on the United Nations to implement sanctions on Eritrea for allegedly supporting the militants in Mogadishu.

The hard-line Al-Shabab group is reportedly planning to overthrow the transitional government led by moderate Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who was elected by a unity government in January.

He is being holed up in his compound along with the AU peacekeepers and government guards as the battle intensify.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the internally displaced people are moving to makeshift camps south-west of the capital that already are home to some 400,000 people...

You'll want to read this sitting down. "Jailed Islamic extremists want ban on women prison officers," by Justin Penrose for the Mirror, May 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

Jailed Islamic extremists want women prison officers banned from guarding them during Friday prayers - claiming it's against their human rights. Terrorists at Wakefield jail say having them there while they pray is an "insult to their religion".

The group at the West Yorks jail - led by convicted terrorist Kamel Bourgass who killed a cop during an anti-terrorism raid - told jail governor Jacqui Tilley of their anger.

Female and male prison guards oversee prayers from a glassed office.

Services are held in the prison's gym after the 60-strong group refused to pray in the jail's multi-faith chapel because it was used by "non-believers".

Their single-sex guards demand was refused - but it's feared they could now take their complaint to the European Court and use the Human Rights Act to claim they are being victimised.

A prison source said: "They do not believe female guards should oversee Friday prayers - and they go mad when they are told what to do by a woman. But that's life."

One person interviewed below insists that this situation arises out of "ignorance," not Islam. Indeed, whenever embarrassing issues in Muslim countries come under international scrutiny, we are assured that the problem is not with Islam, but with "culture." However, wherever women's rights are concerned, two aspects of Islamic teachings are very much at issue: The first is the doctrine of segregation of men and women except where the two are not eligible to marry (hence the "breastfeeding" fatwa from an al-Azhar imam). The second is that it is a matter of Islamic belief that women are beneath men (Qur'an 4:34: "Allah hath made one to excel the other"), and "deficient in religion and intellect" (Bukhari 1.6.301). Thus, they are behind men in order of priority for education and employment, among other things.

The consequence of these teachings, together with the social, political, and physical liabilities of insufficient adherence to Sharia law and a sense of entitlement to control over female relatives as a source of "honor," is the avoidance of "shame" at the expense of life itself.

"Gender issues worsen Iraq's medical woes," by Katarina Kratovac for the Associated Press, May 24:

SAQLAWIYAH, Iraq (AP) — This part of Iraq, says Dr. Ayad al-Hadithy, is so conservative that a man would rather have his pregnant wife die in labor than be touched by a male nurse or doctor.

It's just one of the difficulties faced by U.S. and Iraqi officials as they struggle to nurse the war-ravaged province of Anbar back to health. One showcase of their efforts is the reopening last year, for women only, of the Nursing School in Anbar's capital, Ramadi. Another is a field school in the town of Saqlawiyah that has just graduated its first batch of 10 female nurse's aides.

Nowhere are nurses more badly needed than in Saqlawiyah and its surrounding villages, where 50,000 people have no women doctors and only one female nurse and one midwife, both old and overworked.

The area's most recent records, from five years ago when the anti-U.S. insurgency was just beginning, show that one in five women dies in childbirth, and many women never even see a doctor.

The strictures on women as nurses stems from the province's strong tribal society and its puritan reading of Islam. But al-Hadithy, a 49-year-old mother-and-child care specialist, doesn't accept it.

"This is ignorance, not Islam," he said. "Nowhere does Islam say: 'Let your wife die.'"

Another obstacle, he said, is the reluctance of husbands to let their wives travel 25 miles to Ramadi to train as nurses. So three months ago, the center in Saqlawiyah was opened.

But first al-Hadithy had to persuade the village imams to back the project — or at least not preach against it — and the husbands to let their wives train with him.

Yet another problem is that female nursing is a profession held in low regard by Iraqis, because it requires night work and contact with male patients. "But I knew if I could teach them some basic first aid — how to give a shot or take someone's blood pressure — these women would be accepted," al-Hadithy said.

Muzdalifa Hamza, 33, was told about the program by her cousin, Saqlawiyah's only ambulance driver. Her husband approved and the mother of four even persuaded her sister Khulud, 40, to come along.

"When someone knocks on my door in the middle of the night, I now know enough to go out and help a sick person," Hamza said. "But someday I want to be a real nurse." In the fall, she plans to enroll in a three-year course at the Nursing School.

The Saqlawiyah project was spearheaded by Vernon Pressley, a senior public health adviser from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the head of the local U.S. reconstruction team attached to the Marines in Ramadi.

"The sheiks would never have agreed to let women leave for training far away, so I thought of bringing it to them," Pressley said. The Saqlawiyah project has cost $12,000, and the 10 trainees share a monthly wage of $250.

The sum is small compared with the $847 million the U.S. says it has spent on Iraq's health needs since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. But in Anbar, the security issue was huge. The province was a stronghold of the insurgency and the Saqlawiyah center couldn't open until after tribal sheiks switched sides two years ago and joined U.S. troops in the fight.

The nursing shortage is only part of Iraq's hollowed-out health care system, plagued by corruption, mismanagement and a lack of equipment and medicines. [...]

F.R., one of 10 siblings, is a high school graduate who persuaded her family to let her study nursing, telling them that someday she would have a job and bring in money.

"I believe women can work and still be respected," said the 20-year-old.

But their teacher, Suad Aziz, says old prejudices run deep, even in urban Ramadi.

"It's the attitude that nurses are loose women," said Aziz. She looks at her class with hope, saying: "Once we have them graduate and working, things will change."...

Maybe they won't need to, with the stealth jihad advancing almost unresisted there. "Al Qaeda recruits back in Europe, but why?," by Sebastian Rotella in the Los Angeles Times, May 24 (thanks to Danielle):

Reporting from Brussels -- Determined to die as martyrs, the French and Belgian militants bought hiking boots and thermal underwear and journeyed to the wilds of Waziristan.

After getting ripped off in Turkey and staggering through waist-deep snow in Iran, the little band arrived in Al Qaeda's lair in Pakistan last year, ready for a triumphant reception.

"We were expecting at least a welcome for 'our brothers from Europe' and a warm atmosphere of hospitality," Walid Othmani, a 25-year-old Frenchman from Lyon, recalled during an overnight interrogation in January.

Instead, the Europeans -- and at least one American -- learned that life in the shadow of the Predator is nasty, brutish and short.

Wary of spies, suspicious Al Qaeda chiefs grilled the half-dozen Belgians and French. They charged them $1,200 each for AK-47 rifles, ammunition and grenades. They made them fill out forms listing next of kin and their preference: guerrilla fighting, or suicide attacks?

Then the trainees dodged missile strikes for months. They endured disease, quarrels and boredom, huddling in cramped compounds that defied heroic images of camps full of fraternal warriors.

"What you see in videos on the Net, we realized that was a lie," Othmani told police. "[Our chief] told us the videos . . . served to impress the enemy and incite people to come fight, and he knew this was a scam and propaganda."

Disenchantment aside, the accounts of four of the returning militants arrested in Europe combine with intercepts to paint a detailed picture of Al Qaeda's secret compounds. They also reinforce intelligence that a campaign of U.S. Predator drone airstrikes has sown suspicion and disarray and stoked tension with tribes in northwestern Pakistan, anti-terrorism officials say.

At the same time, the case shows that wily militant leaders still wage war in South Asia and train a flow of foreign recruits. The few trainees from the West remain an urgent concern. Anti-terrorism forces have detected at least one American, a convert to Islam, who trained with Al Qaeda in Pakistan during the last year, Western officials say....

Militant paths from the U.S. and Europe may cross: Prosecutors in Brussels have made a request to interrogate a witness now in the United States who was in Pakistan with the European suspects, a Belgian anti-terrorism official said.

Police in Europe tracked the group's radicalization and travel with the help of real-time U.S. intercepts that corroborate the confessions, and they exploited the men's reliance on the Internet. Fear of an imminent attack spurred their arrests here in December after Hicham Beyayo, 25, a Belgian just back from Pakistan, sent a troubling e-mail to his girlfriend.

"I am leaving for an O [operation] and I don't think I will return," Beyayo wrote Dec. 6, according to investigative documents. "My request has been accepted. You will get a video from me to you from the [organization]."

Beyayo told police that he was boasting to impress his girlfriend. But investigators believe the group may have been groomed for missions at home.

"They were much more valuable for operations in Europe," said the Belgian anti-terrorism official, who, like others interviewed, requested anonymity because the investigation is continuing. "Al Qaeda does not need Belgians and French to fight in Afghanistan."

Islamic resistance doesn't come cheap

Beyayo is about 5-foot-5, chubby and bespectacled. Like the others, he is of North African descent. He grew up in the tough Anderlecht neighborhood of Brussels, and his brothers have done time for robbery and arms trafficking. But he does not have a criminal record. He interspersed college courses with fundamentalist Islam.

"He is the intellectual of the family," said his lawyer, Christophe Marchand. "He bears no ill will against Belgium. He went to Afghanistan to join an Islamic resistance movement."...

There is much more. Read it all.

"Rising numbers of British-born fundamentalists are travelling to Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) for jihadist training, prompting the Bangladeshi government to launch a database to monitor the movements of suspected terrorists."

"Bangladesh is 'safe haven for British Islamic terrorists'," by Rachel Shields for The Independent, May 24:

Security experts have warned that extremists training in Bangladesh could pose a major threat to Britain, adding that the south-Asian country has become a "safe haven" for terrorists.

Rising numbers of British-born fundamentalists are travelling to Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) for jihadist training, prompting the Bangladeshi government to launch a database to monitor the movements of suspected terrorists.

UK security services are also turning their attention to the country, fearing it may become a magnet for would-be terrorists as security forces ratchet up surveillance on Pakistan. More than 4,000 British Muslims are thought to have travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan for military training.

Senior Bangladeshi intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they were keen to crack down on growing fundamentalist activity. But they admitted that lack of technology limits the means they have to monitor suspected extremists.

One source said the country is attempting to create a system to monitor potential terrorists arriving by air, and to secure its borders. He revealed that the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the south, and the land along the Indian border in east Bangladesh, including around the town of Sylhet – the home of many Bangladeshi British expats – were being investigated as possible bases for jihadist training camps.

UK security sources confirmed they stepped up surveillance of Bangladesh after seeing spikes in travel to the country. These corresponded to UK terror plots being foiled – as when 12 suspects were arrested in the north-west of England in April, when scrutiny of travel to Pakistan was at its most intense.

The sources also found that British Muslim extremists travelling to Bangladesh often have links to Asia, and travel into the country via third countries, such as South Africa and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh is setting up anti-terror joint working groups with countries including Britain and the US. This follows the visit to Bangladesh by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, in April last year, to discuss ways the two countries could work together.

Police stepped up security in the country's capital, Dhaka, at the beginning of the month after the British High Commission was one of four foreign missions to receive threats from a group calling itself Jemaah Islamiya al-Qa'ida.

The head of a British-based charity, Green Crescent, was arrested in Bangladesh this month after bomb-making equipment was found at a school run by the group. British-born Bangladeshi Faisal Mostafa, 45, has twice been acquitted of charges of conspiracy to cause explosions, and was given a suspended sentence last year for boarding a plane with a pistol in his suitcase.

"People are now looking to Bangladesh as a potential safe haven. For a safe haven to work you need a passport you can travel on, material, and access to individuals," said Andrew Black, of intelligence and security-services firm Black Watch Global. "Bangladesh, and other countries, need to develop the systems to track and identify individuals moving in and out of the country. These systems are crucial. Jihadist strategists are thinking of new ways to transfer the knowledge, through the internet or through human training, so tracking is going to have to change too."

He was "humiliated" at the prospect of actually doing the job for which he was hired, but in this one case at least, the principle that Western law and custom must in all cases give way to Islamic law does not win out.

An update on this story. "Muslim chef loses tribunal case," from the BBC, May 22 (thanks to George McCallum):

A Muslim chef who accused the Metropolitan Police of religious discrimination when told he must handle pork has lost his tribunal case.

Hasanali Khoja was told he would be expected to handle pork products at his new job at the Empress State Building in Earls Court, west London.

The 60-year-old from Edgware, north-west London, also said racist gestures were made to him when he complained....

What the heck is a "racist gesture"?

Mr Khoja said earlier he was "stressed and humiliated" at the prospect of handling pork products, which Islam considers to be unclean.

He said even wearing gloves or using tongs to cook would not protect him from the risk of splashes.

The catering manager had also claimed that he was the victim of racism by an official when he went to discuss his situation.

What race is Islam again?

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: "We are pleased to have been cleared of allegations of discrimination on the basis of religion or belief against Mr Khoja."

She added: "Mr Khoja remains a valued member of staff."

Why?

An update on this story. "Muslim migrants riot in Athens," from The Age, May 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Dozens of cars have been smashed, 14 people injured and 46 arrested in riots by Muslim migrants over the alleged defacing of a Koran by a policeman.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades at hundreds of protesters outside Parliament in the city centre.

Police said they would investigate the allegation that an officer tore up an Iraqi migrant's Koran while checking his identity papers in Athens last week. "But this isolated incident cannot justify these acts of violence," said Interior Minister Christos Markoyiannakis....

Markoyiannakis, if one wants to riot and hurt the kuffar, virtually any excuse will do.

Ezzat Attiya is the fellow who was ridiculed worldwide and fired from Al-Azhar after coming up with what appeared to be a novel solution to a long-standing problem: how could unrelated men and women work together in the same office, when Islam forbids men and women who aren't married or related to be alone together? Attiya's answer: let her suckle him. Then she will be his foster mother, and they can be alone together.

It seemed novel, as well as ridiculous, but in fact it was based on the words of Muhammad. Attiya, after all, was the head of the venerable institution's hadith department, and so he was no doubt well familiar with this and other, related ahadith:

'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hadhaifa, lived with him and his family in their house. She (i. e. the daughter of Suhail came to Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) and said: Salim has attained (purbety) [sic] as men attain, and he understands what they understand, and he enters our house freely, I, however, perceive that something (rankles) in the heart of Abu Hudhaifa, whereupon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) said to her: Suckle him and you would become unlawful for him, and (the rankling) which Abu Hudhaifa feels in his heart will disappear. She returned and said: So I suckled him, and what (was there) in the heart of Abu Hudhaifa disappeared. (Sahih Muslim 3425)

Muhammad tells the daughter of Suhail to suckle Salim. This will make her unlawful to him, that is, he won't be able to marry her because he will be her foster child. Thus it will be lawful for him to be in the house with her, and Abu Hudhaifa will no longer be angry.

So anyway, now Ezzat Attiya has his job back.

"Egypt court annuls Azhar's decision to expel controversial sheikh: Breastfeeding fatwa sheikh back at Egypt's Azhar," from Al-Arabiya, May 18 (thanks to Twostellas):

CAIRO (AlArabiya.net) The case of the male breastfeeding fatwa, or religious ruling, just took another strange turn as the scholar who issued the controversial opinion was rehired after being fired by Egypt’s al-Azhar University.

The Cairo Administrative Court overturned the decision by al-Azhar's disciplinary committee to expel Ezzat Attiya, the president of the hadith department, for issuing a fatwa condoning the symbolic breastfeeding of grown men in 2007.

The court annulled the university’s decision to expel Attiya after he issued a fatwa permitting symbolic breastfeeding of men as a way to loosen the customs of segregation between the sexes in Egypt.

"No one can argue with a court order,” Sheikh Fawzy el-Zefzaf, head of religion and dialogue committee at al-Azhar, said in a statement Monday. “We respect the Administrative Court and follow its orders without thinking twice.”

Some students at al Azhar University who disagreed with the fatwa nonetheless endorsed the court's deicision, saying that no Azhar teacher should be expelled.

"I am glad the Attiya is back at Azhar because no sheikh should be expelled from his job for his opinions," Abdul Qader Ramadan, 23, told Al Arabiya.

Islam prohibits sexual relations between a man and the woman who breastfed him in infancy. Attiya said that if a woman were to symbolically breastfeed a male colleague, she could be alone with him since he would no longer be considered a potential mate....

No one batted an eye. But just imagine the outcry if a Christian had ridden through a Muslim area calling out on a loudspeaker that Muhammad was a false prophet.

"Jesus was a Jew—not a Muslim," a letter to the editor by Fay Cattini in the East London Advertiser, May 18 (thanks to Twostellas):

Dear Ed,

SOMETIMES people give offence to others intentionally or unintentionally. I am not sure which was the case when a white car went past my house in Spitalfields in East London with a loudspeaker calling out, “Jesus was a Muslim.”

Since I don’t know the man or where he is from, I am writing this in case he reads it as I disagree with his statement.

Jesus lived and died a Jew. We read in The New Testament that he was born a Jew, circumcised when he was eight days old, according to Jewish Law, and went to Jerusalem when he was 13 to be Bar Mitzvah.

As an adult, he observed the Jewish law and in fact said, “I have not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them.”...

Previously, he has glorified Khomeini, justified suicide bombing, and preached Islamic supremacism. He is now in Tehran. "Former Washington DC Imam urges stepping up Palestinian struggle," from IRNA, May 18 (thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater):

Tehran, May 18, IRNA -- Imam Muhammad Al-Asi, the Imam (leader) who formerly led the prayers at the Islamic Center of Washington, said here Monday that people from all over the world should be encouraged to go to Palestine to step up the Palestinian struggle.

Speaking at the Fourth General Convention of the International Union of NGOs Supporting Palestinian Rights, Al-Asi said, "Encourage peoples from all over the world to go to Palestine; and if that is not possible to go to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, or Syria."

He also called for the establishment of a radio station and/or a satellite TV channel devoted solely to the Palestinian cause....

He asked for the integration or at least coordination of strategies of Islamic Resistance in Palestine with the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon.

He said, "Establish a Palestinian genocide memorial in the capitals of selected countries of Europe and the Americas."...

That could probably be accomplished easily enough.

Yet once again he doesn't explain how exactly they're getting Islam wrong. And considering that he himself has endorsed suicide attacks against Israelis, it is unlikely that his vision would be all that peaceful in any case. One also wonders what kind of "jihad" he wants to see waged against the terrorists. An interior spiritual struggle? Or actual hot warfare? And if the latter, that in itself demonstrates that he endorses religious warfare, and we are back to square one.

And why is he backing a non-Sharia government against those who would impose Sharia?

"Al-Azhar cleric urges ‘jihad’ against terrorists," from APP, May 19 (thanks to James):

ISLAMABAD: Professor Dr Muhammad Syed Tantawi, grand sheikh of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, has urged clerics to wage ‘jihad’ against terrorists who do not surrender before the government. “Ulema and mashaikh should try to educate them and if they do not shun their activities then must wage jihad against them.” Dr Tantawi was talking to Central Imam Hussain Council Chairman Dr Ghazanfar Mehdi who called on him at the university. He prayed for security, stability and prosperity of Pakistan. Dr Tantawi urged the international community to help Pakistan in the rehabilitation of the internally displaced persons of the NWFP.

Sho nuff, or, Indeed they do

Absolutely: the restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, the institutionalized inequality of rights for women and non-Muslims -- it's just a different vision of human rights, you see.

This kind of thinking will appeal to multiculturalists. But imagine what the world would be like if FDR and Churchill had explained in 1940 that Hitler's Germany simply had a different notion of human rights from the one that prevailed in America and Britain, and that the world should respect that.

"Muslims Have Own Human Rights Systems," by Sadeq Dehqan for Iran Daily, May 18:

Head of the Foreign Ministry’s College of International Relations Bahador Aminian on Sunday said western countries have become used to abusing human rights to exert pressure on other countries.

In an interview with Iran Daily he said Iran as an Islamic state continues to promote human rights.

“The definition that Islam renders about human beings and the value system that it offers is what the masses demand from the international community. As such, Iran should not be accused for non-observation of human rights. We believe that the notion of cultural diversity and human rights can open new vistas for human rights-related issues and hence the college has attended to the issue both from academic and diplomatic perspectives,“ he noted.

On the occasion of the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, a two-day international training workshop themed ’Cultural Diversity and Human Rights’ opened at the college on Sunday.

Aminian went on to emphasize that human rights should not be necessarily in unison with particular western values and standards as Muslim communities have their own reading of human rights.

“In the workshop we intend to convey the message that different cultures can offer different subjects which are not necessarily what the West wants to impose on the human race. If we define human rights issues by heeding diverse identities and values, we can reach a better understanding of problems visiting the world and overcome them to a great extent."...

Islamic jihadists have always been intent upon characterizing their opponents as Crusaders (or Zionists, or both, as in the indelible honorific Al-Qaeda's Adam Gadahn bestowed upon me: "Zionist Crusader"). Shortly before the beginning of the Iraq war, on November 8, 2002, Sheikh Bakr Abed Al-Razzaq Al-Samaraai preached in Baghdad’s Mother of All Battles mosque about “this difficult hour in which the Islamic nation [is] experiencing, an hour in which it faces the challenge of [forces] of disbelief of infidels, Jews, crusaders, Americans and Britons.”

Similarly, when Islamic jihadists bombed the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in December 2004, they explained that the attack was part of larger plan to strike back at “Crusaders:” “This operation comes as part of several operations that are organized and planned by al Qaeda as part of the battle against the crusaders and the Jews, as well as part of the plan to force the unbelievers to leave the Arabian Peninsula.” They said that jihad warriors “managed to enter one of the crusaders’ big castles in the Arabian Peninsula and managed to enter the American consulate in Jeddah, in which they control and run the country.”

And now comes the revelation that Pentagon briefings once carried Bible quotes. Barry Lynn huffs that U.S. soldiers "are not Christian crusaders, and they ought not be depicted as such."

Indeed. But a few Bible verses doth not a Crusader make. Did American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan impose Christianity on the populace? They did not. (Neither did the real Crusaders, for that matter, but never mind that for now.) Did they even allow proselytizing? They did not. Did the Americans allow for the establishment of Sharia provisions in the Iraqi and Afghan Constitutions that relegated local non-Muslims to second-class status in both countries? Yes, they did.

The whole controversy over these Bible verses is a contrived exercise in moral equivalence, designed once again to distract attention away from the manifest reality that there is a worldwide religious group that is waging war against unbelievers in the name of religion. And the religion in question is not Christianity.

"Pentagon briefings no longer quote Bible: Under Bush, cover pages of daily intelligence report included verses," from MSNBC, May 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration....

For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the Gospel of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq....

The "Gospel of Peter," eh, MSNBC? So Bush was getting quotes from ancient Gnostic texts? That should be newsworthy in itself, no? But of course...it isn't the Bible.

Anyway, wherever the quotes were from -- and I am sure that they were Bible quotes but that the Bible-illiterate MSNBC reporter got mixed up as to the names of the books they were from -- a Muslim was (stop the presses!) offended:

But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.

On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms — "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him. ... To deliver their soul from death." — and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand," read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U.S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on Monday said U.S. soldiers "are not Christian crusaders, and they ought not be depicted as such."

"Depicting the Iraq conflict as some sort of holy war is completely outrageous," Lynn said in a statement. "It's contrary to the constitutional separation of religion and government, and it's tremendously damaging to America's reputation in the world."

That last part is probably true. The jihadist propagandists will love this story.

Islamic Tolerance Alert: "EDITORIAL: Christians unwelcome here: The Muslim world is becoming more intolerant," from the Washington Times, May 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

As the West continues to reach out to the Muslim world with a message of tolerance, some Muslim communities are growing increasingly intolerant toward people of other faiths. A case in point is Iraq, where Christians are being chased out of their homeland.

New research reported by Associated Press indicates that the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen to between half and one-third of the estimated population of 1.4 million before the first Gulf War. Christians have been fleeing the country after being targeted in sectarian attacks, and most find the general climate increasingly less accommodating. After a series of particularly violent anti-Christian attacks in Mosul last October, leaders of the Catholic Chaldean church and other Christian denominations wrote a protest letter stating that "it seems that Iraq is one step closer to becoming an Islamic state intolerant to non-Muslims."

The Taliban last week threatened Pope Benedict XVI, whom they call "the most important personality in the Christian world," with violence over "stupid and irresponsible acts of proselytism" they contend are being conducted in Afghanistan by "crusader" missionaries. This followed edited footage aired on al-Jazeera that appeared to show the military's top chaplain in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, encouraging troops to "hunt people for Jesus." Unedited footage released later showed the chaplain discussing in detail what constituted impermissible proselytizing and cautioning the troops not to cross the line.

For the Taliban, the mere presence of Christians in their country - not to mention Jews, Hindus and others - is anathema. Under current Afghan law - which is under the regime the United States and other Western countries are expending blood and treasure to defend - converting to another religion from Islam is a capital offense. Afghan aid worker Abdul Rahman, who converted to Catholicism, was allowed to flee to Italy after his arrest in 2006 created an international outcry....

Non-Muslims refuse to bow to demands that they abide by Islamic law in...Knoxville, Tennessee. An update on this story, posted somewhat belatedly. "The Hill to sell alcohol next week despite mosque concern," by Jessie Pounds for the Knoxville News Sentinel, May 8 (thanks to Christopher):

KNOXVILLE -- The Hill restaurant in Fort Sanders, which has been the source of controversy over sales of alcohol, will open Wednesday despite concern by members of an adjacent mosque.

The Hill owner Trevor Hill said he found out this week that his request for a liquor license has been granted by the state.

Members of Anoor mosque, which is 191 feet from the restaurant at 1105 Forest Ave., have been upset about the possibility of a business that sells alcoholic drinks and stays open late being located on property next to their mosque.

Some mosque members tried to block Hill from getting a liquor license but were unsuccessful. Knoxville’s local beer ordinance establishes a 300-foot buffer zone around churches and other community institutions for a beer permit but waives the requirement if the establishment is granted a state liquor license....

"Local sources told Compass that in the last few months there has been a wave of arrests of Christians who are held with no official charges. Sources spoke of cases where detainees are held for months in prison, where they are badly beaten and tortured.... Local church leaders believe recent pressure is a response to rumors of an increase in Christian converts in Egypt due to Christian satellite programming, although arrests go beyond converts to Coptic-born Christians."

This Christian satellite programming is none other than Haya TV, spearheaded by Father Zakaria Botros, who, incidentally and according to his biography, was also repeatedly arrested with no formal charges and tortured when he resided in Egypt. More on the Copts' increasingly dire situation.

"Egypt: Stabbing, bombing attacks strike near two churches," from Compass Direct News, May 22:

Copt leaving sanctuary knifed in Minya; bomb explodes near venerable structure in Cairo.

ISTANBUL, May 22 (Compass Direct News) – In separate attacks in Egypt earlier this month, a Coptic Christian suffered severe stab wounds as he left a worship service in Minya, and a car-bombing outside a venerable church in Cairo disrupted a wedding.

Without provocation, three Muslims repeatedly stabbed Coptic Christian Girgis Yousry, 21, as the army conscript was leaving the gates of the church of Saint Mary in Minya, Upper Egypt on May 2, according to Copts United.

The assault left him with severe injuries to internal organs, and he was taken to the district hospital, where he was still receiving treatment at press time.

When Yousry’s father went to the police station to report the attack, the Intelligence Services officer in charge threw him out of the station. Three men implicated in the stabbing, Wael Mohammed Hagag, Mohammed Nasr Anwar and Shabaan Sayed Amin, were arrested on May 5 and have been given a 16-day initial incarceration while the investigation is underway.

All three men stand accused of attempted murder without premeditation, which carries a sentence of five to 15 years.

But Mamdouh Nakhla, president of the Al-Kalema Centre for Human Rights, said he thinks it unlikely that they will be convicted.

“From my experience over the last 15 years, in Minya in particular, all cases of attacks and murder against Christians either went without punishment and [the accused] were totally exonerated, or they were given suspended sentences,” he said.

Home to Egypt’s largest community of Copts (approximately 4 million), Minya is considered a hotbed of anti-Christian violence.

“I am aware of severe injustices happening to Christians who are being incarcerated for no reason,” said Nakhla. “This is my experience of Minya.”

Local sources told Compass that in the last few months there has been a wave of arrests of Christians who are held with no official charges. Sources spoke of cases where detainees are held for months in prison, where they are badly beaten and tortured.

“Police brutality is a widely practiced policy,” said one source, “especially in rural areas, group punishment and systematic intimidation and humiliation are expected practices against all citizens, Christians included.”

This month Compass learned of three illegal arrests of Christians that have taken place since November 2008. Two of the men who were detained have since been released.

“When people are released, they have been beaten and electrocuted so that they are hardly standing up,” said a local Christian.

Local church leaders believe recent pressure is a response to rumors of an increase in Christian converts in Egypt due to Christian satellite programming, although arrests go beyond converts to Coptic-born Christians...

At least two of the four Bronx synagogue jihadis "entered the system as Baptists and were paroled as Muslims." More on this story. "State prisons are major breeding ground for Islamic radicalization," by Wil Cruz, Joe Kemp and Patrice O'Shaughnessy for the Daily News, May 22:

The four men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down a plane all did stretches in state prisons - a major breeding ground for Islamic radicalization.

At least two of the suspects, James Cromitie and Onta Williams, entered the system as Baptists and were paroled as Muslims.

The concern about prisons incubating jihadists has been heightened in the debate over releasing Guantanamo terror suspects to facilities across the U.S.

FBI Director Robert Mueller has called America's prisons "fertile ground for extremists."

A 2006 study called "Out of the Shadows" found "tight-knit communities of Muslims in prison are ripe for radicalization, and could easily become terrorist cells."...

More on this story. "Peshawar locals warned against wearing western clothes," from The Dawn, May 21:

PESHAWAR: Taliban hardliners are warning people against wearing Western clothes in the capital of Pakistan’s northwest region where the military is battling militants, residents said Thursday.

‘I received a piece of paper written in Pushto, saying that doctors and medical workers are wearing unIslamic dress which should be stopped,’ said Abdul Hammed Afridi, chief executive of Peshawar’s main government hospital.

‘It was from Tehrik-e-Taliban because the back of the envelope was marked TTP,’ he said. ‘I have not issued any order to change dress. Anybody is free to wear whatever clothes he likes,’ Afridi added.

But people working at smaller, private companies said they were steering clear of Western-style trousers and shirts, instead donning traditional shalwar khamiz after colleagues were beaten up in the streets.

‘My office advised me in writing to stop wearing western dress and start wearing shalwar khamiz after incidents of violence,’ Mohammad Saghir, who works for a private company, told AFP.

‘Last week one of our colleagues was kidnapped by the Taliban, beaten and warned that pharmaceutical staff should stop wearing western dress,’ said Mohammad Nasir Khan, president of a medical representative’s organisation.

‘They put a warning letter in his pocket after beating him,’ he said.

‘One employee of our courier company was beaten on Tuesday and militants warned him to stop wearing T-shirts and trousers,’ an employee at a private company also told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"The United States had criticised Pakistan’s policy of making deals with the militants..." Not always. "General rules out talks with Swat Taliban," from The Dawn, May 23:

KHWAZAKHELA: Major-Gen Sajjad Ghani, who is leading the ongoing military offensive in the upper part of the valley, ruled out any possibility of talks with militants.

‘Today they stand isolated, not only in the valley but also at the national scene. I think this is a big achievement of the government as well as the military,’ military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas said.

Maj Ghani said the military was determined to eliminate the Taliban and ruled out the possibility of any talks or a ceasefire with the militants.

‘This time it has been decided to take the operation to its logical conclusion aimed at eliminating the terrorists,’ he said.[...]

The United States had criticised Pakistan’s policy of making deals with the militants but has applauded its recent resolve to fight what some US leaders have called an ‘existential threat’ to the country.

Just a few, the jihadist leader said. "British and American fighters respond to jihad call in Somalia," by Tristan McConnell for the Times Online, May 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Up to a thousand foreign fighters, including Britons, have answered the call to jihad in Somalia and are leading street-fighting Islamist extremists in the war-torn capital Mogadishu, The Times has learnt.

Early yesterday the Western-backed Government launched a counter-offensive after almost a fortnight of attacks by insurgents that have killed at least 200 civilians.

At least 45 people were killed yesterday in battles across the city, the highest daily death toll for months.

The insurg