Tiny Minority of Extremists Update: Aafia Siddiqui is a heroine in Pakistan. One would think that if the vast majority of Muslims there rejected the ideology of Al-Qaeda, as Charles Krauthammer and so many others assume they do, she would not have attained this exalted status. "U.S. Sees a Terror Threat; Pakistanis See a Heroine," by Salman Masood and Carlotta Gall for the New York Times, March 5 (thanks to all who sent this in):
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Relations between the United States and Pakistan often have a through-the-looking-glass quality, where almost nothing appears quite the same from the other side. The latest example is the case of Aafia Siddiqui.In the United States, authorities say Ms. Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who once studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda. She was convicted by a New York court in February of trying to kill American military officers while in custody in 2008 in Afghanistan. She faces life in prison when she is sentenced in May.
In Pakistan, she has become a national symbol of honor and victimization so potent that politicians of all stripes, Islamists, the news media and an increasingly anti-American public have all lined up to champion her claim of innocence.
In a rare display of unity, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who has described Ms. Siddiqui as a "daughter of the nation," and the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, have promised to push for her release. Last week, senators passed a resolution to demand her return to Pakistan.
Her sister, Dr. Fauzia Siddiqui, a neurologist who studied and taught at Johns Hopkins University, has led a countrywide campaign on Aafia Siddiqui's behalf. In recent weeks, hundreds of people, including professionals and civil rights campaigners, have taken to the streets in support.
The broad outpouring has forced the government, led by the Pakistan Peoples Party, to publicly assure Ms. Siddiqui's supporters that it will continue its legal assistance, which has amounted to $2 million already. [...]
"The prime minister has suggested to visiting American delegations that releasing Aafia Siddiqui unconditionally would greatly improve the image of the Americans in the public's eyes," a close aide to Mr. Gilani said. [...]
She had a long involvement in jihadi causes, even while a student at M.I.T. and, later, at Brandeis University. The F.B.I. has accused her of opening a post office box in 2002 in the name of Majid Khan, who is suspected of being a Qaeda member and is being held in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Divorced from her first husband, Dr. Muhammad Amjad Khan, the father of her three children, she married Ammar al-Baluchi, the nephew of the professed orchestrator of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in early 2003, according to court documents filed in the United States. [...]
She was arrested in July 2008 in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her eldest child, Ahmed, then 12, who told Afghan investigators they had arrived by road from Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan, two days before. While in custody, prosecutors said, she grabbed a rifle from a police station floor and fired on Army officers and F.B.I. agents, hitting no one. She was shot in the abdomen. [...]
"The iconization of Aafia Siddiqui as an emblem of Pakistani womanhood represents the kind of female rebel acceptable in a rapidly Islamizing Pakistani society," said Rafia Zakaria, a columnist for Dawn, the leading English daily newspaper....
Rapidly Islamizing indeed.
"The prime minister has suggested to visiting American delegations that releasing Aafia Siddiqui unconditionally would greatly improve the image of the Americans in the public's eyes," a close aide to Mr. Gilani said."
Unfortunately our politicians give ear to this kind of persuasion as they continue the route of appeasement towards Muslims thinking that somehow they are going to like us more if give into their demands. It in fact makes us look weak and vulnerable in the Muslim world and only emboldens their aggressive ideology against us.
There's Aafia Siddiqui, who was given every advantage by this country, treated with great generosity and kindness by this country, with scholarships to MIT and Brandeis. Imagine how many Americans would have liked to attend, on scholarship, MIT, or be admitted to a graduate program in neural science at Brandeis. But as we all known, there is Graduate-School blues, and I'm guessing that Aafia Siddiqui just didn't pan out. And perhaps Brandeis, in one of those fits of admissions perversity with which many are all too familiar, decided it would be especially great to have a Muslim admitted to a graduate program at Brandeis, a "Jewish university," precisely for that reason, and even if, on her academic record, she didn't merit such admission.
So, as she went through her graduate-school crisis, one not unknown even to the very gifted, she turned ever more deeply to Islam, and perhaps, newly married, her apparently fanatical husband helped push her along in the direction that caused her to decamp from America for the wilds of Pakistan and then Afghanistan, giving her life to the cause of Jihad -- in this case, of Jihad pursued through violent means (all varieties of Jihad are dangerous for Infidels, of course).
She's now National Heroine.
And who is National Hero?
Oh, it's A. Q. Khan, the metallurgist who, working in Western laboratories, was allowed access by naive overseers in these labs to nuclear secrets, and he naturally helped himself, and took back this stuff to Pakistan where, thanks to the aid supplied by American taxpayers, funds could be found to take those plans, and -- always fending off American inquiries with deeply sincere denials, over many years, that any nuclear project was in the works -- ultimately, the Pakistani "Islamic bomb," by the many dozens, was born.
A. Q. Khan went on to flog his stolen material, and other wares, to North Korea, to Libya, to Iran. We still don't know who got what, when, where. The Americans would dearly like to interview him, but "staunch ally" Pakistan won't hear of it. And still the American billions flow in, apparently unstoppable.
He's the National Hero of Pakistanis.
She's the National Heroine of Pakistanis.
By their National Heroes shall ye know them.
Surnames like Singh are as common in India as Smith is in the US. Curiosity has me wondering if Gilani is as common a surname in Pakistan as Smith in the US.
Would the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani be of any relation to Sheik Mubarik Gilani, famous for:
Muslims of the Americas and Jamaat al-Fuqra are both linked to a slew of terrorist acts and other criminal activity. In the 1980s, they carried out various terrorist acts, including numerous fire-bombings across the United States. amaat al-Fuqra’s early targets in North America were Hindus and targets linked to various Jewish temples too.
I'd be curious to learn if Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's reflections on this namesake, Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani who resides in Lahore, Pakistan would be as glowing.
I think pakistan is dictating to America how it should procced, not only with Aafia but with our war strategy. They've got it all backwards, when it should be US leading the way...! How did pakistan became our 'partner' when roughely all of pakistan wages jihad (some do it implicitly, while others do it explicitly) on the US? If they were not considered 'partners' they would not have received those drones under pakistan control, not to mention those up-to-date jets. Where do you think those drones and jets are pointing towards?
First a jihad against America, and then second against India. Or, Vice-versa.
Btw, if you are a country who wants to wage a jihad against the US, they should (say, a pakistan, but it could be many a muslim countries) wage that war and recieve plenty of dollars along the way. Look at yemen. Yemen is a terriost hotbed. Yemen has impilctly invited all the terriosts to use their country to set up their base. What does the US do? That's right, Yemen gets all those billions of dollars from US.
The only reason the Americans think (I think incorrectly) they have to remain in Pakistan, and placate the Pakistanis, and provide billions and tens of billions, apparently unstoppable Jizyah, is because Pakistan was allowed to build nuclear weapons. This should never have happened. But it did.
And the Americans, and the entire West, and India too, bitterly regret having allowed this to happen.
But at least the Americans can watch Pakistan like a hawk, and make sure it does not acquire the delivery capability to use those weapons outside of Pakistan.
Now comes the Islamic Republic of Iran, and over the past decade has slowly, methodically, without any halt save, perhaps, for a few months just after the Americans invaded Iraq, and all bets were off as to what they might do, has been attempting to produce nuclear weapons and is coming ever closer. It promises, and then takes back promises. It lies, and then lies some more. It offers the facade of reasonableness, and then rips off the mask, and bares its fangs, and speaks with the tongue of that crazed hidden-imam stuff that we just can't believe other people believe, which is a failure of our imiaginations.
Surely someone at or near the top of the Washington heap understands that whatever it takes -- and it will take attacks from on heavenly high, with missiles and planes -- enough damage has to be done to set back the project, to scare the Iranians from re-starting it (for fear that another attack will then come, for there is no reason why the Americans, or Israelis, or the West, would or should limit itself to only one attack, if more prove necessary.
Meanwhile, the fears that Iran will dare to do more, can do more, to American forces than it already is doing, in Iraq (where there are fewer and fewer targets anyway) and in Afghanistan (just how would Iran project power in Afghaistan, where only the Hazara are Shi'a, and where, between Iran and Afghanistan, all sorts of rebellious anti-Iranian peoples live?). And Iran may not fear Israeli retaliation, perhaps out of miscalculation and misplaced inculcated contempt for the "yahudin" but it certainly fears American retaliation, coming from all sides, from the Persian Gulf, from bases near and bases far, and even, perhaps, from the continental United States, because sometimes inter-continental ballistic missiles may be just the thing, may hit the spot, in more ways than one.
That's a number of "heroes" of dubious distinction, I wonder if Pakistan uses the same dictionary as the rest f us?
You learn a lot about a society by who they laud as heroes. The Muslim world had the "Magnificent 19" (the 9/11 Jihad mass murderers), Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (The Lockerbie Bomber), and Samir Kuntar, who killed an Israeli civilian and his little four-year-old daughter, and caused the death of her infant sister.
Here in the US, we have heroes like the 9/11 first responders and Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who safely landed a crippled jet plane down in the Hudson, saving the lives of all aboard.
Compare and contrast.
It's probably too much to hope for, but I wish Captain Chesley Sullenberger would run for office. It doesn't matter what he calls himself, which party he chooses. He'd win, and he'd deserve to win.
Re Samir Kuntar, here's David Hornik's trenchant FrontPage article from July 2008 'Hero's Welcome For Grisly Killers', which also discusses the *female* Arab Muslim role model, Dalil Mughrabi, murder-'martyr'.
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=23E40B55-62ED-49CA-80EE-5E09425748CA
From that article (for those who lack the time to click and read the whole):
'Israeli Middle East scholar Barry Rubin notes that “no one in the Arabic-speaking world will say a single negative word about Kuntar’s deed or his being made a hero, despite a small liberal minority’s disgust.”
'Also set to be delivered to Hezbollah by Israel, along with the remains of two hundred other Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists, are the remains of a Palestinian {sic: local Arab Muslim - dda} woman terrorist named Dalal Mughrabi.
'The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reported, however, that the Palestinian Authority had asked Israel to hand over Mughrabi’s remains to the PA instead.
'Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official and close associate of PA president Mahmoud Abbas, called Mughrabi “the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel” and said “we want to turn Dalal’s funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration. The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women’s struggle.” {I'd love to know what he said in Arabic - I'd almost be willing to bet good money that the word rendered 'struggle' was...JIHAD. - dda}.
'What, then, did Dalal Mughrabi do?
' In what became known as the Coastal Road massacre, on March 11, 1978—about a year before the attack Samir Kuntar took part in—she led a group of eleven Palestinian terrorists who landed in inflatable boats on a beach north of Tel Aviv,
'killed an American photographer named Gail Rubin who was taking nature pictures nearby,
'and hijacked a bus along the coastal highway.
'After the Israeli army pursued the bus and finally stopped it, a gun battle ensued between the soldiers and the terrorists during which the terrorists shot passengers who tried to escape.
'Eventually Dalal Mughrabi blew up the bus, which became a large firetrap, and the attack left thirty-six Israeli civilians dead *including thirteen children* {my emphasis - dda}.
'Mughrabi and the other terrorists were killed; seventy-one Israelis were wounded.
'Toameh noted that “even if Israel refuse[d] to deliver Mughrabi’s remains to the PA in Ramallah, Fatah officials said they were planning to hold big celebrations throughout the West Bank to coincide with her funeral in Lebanon…. Since its inception, the PA has honored Mughrabi by naming many schools and various institutions after her. An article published in Thursday’s edition of the PA-funded Al-Hayat Al-Jadedda newspaper hailed Mughrabi as a ‘living legend and a wonderful example for all women.’”
The Muslim definition of what constitutes acts of 'courage' is very, very different from that of other people.
This is what a Palestinian Arab Muslim, Azzam al-Ahmed, "a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas", said of Samir Kuntar, of that psychopathic Druze janissary of Jihad who murdered an unarmed Israeli Jewish father in front of the man's little daughter, and then murdered the little girl by bashing her head in on a rock.
He called him a "stubborn and firm fighter in the ranks of the Lebanese resistance who led a very courageous operation."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1215330933597
'Courageous'? For a fully grown man to bash a toddler's brains out upon a rock?
I imagine Mr Al-Ahmad probably feels that the gang of armed Muslim men who shot pregnant unarmed Jewish mother Tali Hatuel at point-blank range, and also shot her four terrified little daughters, were "courageous". I imagine he thinks that the gang of heavily armed demon-possessed Mohammedan psychopaths who murdered Rabbi Holzberger in front of his wife in the Nariman House in Mumbai, and disembowelled his pregnant wife Rivka in order to deliberately destroy the dying fetus in front of its dying mother, were splendid fellows, courageously breaching all merely human laws of decency and holiness in order the better to flaunt and revel in the unfettered hand of their demonic blood-god allah.