October 2011 Archives

Shock horror! Imagine: the mainstream media whitewashing the jihadist views of an Islamic supremacist leader! It's unprecedented! Shocking beyond measure! "Media Whitewash Ghannouchi's Radical Islamist Views," from IPT News, October 31:

A recurring media theme in recent days is that Rachid al-Ghannouchi and his Ennahda Party, which won last week's Tunisian elections, are "moderate" Islamists despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

A few notable voices in the conservative blogosphere like Martin Kramer, Melanie Phillips and Raymond Ibrahim pointed out problems with this argument, including Ghannouchi's endorsement of jihad in Gaza, stating that "Gaza, like Hanoi in the '60s and Cuba and Algeria, is the model of freedom today." Ghannouchi has expressed support for suicide bombings and welcomes the destruction of Israel, which he predicts could "disappear" by 2027.

"There is no such thing as 'moderate Islamism,'" Phillips wrote. "It's as absurd as saying there were moderate and extreme Stalinists, or moderate and extreme Nazis, or moderate and extreme proponents of the Spanish Inquisition. You cannot have moderate fanatics."

That message apparently hasn't reached some U.S. media and political elites. Before and after Tunisia's election, news outlets provided a steady stream of stories portraying the group as moderate and committed to democracy.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed (which he republished on his Senate website) declaring that "Ennahda has been giving encouraging answers about its rejection of extremism and its respect for the democratic process, individual liberties, women's rights and the rule of law."

The headline of a front-page New York Times story referred to Ennahda as "moderate." The Times quoted Ghannouchi (the founder of the party) saying that Ennahda "is not a religious party" but one whose members "merely draw their values from Islam." The Times added that the group's win at the polls in Tunisia "was sure to embolden those who favor a more liberal approach, including some within Egypt's mainstream Muslim Brotherhood."

Another Times story began: "For more than three decades, Rachid al-Ghannouchi has preached that pluralism, democracy and secular Islam are harmonious."

These and other media accounts gloss over or neglect to mention Ghannouchi's many radical statements – particularly his calls for Israel's destruction.

The Arab Spring "will achieve positive results on the path to the Palestinian cause and threaten the extinction of Israel," he said in a May interview with the Al Arab Qatari website. "The liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation represents the biggest challenge facing the Umma [Muslim people] and the Umma cannot have existence in light of the Israeli occupation."

In the same interview, Ghannouchi said: "I give you the good news that the Arab region will get rid of the bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may disappear before this."

This is consistent with Ennahda's platform, which declares that the group "struggles to achieve the following goals … To struggle for the liberation of Palestine and consider it as a central mission and a duty required by the need to challenge the Zionist colonial attack which planted in the heart of the homeland an alien entity which constitutes a (sic) obstacle to unity and reflects the image of the conflict between our civilization and its enemies."

Read it all.

Why? Do they possibly know something about Islam and the Islamic party that the learned analysts of the West don't know? Naaah. Couldn't be. They must just be "Islamophobes." "Tunisia's Jews 'discouraged' after Islamic party win," by Mariette le Roux for AFP, October 31:

LA GOULETTE, Tunisia — Gilles Jacob Lellouche, a member of Tunisia's small Jewish minority, shrugs as he contemplates the future under a government run by the Islamic party that swept the country's first free polls.

"We will wait and see," he said about fears that minority freedoms may be under threat.

Lellouche smokes one cigarette after the other on the front porch of the kosher restaurant he owns in Tunis' port suburb of La Goulette, where many Jews live, discouraged by the secular left's splintered election showing.

"The people have spoken, and they have chosen that (Islamist Ennahda) party," he told AFP. His left index finger still sports the mark of pride of Tunisians who voted in Sunday's historic polls -- a fading blue ink stain.

Lellouche was the sole candidate of Jewish origin out of more than 10,000 registered in Sunday's vote for a new assembly that will rewrite the constitution -- the first-ever in Tunisia not to have a pre-determined result. He stood for the Popular Republican Union, which won one seat that went to another candidate.

The businessman takes comfort in the fact that the Islamist party did not obtain an outright majority.

"Tunisians are not ready to open the doors to a new dictatorship having just left behind another. But we have to be vigilant," he said.

Asked if people in the Jewish community were positive about a future under Ennahda, he replied: "They are not negative. There is a substantial difference ..."

Tunisia has one of the Arab world's largest Jewish minorities, estimated at 1,500 people out of a total population of more than 10 million.

According to Dar el Dekra (House of Memory, in Arabic), an organisation for the preservation of the Jewish heritage in Tunisia, their presence dates back 2,000 years -- mainly on the island of Djerba in the Gulf of Gabes.

They numbered in the tens of thousands until World War II, after which many left for Israel, established as a state in 1948, and France, the colonial power until 1956.

Lellouche noted that Tunisia has a long history of "inter-community conviviality" and said he believed Islam to be a "tolerant" religion.

But in March, two months after the toppling of dictator Zine el Abidine Ben whom the West regarded as a bastion against Islamisation, a group of Muslim men assailed Jews outside the Tunis synagogue, the biggest among only a handful in the country. "Begone the Jews, the army of Mohammed is back!" they shouted.

The interim government condemned the attacks.

The following month, the Israeli government made funding available to help Tunisian Jews move to Israel, citing "the worsening of ... society's attitude toward the Jewish community" since Ben Ali's ouster....

"Even the Arabs are worried," said a 30-something kosher butcher in the capital Tunis, who declined to give his name. "There is fear that Islam will be imposed ... women forced to walk around veiled.

"If there is even the slightest danger, the Jews will leave. We all have family elsewhere, in France, in Europe," said the butcher, wearing a Jewish skullcap and a full beard, sitting outside his small shop across the street from the synagogue -- just a few hundred metres from a large mosque.

"My passport is ready, and I have set aside money for a ticket," he added....

On PJ Media (via RaymondIbrahim.com), I discuss how the same "doctrinal" word Egypt's Grand Mufti used to classify Christians -- infidel -- is the same word Egyptian soldiers used when they opened fire on and ran armored-vehicles over Christian Copts, showing, yet again, the connection between doctrine and deeds in Islam:

To what extent was Egypt's Maspero massacre, wherein the military literally mowed down Christian Copts protesting the ongoing destruction of their churches, a product of anti-Christian sentiment?

A video of Egypt's Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa (or Gom'a), which began circulating weeks before the massacre, helps elucidate. While holding that Muslims may coexist with Christians (who, as dhimmis, have rights), Gomaa categorized Christians as kuffar — "infidels" — a word that connotes "enemies," "evil-doers," and every bad thing to Muslim ears.

After quoting Quran 5:17, "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary," he expounded by saying any association between a human and God (in Arabic, shirk) is the greatest sin: "Whoever thinks the Christ is God, or the Son of God, not symbolically — for we are all sons of God — but attributively, has rejected the faith which God requires for salvation," thereby becoming an infidel.

Gomaa then offered a hypothetical dialogue between Christians and Muslims to illustrate Islam's proper position:

Christians: You have the wrong idea about us; we don't worship the Christ.

Muslims: Okay, fine; we were under the wrong impression — but, by the way: "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary."

Christians: But these are philosophical matters that we are unable to explain.

Muslims: Okay, fine; God is one—but, by the way: "Infidels are those who declare God is the Christ, son of Mary."

As a graduate of and long-time professor at Al Azhar university and Grand Mufti of Egypt (a position second in authority only to Sheikh Al Azhar), Ali Gomaa represents mainstream Islam's — not "radical Islam's" or "Islamism's" — position concerning the "other," in this case, Christians. Regardless, many in the West hail him as a "moderate" — such as this U.S. News article titled "Finding the Voices of Moderate Islam"; Lawrence Wright describes him as "a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam"...

Obama has bent over backwards again and again to reach out to the Iranian mullahs. He has never spoken critically of the Iranian regime with any real force, and refused to back the Iranians who were protesting against the regime. Yet his supine dhimmitude is still not good enough for the Islamic Republic. With the typical Islamic supremacist displacement of responsibility, Seyed Ali Aqazadeh is making the fantastic claim that Obama is spreading "Iranophobia." This exactly parallels the jihadist tendency never to accept responsibility for any wrongdoing of any kind, but always to affect the posture of the innocent victim. Hamas-linked CAIR operates in the same way.

"Senior MP: US President Should Apologize to Iran," from the Fars News Agency, October 31 (thanks to Wimpy):

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior member of the Iranian parliament condemned Washington's plots and allegations against Tehran, and said US President Barack Obama should apologize for fabricating lies and accusations against the Iranian nation.

"Apologizing to the Iranian nation for fabricating the recent scenarios (against the country) is Obama's duty and the US president should offer an official and formal apology," member of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Seyed Ali Aqazadeh told FNA on Monday.

He said that the US allegations against Iran aimed to spread the atmosphere of Iranophobia over the world and feed the Zionist-dominated media with new materials against Iran.

The legislator further warned that such anti-Iran moves and actions entail dire consequences for the White House.

Last night, NBC News quoted Iranian diplomatic sources as saying that Tehran has demanded Washington to offer a public apology and pay unspecified monetary damages for its recently declared baseless allegations against Iran.

An unnamed Iranian diplomat told NBC News that the demands were contained in a recent letter to the US. It called on the US to apologize publicly to both the Islamic republic and officials of the Al Quds Force for "material and moral damages" caused by "this baseless accusation," which violated "international rules and regulations."

The diplomatic source would not provide details on when the letter was sent out, to whom it was addressed or who in the Iranian government wrote it.

A US State Department representative acknowledged Sunday that the letter had been received, but declined to discuss its contents.

After the US leveled the accusation against Iran earlier this month, Tehran fiercely rejected them as baseless and ridiculous, and asked Washington to present its proofs and evidence, but the White House has denied Iran's call.

At the same time, Iranian officials at all levels of the government, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have censured the US and warned it to avoid irrational moves.

"If US officials have some delusions, (they must) know that any unsuitable act, whether political or security, will meet a resolute response from the Iranian nation," Ayatollah Khamenei warned two weeks ago.

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said similarly that "Iran is a civilized nation and doesn't need to resort to assassination."

"The culture of terror belongs to you," he said, referring to the United States.

While the government can't retreat quickly enough into total fantasy regarding Islamic jihad activity, for the hard Leftists and Islamic supremacist collaborators at the ACLU, they're still not moving fast enough.

"ACLU deputy sees national security extremes becoming entrenched," by Steve Fidel for KSL.com, October 30 (thanks to David):

WEST VALLEY CITY —The deputy legal director for the ACLU believes post-9/11 security policies specifically target Muslims, and that the intelligence community has taken training cues from bigots, not experts.

And unlike the era where Japanese Americans were detained in camps during World War II, he sees detainment, surveillance and other infringement policies staying in the extreme in the decade following 9/11 becoming "the new normal."

"While President Obama uses the rhetoric of human rights, his administration is continuing to become more entrenched," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the ACLU and director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, which houses the agency's work on national security; human rights; and speech, privacy and technology.

Jaffer spoke Saturday night at the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake's Khadeeja Islamic Center.

He urged Muslims to vote and participate in public events, including demonstrations, but said they should not band together as Muslim or Arabic-sponsored groups to oppose government or societal injustices. "Choose something less selfish" rather than representing a Muslim bloc. "You have to think of other people's rights" as well, he said.

That would be something new.

Jaffer credited the Obama administration for releasing memos that discussed and sanctioned torture among detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp after 9/11, but suggested President Obama spent considerable political capital in doing that, setting him at odds with the CIA specifically and the intelligence community as a whole.

He suggested presidents' effect on human rights issues, in the arena of national security, can be limited by the fact a successful president may be in office eight years, but the mindset moves on a different track within the CIA and FBI, where careers can last 30 years.

He said Muslims have balked at careers in the United States' intelligence community because training materials have labeled Islam as incompatible with democracy. He believes FBI training materials for at least the past decade have drawn on the expertise of bigots, not individuals with expertise in Middle East culture. "And I suspect the CIA's training materials are worse."...

I wouldn't worry, Jaffer.

One might point out to them that there is an aspect of British humo(u)r in their approach -- from the very same filthy kuffar society they rail against. But they are steeped in it, and wholly dependent on the British way of life, values, and culture to exist as they do. Hate it as they may, that is who they are. Perhaps that explains the pitch of their anger. They will never be the product of a purely Islamic society, and might not even be able to function in one: how many are on government benefits? Anjem Chaudary is. Don't curse the kuffar with your mouth full, "Andy."

Fresh from overreaching in their threats to a member of Parliament and then attempting to cover it up, these self-hating Islamic supremacists are looking to make their Armistice Day disruption an annual event. After threatening MP Freer with a "piercing reminder," in reference to a fellow legislator who was stabbed by a Muslim woman, they are calling their next act "Hell for Heroes," in reference to a program for injured British soldiers known as "Help for Heroes."

Jihad by bad puns. That'll show those infidels. "Poppy-burning Muslims plan new 'Hell for Heroes' demonstration on November 11" from the Daily Mail, October 31:

An extreme Muslim group which caused outrage by burning a poppy last Remembrance Sunday is planning further disruption on November 11, with a twisted 'Hell for Heroes' campaign.

The demo, which mocks the charity for injured soldiers Help for Heroes, is due to take place outside the Royal Albert Hall, the same location where a poppy was burned last year.

Emdadur Choudhury, who burned the poppy, was fined just £50.

The Muslims Against Crusades protesters, who have sought permission from police to hold the rally, aim to chant and disrupt the minute's silence held in honour of the war dead.

Firebrand cleric Anjem Choudary, who has links to the Muslims Against Crusades group, said: 'It's going to be called Hell for Heroes and it will be around the Royal Albert Hall.

'It will involve a protest and not observing the minute's silence. We had a significant amount of support from Muslims around the world last year. [...]

Choudary also played down reports that MP Mike Freer had feared for his safety after a protest at a north London mosque where he was holding a surgery last Friday afternoon.

Up to a dozen protesters forced their way into the mosque where Mr Freer was meeting constituents, prompting officials to lock him in a private room for his own safety.

Mr Freer, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, said he was called a 'Jewish homosexual pig'.

He said he only later realised the MAC website had made reference to MP Stephen Timms, who was stabbed in his surgery by a Muslim women [sic].

Choudary played down the protest saying: 'It was peaceful and there were no arrests.

'As far as I am aware, there is no suggestion anyone from MAC said anything anti-Semitic or homophobic.

High culture: The infamous Palestinian art exhibit celebrating the Sbarro pizzeria jihad mass murder

This makes sense. After all, the Palestinians have contributed so much to world culture: children's shows celebrating jihad murder, jihad/martyrdom suicide bombers blowing people up on buses and in restaurants -- it's a veritable cornucopia of cultural and artistic achievement. "Palestine becomes member of UN cultural body," by Sarah DiLorenzo for the Associated Press, October 31:

PARIS (AP) — Palestine became a full member of the U.N. cultural and educational agency Monday, in a highly divisive move that the United States and other opponents say could harm renewed Mideast peace efforts.

U.S. lawmakers had threatened to withhold roughly $80 million in annual funding to UNESCO if it approved Palestinian membership. The United States provides about 22 percent of UNESCO's funding.

Huge cheers went up in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after delegates approved the membership in a vote of 107-14 with 52 abstentions. Eighty-one votes were needed for approval in a hall with 173 UNESCO member delegations present.

"Long Live Palestine!" shouted one delegate, in French, at the unusually tense and dramatic meeting of UNESCO's General Conference....

Monday's vote is definitive. The membership formally takes effect when Palestine signs UNESCO's founding charter.

The U.S. ambassador to UNESCO, David Killion, said Monday's vote will "complicate" U.S. efforts to support the agency. The United States voted against the measure.

Israel's ambassador to UNESCO, Nimrod Barkan, called the vote a tragedy.

"UNESCO deals in science, not science fiction," he said. "They forced on UNESCO a political subject out of its competence."...

Obama's policies in this regard are a continuation and expansion of his predecessor's, in which the fate of Christians of the Middle East is acceptable collateral damage in a region-wide adventure in fantasy-based policy-making. Washington appears to allow them to be treated worse rather than risk being seen as showing partiality. That could lose "hearts and minds," after all -- though meanwhile, Christians are losing heartbeats and heads.

One cannot help but also suspect a bias against or condescending dismissal of Eastern Christianity (and anyone in communion with Rome, as well). It is not the Christianity of members of the Washington establishment, who may thus be prone to write it off as a "cultural" Christianity (i.e., unfamiliar to them) that has some pretty churches, but that they can't imagine anyone observing.

Is it that they are not the "right" kind of Christians to be defended?

There may also be an assumption that Christians in the Middle East are less fervent in their beliefs than Muslims, partly because they have been forced to keep a low profile by Islamic supremacists, and partly as a projection of the a la carte Christianity of selective beliefs and observances in the West.

In any case, the decision has come down that Christians in the Middle East are expendable. Indeed, they are being sacrificed, as Washington looks the other way to worship itself as a messianic bearer of democracy. However, a democracy is only as good as the values that inform its participants, and therein lies the problem for human rights in the Middle East in the near future.

"Gingrich: Obama Caused ‘Anti-Christian Spring,’" by Naureen Khan for the National Journal, October 29:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – Taking a new tack in challenging President Obama’s foreign policy, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Saturday that the “grotesque failure” of the president’s approach in the Middle East has resulted in an “anti-Christian spring.”

The former speaker of the House claimed that the number of Christians in Iraq fell from 1.2 million to 500,000 since the American invasion in 2003, and that Christianity is under assault elsewhere in the region.

“This is why the current strategy in the Middle East is such a total grotesque failure,” Gingrich told about 200 people gathered at the Chesterfield Inn. “People say, ‘Oh, isn’t this great, we’re having an Arab spring.’ Well, I don’t know, I think we may in fact be having an anti-Christian spring. I think people should take this pretty soberly.”

Gingrich was referring to the recent domino-effect uprisings that are challenging longtime autocratic regimes in the Middle East, which has become known as the Arab spring. As president, Gingrich said, “I would actively try to defend religious liberty across the planet, including in Egypt and Iraq.”

American and Irish misunderstanders of Islam came together over Motoon rage, and plotted murder to defend their religion and prophet. Here again, it is odd how those who consider themselves to be most devout and active in the defense of Islam are those who tend to violence; this is never, ever explained by those who claim that they're misunderstanding the Religion of Peace. "Irish journalist reveals details of Jihad Jane plot: New details of Islamic terrorists in Ireland revealed," by Antoinette Kelly for Irish Central, October 31:

Last year, four men and three women were arrested in Waterford and Cork in relation to an alleged plot to kill Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist who had depicted the prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog.

Two of the female converts linked to the plot were from the United States, including Colleen R LaRose, otherwise known as 'Jihad Jane', the pseudonym she used for the internet.

For the first time, an Irish journalist rovided many details that have been missing from the bizarre story. Writing for the Irish Times, Mary Fitzgerald writes that a 14-page indictment obtained by the paper details 55 "overt acts" in relation to the conspiracy.

"The indictment alleges that, from about 2008 to July 2011, Damache and Khalid conspired with LaRose, Paulin-Ramirez and others to provide material support and resources, including logistical support, recruitment services, funds, identification documents and personnel, to a conspiracy to kill overseas," she writes.

She adds that, according to the indictment, "Damache, Khalid and others 'devised and co-ordinated a violent jihad organisation consisting of men and women from Europe and the US divided into a planning team, a research team, an action team, a recruitment team and a finance team; some of whom would travel to south Asia for explosives training and return to Europe to wage violent jihad.'

"The indictment alleges that Damache, Khalid, LaRose and others recruited men online to “wage violent jihad” in south Asia and Europe. In addition, Damache, Khalid, LaRose and others allegedly recruited women who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe in support of such activity.

The indictment further alleges that LaRose, Paulin-Ramirez and others travelled to and around Europe to “participate in and support violent jihad”, and that Khalid and LaRose and others solicited funds online for terrorists."...

Walid Phares and I have long admired one another's work. He said of my 2005 bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) that it was "a ‘politically incorrect’ but academically sound and challenging work. Spencer displays an enormous amount of well-researched material. He throws the ball back into the camp of Arabist historians.” And about my 2003 book Onward Muslim Soldiers he said: “This book is a necessary tool for students of History, Politics, Civilization and Ideologies....This book is a must read for all those who want to understand the world after September 11.”

Now that Islamic supremacists and their useful idiots in the Leftist media have launched a campaign to discredit and marginalize everyone who dares to resist the advance of Islamic supremacism and Sharia in the U.S., Phares has come under fire for, among other things, those endorsements. The hard-Left pro-jihad propagandist Adam Serwer, who is probably still smarting from the blistering he got here and here, mentioned those book endorsements as part of his hit piece on Phares, without bothering (of course) to produce the slightest bit of evidence that anything in either book is hateful, bigoted, or even false.

The strategy is obvious: the Islamic supremacists and the Left are trying to pick off every freedom fighter one by one, focusing on destroying one of us and then using another's connections to the destroyed one as evidence that he should be destroyed next. The ultimate goal is to leave no impediment to the advance of Sharia and jihad in the U.S. And so it is imperative that we fight back; and today, in "The Jihad against Walid Phares" in National Review, Mario Loyola responds ably to the main charges against Phares:

In recent days, the liberal blogosphere has launched a concerted attack against Walid Phares, one of Mitt Romney’s senior Mideast advisers. The likes of Ali Gharib, McKay Coppins, and Adam Serwer think they smell blood because of Phares’s former association with the Lebanese Forces, the de facto army of the Lebanese Christians during the latter half of Lebanon’s civil war. “Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred,” intoned Mother Jones in its headline for Serwer’s piece. The [Hamas-linked] Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has joined in, with a particularly pathetic letter to the Romney campaign requesting “that Phares be removed” from his advisory position.

The assault on Phares is interesting not just because of the basic ignorance behind its main contentions but also because of its true motives.

A bit of background first. In the years after the 1967 war, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was expelled from the Jordanian West Bank and harried by Jordanian and Syrian forces all the way into Lebanon, where it eventually plunged the whole country into civil war. Phares was a teenager when the conflict erupted in 1975. In 1979, when he was 22 years old, Phares published the first of his many books, Pluralism in Lebanon, which called for Swiss-style federated autonomy for the country’s various ethnic and confessional communities. Of course, among liberals, an idea like that is a cause célèbre — when it is advanced by people they like — and a “hard-line extremist” product of “hateful ideology” when it comes from someone they disagree with.

By the early 1980s in Lebanon, Phares was already a well-known writer and was routinely invited to give talks and lectures to all kinds of organizations, including the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella organization in which virtually every Lebanese Christian group was represented. Phares had no official position with the Lebanese Forces until 1986, when he joined its 22-member Political Council as representative for the small left-of-center party he and his brother had previously launched. During his short tenure on the Council, he variously handled foreign affairs and diaspora issues. This, however, was enough for the Mother Jones “investigation” to uncover that Phares was a “key player” in a “sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon’s brutal, 15-year civil war.” 

The connection to one of the most infamous massacres of the conflict gives the Mother Jones story its hook. On their way to Beirut during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the Israelis surrounded two Palestinian refugee camps, at Sabra and Shatila, where PLO terrorists were ensconced. In August of that year, the hugely popular Christian leader Bashir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon — and assassinated three weeks later. Enraged, Phalangist elements of the Lebanese Forces, under intelligence chief Eli Hobeika (later revealed to be in league with the Syrians), asked Israeli permission to enter the camps and hunt down the perpetrators. In the ensuing days, hundreds and possibly thousands of Palestinian refugees were murdered. It was generally understood that the perpetrators were connected to the Lebanese Forces, if only because if you were Christian and you were armed then you were almost certainly with the Lebanese Forces.

The question is whether the war crime of a small rogue group operating clearly outside normal chains of command can be attributed to the organization as a whole. Here the answer is demonstrably “no.” The Lebanese Forces had become the de facto army and political organization of the entire Christian community in Lebanon. It is one thing to link a specific person to a specific massacre, but to discredit someone linked to the Lebanese Forces because of its links to the Sabra and Shatila massacre is to discredit virtually all Christian Lebanese who were prominent during the conflict, even those who rose to the fore years after the massacres. The real target of such an attack is the Christian Lebanese community itself. And let’s note the Left’s rank double standard when it comes to this sort of thing. The Left habitually insists that the United States and Israel recognize the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ elected “representatives,” even if it means legitimizing people who have actually murdered innocent civilians. Mother Jones doesn’t even insinuate that Phares was connected to the massacres, or even that he ever picked up a gun. And Phares’s membership on the Political Council of the Lebanese Forces occurred years after the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

The Mother Jones piece posits several other reasons why Phares should be discredited: that he espoused a “hateful” Christian separatist ideology, that he would be representing the interests of foreigners instead of those of the United States, and that his message is anti-Muslim. The first of these is clearly false — Phares is a federalist — but even if it were true, there wouldn’t be anything hateful about it. All of Lebanon’s confessional communities zealously protect their autonomy and political rights — one of them, the Shia Hezbollah, even has its own army. And how are the separatist movements of East Timor and Palestine not equally “hateful?” The second of the contentions comes from Paul Pillar, 20-year veteran of the CIA: “It should raise eyebrows anytime someone in a position to exert behind-the-scenes influence on a U.S. leader has ties to a foreign entity that are strong enough for foreign interests, and not just U.S. interests, to determine the advice being given,” he told the magazine. The warning about representing foreign views is waved about in the Mother Jones article as a kind of dark insinuation without elaboration, and we are left to wonder just what Serwer thinks he’s talking about. But it’s irrelevant in any case. Phares has lived in the United States since 1990. Other than membership in organizations committed to resisting Syria’s and Hezbollah’s domination of Lebanon (fully in line with longstanding U.S. policy) Phares’s career remains what it has always been — that of a major writer and intellectual on Mideast affairs.

Read it all.

That press release, entitled "MP Mike Freer - You have been targeted," which is also linked at the bottom of this report, and still turns up in Google search results, has since been taken down (this was the original link) and replaced by a release with a softer tone -- we wonder why.

At the time of this posting, one can still see from the Google snippet that it announces "MP for Finchley and Golders Green Mike Freer on the 28th October 2011 will be holding an 'Advice Surgery' at North Finchley Mosque." "MP urges action over Muslim group," from the UK Press Association, October 30:

Home Secretary Theresa May should take action against the extremist Muslims Against Crusades group, a Tory MP said after being threatened by the group at a constituency surgery.

Surgery: British English for office hours, or a meeting.

Up to a dozen protesters forced their way in to a north London mosque where Mike Freer was meeting constituents, prompting officials to lock him in a private room for his own safety.

In a chilling message ahead of the incident on the group's website, they referred to Labour MP Stephen Timms - who was stabbed while holding a surgery in east London last year - warning the attack on him should serve as a "piercing reminder" to politicians that "their presence is no longer welcome in any Muslim area".

Worst pun ever, and an open threat. Timms, one will recall, was stabbed by Roshonara Choudhry, who wanted to be a "martyr" in jihad because, she said, "that's the best way to die ... it's in the Qur'an."

The disturbance at North Finchley Mosque on Friday afternoon began after internet messages posted on Facebook and the Muslims Against Crusades website urged supporters to target the Finchley and Golders Green MP, who had played a prominent role in the campaign against Palestinian activist Sheikh Raed Salah's visit to the UK earlier this year.

Mr Freer said there was a vocal demonstration outside the mosque as he began his surgery, but then a second group of people arrived and forced their way inside.

"One of them sat at a table where I was dealing with a constituent and was abusive," he said.

Mr Freer, a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, said he was called a "Jewish homosexual pig".

He was escorted by staff at the mosque to a locked part of the building until assistance arrived and described the incident as "uncomfortable".

But it was only when he was made aware of the website's reference to the attack on East Ham MP Mr Timms that he realised the potential danger.

Mr Freer said: "What I'm saying is the Home Office needs to be continuing to monitor this group and as soon as they overstep the mark then the full force of the law should come down on them."

As of last month, Pakistan had decided not to undertake an operation against the Haqqanis for the time being, likely hoping to continue delaying until right around the time the ski slopes open in Jahannam.

Speaking of unpleasantly elevated temperatures, the U.S. has reportedly rewarded Pakistan's intransigence by "warming" to the idea of negotiating with the Haqqanis. An update on this story. "Haqqani network sends message with Kabul attacks," by Rod Nordland for the New York Times, October 30:

Kabul, Afghanistan - Every bomb, they say, has a return address.

When car bombs blew up in West Beirut, or explosions cut down worshipers in Sadr City mosques, survivors generally knew who was to blame, and more or less why — even when no one claimed responsibility.

So, too, with the suicide car bomb that on Saturday delivered the worst blow that NATO forces have suffered yet in Kabul, smashing into an armored bus full of troops and killing 13 foreigners, most of them Americans, and at least four Afghans.

The Taliban immediately took credit, but Afghan and American officials here strongly suspect that, more specifically, it was the fearsome Haqqani faction, whose fighters have proved better trained and organized than many Taliban, and which in recent months especially has focused its attacks on military targets rather than civilian ones.

The message the Haqqanis are sending — to the world and, especially, to the Afghan public — is that they are willing and able to kill foreign troops. And with the Haqqani bombs comes a particularly troublesome return address: Pakistan, where the group is based.

One Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity under diplomatic ground rules, said it was clear that if the Haqqanis were behind the attack, the militants were reacting to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent trip to Pakistan. During the visit, she again demanded that the government do something about the Haqqanis, whose bases are in the Pakistani territory of North Waziristan.

"No one goes to this much trouble if they don’t think you’ll get the message," the diplomat said.

An Afghan political analyst, Haroun Mir, agreed. "These are planned attacks in response to the pressure from the United States on Pakistan against the Haqqani network," Mir said. Beyond that, he added, "the Pakistanis are sending another message, too: They are not willing to abandon their support of the Taliban."

Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said Sunday in an interview that many of the so-called "spectacular" attacks in Kabul in recent months had been clearly linked to the Haqqani network. He described the group as "a criminal clan, like a Sicilian family clan, who are into criminal activity of all types, drug dealing, smuggling as well as insurgency." He added that it had been badly hit by coalition raids and arrests this year.

Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service, said about the bombing on Saturday: "Usually these things are the Haqqani network. Kabul is their area of operation, and all the signs and indications point to the Haqqani network." [...]

Since the summer, there has been a string of such attacks in the Kabul region, most characterized by complex assaults using suicide bombers or multiple attackers and acting on considerable intelligence about the target. [...]

On Thursday, another complex attack was launched in Kandahar on the Provincial Reconstruction Team, a largely American group that is helping to distribute aid money as part of the war effort.

Afghan officials have blamed all of those save the Rabbani assassination directly on the Haqqanis.

It was reported earlier this month that the Egyptian military was taking over the investigation of its massacre of Christian protesters from a civilian prosecutor, and Human Rights Watch has warned of an impending cover-up. The inversion of well-documented reality described in this report alone puts Orwell's Minitrue to shame.

"Egypt military jails dissident over Coptic clashes," by Samer al-Atrush for Agence France-Presse, October 30:

Egypt's ruling military jailed a veteran dissident and blogger on charges of inciting deadly clashes between soldiers and Christians this month, his sister and a fellow activist said.

Alaa Abdel Fatah, who was jailed for his activism under ousted president Hosni Mubarak's government in 2006, was remanded in custody for 15 days, said his sister Mona Seif, who is also a leading opponent of military trials.

The prosecutor may choose to formally refer him to a military court or release him.

Abdel Fatah's detention came days after US President Barack Obama called on Egypt's military to lift a state of emergency and end military trials for civilians.

Bahaa Saber, another activist who faces the same charges but was not detained, said he and Abdel Fatah were charged with inciting attacks against soldiers and participating in the October 9 clashes in Cairo.

Coptic Christians were protesting against an attack on a church when clashes broke out with soldiers outside the state television's building. Twenty-five people died in the violence, most of them Copts.

Witnesses said soldiers fired upon protesters and ran them over with armoured cars, accusations the military has denied. The military said a number of its soldiers died in the clashes but has refused to give a toll.

If that is the currently official line, it is a reversal. State television recanted claims of casualties among soldiers that were used at the time to incite Muslims to take to the streets against Christians.

"We are charged with inciting attacks against soldiers and participating in them," said Saber.

What, did bifurcating a human torso scratch a military vehicle?

Saber said he and Abdel Fatah attended the military prosecutor's summons on Sunday "convinced that the military has no right to intervene in judicial matters," and they refused to answer the prosecutor's questions.

"It was humiliating and unacceptable," he said. "This is an unjust escalation by the military. I will not be silenced nor intimidated, and I don't think people will be silent either."

The military has tried thousands of civilians since it took charge of the country after Mubarak's ouster on February 11, in trials rights groups say are unfair and result in harsh sentences.

Saber said the pair's lawyers were not allowed to see the military prosecution's evidence.

Seif said several people, including a journalist and a blogger who opposes the uprising that ousted Mubarak, had filed complaints against her brother.

The blogger, who calls himself Ahmed Spider, posted on YouTube an interview with Abdel Fatah that he said led to the military prosecutor's charges.

The video shows Abdel Fatah at a protest saying he wanted to "cut off the military's hand" and threatening to storm the interior ministry.

How this leads to and explains the events of October 9, the military will likely not discuss.

Saber questioned the military's impartiality in investigating the deadly clash, given its role in the incident.

Military spokesmen were not immediately available for comment, but top generals have denied that soldiers killed any demonstrators and blamed a plot by "enemies of the people."

Muhammad said: "Allah Mighty and Majestic sent me as a guidance and mercy to believers and commanded me to do away with musical instruments, flutes, strings, crucifixes, and the affair of the pre-Islamic period of ignorance."

And not just by asking nicely. "Death toll in Baghdad's twin bombings rises to 32," from the Associated Press, October 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

Iraqi police and health officials say the death toll of a twin bombing in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad has risen to 32.

The two blasts, which took place Thursday evening at a music store, wounded 71 other people, the officials said. A second bomb exploded minutes after the first, targeting rescue workers and onlookers.

Violence in Iraq is increasing with the approach of the end of the year deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw.

The officials said Friday that some of the more seriously wounded died overnight. Wounded were taken to numerous hospitals, they said, and it took time to get an accurate death toll.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Two police officials said the first explosion, at a music store shortly after 7 p.m., killed two people. The second bomb struck four minutes later, as rescue workers and others rushed to the scene, the officials said....

Multiple attacks that are timed to inflict casualties on emergency workers have been an al-Qaeda trademark.

"They told me to stop talking or they would take the necessary measures. I told them they might as well do whatever they have planned because there is no way I am going to stop."

"Mali lawmaker tells of threats over al-Qaida talk," by Martin Vogl for the Associated Press, October 30:

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — A Malian lawmaker who has been outspoken about his country's alleged role in providing refuge to an offshoot of the al-Qaida terror network says he was stopped in traffic Sunday in the capital by armed men who warned him to stop talking about the matter.

Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh, a member of parliament from the Bourem region in the north of Mali, where al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is known to operate, says he was stopped at around 11 a.m. in Bamako by four men in a black Mercedes.

"They presented themselves as agents of the Malian intelligence service. I could see they had automatic pistols concealed under their clothes," Assaleh told The Associated Press by telephone just hours after the incident.

"The men told me I should stop speaking about the links between the Malian state and the drugs trade, and the Malian state and AQIM," Assaleh said.

Assaleh said he has since checked with the head of the Malian intelligence service, who said the men were not working for him.

The lawmaker is among the most outspoken members of Mali's government about the problem of AQIM, a terror outfit that grew out of the groups fighting the Algeria's secular government in the 1990s. The groups merged with al-Qaida in 2006, and were pushed into Mali where they were able to install themselves with little resistance from local authorities.

AQIM militants have raised millions of dollars by kidnapping dozens of European aid workers and tourists, nearly all of whom were abducted in the countries neighboring Mali, then transported to Mali where they've been held until a ransom is secured.

Diplomatic cables made available by WikiLeaks indicate frustration in the diplomatic community with Mali's inaction.

Among the sources quoted in the cables is Assaleh, who acted as a hostage negotiator when an Austrian couple was kidnapped by AQIM. Another is the Algerian ambassador in Bamako who told his American counterpart, according to a February 2010 cable, that Mali is "willfully complicit" in the presence of AQIM on its soil. [...]

Assaleh said he had no idea who the men were, but he has no intention of giving in to the intimidation. "They told me to stop talking or they would take the necessary measures. I told them they might as well do whatever they have planned because there is no way I am going to stop," Assaleh said.

Everyone knew it, but no one spoke up, because they were afraid. Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Coptic Christian Student Murdered By Classmates for Wearing a Cross," from AINA, October 30 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

In mid-October Egyptian media published news of an altercation between Muslim and Christian students over a classroom seat at a school in Mallawi, Minya province. The altercation lead to the murder of a Christian student. The media portrayed the incident as non-sectarian. However, Copts Without Borders, a Coptic news website, refuted this version and was first to report that the Christian student was murdered because he was wearing a crucifix.

"We wanted to believe the official version," said activist Mark Ebeid, "because the Coptic version was a catastrophe, as it would take persecution of Christians also to schools." He blamed the church in Mallawi for keeping quiet about the incident.

Today the parents of the 17-year-old Christian student Ayman Nabil Labib, broke their silence, confirming that their son was murdered on October 16, in "cold blood because he refused to take off his crucifix as ordered by his Muslim teacher." Nabil Labib, the father, said in a taped video interview with Copts United NGO, that his son had a cross tattooed on his wrist as per Coptic tradition, as well as another cross which he wore under his clothes.

Both parents confirmed that Ayman's classmates, who were present during the assault and whom they met at the hospital and during the funeral, said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross. He refused and defiantly got out the second cross which he wore under his shirt. "The teacher nearly chocked by son and some Muslim students joined in the beating," said his mother.

According to Ayman's father, eyewitnesses told him that his son was not beaten up in the school yard as per the official story, but in the classroom. "They beat my son so much in the classroom that he fled to the lavatory on the ground floor, but they followed him and continued their assault. When one of the supervisors took him to his room, Ayman was still breathing. The ambulance transported him from there dead, one hour later."

Prosecution arrested and detained two Muslim students, Mostapha Essam and Walid Mostafa Sayed, pending investigations in the murder case.

The father said that everyone in Mallawi knew how the event took place, but not one of the students' parents was prepared to let their children come forward and give a statement to the police. "They are afraid of the school administration, which has lots of ways to harass the students, as well as being afraid of the families of the two Muslim killers."

"I insist that the Arabic teacher, the headmaster, and the supervisors should be charged as well as the two students who committed the crime," said Nabil. "The Arabic language teacher incited the students to attack my son, the headmaster who would not go to the classroom to see what is going on there when alerted to the beatings, but rather said to be left alone and continued sipping his tea, and the supervisors who failed in their supervising duties."

Prosecution has three witnesses, two men working at school who named the assailants and one student who wanted to retract his statement, but was refused."

"The evidence is under lock and key. Everyone is hiding the evidence. We will know the truth after forensic medicine has finished the report next week," said Nabil, adding that the head of detectives on the case tried to influence the witnesses, claiming that the murder took place as a result of friction between students."

However, last year he visited a Sharia village that was raided for weapons. Imagine: an entire village full of Misunderstanders of Islam, and nary a True, Peaceful Muslim around to set them straight. "Bosnia U.S. embassy attacker says he acted alone: lawyer," from Reuters, October 30:

(Reuters) - A gunman who opened fire with an assault rifle on the U.S. embassy in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo Friday said he had acted alone, his lawyer said on Sunday.

Lawyer Senad Dupovac said that 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic said he had no accomplices but he expressed concern for the defendant's mental state.

"He is confused and I do not think he is aware of his actions and I believe that he would need psychiatric expertise," said Dupovac, after meeting his client, who was wounded by a police sharpshooter before the arrest.

I expect that he was all too aware of them.

Bosnia's state prosecutor Dubravko Campara said he would ask the state court Monday to order a detention term for Jasarevic on suspicion of terrorism....

Serbian police arrested and later released 17 people at three locations in the southwest of the country, including in the mainly Muslim Novi Pazar, the hometown of the gunman.

Friday's attack in broad daylight paralysed central Sarajevo and saw shopkeepers scrambling for cover as the gunman paced up and down firing on the embassy before a police sharpshooter wounded him and he was arrested....

Bosnian police over the weekend raided the northern village of Gornja Maoca, as well as several other locations, and questioned a number of people suspected of having links with Jasarevic. His wife was also questioned.

Security officials said Jasarevic, who was convicted of robbery in Austria in 2005 and deported to Serbia, had entered Bosnia Friday morning.

He visited a group of followers of the puritanical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam in Gornja Maoca earlier in the year, Bosnian security officials said.

The village was also raided last year when police arrested several men and seized a large cache of weapons.

The villagers there live in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Many young Bosnian Muslims, particularly from rural areas, have in recent years adhered to Wahhabism under the influence of foreign fighters, most of whom left Bosnia after the 1992-95 war.

We Tried to Tell You, Part MCXLVIII. "Al Qaeda plants its flag in Libya," by Sherif Elhelwa for Vice, October 28:

It was here at the courthouse in Benghazi where the first spark of the Libyan revolution ignited. It’s the symbolic seat of the revolution; post-Gaddafi Libya’s equivalent of Egypt’s Tahrir Square. And it was here, in the tumultuous months of civil war, that the ragtag rebel forces established their provisional government and primitive, yet effective, media center from which to tell foreign journalists about their “fight for freedom.”

But according to multiple eyewitnesses—myself included—one can now see both the Libyan rebel flag and the flag of al Qaeda fluttering atop Benghazi’s courthouse.

According to one Benghazi resident, Islamists driving brand-new SUVs and waving the black al Qaeda flag drive the city’s streets at night shouting, "Islamiya, Islamiya! No East, nor West," a reference to previous worries that the country would be bifurcated between Gaddafi opponents in the east and the pro-Gaddafi elements in the west.

Earlier this week, I went to the Benghazi courthouse and confirmed the rumors: an al Qaeda flag was clearly visible; its Arabic script declaring that “there is no God but Allah” and a full moon underneath. When I tried to take pictures, a Salafi-looking guard, wearing a green camouflage outfit, rushed towards me and demanded to know what I was doing. My response was straightforward: I was taking a picture of the flag. He gave me an intimidating look and hissed, "Whomever speaks ill of this flag, we will cut off his tongue. I recommend that you don't publish these. You will bring trouble to yourself.”

He followed me inside the courthouse, but luckily my driver Khaled was close by, and interceded on my behalf. According to Khaled, the guard had angrily threatened to harm me. When I again engaged him in conversation, he told me "this flag is the true flag of Islam," and was unresponsive when I argued with him that historically Islam has never been represented by a single flag. The guard claimed repeatedly that there is no al Qaeda in Libya, and that the flag flying atop the courthouse is “dark black,” while the al Qaeda flag is charcoal black. To many locals, it’s a distinction without a difference. One man approached me with a friendly warning: "I recommend that you leave now; [the Islamist fighters] could be watching you."

But none of this should be surprising. In Tripoli, Abdelhakim Belhaj, a well-known al Qaeda fighter and founder of the notorious Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), is now leading the rebel “military counsel” in Tripoli. A few weeks ago, Belhaj ordered his fighters to take command of the Tripoli airport, then controlled by a group of Zintan fighters, a brigade of Berber Libyans who helped liberate the capital from Gaddafi loyalists. A few days later, Belhaj gave a speech emphasizing that his actions had the blessings of Libya’s National Transitional Counsel (NTC), who appointed him to the leadership of Tripoli’s military command.

According to a Libyan who didn't want to be named, a special military group inside the NTC is calling on Salafi fighters with military backgrounds to join a special group fighting in the rebellion. "There will be special benefits if you join whether you die in battle, or when you return home,” including monthly salaries. (One NTC source told me that Belhaj’s fighters are the only rebel fighters who receive a monthly salary.)

In a recent speech heralding the new beginning of post-Gaddafi Libya, Moustafa Abdeljalil, the head of the NTC, declared the country an “Islamic state, and sharia law is the source of all our laws." It was indeed an odd declaration for a leader celebrating his country’s liberation, leading many to wonder: Who are Abdeljalil and the NTC trying to appease?

It isn’t uncommon to discover rebels with radical backgrounds. In an off-the-record interview, one NTC member spoke casually of his past, explaining that the Gaddafi regime blacklisted him from the country for his ties to LIFG. He told me of his close association with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the infamous “blind cleric” jailed for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who he helped ferry across the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the mujahedeen fight against the Soviet Union.

The war to rid the country of the Gaddafi dictatorship might have ended, but the battle for control of post-revolutionary Libya has only just begun. And it will surprise few that assorted radicals, jihadists, Salafists, and LIFG veterans are attempting to fill the power vacuum and replace one dictatorship with another.

The ultimate goal on many sides is, of course, the caliphate, but even if that is achieved, it will risk collapsing on itself in infighting over the implementation of Sharia and sufficient displays of piety to secure the right to rule, save for a tyrant with the right combination of personality cult and iron fist to hold it together. That would be the struggle for one caliph's lifetime, to say nothing of his successor. The entire territory will be plunged into material and intellectual poverty, as its establishment blames outsiders and conspiracies, and seeks wealth to appropriate from the outside because it will have destroyed the means of generating its own.

We have called many times over the years for a sort of "Manhattan Project" for innovations toward the goal of energy independence. Imagine all of the ridiculous political and moral compromises Western countries would not make -- whether with Saudi Arabia or Libya -- if not for blackmail over oil.

An update on this story. "'Saudi prince backs cleric's bounty offer for IDF soldier'," from Reuters, October 29:

DUBAI - A member of the Saudi royal family has pledged $900,000 to a bounty offered by a prominent cleric to any Palestinian who kidnaps an IDF soldier, according to comments aired on a private TV station on Saturday.

Prince Khaled bin Talal, a brother of Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, told Daleel television over the phone that he decided to contribute to Awad al-Qarni's bounty after the Saudi cleric received death threats for offering $100,000 to capture an IDF soldier.

"Dr Awad al-Qarni said he was offering $100,000 to only take a prisoner but they responded by offering $1 million to kill Awad al-Qarni," Prince Khaled said, according to a recording of the call published on Daleel's website.

"I tell Dr. Awad al-Qarni, 'I will be in solidarity with you and pay the remaining $900,000 to take an Israeli soldier prisoner so that other prisoners can be freed,'" he added.

Qarni said on his Facebook page this week that he made the offer in response to a similar reward promised by an Israeli family for anyone who catches the person who killed one of its members in 1998, following a prisoner exchange agreement earlier this month of more than 1,000 Palestinians for the captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.

Qarni is well known in Saudi Arabia for his outspoken views but is not part of the official clerical establishment.

But he clearly has friends in high places.

Lather, rinse, repeat: after a certain period of calm, the jihadists in Gaza decide to see how far they can push against Israel again. Hamas is putatively in control of Gaza, but will not accept responsibility for attacks launched from the territory. They hope instead to reap the benefits of plausible deniability for the attack in a situation where jihadists can open or cease fire at will, and no one can be held responsible.

Hamas and its sympathizers will do all they can to cast Israel as the aggressor for not playing that game. "Man injured in Ashkelon rocket attack dies from wounds," by Yaakov Laapin, Lahav Harkov, and Tovah Lazaroff for the Jerusalem Post, October 30:

A man was killed and four people were wounded when southern Israel was bombarded with long-range Grad rockets fired by Islamic Jihad from Gaza on Saturday.

The rocket casualty was later named as Ami Moshe, 56, of Ashkelon. Moshe was on his way home to his family when the air raid siren went off. He left his vehicle and ran for cover, but was mortally injured by flying shrapnel from the rocket fired at a residential neighborhood in Ashkelon. He was rushed to the Barzilai Medical Center in the city, but doctors were unable to save his life. Moshe was able to answer a call from his concerned wife and tell her that he had been injured before being evacuated to hospital.

Security chiefs searched for a way to contain the situation on Saturday, as the Air Force went into action to strike terror cells preparing rockets for launch in northern and southern Gaza.

IDF confirmed killing 10 Islamic Jihad members on Saturday. It struck four terror targets in Gaza between 9 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Saturday night. The targets included a terror cell in southern Gaza planning to fire a projectile, a terrorist planning a rocket strike, and two rocket launch sites in northern Gaza. An additional terrorist in southern Gaza planning a rocket attack was also struck from the air on Saturday night. Furthermore, a cell in northern Gaza was also hit by the Air Force.

Some 200,000 school children will stay at home as classes in Ashdod, Beersheba and Kiryat Malachi were canceled by local officials, and the IDF Home Front Command asked people who live within 40 kilometers of the Gaza Strip to stay near structures protected against rockets.

On Saturday, 35 projectiles, including Grads and mortar shells, were fired at southern communities, hitting built-up areas in Ashdod, Ashkelon and regional councils across the region. A number of the rockets caused extensive damages to buildings.

The IDF struck a rocket-launching cell in Rafah, in the southern Strip, following the upsurge in attacks, reportedly killing two terrorists.

Hamas is responsible for what takes place in Gaza,” the army said....

There has been a notable double standard in the mainstream media's coverage of stories of brutality and possible war crimes committed by the forces of Libya's National Transitional Council. As videos circulated of a bloodied Gaddafi being beaten about the head with a shoe, and then of his corpse, the trope went something like this:

"Some viewers may find these images coming out of Libya disturbing. But others say the Libyan people have suffered so long that it's only understandable that they want to vent their rage."

Swap out "Libya" for some other country, and "the Libyan people" for some other party, and the double standard becomes evident. Or, compare the coverage of the Navy SEALs' raid against bin Laden, or even the coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution, and there is an acceptance (and even approval) of bloodlust in Gaddafi's demise not seen elsewhere.

Dictator or no dictator, the video (find it on YouTube, if you can stomach it) of Gaddafi being sodomized with a weapon is horrifying, recalling Peter Hitchens' misgivings once again: "It looks to me pretty much like a football crowd armed with AK-47s and bazookas, with the added ingredient of Islamic militancy. Why am I expected to like it?"

And then there's the sodomy. Bill Maher, to his credit, does not take an "anything but Islam" approach to his religious satire, and considers the proverbial elephant in the room below. A quiet subculture of homosexuality is a social phenomenon widely acknowledged within Islamic countries, inextricably tied to the strict segregation of men and women, with an undercurrent of pious misogyny.

"Maher: Gadhafi sodomy video suggests homosexuality has become sexuality in Islamic culture," by Jeff Poor for The Daily Caller, October 29:

HBO host Bill Maher has been no friend of religion over the years. But unlike many of the secular left in America, his attacks haven’t been just on Christianity, but he’s been critical of Islam as well.

And on the Friday night broadcast of his “Real Time” program, Maher drew another conclusion about the Muslim culture, using a video that has been circulating of former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi ultimate demise.

“Alright, let me ask you this because I alluded to it during the monologue and I’m not going to show the footage,” he said. “We could but we’re talking about the fact that as soon as they caught Gadhafi they stuck something up his ass.”

Based on that and how that particular culture strictly interprets Shariah law in the treatment of women, Maher concluded that homosexuality has become sexuality.

“Now Groucho Marx said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” Maher continued. “And sometimes a stick up your ass is just a stick up your ass. But don’t these people have issues? I mean, when the first thing you do is stick something up the guy’s ass, I feel like it says something about you as a culture -- the men in that culture. When you segregate the women and you cover them up and homosexuality becomes sexuality.”

Abdisalan Taqabalahullaah shows his gratitude for the country that took him in, gave him a home, and kept him safe while jihad warfare wracked his homeland. "Somali militants post tape of 'US suicide bomber,'" by Abdi Guled and Katharine Houreld AP, October 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - An al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group on Sunday posted a tape allegedly made by an American citizen who blew himself up during an attack on an African Union base in Somalia's capital that left at least 10 people dead.

The young man, who would be at least the fourth American to become a suicide bomber in Somalia, urges other young people not to "just chill all day" and instead fight nonbelievers around the world.

The website Somalimemo.net, often used by the al-Shabab militia, said Somali-American bomber Abdisalan Taqabalahullaah had emigrated to the U.S. when he was 2 years old.

It was not possible to verify the claims and the U.S. Embassy was not able to comment. U.S. authorities estimate that at least 20 American passport holders have joined the insurgents in Somalia. At least three of them became suicide bombers.

The young man had an American accent and mixed Muslim terminology with American slang as he urged Muslims to carry out attacks against non-Muslims around the world.

"My brothers and sisters, do jihad in America, do jihad in Canada, do jihad in England, anywhere in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in China, in Australia," the voice said. "Anywhere you find (unbelievers), fight them and be firm against them.

"Today jihad is what is most important thing for the Muslim ummah," he said, using a word for the Islamic community. "It is not important that you, you know, you you become a doctor or you become, you know, uh, some sort of engineer."

"We have to believe in Allah and die as Muslims ... Brainstorm," the youth said. "Don't, don't just sit around and, you know, be, be be a couch potato and you know, you know, just like, you know, just chill all day, you know. It doesn't, it doesn't, it will not benefit you, it will not benefit yourself, or the Muslims."...

This clown lived in America from the age of two. We are always told that Muslims in America are peaceful and reject violent jihad and the beliefs of Al-Qaeda and its allies. So how did Abdisalan Taqabalahullaah end up misunderstanding Islam so drastically? Did he attend a mosque in the U.S.? If so, which one? What is being taught there? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Hamas-linked CAIR claimed that Senator Marco Rubio and Governor Rick Scott of Florida pulled out of a Tea Party event because Pamela Geller was speaking. CAIR was lying, of course. Will Honest Ibe Hooper or his Florida henchmen issue a retraction and apology? I won't be holding my breath. War is deceit, eh, Ibe?

Here is the Tea Party group's press release setting the record straight, as published at Atlas Shrugs:

Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Makes hasty press release for attempted political exploitation of Senator Rubio and Governor Scott Press Release October 30, 2011

Response to press release from the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) thanking Governor Scott and Senator Rubio for not speaking at the Florida State Tea Party State Convention in Daytona Beach Fl.

http://news.yahoo.com/cair-fl-thanks-rubio-scott-avoiding-event-hate-195012459.html

Senator Rubio and Governor Rick Scott never confirmed their appearance at our Florida Tea Party Convention. They were invited but due to scheduling conflicts are unable to attend. It was an error on my part that they were listed as confirmed speakers and our website has been corrected.

We thank CAIR for pointing out the mistake. We wish that the leadership of CAIR had checked with us first to confirm their status before sending out a mass press release stating that the Senator and the Governor were skipping our event.. We would like to thank Governor Scott and Senator Rubio for endorsing our convention and for scheduling a representative and or offering a letter of support in lieu of appearing at our convention. Its unfortunate their schedule will not permit their attendance in person. Senator Rubio has offered to send us a video and or a letter of support for all attendees in lieu of his appearance.

All guest speakers have a right to address the convention as per the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution and Senator Rubio and Governor Scott wish all the speakers well because they support their Constitutional rights.

Ms. Pamela Geller has a right to speak too. It is unfortunate that the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) do not support her 1st Amendment rights even if they disagree with her message. This would fall in line with Sharia law.

The leadership of CAIR is welcome to speak in Daytona Beach at our convention. Perhaps they could discuss Sharia Law and its subjugation of women. They could talk about schools having to cater to their prayer needs, making sure our school text books are vetted by Muslims to make sure they are Sharia compliant. They could discuss child brides and the stoning of women after being buried up to their necks in sand for breaking Sharia Law. They could discuss Jihad which means war against the Kafirs or non believers with an ultimate goal to establish Sharia law world wide.

It looks like Muslims will get their Sharia law in Libya and Egypt thanks to military and political intervention by President Obama in direct violation of Article 2, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

We do welcome CAIR at our Convention to speak before or after Ms. Pam Geller addresses the crowds. Let us know your intent.

CAIR was offered the same opportunities to speak at the US Constitution and Freedom Rally on August 21st 2010 in Fort Walton Beach Florida but they never showed up. Instead CAIR tried to shut down the Constitutional speaking rights of gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional candidates by placing political pressure on them not speak at our rally. CAIR tried to disrupt our freedom of speech which could have also disrupted the Constitutional rights of Brigitte Gabriel the President of Act for America.

We all ignored the demands of CAIR and the event went ahead as planned. The Constitution does not capitulate to Sharia law or those who disagree with our message. The US Constitution is a strong and powerful document that sustains itself no matter how hard people try to usurp it. Ms. Pamela Geller is also welcome to speak at our US Constitution and Freedom Rally II on March 17th 2012. The leadership of CAIR is welcome to speak too. Instead of muzzling our free speech CAIR should embrace it. Any attempts by the leadership of CAIR to shut down our 1st Amendment rights will be ignored and or dealt with as required depending on the level of its severity.

God Bless America.

Copy to:

CAIR-South Florida Executive Director Nezar Hamze, 954-673-9459 E-Mail: nhamze@cair.com;
CAIR-Tampa Executive Director Hassan Shibly, 813-541-4321, E-Mail: hshibly@cair.com;
CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, or 202-488-8787, E-Mail: ihooper@cair.com;
CAIR Communications Coordinator Amina Rubin, 202-488-8787, 202-341-4171, E-Mail: arubin@cair.com

Geoff Ross
President
Emerald Coast Tea Party Patriots
Media Relations. Florida Tea Party Convention
Senior Chief Petty Officer USN (Ret.) Surface Warfare/Air Warfare/ Airborne
www.theroguepatriot.org
850-313-1893

Pam Dahl
Chairman
Florida Tea Party Convention
Daytona Beach

Copy to all leaders of the Tea Party across the United States of America

TRIPOLI, Libya — It was just a passing reference to marriage in a leader’s soberly delivered speech, but all week it has unsettled women here as well as allies abroad.

In announcing the success of the Libyan revolution and calling for a new, more pious nation, the head of the interim government, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, also seemed to clear the way for unrestricted polygamy in a Muslim country where it has been limited and rare for decades.

It looked like a sizable step backward for women at a moment when much here — institutions, laws, social relations — is still in play after the end of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42 years of authoritarian rule.

"A sizable step backwards"? Is Islam not grand, noble, pure, etc. etc.? Is even the New York Times becoming Islamophobic?

In his speech, Mr. Abdel-Jalil declared that a Qaddafi-era law that placed restrictions on multiple marriages, which is a tenet of Islamic law, or Shariah, would be done away with. The law, which stated that a first wife had to give permission before others were added, for instance, had kept polygamy rare here.

“This law is contrary to Shariah and must be stopped,” Mr. Abdel-Jalil told the crowd, vowing that the new government would adhere more faithfully to Shariah. The next day he reiterated the point to reporters at a news conference: “Shariah allows polygamy,” he said. Mr. Abdel-Jalil is known for his piety.

For all of the things we already knew were wrong with that interview, here is another. It was bad enough that Shalit was held up from being reunited with his family, and it was bad enough that he was subject to one last round of psychological torment, surely wondering if saying the wrong thing while still in custody with Hamas gunmen in the room might somehow affect his release.

But the Egyptian media could not even wait for Shalit to be checked by a doctor. "Red Cross Doctors Did Not Examine Gilad Shalit Before Controversial Egyptian TV Interview," by Richard Behar for Forbes, October 26:

Established journalists are loath to criticize their own: with jobs scarce, cowardice proves the better career path, especially when too many reporters sit blindfolded inside their own glass houses. Add in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the media community goes into a collective coma.

Such is the case in the aftermath of last week’s exclusive “interview” that Egyptian state TV conducted with Gilad Shalit (also spelled Schalit) – the Israeli soldier who’d been held hostage by Hamas for five years. You can watch the interview for yourself here; while only 9 minutes long, you may come away feeling like a hostage yourself – to one of the most egregious interviews of our era, conducted just moments after Shalit was released in exchange for more than 1,000 imprisoned Palestinians. (The deal required Shalit to be turned over to Egypt – serving as a “neutral” intermediary – which, after the interview, sent the soldier to Israel.)

What’s extraordinary is that so few voices in the international journalism community – outside of Israel, Gaza or Egypt – have weighed in on it. Last week, I sent an email to the interviewer, Shahira Amin, Egypt’s most famous TV journalist – posted afterwards in a news story.

Three days ago, she responded at great length in an email, most of which she subsequently published in an open letter in the Jerusalem Post. In her email to me, Amin defends her decision to conduct the interview with Shalit – in part because she says the interview was conducted “AFTER [her caps] he had been released by Hamas and had a medical checkup by the Red Cross.”

But here’s the problem: Red Cross spokesman Hicham Hassan wrote me today that “ICRC representatives met Mr. Shalit briefly after his transfer to the Egyptian authorities. However, he was not met by an IRC doctor as this has [sic] not been solicited.”

This is no small detail: The issue of Shalit’s medical condition (physical and mental) lies at the very heart of why the interview should never have taken place. So does the fact that a masked Hamas soldier – from the group’s armed wing – stood with a camera in that interview room. Just how “released” could Shalit have felt at that moment – in an Israel-unfriendly country such as Egypt – to freely consent to an interview? Considering that masked Hamas men were the only people he could see for five years, did he feel he was in any position to say no?

“This was an illusion of choice,” says Dr. Nancy Zarse of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, an expert in hostage negotiations for the FBI, federal prisons, and the Chicago Police. “I watched the video of the interview. There was evidence of increased autonomic [nervous system] arousal, a lot of heavy breathing, and there were times that I thought he looked scared. This wasn’t really that you have the option to say no. I haven’t met or spoken with him, but I would understand that an individual like this still feels captive – that an interview like this would become part and parcel of the captivity.

Article 13 of the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners calls for them to be protected from "public curiosity":

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 have long been used to protect the human dignity of current and former war prisoners. While those laws apply to governments, and not media organizations, keep in mind that the Shalit interview was conducted for Egyptian state TV – an arm of government. Since 2003, the British Red Cross and the British Government have made efforts to provide an updated interpretation of the requirement to protect prisoners of war or civilian internees against “insults and public curiosity” by TV media. For one thing, the Red Cross notes, publicity can humiliate the person and make his return to his own country more difficult. And many of those interviews are done “under duress.”

Keep in mind that this is also the "new" Egypt. The modern, moderate one that is supposed to respect human rights (when it is not ramming crowds of civilian protesters with military vehicles).

The Red Cross recognizes that there can be difficult borderline cases, but I think it’s clear to anyone watching Amin’s interview that Shalit was still in a state of shock and very much under duress.

Amin kicked off the interview by saying, “Gilad Shalit, you look fine!” But in her letter to me, she noted that he looked “terribly tired and malnourished … thinner than pictures I had seen of him and pale … His voice was weak and he seemed to have difficulty concentrating, but was in high spirits … .” In a discussion with another reporter, Amin was quoted saying that Shalit seemed “exhausted” and that she felt maternal and “held his hands a few times to calm him down.” She also said the interview had to be stopped several times because Shalit “felt uncomfortable.”

Readers and viewers, of course, can judge it all for themselves. I provided my email exchanges with Amin – plus the link to the video interview – to Gene Foreman, one of the most respected editors in the news business and the author of The Ethical Journalist: Making Responsible Decisions in the Pursuit of News – a book described as “a GPS for sound decision-making.”

Foreman’s take on the interview done by Shahira Amin? “It’s pretty clear even to a lay person that the soldier is not in physical condition to undergo that kind of interview,” he says, adding that, besides exploiting Shalit, she too might have been exploited by Egyptian state TV, especially by pointedly asking whether Shalit will now “help campaign for the release of the 4,000 Palestinian prisoners still languishing in Israeli prisons.” In her email to me, Amin noted that she “had” to ask that question. Just why she had to do that – she didn’t say.

The head of Egyptian TV said it was just too hot a news story to pass up. It was also too much of a propaganda coup, and an opportunity to heap more abuse on Shalit.

There are no instructive journalism lessons here – but budding propagandists would do well to take note of Amin’s odious work.

Pamela Geller tells the story herself:

Last week, The Hyatt Place hotel canceled a Sugar Land Tea Party event because I was scheduled to speak. Hundreds and hundreds of patriots called, wrote, sold their stock, and the Hyatt Place subsequently apologized. Despite having to scramble at the last minute, the industrious Tea party found another venue. The event was held at the Sugar Land Community Center, and the house was packed. Hundreds of freedom lovers came out to hear what the Shariah forbids: the truth. It was an amazing evening.

Watch the speech. Get the truth that the dhimmis fear to tell and the Islamic supremacists fear will be told.

Will the Islamophobia never end? Eurabia Update: "Muslims Stone Catholic Festival-Goers in France," by Cheradenine Zakalwe at Islam Versus Europe, October 29 (thanks to Jack):

Muslims have attacked Christians attending a Catholic celebration in southern France.

The Joyeuse Union Don Bosco [Joyous Union Don Bosco] takes places in Nîmes, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady the Virgin of Santa Cruz, built by French people repatriated from the Algerian city of Oran following Algerian independence. These people were driven out of the place they grew up by Muslim aggression. Now they face it in France too!

After a day of welcoming and reunions, around 7 pm, the participants were leaving in their cars and vehicles when "young Arab immigrants" from the city started to throw stones at the vehicles descending from the sanctuary.

The local police, whose station is in this area, were immediately notified and the event organisers had to arrange a diversion to another route to protect the occupants of the vehicles from the savage attacks which continued.

As for the press, other than a brief honest article in "la Provence", there was no mention of the "intifada" (war of stones) attacks against the Christian religious community at Nîmes.

...it would seem that the media silence on these facts, which are occurring more and more frequently, serves to exonerate, even protect, the Muslims in their racist and anti-religious acts.

Sounds like the U.S., where as far as the mainstream media is concerned, actual hatred and supremacism is portrayed as righteous victimhood, and freedom fighting is depicted as "hatred" and "bigotry."

Watch this one-minute video and see an armored-vehicle literally run over a handful of Christians for protesting the constant destruction of their churches in Egypt, at the recent Maspero Massacre. Such vehicles were made possible by U.S. military aid, supposedly for the protection of Egyptian "citizens." But apparently the military -- hailed by the Western media as the "savior" of Egypt for ousting Mubarak -- does not see the nation's Christian minorities as "citizens," but dhimmis who have no right to protest -- unsurprisingly so, considering the military, even in Egypt's early black-and-white movies, was known as al-Jihadiyya -- "the wagerer of jihad."

Muslim Brotherhood influence in the White House harming persecuted Christians. "Obama’s Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians’ Access to White House," from Creeping Sharia, October 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Americans were warned about Mogahed when Obama hired her in 2009 [Obama Appoints Radical Muslim Apologist To Faith-Based Committee], and well before. H/t Bella

via El Cid at Big Peace: Report: Obama’s Muslim Advisers Block Middle Eastern Christians’ Access to the White House.

From a Middle East correspondent:

Beirut Arab news agency al Nashra reported on Saturday November 22, that [White House Muslim envoy] Dalia Mogahed has succeeded in canceling a meeting between the Maronite Patriarch of Lebanon and President Barack Obama. Writing in al Nashra, the reporter said “an unnamed US source told the news agency, that those who sought canceling a visit of (the spiritual head of the Maronite Church) Patriarch Beshara Rahi to the White House are Dalia Mujahid (Mogahed), the highest adviser on Arab and Islamic Affairs in the State Department, who is from Egyptian origins. And that,” according to al Nashra, “heeding a request by the higher leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, who consider that US Administration must support the Islamist Sunni current facing the Iranian current in the region.”

The al Nashra report, circulating now widely in the Middle East, but also in the United States and across the Lebanese Christian Diaspora confirms what was already known about the impact the so-called “advisors on Arab and Islamic Affairs” in the White House on Middle East issues in general and on US policies regarding the Christians in the Middle East.

The anti-Middle East Christian lobbying in Washington, attributed to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and sympathizers is not limited to the Maronites, who form the bulk of the two million Lebanese Americans. According to research showing the links between Presidential adviser Dalia Mogahed and the Muslim Brotherhood, and to NGOs representing Middle East Christian groups in the US, blocking Middle East Christian meetings at the White House and the State Department have been associated with the work of the “advisors” and their allies in the Islamist camp in Washington such as CAIR and MPAC.

Observers believe that the campaign against Americans from Middle East Christian descent has also reached Terrorism experts and congressional advisers and NGO leaders whose field focuses on the Islamist and Jihadist movements. Indeed, in a report published this year, John Esposito, the chair of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University (and an associate to Mogahed) endorses sharp attacks against experts and analysts, always charging “Islamophobia.”

Blocking the Maronite Patriarch from the White House is a move that is directed to all Middle East Christians in the United States and can have significant effects in the region and even on US politics. Brooklyn Bishop for the Maronites in the US, who are part of America’s Catholic Church criticized President Obama for not meeting the Patriarch during his visit. Bishop Mansour wrote:

Patriarch Rai’s warning about the future of Christians in Syria is not taboo. Christians are in a state of peril in the same way that Christians of Iraq were a few years ago when two-thirds of them migrated out… A new day is dawning in the Middle East. The Arab Spring is happening with little vision for the summer that will ensue.

However, for advisors in the Administration to rebuke the spiritual head of a main Middle East Christian community, and engage in a witch hunt against Middle East Christians, including US citizens, for the benefit of the Muslim Brotherhood is a serious matter the American public should not tolerate.

Indeed.

I tried to tell you. "Benghazi men insist on sharia in new Libya," from AFP, October 28:

More than 200 men from Benghazi staged a demonstration on Friday insisting that Islamic sharia law must be the basis of legislation in newly liberated Libya.

"The Koran is the basis, and our constitution must be based on sharia," shouted the men as they gathered in Freedom Square, the site of the initial protests against the now slain Moammar Qaddafi's 42-year rule....

"We are a Muslim country and our constitution must reflect our religious beliefs. There is nothing above our religious beliefs," said Ahmad al-Moghrabi, a prayer leader at a local Benghazi mosque, who was among 200-300 people who rallied in support of sharia.

The attacker was from the Taliban. You know, the group whose leader the Secretary of State just invited to negotiations, saying that his involvement was crucial for the prospects for peace. More fruit of the Obama Administration's fantasy-based policymaking regarding Islam: "13 Americans Said to Be Among Killed in Kabul Attack," by Rod Nordland and Sharifullah Sahak for the New York Times, October 29 (thanks to Bill):

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 13 American soldiers were among more than 20 people killed when a Taliban suicide car bomber attacked an armored NATO shuttle bus in Kabul on Saturday, a Western military official confirmed.

It was the worst loss of life among American troops in the capital in several years.

The attack on the bus, known as a Rhino because of its heavy armor, took place in front of the American University on a route often traveled by military trainers from NATO bases in downtown Kabul to the Kabul Military Training Center. At least eight civilians were reported among the dead, including three Afghan police officers and two children.

A military dog was also killed, the military official said.

That will please the followers of the man who "ordered the killing of dogs," such that his followers "would send (men) in Medina and its corners and we did not spare any dog that we did not kill, so much so that we killed the dog that accompanied the wet she-camel belonging to the people of the desert." -- Sahih Muslim 3811

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility, saying that a suicide bomber named Abdul Rahman Hazarbos drove a truck with 1,500 pounds of explosives into a bus carrying foreign military trainers, killing all aboard. He claimed 25 NATO soldiers were killed in all.

As I have said many times in the context of many similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist. This is yet more fruit of the unwillingness to make even a cursory attempt to take that fact into account.

And every few weeks (the last time was September 26), I find the paragraph above in the archives and post it again.

And yet the dhimmi dim bulbs in the intelligence community in Washington are busy making sure that none of their teaching materials offend terror-linked Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. This latest mass murder in Afghanistan is the fruit also of their witless useful idiocy and political correctness. They have done nothing and are doing nothing to equip American personnel in Afghanistan with any understanding of why this might happen, so as to allow them to guard themselves against it. And so the death toll of willful blindness, fantasy-based policymaking and politically correct falsehoods about Islam continues to mount.

"13 Americans Said to Be Among Killed in Kabul Attack," by Rod Nordland and Sharifullah Sahak for the New York Times, October 29 (thanks to Bill):

[...] In addition, three Australian NATO soldiers were killed on Saturday by an Afghan soldier who turned his weapon on them, Afghan officials said....

The attack on the Australians took place in the Nish District of Kandahar Province, at a forward operating base used by Australian troops to train the Afghan National Army. Gen. Abdul Hameed, the commander of the Afghan National Army’s 205th Corps, said an Afghan Army trainee opened fire on his Australian trainers, killing three of them as well as an Afghan interpreter. At least nine others were wounded, General Hameed said, seven of them Australians.

“We don’t know the cause of this shooting yet, and we are investigating,” he said.

Yes, it's a total mystery!

“The soldier was not new, the first phase of his training was completed and he was in the second phase of his training.”...

In Khost, unknown gunmen opened fire on a car Friday night, killing four of the occupants, all of them drivers for NATO supply vehicles, said Col. Zeyarat Gul Azans, spokesman for the Khost police chief.

Also on Saturday, a young female suicide bomber on foot attacked government offices in eastern Asadabad city, wounding four, according to the chief of security for Kunar Province, Abdul Sabor Allayar. Guards at the Afghan intelligence service spotted the woman, who was wearing a burqa, and shot her to death before she could get close enough to cause much harm, he said.

JOHOR BARU: PAS' intention to carry out hudud law will cause the nation to backslide and scare away investors, said MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek.

The impact would be great on foreign direct investments and also tourists who would shy away, he said, adding that several countries practising hudud law were backward except for their rich natural resources.

Speaking to reporters after attending a function at the Hock Lin Gong Chinese temple here yesterday, Dr Chua stressed that even non-Muslims in the country would be affected, especially in terms of economy and education.

“It is misleading and a lie to say that the implementation of hudud will not affect non-Muslims,” he said.

Islamophobic indeed. Is it not also true to say that countries that practice Sharia, or countries that practice Islam, are also backward except for their rich natural resources? And that the practice of Islam in said states might have something to do with this backwardness?

An update on this story. "Terrorist attack outside U.S. Embassy in Bosnia," by Sabina Niksic for the Associated Press, October 28:

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A man armed with hand grenades and an automatic weapon opened fire outside the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia Friday in what authorities called a terrorist attack. A policeman and the gunman were wounded, but the embassy said none of its employees was hurt.

Sarajevo Mayor Alija Behmen said the gunman "got off a tram with a Kalashnikov and started shooting at the American Embassy." Witnesses told Bosnian television that the man urged pedestrians to move away, saying he was targeting only the embassy.

Wearing the holy highwaters:

He wore a beard and was dressed in an outfit with short pants that reveal his ankles — typical for followers of the conservative Wahhabi branch of Islam.

One police officer guarding the building was wounded before police surrounded the gunman. After a 30-minute standoff, the sound of a single shot echoed and AP video showed the shooter slump to the ground.

Police arrested the wounded man — who one of Bosnia’s three presidents said is a foreigner — and took him away in an ambulance as pedestrians cowered behind buildings and vehicles. Hospital spokeswoman Biljana Jandric told The Associated Press the gunman had a minor wound to his leg, and would spend the night at the hospital before being released into police custody.

State Prosecutor Dubravko Campara identified the shooter as Mevlid Jasarevic, from Novi Pazar, the administrative capital of the southern Serbian region of Sandzak, who was tried in Austria for robbery in 2005.

Campara said Jasarevic had crossed the Serbian border into Bosnia Friday morning. He said Jasarevic had two hand grenades with him when he was arrested and is also currently under investigation by Serbian police, but did not detail why.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed his identity and said he is 23 years old. Bosnian TV said Jasarevic is a Wahhabi follower.

He complains that they have been "punished" for that mistake. In other words, the message is unchanged: they were surprised they lost the war, and they still want a do-over. "Palestinian leader: Arabs erred on 1947 partition," by Amy Teibel for the Associated Press, October 28:

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Palestinian president, in a remarkable assessment delivered on Israeli TV, said Friday the Arab world erred in rejecting the United Nations' 1947 plan to partition Palestine into a Palestinian and a Jewish state.

The Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept a U.N. plan to partition the then-British-controlled mandate of Palestine sparked widespread fighting, then Arab military intervention after Israel declared independence the following year. The Arabs lost the war.

"It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told Channel 2 TV in a rare interview to the Israeli media. "But do they (the Israelis) punish us for this mistake 64 years?

Abbas also addressed his negotiations with former Israeli leader Ehud Olmert, now in the spotlight because of the publication of the memoirs of former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.

Rice backs Israel's account that Olmert made a peace offer that was rejected, while Palestinians say that talks never actually reached a point where a firm offer was on the table....

By all appearances, the proposed law promises to be yet another exercise in creating the official appearance of "tolerance" on paper, so that business as usual can continue in practice: the cards have been shuffled somewhat, but the dealer is the same, and the deck remains stacked against non-Muslims.

Indonesia has tried this approach before, notably in its 2006 law on houses of worship. The United Nations High Commision for Refugees reported in 2009:

In response to persistent criticism from religious minorities and international observers over the number of religious venues closed or destroyed in Indonesia, the Ministry of Religion issued Joint Ministerial Decree 1/2006 to replace a previous, vaguely-worded decree that required religious groups to gain "community approval" before they could expand, renovate, or open new religious venues. Decree 1/2006 requires a religious group with a membership of more than 90 persons to obtain the support of 60 local residents for any plans to build or expand a religious venue. That petition must then be sent to the Joint Forum for Religious Tolerance (FKUB), a provincial panel of religious leaders chosen proportionally by the number of religious adherents in the province. If there remains strong community opposition to the religious venue, the FKUB can find an alternative location.

Other recent examples of such legal "reforms" that actually threaten to make matters worse include Egypt's similar proposed law on houses of worship, and the recent decree from the Egyptian military that purportedly outlaws "discrimination," but leaves serious questions about actual enforcement.

If the law is adopted, Indonesia will hold it up as proof that it is still a "moderate" Muslim nation. But the law is riddled with contradictions and ambiguities that set up opportunities for abuse. Human Rights Watch has also observed that the bill is sponsored by the same Religious Affairs Ministry that called for a ban on the Ahmadi Muslim sect, already brutally abused in Indonesia and blamed for inviting abuse simply by existing.

How will intolerance of the "tolerance" bill be tolerated? "Religious tolerance bill creates news [sic] problems in Indonesia," by Mathias Hariyadi for Asia News, October 28:

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Far from being a breakthrough, the religious tolerance bill has stirred controversy on fundamental issues. Drafted by the three government bodies, namely the Ministry for Religious Affairs, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry for People’s Welfare, the bill on religious tolerance, known here as the Rencana [Recangan -ed.] Undang-undang (RUU) Kerukunan [Umat] Beragama, was presented to the Indonesian House of Parliament earlier this year (February 2011). After a series of discussions between members of the Eighth Commission of the House and top government officials from the three ministries, the RUU Kerukunan Beragama has met with strong criticism in Indonesian civil society and it is unclear when it might be adopted.

What is more urgent is not to turn the bill on religious tolerance into law, but “to come up with a bill that guarantees the freedom to practice one’s faith,” said Fr Benny Susetyo Pr, from the Interfaith Commission of the Indonesian Bishops of Conference.

For the clergyman, the Indonesian Constitution 1945 has not yet settled several fundamental issues, including how to guarantee people the right to practice their faith. “In my personal opinion, the most urgent thing to do is to put into practice the bill on free religious practice,” he said in an open discussion.

An open discussion was recently held by the National Awakening Party (PKB), a moderate Muslim party established by the late President Abdurrahman Wahid, in cooperation with the Asian Muslim Action Network to critique the bill.

The RUU Kerukunan Beragama does not address a number of concerns on several fundamental issues, some important scholars from different universities noted. For instance, instead of fostering interfaith tolerance and peaceful coexistence in a country prone to sectarian clashes between Muslims and Christians, the bill does the opposite by creating new problems between religious groups and in the relationship between citizens and the state over religious freedom.

Held in parliament in mid-October, the seminar saw three noted Muslim and Catholic scholars critique the bill from different perspectives. The three keynote speakers were Jesuit priest and philosophy and politics professor Fr Franz Magnis-Suseno from the High School of Philosophy Institute, Prof Siti Musdah Mulia from the Islamic State University, who is also the current chairwoman of the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace (ICRP), and Dr Ali Munhanif, also from the Islamic State University.

All three agreed that the bill has created serious problems rather than promote religious tolerance, despite what its name says.

According to Prof Siti Musdah Mulia, the bill’s name is misleading. “I have no idea what kind of religious tolerance it addresses,” she said. “The bill has nothing to say about this fundamental issue”. [...]

The Jesuit priest and philosopher noted that under Chapter 17, Paragraph 2, of the bill people can proclaiming [sic] their faith only to people who have not adopted a religion or who are atheists. “This is very problematic since the state has officially said that every Indonesian citizen is legally expected to adopt a particular religion,” Magnis said. [...]

Another legal and political problem is the fact that people with no religion can be easily become scapegoats. Communists, for example, were politically targeted under the regime of President Suharto (1967-1998). Being an atheist is politically dangerous in Indonesia.

The notion of “disseminating one’s faith” is another problem issue according to the clergyman. Each party has its own definition of what proclaiming the faith means, Fr Magnis explained. Christians and Catholics have their own idea about it; Islam has its own, based on a different spirit and atmosphere.

Another issue concerns places of worship. It is ridiculous that building a place where people can worship needs the approval of neighbours. “The state should allow any place of worship as long as it can provide parking space and not disturb others,” he said.

Like so many abductions and forced marriages in Pakistan, cases like this show that Christians in Pakistan are now, in practice, virtually non-persons. When they disappear, they are often simply gone, fallen down the memory hole as far as authorities are concerned. The pervasive pattern of behavior toward Christians observable in Pakistan makes this case more than a matter of money or official corruption.

"Christian farm workers abducted by Muslim landowners for money in Faisalabad," by Faisal Khan for AsiaNews, October 28:

Faisalabad (AsiaNews) – Nothing is known of two Christian brothers from Faisalabad (Punjab) who were seized by the Muslim landowning family that employed them. The two disappeared on 14 September. Since then, “We have no idea where they are, whether they are dead or alive,” their mother told AsiaNews. A money dispute between the two Christian farm workers and their Muslim landlords is at the root of their abduction. Police have not yet opened a First Information Report because one of the landlords is a police officer.

Asif Masih, 23, known as Kali, and Khadim Masih, 35, come from a poor Christian family living in Chak 71, Jaranwala District, Faisalabad. They worked for 2,500 Pakistani rupees (US$ 29) a month for three Muslim landowners, policeman Javed Dogar and his brothers Sajjad Dogar and Rauf Dogar, who hail from Khurrianwala.

The mother of the two Christian brothers, Basheeran Bibi, said her sons had borrowed 20,000 rupees from the landowners, and were paying the loan back every month, out of their salary.

However, working for the Dogars was getting harder and harder. Although Muslims, they were often drunk and brutally beat the two Christians for no apparent reason.

When they found out, the parents of the Masih brothers suggested they pay off the debt and quit. This sparked an angry reaction from the Dogars who stormed the Masih home where they roughed up Niamat, the brothers’ father, who has a heart ailment. After that, they abducted the two brothers in September asking for a ransom of 70,000 rupees, plus the remainder of the debt.

The men’s mother tried to file a report with police, which refused because one of the suspects is a fellow police officer.

“Disputes between landowners and tenant farmers are commonplace in the area,” Fr Augustine, a priest in Faisalabad who provides financial and moral help to families, told AsiaNews. A serious and impartial inquiry should be conducted into the affair. “Farm workers are poor,” he explained. “They don’t have money to pay for legal action against landowners."

As a diversionary tactic, Pakistan has tried to accuse Kabul and NATO of doing the same thing they have been accused of for years. Pakistani officials save their outrage for jihadist attacks that come back across the border into Pakistan, even when the attacks are organized by jihadist groups that are based in Pakistan.

Officers in the U.S. military have detailed the extent of Pakistani complicity in attacks originating on Pakistan's side of the border, and there is ample evidence of Pakistan's tipping off jihadists: most recently, it was reported that drone strikes became more successful after the U.S. withheld intelligence information from Pakistan.

Pakistan, for its part, will likely act insulted, make some threats, say now is just a terrible time to exacerbate "tensions," and generally play the victim.

"Pakistan safe havens challenge U.S. Afghan effort," by Susan Cornwell for Reuters, October 28:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Even as the United States begins to withdraw from Afghanistan, insurgents abetted by Pakistan pose the major threat to U.S.-led forces, the Pentagon said on Friday.

Security has improved in recent months and enemy attacks are down in Afghanistan compared to a year ago, the Pentagon said in a twice-annual report to the U.S. Congress.

NATO and Afghan forces largely "stunted" the Taliban's spring and summer offensive, although the insurgency remains adaptive and resilient, with a "significant regenerative capacity," the report said.

But attacks from across the eastern border were up because of the support the insurgency received from safe havens in Pakistan, it said.

"Safe havens in Pakistan remain the insurgency's greatest enabler," the report said.

These havens have grown more "virulent" in recent months "and are the most significant risk" to NATO's campaign, it said.

The report comes as President Barack Obama's administration has begun pulling surge forces from Afghanistan -- withdrawing 10,000 this year and the remaining 23,000 by the end of September 2012.

Critics of Obama's plan fear it could undermine the progress surge troops have made and point to faltering security in attacks in Afghanistan's volatile east, along the porous border with Pakistan.

The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), which advises aid and other groups on security, warned this month that the war appeared to be "escalating, not diminishing."

The Pentagon said that recent high-profile attacks in Kabul, including a bold September 13 strike on the U.S. Embassy that rattled perceptions about security in the capital, were carried out by the Pakistan-based Haqqani network and "directly enabled by Pakistan safe haven and support." [...]

Iran also continues to provide lethal aid to insurgents, including weapons and training, the report said....

KUALA LUMPUR — Members of an opposition Islamic party have called on Muslim-majority Malaysia to ban next month's concert by Elton John, saying Tuesday that the gay singer promotes "hedonism".

Shahril Azman Abdul Halim Al-Hafiz, an official with the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), said the concert at the Genting Highlands resort on Nov. 22 would corrupt young Muslims because of John's homosexuality.

"It's not good. In Islam homosexuality is forbidden," he told AFP. "What he is doing is hedonism. Hedonism is not good in Islam."

The British singer is openly gay, marrying his partner in 2005 after same-sex unions were legalised in Britain.

Shahril is the chairman of the PAS youth wing of eastern Pahang state. The casino resort lies on the border of the state, about an hour's drive from the capital Kuala Lumpur.

An official from concert promoter Tune Live declined to comment.

But the show, part of John's "Greatest Hits Tour," is expected to go ahead in the resort. John will be singing in Singapore before he comes to Malaysia and then go on to Jakarta.

PAS often protests concert by Western acts, saying the artists promote a promiscuous lifestyle and corrupt youngsters' minds.

But despite protest threats, most concerts have gone ahead without incidents though performers had to abide by strict rules, barring them from bearing too much skin and kissing on stage.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from World Vision in Progress Foundation!

We would like to call your attention to the most recent case of forced conversion of a young couple. Mr. Shahzed Masih - 23, and his wife Rhukhsana Bibi - 20, daughter of Amanat Masih (the victim of the Blasphemy Law) were abducted on Wednesday, 26th October, 2011, by some unknown people from Farooqabad Sheikhpura.

We received a call from Shahzed Masih that he and his wife were forcibly converted to Islam.

Amanat Masih, the father of Rukhsana Bibi, was also falsely accused under Blasphemy Law in 2007. However he was acquitted from the court. Previously his son, Waris Maish, was also charged under false charges by the influential landlords of the village.

On Wednesday Rukhsana Bibi and Shahzed Maish were abducted by Muslims clerics and influential landlords of the Farooqabad, where they forcibly converted.

We are making our lawful efforts to bring both of them out of the place where they are being kept.

We request the international community to pray for the Christians of Pakistan. Over the last three months, 24 cases of forced conversions were reported.

Christians are particularly vulnerable to these types of crimes. They do not even file a report to the police against such crimes; they usually keep silent because of the fear from the Islamic groups.

Keep praying for the Christians of Pakistan.

In Him We trust!

Executive Director

World Vision in Progress Foundation

Capitulation. But who cares, right? The Twin Towers are down, already. Quit your complaining. "Washington ready to negotiate with Mullah Omar," by Dean Nelson for the Telegraph, October 28 (thanks to Wimpy):

Washington is ready to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and now regards his involvement as crucial to the prospects for peace in Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton has said.

Her comments been taken as a significant shift in American policy from moves to divide the Taliban-led insurgency and isolate Mullah Omar, the man who sheltered Osama bin Laden as he plotted the September 11 attacks, to an acknowledgement of his leadership.

It follows the disclosure earlier this month that American officials had met leaders of the Haqqani Network, the powerful Taliban faction blamed for some of the most devastating attacks on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, including last month's attack on the US embassy in Kabul in which seven were killed and 19 wounded.

Earlier this week the faction's commander Sirajuddin Haqqani warned Washington that only the Quetta Shura, led by Mullah Omar, could negotiate a peace deal and that his fighters would not be divided from its leadership.

In an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs Clinton said the United States would continue to "fight, talk and build" in Afghanistan and Pakistan to "test whether these organisations have any willingness to negotiate in good faith"....

Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst Arif Rafiq said Mrs Clinton's comments marked a significant change. "Hillary Clinton's public statements prior to the recent Pakistan visit noted a desire to split Quetta Shura elements from Mullah Omar. I think they [now] recognise that though talks have yet to yield tangible dividends, attempts to split the Taliban have failed," he said.

No kidding, really?

In the U.S., if you work in counterterrorism, they just charge you with "Islamophobia." "Car bomb kills head of Yemeni counterterrorism unit," by Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN, October 28 (thanks to Kenneth):

(CNN) -- A car bomb exploded in Aden on Friday, killing the commander of a Yemeni counterterrorism unit and seriously injuring two children, according to a Yemeni government official who is not authorized to speak to the media.

Major Gen. Ali Al-Hajji commanded a battalion of Central Security Forces troops, which includes counterterrorism units, the official said.

The bomb was planted in Al-Hajji's car and exploded while the vehicle was traveling near the 22 May Soccer Stadium, according to the official.

Two children standing near the car when it exploded, ages 5 and 14, were seriously injured by the blast and were taken to a hospital, the official said...

No suspect has been named, but Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Ansar Al-Sharia have stepped up attacks against security forces in Aden the last few months.

He was a member, according to this story, of a Tiny Minority of Extremists in Bosnia -- in this case, the Wahhabis. "Islamist shot dead after firing at US embassy in Sarajevo," from Agence France-Presse, October 28:

A gunman opened fire at the US embassy in Sarajevo Friday before being taken out by a sniper, Bosnian radio reported, identifying the attacker as a radical Islamist.

"A man, member of the Wahhabi (branch of Islam), aged around 40, shot at the US embassy with a Kalashnikov rifle," Bosnian national radio said.

Embassy spokeswoman Sanja Pejcinovic would not go into details.

"We can confirm there has been an incident in front of the embassy. The building is closed and we are waiting for the police to seal off the area," she told AFP.

Bosnia is home to a small minority of followers of Wahhabism, a strict and ultra-conservative brand of Islam which is dominant in Saudi Arabia.

During Bosnia's 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs, a large number of volunteers from Muslim nations flocked to the Balkan country to take up arms.

Many of these Muslim fighters stayed on after the conflict and obtained Bosnian citizenship. Some in the mostly moderate Bosnian Muslim community have converted to the more radical Islam preached by several ex-mujahedeen.

Reuters photo.

UPDATE: More recent reports state the gunman is wounded, but alive.

Mehanna: Peanut butter and jelly indeed

Cushy Bedroom Jihad. "Feds: Tarek Mehanna was al-Qaeda mouthpiece," by Laurel J. Sweet for the Boston Herald, October 28 (thanks to Kenneth):

As an American-born Muslim of privilege tried to shield himself yesterday with the Constitution he’s accused of betraying, prosecutors began painting for jurors a sinister portrait of a young man the feds said both al-Qaeda and the FBI recognized was becoming a mouthpiece for jihad.

Tarek Mehanna even had all-American code for holy war, prosecutors said: Peanut butter and jelly.

By moderating online chats from the “cushy bedroom” of his parents’ Sudbury home about the monster he thought of as his “real father,” 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, and translating bin Laden’s recorded calls to arms into English subtitles, assistant U.S. Attorney Aloke Chakravarty said Mehanna, 29, “viewed himself as part of the media department of the terror group.

“It meant killing, it meant bullets, it meant martyrdom,” said Chakravarty, noting that in the summer of 2005, al-Qaeda “personally solicited” Mehanna to translate works by leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

And to a large extent, Mehanna’s attorney J.W. Carney Jr. — acknowledging his client was bitter about the war in Iraq — didn’t disagree.

“Yes, he expressed admiration for Osama bin Laden. He didn’t hide his beliefs; he wore them on his sleeve,” Carney said on day one of an anticipated two-month trial, amid extraordinary security in and around U.S. District Court in Boston.

Mehanna’s religious and political beliefs — while perhaps treason to some — are “what make America so great, so strong, so free,” said Carney, who treated Judge George A. O’Toole Jr.’s packed courtroom to boyhood photographs of a chubby Mehanna sitting on a mall Santa’s lap and playing baseball.

Yes, treason makes America great!

Testimony begins today. Star witnesses for the prosecution will include a married father granted immunity to tell jurors how he, Mehanna and a third man flew out of Boston on Super Bowl Sunday 2004 (featuring the New England Patriots [team stats] defeating the Carolina Panthers 32-29) with the intent of traveling to Yemen to enlist in a terrorist training camp.

Carney said he will counter with a Yemen scholar from Princeton University, who will vouch for the rich Islamic education opportunities that Mehanna contends were the real reason for his journey.

Yes, Yemen is world-renowned for the quality of its universities!

"Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." -- Qur'an 4:34

Video from the San Francisco Chronicle (thanks to Karl).

Video courtesy Pamela Geller, who explains:

Napolitano denies being aware of a Muslim Brotherhood-tied operative whom she swore in. Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas does a spectacular job pressing Napolitano on her knowledge of the story that I posted yesterday concerning Mohamed Elibiary, the Homeland Security Adviser who allegedly leaked intel and shopped classified Info to media. I warned of Elibiary's appointment back in 2010. He asked if she was aware and she said she was not aware. Gohmert further pressed Napolitano of her knowledge of Elibiary's support of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Again she feigned concern and professed ignorance. This is the head of Homeland Security claiming ignorance of the most dangerous threat to the homeland, the global jihad and Islamic imperialism and expansion.

Meanwhile, still no word from Mohamed Elibiary in response to my email asking him for comment on this story. Odd -- he used to be so eager to enter into dialogue!

Yes, it's a civil case. Still, it opens the door farther to the use of a legal system that contains coercive and oppressive elements that infringe upon the rights of women and non-Muslims, and restrict the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience. An update on this story. "Use of Islamic law OK in civil case, judge rules," by José Patiño Girona for the Tampa Tribune, October 25:

A state appeals court has ruled that a Hillsborough County Circuit judge can consider Islamic law to decide a civil case between a mosque and its former trustees.

The decision by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland to decline the appeal of the Islamic Education Center of Tampa sends the case back to Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Richard A. Nielsen. Nielsen's decision in March to allow the case to proceed under "ecclesiastical Islamic law" drew national attention when the ruling was criticized by conservative bloggers.

The case has its roots in 2002, when the mosque ousted four of its founding members; those founding members later sued the mosque. One of the main issues of dispute was who would be responsible for how to spend $2.5 million Florida's Turnpike Enterprise had paid the mosque for 3.4 acres needed to widen Veterans Expressway.

When he made his March ruling, Nielsen said courts have ruled "that ecclesiastical law controls certain relations between members of a religious organization, whether a church, synagogue, temple or mosque."

The uproar over the ruling went overboard, said Lee Segal, a Clearwater attorney representing the ousted trustees. He said the ruling follows established legal precedent and does not mean Nielsen is allowing Islamic law to trump U.S. law.

"When the parties agree (before the trial that) they are bound to Islamic law, they can be bound to Islamic law," Segal said. "As long as what you are agreeing to doesn't violate the constitution of the United States, you can apply any type of law."

Though the issue of Islamic law has garnered attention, the legal fight over the lawsuit is complicated, with much of it revolving around the arbitration process.

On Monday, Paul Thanasides, the attorney for the mosque, filed a new motion to dismiss the case because of lack of jurisdiction.

On October 12, I wrote: "I am sorry for the families of those whom the freed jihadists have murdered in the past, and those whom they will murder in the future once they gain their freedom." And to murder more Israelis is just what these two jihad murderers -- and no doubt others also -- are vowing to do.

"Interviews with Two Terrorists Released in the Gilad Shalit Exchange Who Vow to Return to Terror Activities," from MEMRI, October 27 (thanks to Wimpy):

The following are two reports from the MEMRI TV Project and the Palestinian Media Studies Project, consisting of interviews with terrorists released in the recent Gilad Shalit deal. One of the terrorists, Ahlam Tamimi, assisted in the August 9, 2001 bombing of the Sbarro's pizzeria in Jerusalem, which killed 15 and wounded 130 people.[1]

For more from the MEMRI Palestinian Media Studies Project, visit http://www.memri.org/palestinianmediastudies

Released Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi Takes Pride in the Number of Casualties She Caused and Proclaims: I Would Do It Again Today

Following are excerpts from an interview with released terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who was sentenced to 16 life terms in prison. The interview was posted on the Internet on October 19, 2011.

Interviewer: "If you could go back in time, would you carry out such a large-scale attack?"

Ahlam Tamimi: "Of course. I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]? This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner." […]

Released Terrorist Muhammad Abu Ataya Brandishes Gun and Says: Netanyahu "Will Not Deter Us from Continuing the Journey of Resistance"

Following are excerpts from an interview with released terrorist Muhammad Abu Ataya, who had been sentenced to 16 life terms in prison. The interview aired on Al-Quds TV on October 20, 2011.

Muhammad Abu Ataya: "I was arrested for being a member of the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, and for killing traitors and spies, and killing traitors and spies, as well as going after the herd of settlers and the Israeli army."

Interviewer: "Brother Muhammad, as you regain your freedom, you carry the gun of the rebel, the gun of the fighter, and you wear the fatigues of the Al-Qassam Brigades, even though Netanyahu warned that any released prisoner rejoining the resistance would be severely punished."

Muhammad Abu Ataya: "He can make as many warning as he likes. His warning and threats will not deter us from continuing the journey of resistance, on which we embarked decades ago. […]"

Videos at MEMRI.

As far as Mufti Azaam Bashir-ud-din is concerned, CM Khanna has some 'splainin' to do. He has allegedly been converting young Muslims to Christianity, and you know what the prophet of the Religion of Peace said about that: "If anybody changes his religion, kill him." Can you imagine the outcry if a Christian priest or minister in Europe or the U.S. summoned a Muslim cleric and demanded that he explain why Christians were converting to Islam?

Islamic Tolerance Alert: "Kashmir’s 'mufti azam' summons Christian priest to explain alleged conversions," by M Saleem Pandit for the Times of India, October 28 (thanks to PM):

SRINAGAR: Mufti Bashir-ud-din - J&K's official " mufti azam", or head Muslim clergyman - issued fresh summons to a leading Christian priest, CM Khanna, on Friday, asking him to appear before his court to explain his activities of reported conversions of young local boys and girls at his church in Srinagar. Khanna said the mufti was annoyed with him because he had expressed his inability to help the mufti in the admission of a boy to a Christian missionary school.

Talking to TOI, Mufti Azaam Bashir-ud-din said: "Our shariat court had summoned the Christian priest, CM Khanna, to appear personally today at 11am but he failed to appear. Now we have issued fresh summons to him for personal appearance on November 12."

A shariat court has existed in J&K since the early 1960s; Mufti Bashir-ud-din is the judge of the court and the appeal against this court lies in the civil court. Mufti Bashir said that the court was recognized by the state government because of the majority Muslim character of the state. The shariat court, however, has no enforcing agency like police to implement its judgments, he said

Mufti Bashir-ud-din said: "I have received the complaint that the said priest, CM Khanna, is involved in converting young Muslim boys and girls to Christianity. This warrants action as per Islamic law. So we summoned him to appear before the shariat court to explain his position."

The mufti claimed to possess a video cassette purportedly showing Reverend Khanna urging young Kashmiri Muslims to embrace Christianity and asking them to take a dip in a pond inside the church near the cricket stadium in Srinagar.

"I will take all necessary measures in exercise of the powers vested in me by Islamic shariat," the mufti said when asked what course he would take if the priest failed to appear in his court.

Threat noted.

"It is a matter of grave concern that Christian missionaries active here should be running an organized and integrated campaign to convert young Kashmiri Muslims to Christianity," he said....

This report acknowledges that the High Court ruled that Raed Salah would be eligible for "damages" to the tune of £5,000 because officers could not speak Arabic in his initial detention. There is no further word on whether Salah will have a check -- sorry, cheque -- in his pocket when they show him the door. "Banned preacher can be removed says tribunal," by Tom Whitehead for the Telegraph, October 27:

Sheikh Raed Salah, a Palestinian activist accused of inciting anti – Semitic violence, was able to walk through immigration at Heathrow in June, despite being banned days before.

He appealed against a decision by Theresa May, the Home Secretary, to remove him but has lost the latest round.

Mrs May has said he is not conducive to the public good and wants him out of the country.

And yesterday, an immigration tribunal hearing his appeal concluded that the Home Secretary was justified in her position.

It added: “In the balancing exercise necessary for any consideration of proportionality, great weight must be attached to the public interest of preventing disorder or crime.

“We are satisfied that the appellant has engaged in the unacceptable behaviour of fostering hatred which might lead to intercommunity violence in the UK.

“We are satisfied that the appellant’s words and actions tend to be inflammatory, divisive, insulting and likely to foment tension and radicalism.

“They deal with issues which are highly sensitive in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute.”

But it may not yet be time for officers to pull out their phrasebook for "Don't let the door hit you..."

Mr Salah, 52, now has five days to appeal the decision.

Mr Salah, who lives in Jerusalem, is the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. He became popular among Arab extremists after he was jailed for two years by Israeli authorities in 2003 over allegations he had helped fund Hamas.

In June, Mrs May tried to prevent a planned visit by banning him but immigration officials missed six opportunities to stop him from entering the UK.

Earlier this month, the High Court said he was entitled to claim damages after being detained unlawfully shortly after entering the country. He is currently on bail.

A Home Office spokesman said: "We are pleased the court agrees Salah’s removal would be conducive to the public good and that he has engaged in unacceptable behaviour.

“We will seek to deport him at the earliest opportunity.”

The Pakistani response depends heavily on the argument that "Hey, we're the victims here!" But Pakistan's double game and policy of steam control with jihadists and Islamic supremacist sympathizers have created the environment for more jihadist attacks, and more Pakistani casualties. An update on this story. "Pakistan denies BBC report on Taliban links," by Chris Allbritton for Reuters, October 27:

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan strongly denied Thursday a BBC report that alleged the Pakistani military, along with its intelligence arm, supplied and protected the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda.

A number of middle-ranking Taliban commanders detailed what they said was extensive Pakistani support in interviews for a BBC documentary series, the first part of which was broadcast Wednesday.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik, on a visit to Britain, criticized the program, telling a London news conference that the Taliban were trying to create a wedge between their adversaries by making such allegations.

Which Rehman Malik? That Rehman Malik.

"We are victims, victims of war, we have lost over 35,000 innocent people, including senior officers, policemen, and normal foot soldiers. I think doubting us is really heartbreaking ... We have stood in the front line," Malik said, referring to Pakistan's fight against militant groups.

"We are facing daily these suicide bombers. If they had been trained by us, we should not be getting ourselves killed," he said.

A former Afghan intelligence head also told the BBC that Afghanistan gave former Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf information in 2006 that Osama bin Laden was hiding in northern Pakistan, but the intelligence was not acted on. The al Qaeda leader was killed in the same area by U.S. special forces in May this year.

Pakistan's military denied the BBC report.

"We consider that this report is highly biased, it is one-sided, it doesn't have the version of the side which is badly hit or affected by this report," Major General Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani military, told Reuters.

"So therefore, other than that, it's factually incorrect."

One Taliban commander, Mullah Qaseem, told the BBC that Pakistan had played a significant role in providing supplies and a hiding place for Afghan Taliban fighters.

Abbas denied this, questioning Qaseem's credibility.

He said the head of Pakistan's spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had already said "not a single bullet or financial support" had been given to groups named in the BBC report....

Covering their bases: in the midst of their saber-rattling about spectacular attacks inside Kenya, they are also trying to make arrangements for a hudna. "Official: Al-Shabaab leaders contact Kenyan government to negotiate," by David McKenzie for CNN, October 27:

Nairobi, Kenya (CNN) -- Conflicting accounts emerged Thursday over whether the extremist group Al-Shabaab has signaled a desire to negotiate with Kenya amid a Kenyan military offensive targeting the group.

"They want to talk," said a Kenyan official who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

A spokesman for the Kenyan government, however, disputed that account and said Kenya wouldn't talk with Al-Shabaab even if the group did want to negotiate.

"Al-Shabaab has not contacted Kenya in any way," said the spokesman, Alfred Mutua. "There are no plans whatsoever for Kenya to negotiate with Al-Shabaab. Kenya does not negotiate with outlawed groups."

He said Kenyan troops have enjoyed success since crossing the border into Somalia to pursue Al-Shabaab, which the United States and several Western nations view as a terrorist organization.

"They are running scared. I think they are busy running for their lives," Mutua said. "They don't have time to talk."

Kenyan troops struck several Al-Shabaab training sites in Somalia early Thursday, a military spokesman said. The militant group, which includes many rival factions with different leaders, operates from Somalia.

The group's leaders were said to be reaching out for possible negotiations two weeks after Kenyan troops stormed into Somalia to hunt for Al-Shabaab, which Kenya blames for recent kidnappings of foreigners in the nation.

But Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Ali, Al-Shabaab's second-in-command who is also known as Abu Mansur, told supporters protesting in Mogadishu against the Kenyan incursion that if Kenya struck targets in Somalia, the militant group would strike back.

Kenya has said its forces aim to take the Somali port city of Kismayo, described by the United Nations as a key stronghold and source of cash for Al-Shabaab. The United Nations estimates the group collects up to $50 million a year from businesses in Kismayo, about half of its annual income.

Robow urged what he said were Al-Shabaab-trained fighters in Kenya to take action in return, with the Kenyan port of Mombasa a target.

''Carry out attacks with heavy losses on Kenya," Robow said. "If Kenya closes the sea port in Kismayo, attack its banks, its port, its foreign guests and wherever there is a high-value target."...

This BBC report says the exchange shows that "Egypt is still capable of dealing with Israel on business-like terms." Well, if your idea of "business-like terms" is snagging what was essentially a hostage on laughable espionage charges and using him as leverage to set up a disproportionate prisoner exchange in an atmosphere of antisemitic conspiracy paranoia, then, sure.

An update on this story. "Egypt frees alleged Israeli spy Grapel in swap deal," from BBC News, October 27:

US-Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel has arrived in Tel Aviv after being freed by Egypt as part of a prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

Mr Grapel, who was detained in June on spying charges, flew from Cairo, accompanied by Israeli officials.

The exchange saw Israel release 25 Egyptian prisoners, who crossed by land back into their home country.

Correspondents say that despite regional turmoil, the deal shows the two countries can still do business.

Mr Grapel is expected to meet briefly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem before flying to New York.

Israel and his family deny the accusations against Mr Grapel, a former soldier, saying he was working for a charity in Cairo and never sought to conceal his identity. [...]

Mr Grapel was arrested on 12 June and accused of trying to stir up sectarian strife in Cairo on behalf of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

His relatives say he made no attempt to disguise his identity, including the fact that he had served in the Israeli army during its war in Lebanon in 2006.

There is widespread scepticism in Egypt that Mr Grapel really was an Israeli spy. [...]

It appears the deal to release Mr Grapel was negotiated around the same time as the Shalit exchange, says the BBC's Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem.

It shows that Egypt is still capable of dealing with Israel on business-like terms and reminds regional rivals such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia that Cairo's influence is real, despite the change of government, our correspondent says.

I met Mohamed Elibiary at the America's Truth Forum Symposium in Dallas a few years ago. Elibiary was then the President and CEO of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, which he cofounded in 2002 to "promote a Centrist Public Policy environment in Texas by coordinating the state level government and interfaith community relations for the organized Texas Muslim community." He is a prominent "moderate," but he spoke at a 2004 conference in Dallas lauding the "Great Islamic Visionary" Ayatollah Khomeini. Subsequently, he had acrimonious discussions with Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, to whom he issued what looked to many, including Dreher himself, like a threat.

Despite all that and more, he was named to the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council. But now he is in a bit of hot water over shopping around highly sensitive intelligence documents to try to get the media in Texas to do a story about "Islamophobia" in the Texas Department of Public Safety. And Pamela Geller asks the salient question: "Who else is the devout Elibiary shopping sensitive intel to?" This is, after all, a man who once offered to give me Hamas top dog Khaled Meshaal's email address.

"BREAKING: Homeland Security Adviser Allegedly Leaked Intel to Attack Rick Perry," by Patrick Poole at PJ Media, October 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Texas Department of Public Safety officials are asking questions following a report that Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council member Mohamed Elibiary may have been given access to a sensitive database of state and local intelligence reports, and then allegedly shopped some of those materials to a media outlet. He allegedly used the documents to claim the department was promoting “Islamophobia” — claims that the media outlet ultimately rejected. They declined to do the story.

Earlier today, I received confirmation from a left-leaning media outlet that Elibiary had recently approached them asking to do a story attacking Texas DPS:

Yes, he approached us and gave us some reports marked FOUO [For Official Use Only] that he said showed a pattern of Islamophobia at the department. He emphasized that some of the regional fusion centers were shut down a few years ago after the ACLU complained that they were targeting Muslim civil rights groups and said that this was being directed by [Texas Gov.] Rick Perry.

We looked at the reports and they weren’t as he had billed them to us. They seem to be pretty straightforward, nothing remotely resembling Islamophobia that we saw. I think he was hoping we would bite and not give it too much of a look in light of the other media outfits jumping on the Islamophobia bandwagon.

I asked if there was any sense of his possible motivation:

Oh, self-promotion definitely. It was clear up front that he wanted to be a quoted source in the story. We’ve used him as an unnamed source in previous stories. There’s nothing unusual or unseemly about that because officials do it all the time, but this was the first time he approached us with documents. Honestly, if they had been what he represented them as we would have probably run with the story. But we looked at them and saw this was a partisan hatchet job that could blow back on us so we passed on it.

In light of these allegations, I spoke today with Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw. He confirmed that Elibiary has access to the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest (HS SLIC) database, which contains hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports and products that are intended for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies....

I asked Director McCraw if he knew whether Elibiary had access to TX DPS reports on the HS SLIC, to which he replied:

We know that he has accessed DPS documents and downloaded them.

McCraw stated that he will be requesting that DHS conduct an investigation to determine whether or not Elibiary improperly handled any sensitive intelligence products, and said that he will reserve judgment until an investigation is complete. He added:

If in fact this happened we will be extremely disappointed in him. We’ve worked with him and other groups to get their comments regarding a wide range of issue in order to be inclusive.

Ah, inclusiveness -- what could be more important?

Oh, and about Elibiary: I tried to tell you. I emailed him asking him for comment and if I hear back from him, you will be the first to know.

Tunisia, where the 2011 Arab uprisings began, remains an ominous model for where these uprisings will end.

The nation’s first round of elections are in, and, as expected, the Islamist party, al-Nahda, won by a landslide, gaining over 40% of the seats in the national constituent assembly. As usual, the mainstream media, interpreting events exclusively through a Western paradigm, portrayed this largely as a positive development.

Thus, a Washington Post editorial, “Tunisia again points the way for Arab democracy,” asserts how “the country’s leading Islamic party claimed victory—and that, too, could prove a positive example.” Other reports, perfunctorily prefixing the word “moderate” to “Islamist”—an oxymoron to common sense, an orthodoxy to the MSM—gush and hail “democracy.”

Such sunny depictions are not mere products of Western projection but augmented by conniving Islamists who spoon-feed the world what it wants to hear. Thus, an MSNBC report, “Tunisia’s Islamists Seek to Reassure Secularists,” optimistically talks of how the Islamists “said they would share power and would not try to push through radical measures.”

Of course they did.

Meanwhile, despite these fantasies, the mood among seculars on Tunisian ground is one of dread and urgency. Wael Elebrady, host of the popular show Al Haqiqa, speaking to a correspondent in Tunisia soon after al-Nahda’s “sweeping victory,” confirmed that the Islamists have immense grassroots support, that they will have a major say in the formulation of laws (Sharia), and that, if the Western MSM is eating up Islamist talk of “sharing power,” the apparently outnumbered “liberals and secularists” are not.

Some reflections: First, among Arabic speaking nations, Tunisia has long been recognized as an especially “Westernized” nation, secular and liberal—at least in comparison to other Arab countries, and not unlike traditional Lebanon.

Now, if Islamists have risen to power in onetime “moderate” Tunisia, through the usual conduits—grassroots support, lip-service to democracy, promises of “sharing power,” and a complacent West—is there any doubt that Islamists will also takeover in those nations where they are especially entrenched, like Egypt and Libya?

Ali Akbar Velayati, top advisor of Iran’s Supreme Leader, accurately predicts that “the result of the election in Tunisia will positively affect regional developments. We will observe the victory of Islamists in future elections in Egypt and Libya.”

A Wall Street Journal report elaborates:

Tunisia’s small, well-educated and religiously moderate population could make it an unreliable metric for gauging the regional political changes that will follow. The Nahda Party distinguished itself as uniquely moderate when compared with other Islamist parties in the Arab world. Egyptian Islamists, who are led by an 83-year-old organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, in general take a stricter view of the role Islamic law, known as Shariah, should play in Egyptian governance.

Accordingly, not only are Islamists better positioned to come to power through elections in Egypt than Tunisia, but more critical consequences are sure to follow: peace with Israel will be contemptuously scrapped—once capability permits—and the suffering of Christian Copts, who are already under attack in a myriad of ways, will be institutionalized.

Yet the West remains transfixed before the words “democracy” and “elections.” Nice words, to be sure; but just as the generic word “terror”—as in “War on Terror”—provides absolutely no understanding of the ideas motivating Islamic terror, so too does the generic word “democracy” provide no understanding of the draconian, anti-infidel ideas the “will of the people” will establish—ideas encapsulated by one word: Sharia.

Consider the following excerpt from a Fox News report:

“I am the enemy of democracy,” Hesham al-Ashry said in an interview with Fox News in his Cairo tailor shop. The devout Muslim is a main organizer in a group called the Salafists, which is working to bring Shariah law to Egypt. They, along with the Muslim Brotherhood, have risen quickly in the past eight months to fill the power vacuum left in post-Mubarak Egypt.

Left unspoken is how they rose—and will continue to rise—to power: democracy, “people-power,” which al-Ashry gladly exploits, even as he is “the enemy of democracy.”

The report continues: “As for what’s next if al-Ashry and his followers get their way, ‘instead of one Iran …you have two.’”

Actually, “what’s next,” in the grand picture of things, not the myopia of the moment, is the resurrection of a Sharia-enforcing Caliphate and the ushering of a new age of conflict—an age when future generations will look back to their Western predecessors and see in them the sort of passive naivety that would make Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill.

Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam-specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He writes a weekly column for Jihad Watch.

"Stop throwing grenades at buses," they said. "We need a huge blow against Kenya."

Everyone's a critic. More on this story. "Somalia's al Shabaab vows huge blast in Kenya," by Ismail Taxta and Abdi Sheikh for Reuters, October 27:

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's al Shabaab rebels called Thursday for supporters in Kenya to carry out a major strike in retaliation for a 12-day military incursion by east Africa's powerhouse.

Kenya has sent soldiers and heavy weapons into southern Somalia to crush the al Qaeda-linked militants Nairobi blames for a string of kidnappings on Kenyan soil and frequent border incursions.

Kenyan units have advanced on several fronts with Somali government troops and allied militias toward al Shabaab strongholds and a fighter jet bombed its port city of Kismayu on Sunday.

"The time to ask Kenya to stop war has passed. The only option is to fight them. Kenya, you have started the war and so you have to face the consequences," Sheikh Muktar Robow Abu Mansoor, a top al Shabaab official, told a demonstration.

An al Shabaab spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, told Reuters his fighters had struck four Kenyan military vehicles near a town called Tabdo inside Somalia Thursday.

General Yusuf Hussein Dhumaal, the head of Somali troops in the area, denied there had been any ambush or fighting. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua declined to comment.

The al Shabaab official urged sympathizers in Kenya to shun the grenade attacks that hit the capital Nairobi Monday, killing one person and wounding 29. Police said Thursday that all but six of the victims had now returned home.

"The Kenyan Mujahideen who were trained by Osama in Afghanistan, stop throwing grenades at buses. We need a huge blow against Kenya. Hand grenades hurled can harm them but we want huge blasts," he told hundreds of people gathered in Elasha, near Mogadishu.

Jihad causes poverty:

Residents said al Shabaab had ordered them Wednesday to close businesses and attend the anti-Kenyan rallies.

The two grenade attacks on a bar and a bus terminus in downtown Nairobi have spooked Kenyans and security has been beefed up in the capital at hotels, government buildings, restaurants, bars and shopping malls.

All of these measures are costly, and a drain on resources. Even if al-Shabaab does not get a truck bomb into position, it has had an impact.

The blasts came two days after the U.S. embassy warned of an imminent attack. A Kenyan man has pleaded guilty to one of the attacks and being a member of al Shabaab.

Kenya's Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere said two more people had been arrested over the attacks and were due to appear in court this week. He said the man who pleaded guilty went to Somalia in February and returned to Kenya in August.

The United Nations has warned that hundreds of Kenyan Muslims have been recruited by al Shabaab and that youth organizations have raised funds for the Somali militants.

A U.N. Monitoring Group report on Somalia published in July said al Shabaab had extensive funding, recruiting and training networks within Kenya.

Al Shabaab has yet to carry out a major strike in Kenya but has used suicide bombers to devastating effect in Somalia and Uganda -- whose troops are fighting the rebels in Mogadishu as part of an African Union force.

Twin suicide blasts in Kampala killed 79 people watching the soccer World Cup final last year and a truck bomb in Mogadishu killed more than 70 people earlier this month.

Unknown gunmen also attacked a vehicle in northeastern Kenya Thursday killing at least four government employees, local officials told Reuters. Media reports said they were targeted with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire.

Iteere said the vehicle transporting papers for school exams was attacked about 110 km (70 miles) from the northeastern town of Mandera, which is on the border with Ethiopia and Somalia.

Al-Shabaab may also decide Dar-es-Salaam is Dar al-Harb:

Kenya's southern neighbor Tanzania also issued a terrorism alert late Wednesday following the Nairobi attacks....

Hey, Saeed: how about we work out a trade? You can have some of our pro-jihad journalists, and we'll take some of your anti-jihad ones. I am sure we could work out a mutually beneficial deal for Bob Smietana, Rachel Slajda, Michael Kruse, Daniel Reed, Ann Barnard, Justin Elliott, and some pro-jihad journalists to be named later. And they would no doubt be only too happy to relocate to Pakistan, where the Religion of Peace prevails and there is no "Islamophobia." Whaddeya say, Saeed?

"Jihad is the only way for Pak survival: JuD chief," from Zeenews.com, October 20:

Islamabad: LeT founder and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has threatened journalists for what he says backing an "anti-jihad spirit" in Pakistan and asked them to be aware of the consequences.

Addressing gatherings at Vehari and Multan in Punjab province yesterday, he claimed journalists were backing the agenda of foreign intelligence agencies and furthering "propaganda against jihad and the defence of Pakistan".

He blamed journalists for promoting "hatred against jihad".

Jihad or holy war is an integral part of Islam and is binding on all Muslims, media reports quoted Saeed as saying. Saeed, the founder of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba, warned journalists to be aware of the consequences of "becoming tools in foreign hands".

Saeed claimed jihad is the "only way for the survival of Pakistan"....

Hypocrisy. "Palestinian envoy to Canada recalled," by Rob Gillies for the Associated Press, October 24:

TORONTO (AP) — The Palestinian Authority recalled their envoy to Canada this month for posting a link on twitter that included an anti-Semitic video.

Linda Sobeh Ali posted a tweet this month with a link to a YouTube video featuring an emotionally distressed Palestinian girl shouting a poem in Arabic titled "I am Palestinian."

The English subtitles on the video include a passage where millions are called upon "destroy the Jews."

Joseph Lavoie, a spokesman for Canada's foreign affairs minister, said Monday it was a serious enough matter for the Palestinian Authority that they recalled Sobeh Ali.

"This video is completely unacceptable and offensive as it calls for the death of Jews," Lavoie said.

Riad Malki, the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister, speaking in Ramallah, said the envoy posted the link thinking it was a "normal national poem."

"We asked her to leave Canada because we didn't want to create any problems," he said.

According to Malki, the "Jewish lobby and Jewish institutions" in Canada complained to the Canadian government. The envoy "went back to the poem and there was something wrong with the translation." The phrase translated in the English subtitles as "destroy the Jews" was actually "to kill the soul of Zionism."...

Oh, all is well, then!

Leading with the family chin

The Qur'an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: "Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will" (2:223).

The Qur'an also declares that a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man: "Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her" (2:282).

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: "If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice" (4:3).

It rules that a son's inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: "Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children's (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females" (4:11).

Worst of all, the Koran tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: "Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them" (4:34).

It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures "shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated" (65:4).

Wife-beating, child marriage, devaluation of testimony -- where is all that in the Bible? There is polygamy, but it is superseded by monogamy. So what is Mavis Leno talking about, other than the fact that it is fashionable today to praise the Qur'an and Islam, especially while bashing the Bible and Judaism and Christianity?

"Women's activist Mavis Leno and CNN Muslim producer dialogue in Dallas," by Dina Malki for the Examiner, October 24:

At the 26th annual Dallas Women’s Foundation’s luncheon, Mavis Leno, wife of talk show's comedian Jay Leno, shared with the audience accounts about her journey into activism to help empower Afghani women and girls under the Taliban regime....

When asked about the role of Islam in the status of women in Afghanistan, Leno confirmed that “the Quran is more liberal with women than the Bible.” She added that Prophet Mohammad was married to a wealthy and powerful woman, implying that Islam has nothing against empowering women; on the contrary it is a religion that supports women’s rights. Culture, on the other hand, affects the interpretation of religious texts which results in assaulting women’s rights....

Religious police are now on the lookout for the hottest new gift of the season, Blaspheme Me Elmo. "Anti-Islam toy guns found in the UAE," from Emirates 24-7, October 26:

An Emirati social expert and activist shopping in a local market stumbled across Chinese-made toy guns that issue sounds mocking Islam and called on authorities to take action against such products.

The discovery came a few days after Saudi authorities said they seized nearly 1,500 Chinese-made toy guns issuing sounds that mock and insult Aisha, the wife of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).

You can't make this stuff up.

Mariam Al Ahmadi, a well-known social activist in Abu Dhabi, said she found the toy guns at some shops in Bani Yas, just outside Abu Dhabi city.

Quoted by the Dubai-based 'Emarat Al Youm' Arabic language daily, Mariam said she had reported the guns to the police and called for immediate measures. “I call upon the police and other competent authorities to investigate how these anti-Islam guns found their way into the UAE market and to take action against all those who had brought them in,” she said.

In Saudi Arabia, police said on Sunday they had seized nearly 1,500 Chinese-made toy guns at a local market found to be issuing sounds that abuse Aisha, one of the most venerated women in Islam.Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential law enforcement authority in the country, seized the toys during a raid on a shopping centre in the western town of Jeddah.

“The guns were found to be issuing sounds which are considered mocking and offending against the Prophet’s wife,” newspapers said, quoting Commission spokesman in Jeddah, Turki Al Zahrani.He said sellers of those toys, mostly Asians, apparently do not know they offend Islam as the guns issue sounds in Arabic.

Still more evidence of Pakistan's double game. "Afghanistan: Pakistan accused of backing Taliban," by Sam Collyns for BBC News, October 26:

Pakistan has been accused of playing a double game, acting as America's ally in public while secretly training and arming its enemy in Afghanistan according to US intelligence.

In a prison cell on the outskirts of Kabul, the Afghan Intelligence Service is holding a young man who alleges he was recruited earlier this year by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI.

He says he was trained to be a suicide bomber in the Taliban's intensifying military campaign against the Western coalition forces - and preparations for his mission were overseen by an ISI officer in a camp in Pakistan.

After 15 days training, he was sent into Afghanistan.

"There were three of us. We were put into a black vehicle with black windows. The police did not stop the car because it was obviously ISI. No-one dares stop their cars. They told me... you will receive your explosive waistcoat, and then go and explode it."

Taliban bases in Pakistan

The man recruited to be a suicide bomber changed his mind at the last minute and was later captured by the Afghan intelligence service.

But his story is consistent with a mass of intelligence which has convinced the Americans that, as they suspected, for the last decade Pakistan has been secretly arming and supporting the Taliban in its attempt to regain control of Afghanistan.

These suspicions started as early as 2002, when the Taliban began launching attacks across the border from their bases in Pakistan, but they became more widely held after 2006 when the Taliban's assault increased in its ferocity, not least against the ill-prepared British forces in Helmand province.

The final turning point in American eyes was the attack on Mumbai when 10 gunmen rampaged through the Indian city, killing 170 people - two weeks after Barack Obama's US presidential election victory in November 2008.

Despite Pakistan claiming it played no part in the attack, the CIA later received intelligence that it said showed the ISI were directly involved in training the Mumbai gunmen.

President Obama ordered a review of all intelligence on the region by a veteran CIA officer, Bruce Riedel.

"Our own intelligence was unequivocal," says Riedel. "In Afghanistan we saw an insurgency that was not only getting passive support from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, but getting active support."

Evidence of Pakistan's support for the Taliban is also plain to see at the border where insurgents are allowed to cross at will, or even helped to evade US patrols.

There have been other reports of jihadists operating in sight of, and even with the help of the Pakistani military.

And the recent drone attacks in Pakistan have become increasingly effective as intelligence has been withheld from the Pakistanis, claims Mr Riedel.

"At the beginning of the drone operations, we gave Pakistan an advance tip-off of where we were going, and every single time the target wasn't there anymore. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to put the dots together." [...]

But those who claim that Pakistan's hidden hand has shaped the conflict fear the same is now true of the negotiations for peace. Last year, in the Pakistani city of Karachi, Mullah Baradar, the Taliban's second-in-command, was captured by the ISI.

Secretly, Baradar had made contact with the Afghan government to discuss a deal that would end the war. He had done so without the ISI's permission and he was detained "to bring him back under control" according to one British diplomat....

Officially, al-Shabaab calls the famine declaration a conspiracy. It may have occurred to al-Qaeda that the Somali jihadists' willingness to starve the country into submission might be bad for business, or there may have been private appeals from al-Shabaab.

In any event, what is of additional interest to U.S. officials in this case is the identity of the al-Qaeda emissary in a recent video, who speaks nearly perfect English. It is all too likely we will see or hear from him again, and increased cooperation between al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab poses its own set of problems inside the region and beyond. "Who is “the Foreigner,” al-Qaida’s new aid emissary to Somalia?," by Laura Rozen for The Envoy, October 25:

Despite recent high-profile successes in U.S. efforts to remove key al-Qaida leaders from the battlefield, American counter-terrorism officials are increasingly concerned about al-Qaida affiliates finding fertile ground in unstable, weakly-governed parts of Africa. So terrorism analysts are paying particular attention to a fluent English-speaking al-Qaida emissary who appeared on a video in famine-ravaged Somalia last week, NPR's Dina Temple-Ralston reports.

On a video distributed to Islamist websites last week, the light-skinned man described himself as an emissary of bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. As NPR correspondent Temple Ralston reports Tuesday, the man's Islamic name translates to "the Foreigner," and in his slightly north African accented English, he said he had been sent to Somalia by Zawahiri to distribute aid to southern Somalia's starving population, much of it under the control of the al-Qaida-linked Somali militant group al-Shabab:

So imagine the reaction when a little over a week ago an unusual video appeared on Islamic websites. It was of a white man with a scarf twisted over his face standing before bags of grain and piles of clothes in a desert in Somalia. In the video, he was addressing the hungry at a local feeding station. He said his name was Abu Abdulla al-Muhajir, or "the foreigner." And there was one thing US officials noticed about the man almost immediately: He was speaking nearly perfect English.[...]

His English wasn't quite unaccented and his word choice wasn't quite right — but it was close. The young man went on to tell the crowd that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had sent him to Somalia to distribute food and clothing. "Al-Qaida, under the leadership of Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, continues to highlight the plight of the (community) and continues to support them with every means at their disposal," he said.

"Counter-terrorism officials say the release of this tape could mean al-Qaida is forging closer ties" with Somalia's al-Shabab, Temple-Ralston reports.

And indeed, the release of the tape comes as al-Shabab is accused of stepping up a campaign of kidnappings that target foreign tourists and aid workers providing famine relief in neighboring Kenya.

Several such kidnapping incidents have recently threatened Kenya's critical tourism industry, and have also hampered international famine relief efforts in the Horn of Africa. [...]

However, the president of Somalia's weak transitional government on Monday dismayed western allies when he urged Kenya to halt its military incursion in southern Somalia, the Associated Press reported. Somalia's transitional regime ostensibly works with a 9,000-member African Union peacekeeping force to fight al-Shabab to maintain minimal control of the capital of the civil war-stricken country.

"American and European officials on Tuesday joined some Somali residents in expressing dismay over comments from Somalia's president that called on foreign military allies to stop twin advances against Islamic insurgents," the AP's Katharine Houreld reported from Nairobi Tuesday. Somalia President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed "on Monday publicly told Kenya to halt its military advance in southern Somalia. Diplomats say he also privately asked African Union troops not to move beyond the Deynile neighborhood of Mogadishu, where they are fighting al-Shabab militants for control."

So who is Zawahiri's English speaking aid emissary to Somalia, "the Foreigner?" U.S. military and intelligence officials are intently trying to find out.

"If you ask me what keeps me up at night, it is the thought of an American passport-holding person who transits to a training camp in Somalia, gets some skill, and finds their way back to the United States to attack Americans," U.S. Africom commander Gen. Carter Ham told the Center for Strategic and International Studies earlier this month, Temple-Ralston reported.

The good news is that Kenya apprehended this bomber. The bad news is that this pair of somewhat amateurish, opportunistic free-lance jihadist attacks is almost certain not to be al-Shabaab's main event in Kenya. Al-Shabaab has actually denied any connection to these attacks, which fall outside of its recent tendencies toward suicide attacks, and the group has specifically threatened Kenya with suicide bombings.

An update on this story. "Kenyan pleads guilty to grenade attack, being Shebab," from Agence France-Presse, October 26:

A Kenyan man plead guilty Wednesday to involvement in a grenade attack in Nairobi and being a member of the Al-Qaeda linked Somali Shebab militant group. Police arrested Elgiva Bwire Oliacha Tuesday in a Nairobi district and seized a cache of weapons including several grenades, ammunition and guns, after two grenade attacks shocked Kenya's capital.

On Monday, one person was killed in a grenade attack at a Nairobi bus stop hours after several others were wounded when a grenade was detonated in a bar.

Bwire, aged 28 and from western Kenya, admitted guilt in court only to involvement in Monday night's grenade attack at a bus station, as well as to possession of unlicensed weapons.

His case is due to be heard again on Friday, and he could face up to 15 years in prison.

Despite Bwire's guilty plea, Shebab leaders continue to deny responsibility for the attacks, which wounded more than two dozen people.

Kenyan police have in the past been accused of using "violence and torture during interrogations," according to US State Department reports.

Police have come under intense pressure to step up security following threats of retaliation by Shebab insurgents after Kenya's military launched an assault against the rebels in the south of war-torn Somalia....

This guy again: "In March 2007, a KSU official said that [Julio] Pino, 48, had acknowledged providing news stories to a jihadist Web site but had stopped."

"Kent St. prof. reportedly yells ‘Death to Israel’ at event with Israeli diplomat," by Christopher Santarelli for The Blaze, October 26:

A Kent State history professor, who has allegedly been linked to elements of Muslim extremism, reportedly lashed out at a former Israeli diplomat speaking at the university Tuesday night.

The event was co-sponsored by the undergraduate student government and entitled “An Evening with Ishmael Khaldi.” Khaldi spoke in regards to his book, A Shepherd’s Journey, which details his life journey from a small tent in a Bedouin village to the inner-circles of the Israel Foreign Service. When his speech ended, Khaldi opened the floor to a Q&A, where History Professor Julio Pino rushed to be the first to question Khaldi.

John Milligan of KentWired, an independent student publication,reports that Pino began to question how Khaldi could justify speaking of foreign aid given from Israel to countries like Turkey, when that aid was financed by “blood money that came from the deaths of Palestinian children and babies.” Milligan, a senior majoring in magazine journalism, then captured the the most shocking part of the exchange:

“The crowd fell into an awkward silence as the two continued to exchange words from across the auditorium.

‘It is not respectful to me here,’ Khaldi said.

Pino responded by saying ‘your government killed people’ and claimed Khaldi was not being respectful to him.

‘I do respect you, but you are wrong,’ Khaldi said. ‘It’s a lie.’

The exchange ended as Pino stormed out of the auditorium shouting ‘Death to Israel!’”

Pamela Geller has here the actual letter that Steve Eckley, a senior vice president of the management company that runs the Hutton Hotel, sent to Lou Ann Zelenik. He says that "at least two of your speakers have a history of enraging people to the point of violence." That would be, as is clear from his earlier statements, Geller and me.

Now, in fact, neither Pamela Geller nor I have ever advocated or approved of violent action. So if someone is enraged to the point of violence by what we say, the responsibility lies entirely with him, not with us. And if Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies have threatened violence if we speak, as it appears that they have, the police should be called in and these threats investigated, and the right of free citizens to free speech and freedom of assembly upheld. Instead, Eckley blames us for Islamic supremacist irrational violence and rage, and encourages more of that violence by showing that the threat of it gets results.

"Nashville hotel blocks Zelenik's anti-Sharia conference," by Scott Broden for DNJ.com, October 25:

MURFREESBORO — Lou Ann Zelenik started searching for a new place for "The Constitution or Sharia?: Preserving Freedom Conference" Monday after learning a Nashville hotel canceled its Nov. 11 booking.

"It's ridiculous that they chose to silence our freedom to speak," said Zelenik, a Murfreesboro resident who came in second in a close Republican primary in 2010 against U.S. Rep. Diane Black of Gallatin. "They canceled it because they got threats. The Islamic extremists won, as far as I'm concerned."

A company official with oversight of Hutton Hotel contends that Zelenik is wrong.

"This has nothing to do with freedom to speak," said Steve Eckley, a senior vice president of the management company that runs the Hutton Hotel. "This has everything to do with making sure we are protecting our employees, our guests and our property.

"We were very concerned about protests, and those protests turning ugly. Several of the calls that we received led us to believe there was going to be organized protests," he said. "We have no issue with the organization whatsoever. But because of two of their very inflammatory speakers, we were concerned about those protests."

Pamela put it best: "My defense of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience enrages Islamic supremacists to the point of violence, and that is our fault." Yes it is, in today's Orwellian society.

Eckley confirmed that Pamela Geller of Stop Islamization of America was one of them and that her involvement is mentioned as a concern on the Anti-Defamation League's website, which is dedicated to stopping the defamation of the Jewish people and securing justice and fair treatment to all.

"They protect everyone," Eckley said.

Note how Eckley contradicts himself: he says he has no problem with our message, but is just concerned about violence. Then he cites two hard-Left reports that smear us for our message.

And of course the local Islamic center is pleased by their denial of the freedom of speech:

Islamic Center of Murfreesboro member Saleh Sbenaty said he thinks the hotel did the right thing.

"We as citizens support the First Amendment, whether that be freedom of religion or freedom of speech, but hate speech cannot be called freedom of speech," said Sbenaty, a 19-year MTSU professor in the Department of Engineering Technology. "The United States does not stand for bigotry or exclusion. The United States is an open country that welcomes people of all faiths and all traditions, including the Muslim tradition."

The problem with this is that "hate speech" is in the eye of the beholder. Sbenaty would doubtless not characterize a sermon based on Qur'an 9:5 or 9:29 or 4:34 or 5:33 or 4:89 or 47:4, etc., as hate speech, but others would differ. Ultimately hate speech laws are tools in the hands of the powerful to silence dissent. And that's just what the Islamic supremacists want to do.

More on Eckley's lies and cowardice here and here.

And just watch for the dividends that will come in from that billion: oppression of women (polygamy has already been legalized in Libya), oppression of non-Muslims (a Jew who returned to Libya after decades in exile has already been harassed and deported), the denial of free speech and the freedom of conscience, and more virulent anti-Americanism than Gaddafi ever imagined. A bargain!

"Obama on Libya: 'We led from the front,'" by Jamie Klatell for The Hill, October 26 (thanks to Wimpy):

President Obama said Tuesday the often-repeated idea that the U.S. led from behind in the ouster of Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi was incorrect.

"We led from the front," Obama said in a pre-taped interview for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." "We introduced the resolution in the United Nations that allowed us to protect civilians in Libya when Gadhafi was threatening to slaughter them. It was our extraordinary men and women in uniform, our pilots who took out their air defense systems, set up a no-fly zone."...

Because his administration was "able to organize the international community," Obama told Leno, operations in Libya "only cost us a billion dollars" and no U.S. troops were killed or injured....

Exceptions to a uniform defeat the purpose of having one, making the exception stand out and calling attention to it. That appears to be precisely the idea here.

It is a curious inversion of logic, also seen in the story about prayer spaces at the Catholic University of America, and the prayer break dispute with Hertz: Refusing to discriminate in Muslim complainants' favor on those matters is discriminating against them.

"Muslim Girl Wants Army to Bend Its Rules Just for Her," from The Stir, October 21:

When you envision signing up for the US Army, what's the picture that comes to mind? Green fatigues and dress blues that match your fellow soldiers? Or wearing any darn thing you please?

The military is pretty well known for requiring uniformity in uniforms. So news that a Muslim teenager has been told she can't wear her headscarf when she marches with her high school's junior ROTC, a youth offshoot of the Army, isn't terribly surprising. And it's not discrimination either.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has come out to say that Demin Zawity, a 14-year-old cadet from Tennessee, has been treated unfairly because her ROTC commander told her she couldn't wear her traditional headscarf with her uniform if she wanted to march in a homecoming parade with the rest of the cadets. Although they didn't call it Islamophobia, the undertones of their complaints are clear: they think the Army needs to change its rules.

But ROTC regulations do allow for the headscarves worn by Muslim women for religious reasons to be worn, so long as they're "completely covered by standard military headgear." She wasn't told no. She was told "yes, but ... "

But Zawity wanted a special dispensation -- something that takes time to make its way through the proper channels -- and she only learned her scarf was inappropriate the day before the parade.

Or so she says.

It's not that I think she's lying, per se. But as a Muslim American who wears her headscarf on a daily basis, I find it hard to believe that this is the first time Zawity was ever faced with the notion that some people don't wear headscarves. As a 14-year-old, I'm finding it hard to believe that she can't fathom the concept of "uniforms."

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of jobs that are known for requiring their employees to match. She has to have seen police officers, chefs, nurses, basketball players ... the list could go on. But in particular, Zawity chose to join a military organization, where the uniform rules are widely known for being stringent.

Join the Army -- or in this case, the ROTC -- and you pledge to live by their rules. She signed up for that, not the other way around.

This is the demarcation between what represents discrimination in this country and what allows for the freedoms we so enjoy as Americans. We all have the right to take a job that carries strict rules for its employees or join an organization with specific expectations, and we all have the right to say, "You know, that job isn't for me."

Liberal teenagers don't join the Young Republicans. Evangelical kids don't join the Gay/Straight Alliance. It's all about choice, something we as Americans are lucky to have.

This Muslim teenager chose to join an organization that accepted her, and gave her an ability to merge her religious background with their strict standards. She, in turn, asked for special treatment. That doesn't mean she's been discriminated against. It means she picked the wrong organization to join.

When Abu Bakr Bashir was sentenced, we wrote: "how much Bashir actually serves of a 15-year prison term in Indonesia will be anyone's guess."

The reduction in his sentence has occurred very quietly, with no explanation given. Now, it is officially down to nine years, and that will not be the end of the story. Bashir's lawyer intends to appeal to the supreme court. "Indonesian court slashes radical cleric's sentence," by Noor Fatchi for the Associated Press, October 26 (thanks to Bill):

JAKARTA, Indonesia—A radical Islamic cleric accused of setting up a terror training camp in western Indonesia had his prison sentence slashed from 15 years to nine years, an appeals court said Wednesday. No reason was given for the decision.

Abu Bakar Bashir, known as the spiritual leader of al-Qaida-linked militants blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings, was accused of providing key support for the camp that brought together men from almost every known extremist group in the predominantly Muslim country.

They were allegedly planning Mumbai-styled gun attacks on foreigners in the capital, Jakarta, and the assassinations of moderate leaders, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

In March, a district court sentenced the 72-year-old cleric to 15 years in prison for inciting terrorism, but his lawyers appealed.

The Jakarta High Court quietly handed down its ruling Oct. 20.

"All I can say right now is that his sentence was reduced to nine years," Achmad Sobari, a court spokesman, told The Associated Press.

"I do not know exactly what factors were taken into account in the judge's decision."

Bashir's lawyer, Mohammad Mahendradatta, said he was awaiting official notification from the court. He stressed, however, that his client was innocent and should be freed.

Even nine years was an outrage, he said, vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court....

In "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991, Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the U.S. are told that they "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

In "Virginia Senate Candidate Honors Hamas Associate" at FrontPage, October 25, Ryan Mauro discusses yet another American politician in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood:

On September 25, the 23rd Arab-American Candidates’ Night Dinner was held in Virginia, attended by 46 Democrats and Republicans seeking office, with former governor and current Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine, as a major speaker. The dinner honored a top Muslim Brotherhood official affiliated with Hamas named Jamal Barzinji, an inconvenient and overlooked fact for Kaine’s campaign team.

Tim Kaine was the governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010 and then was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He was on the short-list to become President Obama’s running mate. He is now running for Senate and will likely face off against former Senator George Allen, who narrowly lost his seat in 2006 to Senator Jim Webb. Democratic Senator Mark Warner also sent a videotaped message to the conference.

Kaine thanked the audience for their help with his gubernatorial campaign and asked for them to again support him in his quest to become a senator. This is troubling when you consider what else happened that night: A Lifetime Achievement Award was bestowed upon Jamal Barzinji, called a “founding father” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. and an associate of Hamas. His Wikipedia page has been altered to boast of the award and Kaine’s attendance.

FBI documents from 1987-1988 flat-out state that Barzinji is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He played an instrumental role in setting up the Brotherhood networks in the U.S. decades ago. In 1972, he was the president of the Muslim Students Association, identified as a Brotherhood front in the Islamist group’s own documents. He was a founder of the North American Islamic Trust and a top official with the Islamic Society of North America, both labeled by the federal government as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. A judge ruled in 2009 that the government provided “ample evidence” tying the two organizations to Hamas.

Read it all.

UPDATE: In recent days, word has gotten out that apparently no CUA students are party to Banzhaf's suit, though the effort remains an equally insidious social engineering effort against CUA. The agenda remains the same.

Crucifixes? At a Catholic university? How about that.

Of course, at the heart of this complaint is the hope of establishing a Muslim prayer space on the campus that would be subject to different standards than the rest of the university -- a little enclave of Islamic law where its ban on the display of crosses would be "respected."

It is mentioned below that Muslim students say they like CUA because they feel "safe" and "comfortable." They are receiving the benefits of what Catholics have built at CUA, but are expecting more. They want to bend the institution to their own purposes for their own "comfort."

They think it's a fine place, if it just weren't so, you know, Catholic, and therefore un-Islamic. "University Accused of Discriminating Against Muslims," from CUA's The Tower, October 20 (thanks to B.):

New charges have recently been filed against the University on counts of illegal discrimination against its Muslim and female students. The allegations are being reviewed by the District of Colombia Office of Human Rights (OHR), which has the strictest discrimination laws in the country. President John H. Garvey and the University is being urged to respond to the charges.

John F. Banzhaf III, the George Washington University Professor of Public Interest Law who initiated the legal controversy surrounding same-sex residence halls, is also the one behind these new charges.

You'll want to read this sitting down:

The official allegations claim that CUA, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to a press release on PRLOG.com.

This formal complaint also maintains that the new same-sex residence halls are particularly discriminating against female students, which is a new position on the same-sex lawsuit that began last month.

For both aspects of the complaint: it's a Catholic university, a private institution. No one is being forced to attend it. On the other hand, its very nature and identity puts a giant target on it for social engineering.

Banzhaf claims that the University is denying Muslim students the same benefits that students of other religions are able to enjoy since there is no formal Muslim association sponsored by Catholic University but the Columbus School of Law has an association for Jewish students

“Denying Muslim students the opportunity for form a student group on campus could hardly be based upon any fundamental Catholic doctrine since Georgetown University not only has such a Muslim student group, but also provides its Muslim students with a separate prayer room and even a Muslim chaplain,” said Banzhaf in that press release.

“An important reason [that Muslims are gravitating towards Catholic universities] is that the Muslim students, especially those who are observant, feel comfortable and safe at the institution,” said President Garvey in an interview with NPR in December of 2010. “It’s a place where their own faith practices are mirrored by our own. And they feel both welcome and understood at the campus.”

Gentlemen, start your platitudes:

“Even though it’s a Catholic school, a lot of its teachings are very similar to Islam,” said Al Salmi. “It teaches respect, community service, love, worship etc. which are things that Islam also teaches.”

The discrimination charge asserts that although OHR has been investigating alleged discrimination on campus since Banzhaf’s lawsuit began, “neither the President nor anyone else speaking for the University has sought to explain to the public, or even to CUA’s own students, why it believes that its discrimination does not violate the Human Rights Act.”

“As University spokesman, I have repeatedly explained to anyone who has asked me, including the media, that we reject the premise of Banzhaf’s argument, namely that single-sex residence halls are discriminatory,” said Victor Nakas, University Vice President of Public Affairs. “And we also reject his assumption that the Human Rights Act requires residence halls to be co-ed.”

That does a fine job of illustrating the mindset at work here. Rules and standards are hate and discrimination.

As these charges are being considered by the Office of Human Rights, the University administration said they will continue to work towards the betterment of its students.

“Catholic University is committed to the religious freedom and dignity of all members of its community,” said Nakas. “This includes the dozens of Muslims who come to the University for its academic excellence as well as its demonstrated history of outreach and dialogue to people of all faiths.”

Avpixlat.info is a new Swedish-language pro-freedom website. In this video, I welcome it to the front lines and tweak a Swedish "journalist" who was prematurely celebrating the demise of freedom in Sweden.

In "The Justice Department's war on the truth" in WND today, Pamela Geller discusses the Obama Administration's new ban on speaking about the Islamic jihad threat accurately, which I examined here:

The U.S. Department of Justice is becoming a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Obama administration is bowing to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and stopping the use of all training materials for law enforcement and national security officials that refer to jihad and any and all references to Islam. Yet Anwar al-Awlaki was a devout imam who preached the Quran. So let me understand this: Obama executed Awlaki for preaching jihad. That was all he did. Awlaki did not kill anyone. And yet Obama orders law enforcement to drop all mention of jihad and the Islamic motivation of terrorists. What's the difference?

Why did he kill Awlaki?

The Justice Department held a seminar last week on "Confronting Discrimination in the Post 9-11 Era." Among the treacherous conspirators indoctrinating believers and non-believers was the notorious Jew-hating pollster James Zogby and the ghastly leader of the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Mohammed Magid.

James Lafferty, a board member of my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), was there and reported: "Speaker after speaker recited anecdote after anecdote which demonstrated that, except for the Justice Department, law enforcement is conspiring with 'bigoted' Americans to suspend the First Amendment protections of religious expression and free speech."

The DOJ promised to fight that "bigotry" by changing training materials designed to help law enforcement officials understand the jihad threat. Dwight Holton, the U.S. attorney in Oregon, said: "I want to be perfectly clear about this: Training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency toward violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated."

The only ones really responsible for the idea that Islam is "a religion of violence or with a tendency toward violence" are the Muslims who act violently and justify their violence by quoting the Quran. That isn't "bigotry." It's the truth.

Read it all.

In 2004, Awad al-Qarni was one of 26 Islamic scholars who signed a statement encouraging jihadist attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, saying "A Muslim must not inflict harm on any resistance man or inform about them. Instead, they should be supported and protected."

Now, on his Facebook page, he has said "any Palestinian who will jail an Israeli soldier and exchange him for prisoners will be rewarded with a $100,000 prize." "Saudi cleric: Kidnap soldier - get $100,000," by Roee Nahmias for YNet News, October 26:

A week after the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, top Saudi cleric Dr. Awad al-Qarni is offering a $100,000 reward to anyone who kidnaps Israeli soldiers.

He is responding to an ad published by the Libman family offering a similar reward for anyone who catches the person who murdered their relative Shlomo Libman. Libman was killed by terrorists near the settlement of Yitzhar in 1998.

Awad al-Qarni likes this.

"The press reported that the Zionist settlers will pay huge amounts of money to whoever kills the freed Palestinian prisoners," al-Qarni said. "In response to these criminals I declare to the world that any Palestinian who will jail an Israeli soldier and exchange him for prisoners will be rewarded with a $100,000 prize," he wrote on his Facebook page.

Al-Qarni's post has already received more than 1,000 likes and extensive coverage in Hamas-affiliated newspapers in Gaza.

Al-Qarni is a famous Muslim cleric who often guests on TV shows and operates his own website where he discusses various religious law issues. The Palestine-Islam issue is particularly close to his heart.

Meanwhile in Gaza, Hamas Minister Fathi Hamad admitted that Israel's withdrawal from the Strip enabled Hamas to hide Gilad Shalit for so long.

In an interview with Lebanese daily as-Safir Hamad said that the "military campaign in Gaza abolished any security coordination with Israel and the Strip's liberation allowed us to conceal Shalit for five years."...

The intrepid mujahedin, taking the fight to shops, hotels, and schools. "Bombings in Thai south kill 3, wound dozens," from the Associated Press, October 26 (thanks to Twostellas):

PATTANI, Thailand (AP) — Thailand's military said more than a dozen coordinated bomb attacks in the country's insurgency-plagued south Tuesday killed at least three people and injured dozens.

The south is "insurgency plagued." But is it "restive?"

The military's Internal Security Operations Command said suspected Muslim insurgents put bombs at 16 locations across the southern town of Yala, including a school, shops and hotels. Authorities defused five of the bombs.

The agency said three people were killed, 14 severely injured and 31 slightly injured. The explosions also caused power outages.

More than 4,700 people have been killed in Thailand's southernmost Muslim-dominated provinces since an Islamic insurgency flared in 2004.

Tuesday's attacks occurred on the anniversary of the 2004 suppression of an anti-government protest in Tak Bai in neighboring Narathiwat province. Seven demonstrators were fatally shot and 78 others died of asphyxiation after being piled on top of one another on military trucks to be taken to a detention center.

And so they take the fight to easy civilian targets?

Internal Security Operations Command deputy director Akra Tiproj said one of the dead was believed to be a bomber because his body was found on a motorcycle that exploded. Planting bombs on motorcycles is a common tactic of the insurgents.

TUNIS—Tunisia's moderate Islamist party on Tuesday claimed a thumping victory in the country's first election, sending a message to the region that once-banned Islamists are challenging for power after the "Arab Spring."

With election officials still counting ballots from Sunday's vote — the first to follow as a result of the uprisings which began in Tunisia and spread through the region — the Ennahda party said its own tally showed it had won. Several of its biggest rivals conceded defeat.

Ennahda was in talks with rivals on Tuesday about forming an interim coalition government to lead the birthplace of the Arab Spring through its transition to democracy.

Tunisia has a strong secular tradition, and Ennahda officials promised a broad-based coalition.

How far should one trust an Islamist? Even if such promises of having a 'broad based coalition' are carried out, it's nothing but window dressing. The Islamists will certain cast aside their coalition partners once they are no longer needed.

Seeking to reassure secularists in Tunisia and elsewhere who see a threat to liberal values in the region, party officials said they would share power and would not try to push through radical measures.

"There will be no rupture. There will be continuity because we came to power via democracy, not through tanks," campaign manager Abdelhamid Jlazzi said at party headquarters.

Power sharing! See, that should head off all possible problems. And as for the promised continuity, now that they are in power, there they shall remain. One man, one vote, one time.

"We suffered from dictatorship and repression and now is an historic opportunity to savor the taste of freedom and democracy," he said.

Freedom and democracy as allowed within the bounds of Sharia, of course.

Shortly before he spoke, an Ennahda female candidate who does not wear the Islamic head scarf, or hijab, sang along to Lebanese and Tunisian pop songs on a stage. The party says her inclusion is proof of its moderate outlook.

Apparently music, singing and no hijab equal 'moderation'.

Confirming yet again that terrorism works, and that all too many Americans no longer have the courage of their forefathers to defend liberty at whatever cost. Islamic supremacists threatened the hotel over our conference, and the hotel immediately gave in to their violent intimidation. "Conference on Islam canceled as hotel fears head-bashing: Corporate exec reacted to warning 'protests could erupt into violence,'" by Art Moore for WorldNetDaily, October 24:

For the second time in less than a week, a major U.S. hotel has canceled an agreement to host an event on radical Islam's threat to America's freedoms, due to threatening messages to management.

The Preserving Freedom Conference, scheduled for Nov. 11 at the top-rated Hutton Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., features Robert Spencer, author of 10 books about Islam and director of Jihad Watch, and Pamela Geller, a WND columnist, editor of the blog Atlas Shrugs and author of the book "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance." WND is a co-sponsor of the conference.

Steve Eckley, senior vice president of hotels for Amerimar Enterprises in Denver – the Hutton Hotel's managing corporation, told WND it was his decision to cancel the event.

Eckley said he "wasn't exactly sure what the content of the program was," but he explained that he canceled it because of the threat of physical harm to people at the hotel.

"They were veiled threats that there were going to be protests that could easily erupt into violence," he told WND in a telephone interview.

Sessions planned for the conference include "The European Experience" with Shariah, "Religious Persecution Under Shariah," "The Dehumanization and Diminishment of Women in the West Under Shariah," "The Muslim Brotherhood In America" and "Fighting Islamist Propaganda in the Media."

Spencer and Geller are co-founders of the activist group Stop Islamization of America, which helped lead opposition to the so-called Ground Zero mosque in New York City.

As WND reported last week, the Hyatt Place Hotel in Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston, canceled a tea party event featuring Geller after complaints reportedly by the [Hamas-linked] Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. The D.C.-based Islamic group has sued the co-author of a WND Books expose, "Muslim Mafia," which documents CAIR's founding as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas....

Read it all.

This is a free speech issue. The Hutton Hotel has no right to cancel our event or any event because it doesn't like the point of view presented.

In canceling the conference because it received threats, the Hutton Hotel is kowtowing to violence and showing that terrorism works, instead of doing what it should do: stand resolutely against violent intimidation. The conference was to be well-guarded, and the hotel knew this.

The hotel's cancellation of the event is part of the ongoing efforts by Islamic supremacist groups to force non-Muslims to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws and to acquiesce to the Islamization of the public square. They have been pursuing such efforts in the U.S. and Europe for years.

It is noteworthy that Pamela Geller and I were singled out by the hotel. The cancellation of the conference illustrates the threats that Geller has warned about in her 2011 book Stop the Islamization of America (WND Books) and that I wrote about also in my 2008 book Stealth Jihad (Regnery).

We urge all freedom-loving Americans to voice your outrage at this capitulation to Islamic supremacist intimidation. Politely and courteously contact Steve Eckley, vice president of hotels for Amerimar Enterprises in Denver, which makes him the top exec for hotels at the corporation that manages the Hutton Hotel. His phone number is 720-318-4238. The Hutton Hotel is at 1808 West End Ave, Nashville, TN 37203. Tel: 615-340-9333, Fax: 615-340-0010 EMAIL form: http://www.huttonhotel.com/contact_form/contact_form.cfm.

Gerald Marshall is the President & CEO of Amerimar Enterprises. His email address is gmarshall@amerimar.com.

In "Reading the Real Qur'an" in the American Thinker this morning, Pamela Geller reads into the "real translation" that Islamic apologist Mike Ghouse gave her on the Sean Hannity Show last Friday night:

Last Friday I was on the Sean Hannity Show, debating Muslim activist Michael Ghouse on the future of Libya.

Debating Michael Ghouse is like shooting kuffar in a barrel. But Friday night, Ghouse presented me with an enormous Qur'an, courtesy of the Muslim Brotherhood-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): The Message of the Qur'an, Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad. Giving out these giant door-stoppers is further proof of Hamas-linked CAIR's limitless resources.

Inside, Ghouse had written this inscription: "Quran has 25 translations. 2 are bad -- One by Christian Kings other by Muslims -- both to generate hate for the other. Quran is a book of Justice." On the show, Ghouse gave Hannity a copy of the same edition, repeating his claim about the two "wrong translations" and saying, "This is the right translation."

So this must be the book of peace from the religion of peace. Because Ghouse is all about peace. At his website, he says: "Welcome to my world, the world of Pluralism. If we can learn to accept the otherness of other and respect the God given uniqueness of each one of the seven billion of us, then conflicts fade and solutions emerge."

The only problem that Ghouse fails to address is there is no respect or acceptance of "the other" in Islam. "The others" are despised, denigrated, and dawah-ed to death. Under the sharia, nonbelievers are forced live under dhimmitude, a subjugated class status denied basic human rights.

According to Ghouse, it would seem that the things in the "bad" translations that are designed to "generate hate" must not be in this Qur'an. The one he gifted to Hannity and me promotes "the world of Pluralism." So I started reading. The first thing I noticed was that this translation uses "God" for Allah throughout, even as it shows on every page that the Allah of the Qur'an is not the G-d of the Jews or of the Christians. Hmmmm.

I found plenty of pluralism. I found Allah saying to the Jews, who "profaned the Sabbath," "Be as apes despicable!" (2:65). And saying to the Muslims that they should "fight in God's cause against those who wage war against you, and do not commit aggression, for, verily, God does not love aggressors. And slay them wherever you find them" (2:190-191). Don't commit aggression, but slay them wherever you find them. Right.

I kept reading. "And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; then beat them" (4:34; the bracketed word is in the book in this and all other quotes). I sure am glad I am finally reading the right translation.

The pluralism and peace don't end there. I learned that God has "disowned" the "hypocrites" -- that is, people who pretend to be Muslim but aren't really, or who were once Muslim but leave the religion. It says that if they "revert to [open] enmity," the Muslims should "seize them and slay them wherever you may find them" (4:89). So now Muslims are supposed to beat "women whose ill-will" they "have reason to fear," and kill those who wage war against them, and hypocrites who are in open enmity against them, wherever they find them. And we're only on page 139 (out of 1,164 pages). They're not told to try to talk things out, or turn the other cheek, or work to make peace even while defending themselves. Muslims are supposed to fight against those who have "denied the truth" until "there is no more oppression and all worship is devoted to God alone" (8:39). So now Muslims have to fight unbelievers until everyone worships only Allah.

Read it all.

From Yahoo News:

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national human rights and advocacy organization has condemned the Hutton Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee for capitulating to Islamic supremacist threats and intimidation and canceling the Preserving Freedom Conference scheduled for November 11.

Steve Eckley, Senior Vice-President of Hutton Hotel, told conference organizers Monday that he had been getting threatening letters and calls, and that consequently the hotel would not honor its contract for the conference. Eckley even said that if conference organizers and attendees showed up at the hotel, they would not be let in.

AFDI/SIOA executive director Pamela Geller, who is scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the conference, noted that Hyatt Hotel Place in Sugar Land, Texas, similarly caved in to Islamic supremacist intimidation last week, canceling an event at which she was speaking.

"The Hyatt was subsequently inundated with calls and emails protesting their surrender to the foes of free speech," Geller said in a statement. "The Hyatt apologized and promised redress to the Sugar Land Tea Party. The Hutton Hotel has learned nothing from this, and again allowed enemies of free speech to run roughshod over the rights of Americans. This is the second time in no less than a week that a major hotel has capitulated to intimidation and demands to enforce the blasphemy laws under the Sharia here in America."

Geller called on the Hutton Hotel, at 1808 West End Avenue in Nashville, to apologize, reverse its cancellation, and hold AFDI/SIOA sensitivity training sessions to train its employees about the importance of the freedom of speech and the Islamic jihad threat.

"Why is the Hutton Hotel more afraid of fascists and supremacists than they are of losing our cherished freedoms?" asked Geller.

She also called upon free people to boycott the Hutton Hotel until this decision is reversed, and to contact the Hutton Hotel and politely and courteously protest the hotel's cancellation and capitulation to Islamic supremacism. "Americans must boycott these cowardly enterprises and raise their voices in protest," said Geller. The Hutton Hotel's telephone number is 615-340-9333; fax: 615-340-001. Steve Eckley: 720-318-4238.

The Preserving Freedom Conference was to feature Geller as a keynote speaker, along with Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Mark Durie, William Murray, Father Keith Roderick, and a host of voices for freedom.

"We will find a new venue," said Spencer, associate director of AFDI/SIOA, "but the Hutton Hotel's capitulation to Islamic supremacist threats and intimidation is a disgrace, and a disquieting reminder of just how much the freedom of speech is threatened in America today."

"The silencing of free speech is key to the Islamization of America," explained Geller. She chronicles many similar anti-freedom initiatives and explains how to combat them in her book Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

AFDI/SIOA calls upon the Hutton to apologize for its capitulation to the enemies of freedom, and to hold sensitivity training sessions for all its employees to teach them the value of the freedom of speech and the truth about the jihad threat facing the U.S. and the West.

AFDI/SIOA offers diversity and sensitivity training to corporations and government agencies at the local, state and national levels.

AFDI/SIOA's diversity training is designed to help these entities understand the jihad threat in all its different manifestations, including Islamic supremacist cultural initiatives to assert Islamic law and practice in the American workplace. It helps them protect their business practices in the face of demands for special accommodation for Muslim employees.

For more information or to schedule a session, please write to writeatlas@aol.com.

AFDI/SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

The cover-up of the October 9 massacre is well underway. It was reported on October 13 that the Egyptian military was taking over the investigation of its own massacre of Coptic protesters, which was aided by incitement from state television, from the civilian prosecutor.

Below are additional developments, as the "Arab Spring" progresses into an Islamic supremacist winter across North Africa. "Group warns of cover-up in Egypt Christian deaths," from the Associated Press, October 25:

CAIRO (AP) — A leading international rights group has warned of a cover-up by the Egyptian military in the investigation of the killing of more than two dozen mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators in the deadliest single incident since the February overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak.

The New-York based Human Rights Watch called Tuesday for the independent investigation of the October 9 deaths of 27 people, mostly Christian, in front of Cairo's state TV building in the Maspero district along the Nile. Military vehicles were filmed running down protesters.

The group also urged authorities to transfer investigation of the case from military to civilian prosecutors.

"The only hope for justice for the victims is an independent, civilian-led investigation that the army fully cooperates with and cannot control and that leads to the prosecution of those responsible," the HRW said in a statement.

Egypt's military council composed of top army generals took power on Feb. 11 when Hosni Mubarak stepped down, ending the country's 18-day mass uprising. The generals have pledged to eventually yield power to an elected civilian government.

However, activists charge that the military during its time in power has cracked down on discontent in a manner reminiscent of Mubarak. The generals have urged an end to street protests and seem particularly sensitive to any criticism of the army.

The generals have portrayed the October 9 protest and the ensuing bloodshed as the work of provocateurs, thereby shielding the soldiers present from any blame.

Did "provocateurs" plow armored personnel carriers into the crowd?

The HRW statement reflects fears by activists that an army-controlled investigation may simply back up the official story, and may even seek to make scapegoats of some of the protesters.

Some 28 people were arrested in the aftermath of the killings. Most of the names are of Christians. There have been no reports so far of arrests of soldiers involved in the incident.

"The generals seem to be insisting that they and only they investigate the Maspero violence, which is to ensure that no serious investigation occurs," said HRW spokesman Joe Stork. "The military has already tried to control the media narrative, and it should not be allowed to cover up what happened on October 9."

Egypt's newspapers, many of them state-run, have been willing participants.

The group also urged an investigation into whether the military manipulated the media and the state television coverage on Oct. 9 which "may have amounted to incitement to violence."

As protesters marched towards the TV building, state television called on viewers to rush to the army's rescue, casting the Christians as a mob seeking to undermine unity between the people and the military.

Egypt's military rulers have signalled since the killings that they might move to address some long-standing Christian grievances.

That includes a decree purported to criminalize discrimination. It appears to talk a good game, but there are many unanswered questions about its actual enforcement.

On Monday, the state media reported, the head of the ruling military council Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi met with Pope Shenouda III and promised to resolve issues related to the construction of churches. Attacks on a newly-repaired church in southern Egypt sparked the Christian protests which turned deadly on Oct. 9.

A pre-20th century law forbids Christians, who are estimated to number 10 percent of the population, from building or repairing churches without receiving special permission from Egypt's rulers.

That is not just some old law from a century or so ago. It is Sharia, which forbids the construction of new churches or the repair of old ones. Sharia is the basis of legislation in Egypt according to Article 2 of the current constitution, and is certain not to budge from the next one.

This law lies at the root of much tension between the military and Christians, with Egyptian presidents from the 1960s on carefully rationing church-building licenses to gain leverage with the Coptic church.

The Egyptian cabinet said it will issue a new law to regulate construction of churches, a move that would risk antagonizing some conservative Muslims.

That is because the current rule is Sharia, with some allowances for political expediency. The post-revolutionary government has already proposed a law that would be a useless exercise in window-dressing with regard to the construction of churches, and would only serve to restructure the biased bureaucracy standing between Christians and the churches they would build.

But even as they make this overture to the church, Tantawi and his fellow officers have avoided shouldering any blame for the bloodshed of Oct. 9.

Any nation that considers itself civilized should hold Egypt accountable.

I tried to tell you -- in Human Events this morning:

Muammar Gaddafi is dead, and Barack Obama’s partisans are hailing the Brave New Libya as a triumph for his administration. Speaking about the Libyan revolution in March, Obama hailed “the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny,” saying now they have done it. It may, in fact, give him a boost in the polls, bolstering his manufactured image as a fearless anti-terror crusader, bagger of bin Laden, al-Awlaki, and now Gaddafi. But much less likely is the possibility that the end of Gaddafi’s regime will actually secure the rights of peaceful assembly and free speech for Libyans, or be any benefit to the United States.

This is hard for many people to believe. After all, Gaddafi has been waging war against the U.S. for so long that it was fully 25 years ago that Ronald Reagan​ dubbed him the “madman of the Middle East.” But following in Gaddafi’s wake is likely to be a Sharia regime that will be even more virulent in its anti-Americanism than he was—and much better connected internationally.

Supporters of Obama’s intervention in Libya generally assumed that the forces that were revolting against the Gaddafi regime were secular and oriented toward Western values. When Gaddafi was captured and killed, the victors were chanting “Allahu Akbar.” This is a common enough chant in Muslim countries, especially on such occasions, but in this case it was emblematic of the imminent replacement of Gaddafi’s bizarre Islamosocialist cult of personality with a straight Sharia regime populated by al-Qaeda elements.

It is likely that the new America-backed regime will compete with the Gaddafi regime in its hatred for America and the West, and become noted for being even more anti-American than he was. David Gerbi was one of the many who believed the mainstream media news stories about plucky Libyan revolutionaries fighting for freedom against a repressive regime. Gerbi, a Libyan Jew who had lived in exile in Italy for decades, took people like Barack Obama at their word and believed that what was happening in Libya was a wonderful throwing-off of oppression and reaffirmation of human rights. He decided to return to Libya to rebuild the synagogue in Tripoli, a once-grand structure that had been used as a garbage dump during the Gaddafi regime.

But when Gerbi arrived in the new Libya, he was in for a rude awakening. Demonstrators outside the synagogue revealed to him the brutal truth behind all the fog of political correctness: Carrying signs with inscriptions such as, “There is no place for Jews in Libya,” they made it abundantly clear that they believed that his attempt to rebuild the synagogue was yet another plot of the Zionism they detested, and the enlightened democratic revolutionaries called for Gerbi's deportation. Gerbi ultimately returned to Rome.

Gerbi’s case was not isolated. Islamic law mandates a humiliating second-class status for Jews that, among other discriminatory regulations, forbids them to repair old houses of worship or build new ones. And Islamic law is going to be the foundation of post-Gaddafi Libyan society. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of Libya’s Transitional National Council, declared before a jubilant crowd in Tripoli in September that Sharia would henceforth be the “main source” for Libyan law. Likewise Sheikh Abdel Ghani Abu Ghrass, a popular imam in Libya, who told a crowd of thousands in Tripoli, “We must underline the Islamic character of the new Libyan state,” and that Libya “should be governed in conformity with Sharia.” Libya’s new draft constitution declares: “Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence [Sharia].”

There is more.

I do not support the burning of books. Still, there is absolutely no doubt that if Ernesto Rojas Abbate had burned a Bible, he never would have been arrested or prosecuted. It is a good thing that he was acquitted, but he never should have been arrested or tried in the first place. The specter of Muslim outrage is now beginning to override the rule of law. "No reprisals for Frenchman who burned Koran," from AFP, October 25:

An appeals court on Tuesday confirmed the acquittal of a Frenchman accused of inciting racial hatred after posting an internet video of himself burning a Koran and then urinating on it.

Ernesto Rojas Abbate was arrested in October 2010 after posting footage of himself wearing a devil mask and tearing pages from the Islamic holy book before setting it on fire and later urinating on it to extinguish the flames.

Prosecutors, who had been seeking a three-month suspended sentence and €1,000 ($1,400) fine, appealed after a court acquitted him in May on charges of inciting racial hatred.

In the footage Rojas Abbate, a 31-year-old resident of a suburb of the eastern city of Strasbourg, used pages of the Koran as a prop in a simulation of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York.

He made paper airplanes from pages of the Koran, threw them at glasses meant to represent the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, then burned the pages and the book before urinating on them.

The appeals court ruled that, while the video was "wilfully outrageous and deliberately provocative", there was no evidence Rojas Abbate had intended "to arouse feelings of hostility... aimed at provoking discrimination, hate, or violence towards Muslims."

His lawyer, Renaud Bettcher, hailed the ruling, saying: "In a secular and republican society, it is incomprehensible that my client was prosecuted. Blasphemy does not exist in France."

Police arrested Rojas Abbate after local Muslim leaders in Strasbourg reacted with outrage at the video.

Causing Muslim outrage is increasingly a cause for arrest all over the Western world.

Picking up Leftist smears from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League, the Hutton Hotel has canceled the Preserving Freedom Conference because Pamela Geller and I were speaking there. More on this story, and a Free Speech Death Watch Alert: "Nashville hotel cancels conference over speakers deemed anti-Muslim 'extremists,'" from the Associated Press, October 24 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Nashville hotel has canceled a conference by the Sharia Awareness Action Network, saying it was concerned the speakers include "extremists" with a history of contentious events.

The "Preserving Freedom Conference" had been scheduled for Nov. 11 at the Hutton Hotel near downtown. The hotel in a statement Monday said it has to be "mindful of the safety, security and peace of mind of its guests."

The hotel cited reports by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center about speakers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer of the group Stop Islamization of America, adding that they have "a history of controversy and contention surrounding their appearances."

I didn't know that!

A post on Geller's website said the hotel had "caved to Islamic supremacist demands" and urged supporters to call the hotel's management to complain.

Now it's "extremism" to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights for women.

Saudi Arabia is a curious destination, given its own approach to Sharia, blasphemy, and Christians, such as Asia Bibi, whom the assassinated Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, sought to defend against false charges brought under Pakistan's inherently abusive blasphemy law.

But the fact remains that the judge, who pronounced the sentence for murder as provided by law, has had to flee the country for doing his job and not making an exception in the name of Islamic supremacism. There have been imaginative excuses from Pakistani Islamic groups about why the death sentence should not have been applied, from the argument that a Sharia court should have had jurisdiction instead, to the idea that people wanted Salman Taseer dead anyway, so the assassin didn't cause any real distress to society in their estimation.

An update on this story. "Qadri case judge sent abroad," by Zulqernain Tahir for Dawn, October 24 (thanks to K):

LAHORE: The district and sessions judge, who had handed down two death sentences to Mumtaz Qadri for killing Punjab governor Salman Taseer, has left for Saudi Arabia along with his family after receiving death threats from extremists.

“The death threats have forced Judge Pervez Ali Shah to leave the country along with his family for Saudi Arabia,” Advocate Saiful Malook, the special prosecutor in the Qadri case, told Dawn on Monday.

He said sensing the gravity of the situation the government had arranged the lodging of Mr Shah and members of his family abroad. “Although security was provided to the judge and his family members, the government on the reports of law-enforcement agencies opted for sending him abroad,” he said.

There were also unconfirmed reports that extremist elements in religious parties had fixed the head money for the judge. “There were such reports but there was a potential threat to the life of Mr Shah and his family members,” he said.

The prosecutor has also been threatened:

Mr Malook said he also had been receiving threats to his life and urged the government to arrange adequate security. “The government has deployed only two policemen for my security which is not adequate,” he said.

Judge Pervez Ali Shah had said in his verdict: “No-one can be given the licence to kill anyone in any condition, therefore, the killer cannot be pardoned as he has committed a heinous crime.”

Assassin Qadri, a constable in the Punjab Police Elite Force, tried to justify the murder by stating that he had killed Mr Taseer for supporting Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who the slain governor had projected as having been wrongly convicted of blasphemy. Qadri, who was on duty to guard Taseer, gunned him down outside a restaurant in Islamabad on Jan 4 this year.

The Islamabad High Court stayed the implementation of death sentence till a decision on his appeal against the verdict.

Advocate Malook said the judge’s decision was “absolutely according to law” but the reaction of lawyers of the Rawalpindi Bar to the verdict was unfortunate.

Judge Shah had been on long leave since sentencing Qadri to death. Earlier, the chief justice had placed services of Mr Shah at the disposal of the Punjab government and transferred him from the anti terrorism court-II, Rawalpindi, to the Child Protection Court, Lahore, but later repatriated him.

About three dozen religious parties, including Sunni Tehrik and Jamatud Dawa, have been pressing the government to remove Mr Shah from his post. The clerics termed the decision “un-Islamic” and demanded action against the judge.

Police are also investigating the kidnapping of Shahbaz Taseer, son of Salman Taseer, on the lines that Qadri’s sympathisers might be involved in it.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said recently that Shahbaz Taseer was alive and his kidnappers were holding him near the border with Afghanistan. Shahbaz Taseer was kidnapped from Lahore’s Gulberg area in the last week of August.

I wish all Hindu, Sikh, and Jain Jihad Watchers and their families a happy and prosperous Diwali. India is one of the front-line states in the global jihad war, and all free people need to stand with her in defense of the civilizations we have built and the understandings of human rights that we have formulated and share, as they are essentially universal outside the realm of Sharia.

Happy Diwali!

Arid Uka claims he was "radicalized" by what he thought was a video of U.S. soliders raping a Muslim girl -- actually footage from an American antiwar movie -- and went on his rampage the next day. However, Uka was also railing against the "kuffar" on Facebook, and said he wanted to "do his bit for jihad."

Uka has also said he no longer believes in violent jihad, but the father of one of the victims sees through the crocodile tears below: "he is unemotional, he has not looked up during the witness testimonies, and I think he does not have any regrets about what he’s done."

"US airman: Gunman had ‘hate in his eyes’ when he shot 2 servicemen at Frankfurt airport," from the Associated Press, October 24:

FRANKFURT, Germany — A U.S. airman who survived an attack by a radical Islamist that left two fellow servicemen dead told a German court Monday that he looked the gunman in the face and saw “hate in his eyes.”

Staff Sgt. Trevor Brewer, 23, was on a U.S. Air Force bus at Frankfurt airport when Arid Uka, a 21-year-old Kosovo Albanian, began shooting. Brewer was unhurt as Uka’s 9mm pistol jammed due to a defective cartridge.

He told the court that he had ducked behind his seat after he heard the shots, then came face to face with Uka.

“When I looked up, the pistol was in my face. I heard the words ‘Allahu Akbar’ and the pistol went ‘click,’” Brewer said. “Allahu Akbar” means “God is great” in Arabic.

Uka is charged with murder for the March 2 slayings of Senior Airman Nicholas J. Alden, 25, from South Carolina, and Airman 1st Class Zachary R. Cuddeback, 21, from Virginia. He also faces three counts of attempted murder.

German investigators say Uka was a lone attacker who had become radicalized by reading and watching Islamist propaganda on the Internet.

Brewer, who is from Gray, Tennessee, testified that he saw “hate in his eyes” as he stood face to face with Uka.

“I stood up to take him out ... or to seize the weapon,” Brewer said. “He said ‘Allahu Akbar’ again and the gun clicked again.”

Uka fled and Brewer gave chase but slipped and fell behind. He ran into the airport and watched police arrest Uka.

“With my job, we expect danger,” he said. “We expect to fight a war and possibly lose our lives. But we don’t expect that in Europe or America.”

Uka briefly made eye contact across the courtroom with Cuddeback’s father but otherwise looked down at the table in front of him during the testimony and showed no emotion.

He gave a teary confession at the trial’s opening in August, saying that the night before he had seen a video on Facebook that purported to show American soldiers raping a teenage Muslim girl. It turned out to be a scene from the 2007 Brian De Palma anti-war film “Redacted,” taken out of context.

Uka has told the court that the video prompted him to do anything possible to prevent American soldiers from going to Afghanistan. Before opening fire, he asked if the group of airmen were heading for Afghanistan, and was told they were.

Under German law, the court is still required to hear all evidence in the case even though Uka has confessed. [...]

Airman Cuddeback’s father, Robert Cuddeback of Millerton, New York, sat as co-plaintiff at the prosecution’s table, as allowed under German law. An Army veteran, the elder Cuddeback wore the Gold Star lapel pin given to family members of fallen military personnel.

Airman Cuddeback was awarded the Purple Heart, the U.S. military’s decoration for soldiers wounded or killed in action.

Robert Cuddeback said he came to Germany to support Brewer and other servicemen testifying in the case. He said it was “very difficult” to be in the same room with Uka.

“It’s surreal for me, being here, and actually looking Uka in the eyes,” he said. “I can tell you I think that he is unemotional, he has not looked up during the witness testimonies, and I think he does not have any regrets about what he’s done.”

He said he hopes the court sentences Uka to life in prison.

Uka faces a life sentence upon conviction but any cooperation with authorities could lower the amount of time he would have to serve before parole can be considered to as little as 15 years. The judge in the case has said Uka’s confession is not complete because he has not said where he obtained the weapon.

That's how it always seems to happen. More on this story. "Karzai backtracks on controversial Pakistan remarks," from Agence France-Presse, October 24:

President Hamid Karzai sought to distance himself Monday from controversial remarks made in an interview in which he said Afghanistan would back Pakistan against the US if the two ever came to blows.

The presidential palace said Karzai's comments, made in an interview with private Pakistani television station Geo at the weekend, were "misinterpreted".

Karzai has said that his country would support Pakistan if it was attacked by either the United States or India.

What he said:

"God forbid, If any time war erupts between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan," Karzai said in an interview aired late Saturday

The prospect of all-out conflict between the US and Pakistan remains remote, despite strained relations in recent months, following the killing of Osama bin Laden by US commandos in a secret raid in a Pakistani garrison town.

Nevertheless the comments raised eyebrows among Western officials in Kabul allied to the 10-year campaign to keep the Taliban from returning to power.

Christopher Chambers, a NATO spokesman, told reporters in Kabul that "we all need to focus on much wider dialogue that's required for peace... and which the people of both countries mostly certainly want and certainly deserve."

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland would not comment directly on Karzai's remarks.

"It's not an issue because it's not going to happen," she said of the hypothetical war, quoting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Karzai's office insisted the remarks were broadcast out of context.

"Pakistani media has misinterpreted it," said the president's deputy spokesman Seyamak Herawi.

"They only showed the first part when the president says Afghanistan will back Pakistan if there is a war."

The attempted explanation:

Instead, the reference was to Afghanistan's willingness to house refugees from Pakistan in case of any conflict, in the way that millions of Afghans are given refuge across the border in Pakistan's northwestern frontier region.

"But in connection with the war on terrorism if there is a war on Pakistan, Afghanistan will not support that," he further stated.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been tested, with Karzai recently accusing his neighbour of playing a "double-game" with Afghan insurgents fighting the US-led war effort who hold bases across the border.

So, are the Libyans who would resist Sharia law racists, or are they Islamophobes? After all, no one can ever have legitimate concerns about the contents of Sharia law and the intentions of its backers. "Sharia law declaration raises concerns in new Libya," by Simon Martelli for Agence France-Presse, October 24:

The announcement that Islamic sharia law will be the basis of legislation in newly liberated Libya has raised concerns, especially among women, despite Islamists insisting moderation will prevail.

Interim leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil said on Sunday, during his speech to the nation in Benghazi to formally declare the country's liberation from the ousted regime of Moammer Kadhafi, that sharia would be Libya's principal law.

"Any law that violates sharia is null and void legally," he said, citing as an example the law on marriage passed during the slain dictator's 42-year tenure that imposed restrictions on polygamy, which is permitted in Islam.

"The law of divorce and marriage... This law is contrary to sharia and it is stopped," Abdel Jalil said.

His comments have provoked criticism and calls for restraint both in Libya and in Europe, amid fears that the Arab Spring may give rise to a potentially intolerant Islamist resurgence.

Many Libyans awaiting Sunday's historic speech expressed surprise at the decision by the National Transitional Council leader to mention the role of sharia law in the new country before addressing such important issues as security and education.

"It's shocking and insulting to state, after thousands of Libyans have paid for freedom with their lives, that the priority of the new leadership is to allow men to marry in secret," said Rim, 40, a Libyan feminist who requested anonymity.

"We did not slay Goliath so that we now live under the Inquisition," she told AFP.

Interesting mixture of metaphors.

In his speech, Abdel Jalil also announced the introduction of Islamic banking in Libya in keeping with sharia which prohibits the earning of interest, or riba in Arabic, that is considered a form of usury.

Adelrahman al-Shatr, one of the founders of the centre-right Party of National Solidarity, launched just last week, said it was premature for the NTC leader to speak about the policies of the new state.

"It is a subject that should be discussed with the different political groups and with the Libyan people," he said.

"These declarations create feelings of pain and bitterness among women who sacrificed so many martyrs," in the eight-month battle against Kadhafi loyalists, he added.

Women can divorce under Sharia, but the terms are far less favorable.

"By abolishing the marriage law, women lose the right to keep the family home if they divorce. It is a disaster for Libyan women."

Western leaders also responded swiftly to Abdel Jalil's comments, with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton saying on Monday Libya's introduction of sharia law must respect human rights and democratic principles.

Abdel Jalil, a respected former justice minister of Kadhafi who distanced himself from the old regime, is seen as a pious man and a Sufi follower of Islam who is at odds with extremism.

He has already said that the new Libya would not adopt any extremist ideology, and sought to reassure the international community by stating on Monday that Libyans were moderate Muslims.

"Moderate." "Extreme." Relative to what?

Nevertheless, Libya's Islamists are a rising force in the country's political arena, some of whom, such as Abdelhakim Belhaj, the founder of the Al-Qaeda linked but now-disbanded Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), are expected to hold prominent positions.

After suffering decades of persecution by Kadhafi, they are also working hard to present themselves as proponents of tolerant, democratic values and policies.

As defined by and within the limits of Sharia.

"The rules and laws (in new Libya) should take Islam as a basic reference," Islamist leader Sheikh Ali Sallabi, a supporter of Belhaj, told AFP.

He insisted that freedom, justice, equality and respect for human dignity should be enshrined in the new constitution, along with the peaceful rotation of power.

As defined by and within the limits of Sharia.

"We believe in the rights of others to show their programmes to the people, and to let the people decide," said Sallabi, who was jailed for eight years during the 1980s in Tripoli's notorious Abu Salim prison.

"We also believe in the freedom of the press and the right to self expression. We believe that our religion accommodates these rights," he added.

As defined by and within the limits of Sharia.

Psychology 101: Behavior that is rewarded is likely to be repeated. Behavior that is repeatedly rewarded is likely to be repeatedly... repeated.

Will Egyptian state television hold up his release for an interview, too? An update on this story. "Egypt to free 'Israeli spy' Grapel under swap deal," from BBC News, October 24:

Israel says it has reached a deal with Egypt under which the Egyptians will release a US-Israeli citizen, Ilan Grapel, who has been detained since June on suspicion of spying.

In return Israel has agreed to release 25 Egyptian prisoners.

Mr Grapel has been accused of spying for Israel during the uprising against the former president, Hosni Mubarak.

Israel and Mr Grapel's family say he was working openly for a legitimate aid project in Cairo.

The deal was announced in a statement by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

It has yet to be approved by Israel's security cabinet, but the 14-member body will meet later this week and is thought unlikely to reject the agreement.

Israeli army service

Ilan Grapel's friends and family say he was a law student in the US before he moved back to Israel in 2005.

He served in the Israeli military during its war in Lebanon with the militant group Hezbollah in 2006 and was injured in the fighting.

His family say he was in Cairo working for a non-governmental organisation when he was arrested on 12 June this year.

Egypt accused him of trying to stir up sectarian strife in Cairo on behalf of the Israeli spy agency Mossad.

However, on top of the Israeli denials, many Egyptians also expressed doubt about the allegations.

Sceptics on internet forums pointed out that Mr Grapel travelled to Egypt under his own name and posted pictures of himself on Facebook wearing an Israeli army uniform.

They accused the Egyptian military leadership of trying to use the case to divert attention from their own difficulties.

Israel and the US have for months been pressing the authorities in Cairo to release him.

Mr Grapel's father, Daniel, spoke briefly to Israel's Channel 10 TV on Monday evening.

"I haven't been officially notified, but I do know that things are happening between the US, Egyptian and Israeli governments," he said.

Egyptian prisoners

Egyptian state-owned television has said three children are among the 25 Egyptians to be released.

Israel stressed in its statement that none of the Egyptians had been involved in security-related crimes.

The deal comes less than a week after Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

He had been held by the militant group, Hamas, which controls Gaza, since 2006.

Egypt's Al Ahram newspaper, which is also state-owned, said mediation by the Egyptian authorities in the Shalit deal had helped to clear the way for the Grapel agreement to be reached.

This attack on a bus stop, and a grenade thrown into a nightclub, follow threats from al-Shabaab in response to a Kenyan military operation (rumored to have Western support) in southern Somalia, which was launched after cross-border kidnappings on Kenyan territory.

The U.S. embassy in Nairobi warned Saturday of an "imminent" threat of attacks on Nairobi, but neither of these are al-Shabaab's main event. The group has increasingly turned to suicide bombings in recent weeks, and these smaller attacks only leave Kenyans to wonder when or if the other shoe is going to drop as the Somali jihadists seek to become "victorious with terror" (Sahih Bukhari 4.52.220).

"Kenya: Second explosion in Nairobi," from BBC News, October 24:

A blast has gone off at a bus stop in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, killing at least one person, police say.

An earlier grenade attack on a bar in the city wounded 12 people.

The attacks happened two days after the US embassy in Kenya warned that an attack by Islamist militants from neighbouring Somalia was imminent.

But Kenyan Police Commissioner Matthew Iteere said there was no evidence linking the nightclub attack to the militants from the al-Shabab group.

The Kenyan government sent troops to Somalia more than a week ago to pursue the militants after accusing them of being behind a spate of abductions on its territory.

Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda and controls much of southern and central Somalia, denies involvement in the kidnappings but has warned of reprisals if Kenyan troops do not withdraw from Somalia.

There is also the possibility that these acts are copycat attacks, possibly by sympathizers within Kenya who want in on the action.

Police said the explosion on Monday evening occurred at the OTC bus terminal in downtown Nairobi, which is usually a busy part of the city.

Kenya's Red Cross said on its Twitter feed that eight casualties had been rushed to Kenyatta National Hospital.

In the early hours of Monday morning a man threw a grenade into the Mwauras nightclub and fled the scene, witnesses said. No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The BBC's Will Ross in Nairobi says last December three people died during a grenade attack at a bus in Nairobi. It was never clear who was behind it.

Our correspondent adds that although both attacks were small, they will nevertheless cause a great deal of anxiety in Kenya.

Pamela Geller has the story. If you value the freedom of speech, start calling and writing the hotel now. Here is Pamela's report:

The Hutton Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee is now sharia-compliant.

Steve Eckley, Senior Vice-President of Hutton Hotel, has caved to Islamic supremacist demands and cancelled our entire Preserving Freedom Conference scheduled for November 11th in Nashville. Eckley notified us that they will not honor our contract. Steve said that if we showed up we would not be let in. He said he has been getting threatening letters and calls. We are currently awaiting the written notification of the cancellation.

Steve Eckley's phone number is 720 318 4238. He said he would not let us in the hotel if we showed up.  He was so ugly and hostile, it was shocking.

I was a scheduled keynote speaker, along with Robert Spencer, Wafa Sultan, Mark Durie, William Murray, Father Keith Roderick, and a host of voices for freedom.

This is the second time in no less than a week that a major hotel has capitulated to intimidation and demands to enforce the blasphemy laws under the sharia here in America. Opposing the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the earth is now forbidden in the war of ideas.

Just last week the Hyatt Place in Sugarland canceled a tea party event where I was scheduled to speak. They have since apologized, but that is hardly enough. Free speech, the cornerstone of our constitutional republic, is in serious jeopardy. Under the Shariah, criticism of Islam is blasphemy (punishable by death in Muslim countries living under the Shariah). This is the death of free speech in the continuing Islamization of America. This is yet another shattering demonstration of why I wrote my book Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

The silencing of free speech is key to the islamization of America.

Americans must boycott these cowardly enterprises and raise their voices in protest.

Hutton Hotel
1808 West End Ave
Nashville, TN 37203

Tel: 615-340-9333, Fax: 615-340-0010

EMAIL form: http://www.huttonhotel.com/contact_form/contact_form.cfm

Here is the email of the current manager of the Hotel, Steven Andre sandre@huttonhotel.com (hat tip Rob)

Nashville is a gateway city for refugee resettlement -- whole Muslim communities are resettled in "gateway" cities like Lewiston, Maine; Shelbyville, Tennessee; St. Cloud, Minnesota; Clarkston, Georgia; and Jamestown, North Dakota. Nashville has one of the country's highest Muslim populations.

I strongly urge all Atlas readers contact the Hutton Hotel and voice your concern with the abridgment of our cherished and hard-fought freedoms. This continuing restriction of free speech is a key front in the war on the truth. Your future, your children's future and that of our country is at stake. I cannot impress this upon you enough.

Get this out to your lists, your friends, and all the freedom lovers that you know.

This cannot stand. Start calling. Now.

UPDATE: The cretins at Hutton Hotel are referring callers to their PR firm. Don't accept that. Politely insist upon speaking with hotel senior management. The attempt to blow you off to their spinmeisters at their highly paid PR firm is not going to cut it.

Check this out -- here's the latest info from Steve Gill:

Mr. Eckley told me that they cancelled the event because of "risk to their property and staff" and numerous threatening calls they received. I asked him where the threats were coming from and he refused to answer that. He indicated he did not contact the FBI or Homeland Security or local police, because he cancelled the event and there was no need to do so. I asked him if the hotel gets a bomb threat over a particular event to they simply cancel the event and fail to contact police in that case, too? He then hung up stating I was "so right wing" he didn't want to talk any longer. The hotel has referred any contacts to their pr agency.

Over the weekend on Pajamas Media (via RaymondIbrahim.com), I discussed how Gaddafi, Mubarak, Bin Laden — even Obama — are not causes but symptoms of their societies:

What a myopic view the Western media and its array of "experts" have concerning the so-called "Arab Spring" — a myopia that naturally metastasizes among the general public.

Consider the Libyan crisis. As usual, the focus is entirely on the individual, on the tangible — the now dead Gaddafi — whom all the blame can be heaped upon, while the existentialist elephant in the room, the real mover and shaker, the spirit of the age behind all these uprisings, is never acknowledged.

So another Arab dictator has been eliminated, and the talking heads are abuzz: some, whose knowledge of the world and reality is chronically limited to their own experience, naively cry "democracy!" (even as those who butchered Gaddafi were crying "Allahu Akbar!"); others cautiously include the usual boilerplate caveats in their analyses, which otherwise remain parochial.

Either way, as many interpret events in Libya, they project their own values and notions of right and wrong, good and bad — most notably by portraying the Arab uprisings as positive signs of democracy — thereby demonstrating, yet again, their inability to comprehend Islam's distinct civilization, let alone the Closing of the Muslim Mind.

I am reminded of an especially pertinent observation by philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

The discovery of truth is prevented most effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, nor directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice [in this case, by the Western conviction that all people want a secular, liberal democracy], which as a pseudo a priori stands in the path of truth and is then like a contrary wind driving a ship away from land, so that sail and rudder [reality and those who present it] labor in vain.

Indeed, 19th century Germans, such as Hegel, understood that world events, far from being inextricably tied to individual leaders, were products of the Zeitgeist, defined as: "The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation … the spirit, attitude, or general outlook of a specific time or period … the general atmosphere of a place or situation and the effect that it has on people."...

But Islamic law is swiftly returning to Libya. "Libya - Mufti:'Gaddafi an infidel,no Islamic funeral," from ANSAmed, October 24 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 24 - The Grand Mufti of Libya, Assadiq al-Ghiriani, has stated that Colonel Gaddafi was an ''infidel'' and for this reason ''prayers should not be spoken over his body'' in mosques, as is foreseen by Islamic funeral rites, the website of Egyptian daily Al Ahram reports.

According to the Mufti, it is, however, possible to bury the former dictator in a Muslim cemetery, but his body should be washed by family members only: ''the only people who can pray for his soul''. In the view of the Grand Mufti, the mortal remains of Colonel Gaddafi should be buried in an unknown place, in order to avoid fomenting divisions between Libyans by ''making his tomb a place of pilgrimage''.

But a different line of thought dominates at Cairo's Ad Alzhar [sic]: it is ''overdone'' to call Mohammar Gaddafi an atheist and so he should be granted a burial according to Muslim rites in a normal cemetery. It should be ''God who judges him,'' said Abdel Moeti Bayoumi, of the Research Academy of Al Azhar, the most important theological centre of the Sunni creed. (ANSAmed).

As the opposition leader said, "the trend is clear."

"Ennahda says it models itself on the ruling AKP party in Turkey, another Muslim-majority country which like Tunisia to date has a secular state," but considering Turkey's behavior under the AKP, that is not exactly a reassuring statement. For that matter, Tunisia is certain not to have a secular constitution, without reference to Islam. In Turkey, Sharia has been on the outside trying to get back in; in the "new" Tunisia, it will get in on the ground floor.

An update on this story. "Islamists claim lead in Tunisia poll," from Agence France-Presse, October 24:

Tunisia's main Islamist party claimed on Monday to have captured about 40 per cent of the vote in the country's first free polls, as the cradle of the Arab Spring basked in praise for its democratic revolution.

Official results were only due on Tuesday but provisional results released by some media outlets appeared to confirm Ennahda's prediction that it would be the dominant force in Tunisia's constituent assembly.

The leader of the secular centre-left PDP party, tipped as Ennahda's main challengers before the vote, conceded defeat.

"The trend is clear. The PDP is badly placed. It is the decision of the Tunisian people. I bow before their choice," leader Maya Jribi said at her party's headquarters.

Tunisians turned out en masse Sunday to elect an assembly seen as the custodian of the pro-democracy revolution that brought dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's 23-year-old rule to a crushing end nine months ago.

"We are not far from 40 per cent. It could be a bit more or a bit less, but we are sure to take 24 (of the 27) voting districts," Samir Dilou, a member of Ennahda's political bureau said, quoting "our sources".

Another executive member said the Ennahda party's own count showed it would have between 60 and 65 seats on the 217-member body.

Data posted on the site of independent radio station Mosaique FM also gave Ennahda the lead based on non definitive results from a few dozen polling centres.

The polls, for which over 90 percent of some 4.1 million registered voters turned out, won hearty acclaim from world leaders closely scrutinising developments on the soil of the Arab Spring's trailblazer.

"This landmark election constitutes a key step in the democratic transition of the country and a significant development in the overall democratic transformation in North Africa and the Middle East," UN chief Ban Ki-moon said.

US President Barack Obama late Sunday hailed the vote as "an important step forward".

The 27-member European Union vowed support for the new authorities while former colonial power France hailed Tunisian voters' "democratic fervour".

Analysts widely predicted Ennahda to win the most votes but fall short of a majority in Sunday's elections for the new assembly that will rewrite the constitution and appoint a president to form a caretaker government.

The assembly will decide on the country's system of government and how to guarantee basic liberties, including women's rights, which many fear Ennahda would seek to diminish despite its assurances to the contrary.

It will also have interim authority to write laws and pass budgets.

Ennahda says it models itself on the ruling AKP party in Turkey, another Muslim-majority country which like Tunisia to date has a secular state.

Its critics have accused Ennahda of preaching modernism in public and radicalism in the mosques, but Tunisia's progressive left remains divided with party leaders having failed to form a pre-vote alliance.

AFDI/SIOA Calls on Hyatt Hotels to Apologize, Institute Sensitivity Training After Caving Into Islamic Supremacist Pressure

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national human rights and advocacy organization is calling on the Hyatt Hotel Place in Sugar Land, Texas to apologize and hold sensitivity training sessions after caving in to pressure from Leftists and Islamic supremacists and canceling an event featuring prominent human rights activist Pamela Geller.

Geller is the executive director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and its Stop Islamization of America (SIOA). She had been scheduled to speak at the Hyatt Place on October 18, but Hyatt officials canceled the event after receiving threats of protests. The Sugar Land Democrats Club announced a protest of the event, issuing a press release from its leaders, Deron Patterson and S. Qaisar Imam.

Said Geller in a statement: "Another venue was found and the event went on as planned, but the Hyatt cancellation raised important issues regarding the freedom of speech and the truth about Islamic supremacism and terrorism."

The Hyatt did issue a qualified apology, but not for allowing the freedom of speech to be subverted by Islamic supremacist entities bent on covering up the truth about the Islamic jihad terror threat. Rather, it apologized only for "not working hard enough with the group to address concerns about potential business disruptions the way we should have to find a resolution."

The Hyatt's cancellation of the Geller event was all the more egregious in light of the Hyatt corporation's hosting of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

AFDI/SIOA accordingly calls upon the Hyatt to apologize for its capitulation to the enemies of freedom, and to hold sensitivity training sessions for all its employees to teach them the value of the freedom of speech and the truth about the jihad threat facing the U.S. and the West.

AFDI/SIOA offers diversity and sensitivity training to corporations and government agencies at the local, state and national levels.

AFDI/SIOA's diversity training is designed to help these entities understand the jihad threat in all its different manifestations, including Islamic supremacist cultural initiatives to assert Islamic law and practice in the American workplace. It helps them protect their business practices in the face of demands for special accommodation for Muslim employees.

For more information or to schedule a session, please write to writeatlas@aol.com.

AFDI/SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Fighting like men isn't often jihadists' strong suit, anyway. Hence the preference in conflicts the world over for asymmetrical warfare and the targeting of civilians. "Seven dead in Thai south attacks," from Agence France-Presse, October 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

NARATHIWAT, Thailand: Suspected Muslim insurgents have killed at least seven people in back-to-back shooting and bomb attacks in Thailand's troubled south, police said Monday.

On Sunday evening an unknown number of gunmen dressed as women, travelling in three pick-up trucks, opened fire on a checkpoint in the main town of Narathiwat province killing two rangers.

Shortly afterwards a bomb exploded at a nearby supermarket, followed by a second bomb at another supermarket about 300 metres (yards) away, causing fires that spread through shophouses and took three hours to extinguish.

Police said they found two charred bodies of the male owner and a female teacher in the first shop, while a young boy and his parents were found dead in the second.

Another seven people suffered burns in the attacks, which happened within the space of half an hour -- the latest in a series of increasingly brazen attacks by the shadowy militants.

Thailand's southernmost provinces have been plagued by more than eight years of conflict that has claimed the lives of more than 4,800 people, both Muslims and Buddhists.

Late last month, more than a dozen suspected insurgents attacked a school in Narathiwat, killing four soldiers and seriously wounding one child.

Teachers working in state schools are frequently targeted because they are seen as a symbol of government authority and an education system perceived as an effort by Bangkok to impose Buddhist culture.

People in the region complain there is discrimination against ethnic Malay Muslims by authorities in the Buddhist-majority nation, including alleged abuses by the armed forces.

Where is the outrage over jihadists dressing up as women and whacking a supermarket owner and a teacher?

Something seems to have gone amiss in that next-to-last paragraph below. What they probably meant is that these additional measures, which serve to "protect" Islam from having to stand on its own in the free market of ideas, aim to counter an imaginary "conspiracy" to weaken the faith of Muslims. It didn't quite come out that way.

"Propagation Of Non-Islamic Teachings To Muslims Can Be Charged In Civil Court, Says Jamil Khir," from Bernama, October 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 (Bernama) -- Non-Muslims who propagate their non-Islamic religious teachings to Muslims can be charged in the civil court under the Control and Restriction of the Propagation of Non-Islamic Religions Enactment.

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom said provisions in the enactment included offences for persuading, coaxing and instigating Muslims to change their religious faith.

Besides publishing publications on other religions other than Islam, it is also an offence to expose non-adult Muslims to other religions, he said when debating the Supply Bill 2012 in the Dewan Rakyat.

Many people were not aware of the law which had been enforced since 1980, he said, adding that among states which enforced the law were Terengganu, Kelantan, Selangor, Melaka, Kedah, Pahang, Johor, Negeri Sembilan and Perlis.

He said the Islamic Development Department (JAKIM) would continue to collaborate with all state Islamic religious councils in an effort to weaken the religious faith of Muslims.

He said efforts were also made by the government to standardise Islamic law in all states.

A jihadist walked into a bar, and... More on this story. Grenade attack on Nairobi bar injures 14," from AFP, October 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

A grenade thrown into on a bar in the Kenyan capital Nairobi has wounded 14 people, all Kenyans, in an attack police linked to recent threats made by Somali Al-Shebab insurgents.

"We are linking the grenade attack to the threats that have been issued by Shebab, and that is why I am appealing to city residents to be vigilant and cooperate with our officers," said Nairobi police chief Antony Kibuchi.

The US embassy in Nairobi had warned on Saturday of an "imminent threat" of attacks possibly targeting foreigners, one week after Kenyan forces crossed into Somalia to hunt down al-Qaeda-linked Shebab fighters.

The embassy cited "credible information of an imminent threat of terrorist attacks directed at prominent Kenyan facilities and areas where foreigners are known to congregate, such as malls and night clubs"....

Libya's new regime in two swift strokes contradicts the Western Islamic apologists who claim that there is no contradiction between Islamic law and American law. "Libya's liberation: interim ruler unveils more radical than expected plans for Islamic law," by Richard Spencer in the Telegraph, October 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Libya's interim leader outlined more radical plans to introduce Islamic law than expected as he declared the official liberation of the country.

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council and de fact [sic] president, had already declared that Libyan laws in future would have Sharia, the Islamic code, as its "basic source".

But that formulation can be interpreted in many ways - it was also the basis of Egypt's largely secular constitution under President Hosni Mubarak, and remains so after his fall.

Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi's era that he said was in conflict with Sharia - that banning polygamy.

In a blow to those who hoped to see Libya's economy integrate further into the western world, he announced that in future bank regulations would ban the charging of interest, in line with Sharia. "Interest creates disease and hatred among people," he said.

Gulf states like the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslim countries, have pioneered the development of Sharia-compliant banks which charge fees rather than interest for loans but they normally run alongside western-style banks.

In the first instance, interest on low-value loans would be waived altogether, he said.

Libya is already the most conservative state in north Africa, banning the sale of alcohol.

C'mon, Spence. That's not a "conservative" thing. Lots of conservatives drink alcohol. Call things by their right names.

Mr Abdul-Jalil's decision - made in advance of the introduction of any democratic process - will please the Islamists who have played a strong role in opposition to Col Gaddafi's rule and in the uprising but worry the many young liberal Libyans who, while usually observant Muslims, take their political cues from the West.

I tried to tell you.

Fantasy-based analysis is now required at the highest levels in Washington. In FrontPage this morning I discuss the new truth-denying policies:

It has been a long time coming, but the Obama Administration has now officially banned the truth. Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole declared Wednesday at a conference in Washington that he had “recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security.” This “reevaluation” will remove all references to Islam in connection with any examination of Islamic jihad terror activity. The Obama Administration has now placed off-limits any investigation of the beliefs, motives and goals of jihad terrorists.

Dwight C. Holton, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, emphasized that training materials for the FBI would be purged of everything politically incorrect: “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for. They will not be tolerated.”

Holton said that he had spoken with Attorney General Eric Holder about FBI training materials that Holton claimed were “egregiously false,” and that Holder “is firmly committed to making sure that this is over….we’re going to fix it.” Holton said that this “fix” was particularly urgent because the rejected training materials “pose a significant threat to national security, because they play into the false narrative propagated by terrorists that the United States is at war with Islam.”

Cole suggested that these training materials had done damage domestically as well: “One of the many, tragic legacies of 9/11 has been an increase in prejudice, discrimination and hatred directed against persons of the Muslim and Sikh faiths and those who are, or who are mistakenly perceived to be, of Arab or South Asian descent. Some have wrongly sought to blame the horror of 9/11 on Arab-American, Muslim American, Sikh-American and South Asian American communities. It has led to attacks against places of worship and other hate crimes, to job discrimination, and to the tragic harassment of children in our schools.”

After sketching out this horror tale, Cole declared: “We must never allow our sorrow and anger at the senseless attack of 9/11 to blind us to the great gift of our diversity.” And this, he said, must involve a rejection of the stereotyping of Muslims: “All of us must reject any suggestion that every Muslim is a terrorist or that every terrorist is a Muslim. As we have seen time and again – from the Oklahoma City bombing to the recent attacks in Oslo, Norway – no religion or ethnicity has a monopoly on terror.” It was George Bush, he said, who after 9/11 “made clear to the nation that these terrorist acts were committed by individuals who distort the peaceful religion of Islam,” and now all government analysis of jihad terror would reflect that perspective.

Of course, the controversial training materials did not really claim that all Muslims are terrorists or that all terrorists are Muslims, and it is noteworthy that Cole had to resort to dismissive caricatures to make his point. For in taking this course, the Obama Administration is bowing to pressure from the Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic advocacy groups. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed that appeared on the same day as the conference in Washington, Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) roundly criticized existing training materials about jihad terror and demanded that the FBI and the Justice Department “issue a clear and unequivocal apology to the Muslim American community; establish a thorough and transparent vetting process in selecting its trainers and materials; invite experts who have no animosity toward any religion to conduct training about any religious community to law enforcement.”

Al-Marayati complained that training materials reflected “bigoted and inflammatory views on Muslims, including claims that ‘devout’ Muslims are more prone toward violence, that Islam aims to ‘transform a country’s culture into 7th century Arabian ways,’ that Islamic charitable giving is a ‘funding mechanism for combat’ and that the prophet Muhammad was a ‘violent cult leader.’”

In this al-Marayati was simply repeating talking points from an “expose” of FBI training materials by hard-Left journalist Spencer Ackerman in Wired, who has been conducting a campaign for some time to get the bureau to purge its terrorism training seminars of any hint of the truth about the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. Yet like virtually all Leftist and Islamic supremacist critics of anti-jihad and anti-terror material, Ackerman and al-Marayati take for granted that such assertions are false, without bothering to explain how or why. Apparently they believe that their falsity is so self-evident as to require no demonstration; unfortunately, however, there is considerable evidence that they are true, and that in banning such materials, the Obama Administration has essentially banned the truth.

There is more.

The Kenyan military is reported to be advancing toward Kismayo, accompanied by aerial bombardment of the city. With or without international assistance to the Kenyan military, al-Shabaab seems at last to have bitten off more than it can chew with its recent cross-border kidnappings.

"Kenya Says Western Nations Join Fight in Somalia, as U.S. Denies Role," by Josh Kron and Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times, October 23:

NAIROBI, Kenya — Foreign military forces have joined the offensive against the Shabab militant group in Somalia as Kenyan troops advanced toward the rebel stronghold of Kismayu from two different directions, Kenya said Sunday.

A Kenyan military spokesman, Maj. Emmanuel Chirchir, said that “one of the partners,” possibly the United States or France, had been behind airstrikes in the past few days, killing a number of Shabab militants. The French Navy has also shelled rebel positions from the sea, the Kenyan military said in a statement.

There is also a psychological element to this announcement, of course. Al-Shabaab may have surmised by now that it is in much more trouble than usual. A report like this leaves the group to wonder how much.

Two senior American officials in Washington said Sunday that neither the United States military nor the Central Intelligence Agency had carried out airstrikes in Somalia in recent days. One of the officials, who follows American military operations closely, said the Kenyan offensive had forced many Shabab fighters and commanders to disperse, making them easier potential targets, but emphasized that there had been “no U.S. military strikes in Somalia at all recently.”

American officials in Kenya declined to comment. A French diplomat in the United States did not return phone calls.

If Western military powers have indeed joined the conflict, analysts said, it could represent a turning point against the Shabab, a ruthless militant group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. The group controls much of southern Somalia, though its young fighters and battered pickup trucks are deemed no match for a sophisticated army.

“Everybody is in theater,” Major Chirchir said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “We know about the strikes. They are complementary.”

The American military has previously conducted surgical strikes in Somalia, taking the opportunity to kill terrorism suspects and Shabab fighters who were on the run. In 2006 and 2007, the American military cooperated closely with a large Ethiopian force that stormed into Somalia to oust an Islamist movement that had taken control of much of the country.

About a week ago, Kenya sent hundreds of its soldiers into Somalia to battle the Shabab, whom the Kenyans blame for recent kidnappings in Kenya; many independent analysts, however, doubt the group had a role in the abductions. Kenya’s military says it plans to remain in Somalia until the Shabab’s capacity is “reduced” and Somalia’s weak, American-backed transitional government is able to function.

But Kenya’s military — especially compared with those of its neighbors, like Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan and Somalia — has scant experience. Several military efforts over the past 20 years by other external powers, from the United States to the United Nations, have failed to deliver a sustainable government in Somalia.

Kenyan military officials say their plan is to squeeze the port of Kismayu, one of Somalia’s biggest towns and a major money-earner for the Shabab, from two sides in a pincer movement with troops massing to the west near Afmadow and to the south in Raas Kaambooni. Heavy rains, though, have literally bogged them down, and after an initial burst of activity, the Kenyan advance seems to have slowed.

Major Chirchir said the Kenyan Navy had also positioned ships along the coastline from the Kenyan border toward Kismayu.

“Any vessel that is there with a militia we will take it down,” he warned.

On Sunday, Kenyan officials said that a French naval ship had shelled the city of Koday, south of Kismayu, and that casualty figures were not yet available. The French military has also launched small, covert strikes in Somalia in the past, aimed at terrorism suspects and pirates.[...]

On Saturday, the American Embassy sent a text message to Americans in Kenya saying, “ the U.S. Embassy in Kenya has received credible information of an imminent threat of terrorist attacks directed at prominent Kenyan facilities and areas where foreigners are known to congregate, such as malls and nightclubs. Please exercise caution.” [...]

Early Monday, a grenade attack wounded 14 people in a bar in central Nairobi, the Kenyan police said, according to Reuters. No one was killed in the blast and no one claimed responsibility.

The cameraman was "was not known to have offended anyone through his professional job," but he offended them simply by doing his job. Boko Haram consistently targets institutions and practices that go against Sharia or stand in the way of their plans to impose it, and this victim worked for state television.

The group has stated its dissatisfaction with its portrayal in the media. Somehow, they've come to be portrayed in a negative light.

"Nigeria union urges probe into journalist's killing," from Agence France-Presse, October 23:

Nigerian journalists on Sunday called for an investigation into the killing of a colleague by suspected Islamists in the restive city of Maiduguri, the first deadly attack targetting the media.

"We totally condemn this dastardly killing of our colleague and urged government to conduct proper investigations so as to bring his killers to book," Garba Mohammed, president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), told AFP.

He said Zakariyya Isa was a cameraman with the state-run Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) in Maiduguri before he was killed on Saturday evening in front of his house shortly after leaving a mosque.

Mohammed described the killing as "unfortunate because Zakariyya was not known to have offended anyone through his professional job."

He said the journalist had been buried according to Muslim rites, but vowed that the union would meet over the incident on Monday.

"The killing has further demonstrated the growing spate of insecurity in the country and the need for government to urgently confront the Boko Haram challenge," he said.

He said government should open dialogue with Boko Haram with a view to ending the spates of bomb and gun attacks by the sect in recent months.

Witnesses said Zakariyya was shot dead by gunmen who trailed him to his house, a few metres from the mosque.

The attack happened in the northern city of Maiduguri, where the sect has been most active.

While most of its attacks have occurred in Nigeria's northeast, Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for the August 26 bomb blast at UN headquarters in Abuja that killed at least 23 people.

Saturday's killing was the first of its kind targeting journalists in the violence-wracked city.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the killing, last month, Boko Haram threatened to attack media organisations, particularly some foreign media, over what it described as misrepresentation of its activities.

Put another shrimp on the barbie for me. Details in the video, filmed in front of my bookshelves in the Jihad Watch headquarters, and more specifically here.

"Mouna Diab was once active in a Quebec youth group that fought discrimination against Muslims by challenging the stereotypes that too often associate them with violence and terror." But it appears now that she, too, was a Misunderstander of Islam. "Quebec woman charged with trying to export assault rifle parts to Lebanon," by Stewart Bell and Graeme Hamilton for the National Post, October 21 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

MONTREAL — Young and striking in her black hijab, Mouna Diab was once active in a Quebec youth group that fought discrimination against Muslims by challenging the stereotypes that too often associate them with violence and terror.

But the outspoken 26-year-old activist had little to say this week after appearing in a Montreal courtroom to face a charge alleging she had violated a United Nations Security Council arms embargo that prohibits the export of weapons to Lebanon.

“I really have no comment to make,” she said. At the bungalow where she lives in suburban Laval, friends and family likewise declined to talk about the case. “She’s finding the whole ordeal very difficult,” her lawyer, Richard Prihoda, said.

Police said Ms. Diab was arrested at Montreal’s Trudeau airport on May 19 as she was departing for Beirut. In her luggage, investigators allegedly found parts of AR-15 assault rifles. Other parts were allegedly shipped separately.

Police said the components could have been assembled into working firearms. “If you put all the pieces together you could build or make two weapons with it,” said Cpl. Luc Thibault, a spokesman at the RCMP’s “C” Division in Montreal....

I tried to tell you. "Libya's transitional leader declares liberation," from AP, October 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Libya's transitional leader declared his country's liberation on Sunday, three days after the hated dictator Moammar Gadhafi was captured and killed.

He called on Libyans to show "patience, honesty and tolerance" and eschew hatred as they embark on rebuilding the country at the end of an 8-month civil war.

The transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil set out a vision for the post-Gadhafi future with an Islamist tint, saying that Islamic Sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation in the country and that existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified. In a gesture that showed his own piety, he urged Libyans not to express their joy by firing in the air, but rather to chant "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great. He then stepped aside and knelt to offer a brief prayer of thanks.

"This revolution was looked after by God to achieve victory," he told the crowd at the declaration ceremony in the eastern city of Benghazi, the birthplace of the uprising against Gadhafi began. He thanked those who fell in the fight against Gadhafi's forces. "This revolution began peacefully to demand the minimum of legitimate rights, but it was met by excessive violence."

Abdul-Jalil said new banks would be set up to follow the Islamic banking system, which bans charging interest. For the time being, he said interest would be canceled from any personal loans already taken out less than 10,000 Libyan dinars (about $7,500)....

The mainstream media has lionized this deadbeat thug, and will no doubt continue to do so. But he continues to show the true, ugly face of the Ground Zero Mosque project. "Mosque developer can't take care of vermin-infested apartment building," by Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein for the New York Post, October 23 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The developer who wants to build a $100 million mosque and community center near Ground Zero can’t take care of a rat-ridden apartment building with just 14 units.

Sharif El-Gamal, the main developer behind the mosque, has nearly 400 open violations that he has refused to fix despite a court order. His company owes the city $61,633 in fines, fees and taxes for the property at 1835 Amsterdam Ave.

El-Gamal, a principal in the company that owns the Washington Heights building, is due in court Thursday. If he doesn’t show up, he risks being sent to jail.

He already failed to appear at a Sept. 28 hearing....

More than 150 complaints about the building, including rats, roaches and lack of heat, were logged with the city from July 2010 to May 2011.

The building’s staircase “was obstructed with construction debris, and the fire escapes were also obstructed,” according to legal papers.

There are 366 housing-code violations that the owner hasn’t addressed, according to the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

HPD sued El-Gamal’s company, Washington Heights Holdings II, to fix the problems and reached a consent order in September. It also fined the company $5,550. It’s unclear if any work has been done.

But fear not. As soon as a Palestinian state is established, all this Jew-hatred will evanesce like the morning dew. Isn't that right, Mr. Obama? Conspiracy Paranoia and Islamic Antisemitism Updates: "Egyptian Researcher Muhammad Galaa Idris: The Jews Are Behind the Spread of Depravity and Sin in the World and Have Brainwashed Europe," from MEMRI, September 23 (thanks to Wimpy):

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian researcher Muhammad Galaa Idris, which aired on Al-Rahma TV, September 23, 2011:

Muhammad Galaa Idris: Another cause for the hatred of Jews is the social cause. Due to the sense of superiority of the Jews, they lived in separate quarters in all societies. These were called ghettoes in the West.

[…]

The Jews were responsible for all the depravity that has spread in society. The gangs of thieves… The stories of Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist and others – exemplify that. They show how the Jews would deal with stolen goods and so on. The Jews were behind the spread of immorality, prostitution, and licentiousness in Europe. They were behind the spread of all sins, and they are to this day. This is written in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We've discussed this. Moral corruption is part of the conspiracy. [...]

This is a part of a campaign to brainwash the world. The Jews have managed to brainwash Europe.

Who benefits? The Pakistanis, who would obtain a tool for buying time indefinitely, saying they need to see the "dialogue" through, and that now is not the time (it never is) for firmer action that could upset a delicate situation. They don't need to do much to look busy.

Who else benefits? The Haqqanis, who can also buy themselves time and an air of legitimacy, playing to false hopes that there is a "pragmatic" element that can be split off and a working relationship established through "engagement." All the while, they will continue fighting and plotting attacks, and they will use the prospect of cutting off talks as an instrument of blackmail.

"US warms to idea of Pakistan talks with militants," by Sebastian Abbott for the Associated Press, October 23:

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Despite some tough talk, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's recent visit to Pakistan seemed to subtly soften Washington's stand on a key point of contention between the two countries: whether Islamabad should take military action against Pakistan-based insurgents fighting American troops in Afghanistan, or try to engage them in peace talks.

Clinton seemed to acknowledge during her two-day visit that ended Friday that help with a negotiated settlement is perhaps the best the U.S. can hope for from Pakistan. This shift in the U.S. stance could give Washington and Islamabad new room to cooperate on ending the Afghan war.

But serious barriers to negotiations remain. The U.S. believes that military force is still needed to push the Taliban and their allies to make concessions. Pakistan, which Washington alleges supports some of the militant groups, prefers on the other hand to reduce violence to induce the insurgents to come to the table.

Islamabad is also worried about being blamed if peace talks fail. It has long-standing ties with the armed groups, but the militants are unpredictable and resistant to pressure. Pakistan is furthermore unsure of exactly what kind of deal the U.S. and Afghan governments might strike with the insurgents, and the atmosphere is permeated by feelings of distrust on all sides.

The U.S. has long demanded that Pakistan take greater military action against Taliban militants and their allies who use Pakistani territory to regroup and to send fighters to attack forces in Afghanistan. Recently, the U.S. has pushed for an assault on the Haqqani militant network, which the U.S. alleges is supported by the Pakistan military's spy agency, the ISI. The U.S. deems the Haqqanis the greatest threat to American troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has denied supporting the Haqqanis, but has also made clear that it will not conduct an offensive against the group's safe haven in the North Waziristan tribal area, a position that has not changed despite the two-day visit by Clinton and other senior national security officials, including CIA chief David Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Many analysts believe Pakistan's refusal is driven by its belief that the Haqqanis could be key allies in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw, especially in countering the influence of archenemy India.

The Pakistani military, however, says that its failure to act against the Haqqanis is just a question of limited resources. It claims its troops are stretched too thin by operations in other parts of the tribal region of northwest Pakistan that are deemed a higher priority — a stance reiterated by the Pakistanis following talks with Clinton's delegation.

"There is limited capacity, and if the organization is overstretched and starts to develop cracks, that is counterproductive," said a senior Pakistani security official, speaking on condition of anonymity to comment on the outcome of the closed-door talks.

Clinton seemed to soften the U.S. stance during a town hall meeting in Islamabad. When asked whether the U.S. expects Pakistan to militarily tackle the Haqqani network or force them to the negotiating table, she said, "It's more the latter."

Clinton also confirmed that the U.S. had tried to reach out to the Haqqanis directly in peace efforts. She is the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge the overtures, which were first reported by The Associated Press in August. She said the meeting was organized by the ISI. [...]

Pakistan doesn't believe the U.S. plan to use military action to force militants into peace talks will work — a disagreement that has bedeviled the process.

"In our culture, it may not work if you want to negotiate with the same adversary you are fighting," said the Pakistani security official. "You have to declare a pause in fighting if you want to give peace a chance."

Clinton made clear the U.S. feels otherwise, saying during the town hall meeting that experience has shown that only a combination of fighting and talking "will convince some to come to negotiations and will remove others who are totally opposed to peace and want to continue their violent attacks."

Pakistan is open to approaching the Taliban and their allies about participating in peace talks, but can't provide any guarantees that its efforts will succeed, said the security official.

"Contact does not mean that they are in our pockets," said the official. "Contact means we will suggest to them that they participate."

Both the Taliban and the Haqqanis have been difficult partners for Pakistan over the years....

It is noteworthy that al-Shabaab has stepped up its use of suicide bombers in recent weeks, even if this attack was, well, not exactly the product of stellar planning. Al-Shabaab has shown itself to have no particular qualms about squandering human life. "Somalia: Suicide bomber wounds 2 AU peacekeepers," from the Associated Press, October 22 (thanks to Kenneth):

MOGADISHU, Somalia — An African Union official says that a suicide bomber has blown himself up in Somalia's capital, wounding two AU peacekeepers.

Biyereke Floribert, a spokesman for African Union peacekeepers, said Sunday that the bomber ran after a convoy of AU peacekeepers near the Tribunka square in Mogadishu before detonating the explosives.

Floribert blamed the attack on al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group that is waging an insurgency against Somalia's weak government.

Earlier this month al-Shabab militants blew up a truck bomb in the capital, killing more than 100 people in their deadliest single explosion.

African Union peacekeepers from Burundi and Uganda are supporting Somali forces in their battle against the militants.

Now, are those in Tunisia who oppose Islamic rule racists, or are they Islamophobes? It has to be one or the other, or both, right? An update on this story. "Huge turnout in Tunisia's Arab Spring election," from Reuters, October 23:

TUNIS, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Tunisian voters poured into polling stations to vote on Sunday in their country's first free election, 10 months after a vegetable seller set fire to himself in an act of protest that started the Arab Spring uprisings.

The leader of an Islamist party predicted to win the biggest share of the vote was heckled outside a polling station by people shouting "terrorist" -- highlighting tensions between Islamists and secularists that are also being felt in other countries touched by the Arab Spring.

Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, prompted by his despair at poverty and government repression, provoked mass protests which forced President Zine al-Abidine to flee Tunisia. This in turn inspired revolts in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria.

Rachid Ghannouchi, leader of the moderately Islamist Ennahda party, took his place in the queue outside a polling station in the El Menzah 6 district of the capital.

"This is an historic day," he said, accompanied by his wife and daughter, who were both wearing hijabs, or Islamic headscarves. "Tunisia was born today. The Arab Spring was born today."

But as he emerged from the polling station, about a dozen people shouted at him: "Degage" French for "Go away," and "You are a terrorist and an assassin! Go back to London!"

Ghannouchi, who spent 22 years in exile in Britain, has associated his party with the moderate Islamism of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. He has said he will not try to impose Muslim values on society.

But the party's rise is worrying Tunisia's secularists who believe their country's liberal, modernist traditions are now under threat. [...]

A final election rally on Friday illustrated the party's contradictions. Suad Abdel-Rahim, a tall, glamorous Ennahda candidate who does not wear a veil, addressed the crowd.

But many books on sale on the fringes of the rally were by writers who belong to the strict Salafist branch of Islam. They believe women should be segregated from men in public and that elections are un-Islamic.

"I'm not so optimistic about the result of the vote," said Ziyed Tijiani, a 26-year-old architect who had just cast his vote. His forefinger was stained with the blue ink used in polling stations to stop ballot fraud.

"I think the Islamists could win. It's not want I want. They may try to change the way I live," he said, accompanied by a young woman dressed who was in jeans and T-shirt.

An Ennahda victory would be the first such success in the Arab world since Hamas won a 2006 Palestinian vote. Islamists won a 1991 election in Algeria, Tunisia's neighbour. The army annulled the result, provoking years of conflict.

Ennahda's fortunes could have a bearing on Egyptian elections set for next month in which the Muslim Brotherhood, an ideological ally, also hopes to emerge strongest.

Tunisia's election will be watched too in neighbouring Libya, which plans to hold elections next year after a revolt there ousted Muammar Gaddafi....

Asia Bibi is the Pakistani Christian mother who was sentenced to death on "blasphemy" charges brought by vindictive neighbors after she refused to convert to Islam.

She has said, "I have not been asked even once for my statement in court. Not by the lawyers and not by the judge." She was not given an attorney, and was sentenced in a court heavily influenced and intimidated by Islamic supremacist thugs.

This petition, from the group Voice of the Martyrs, is one way of letting Pakistan and its leadership know Asia Bibi and her unjust imprisonment have not been forgotten. Not unlike Iran's persecution of the convert from Islam, Youcef Nadarkhani, Pakistan is playing a waiting game with Asia Bibi, stalling for time in the hope that the rest of the world will spare them the international embarrassment so they can get on with business as usual. Meanwhile, innocent lives are caught in the middle.

The petition can be found here.

"Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." -- Qur'an 4:34

How long will Islamic supremacists continue to claim they were "misunderstood" whenever they say something inflammatory? And how long will the credulous kuffar fall for this line? Islamic supremacists are the most misunderstood people on the planet. They have the hardest time making themselves clear, and for some crazy reason people seem to think they're frequently calling for violence when all they're talking about is peace and love.

"Islamic group defends itself by saying message is misunderstood," from CTV Montreal, October 21 (thanks to all who sent this in):

MONTREAL — An Islamic group whose presence in Montreal sparked controversy insisted Friday night that its message has been misunderstood.

The Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) is a UK-based group that describes itself on its website as an "international dawah organization committed to educating and informing humanity about the truth and noble message of Islam."

However, a speech by the group's chairman Abdurraheem Green, where he suggested it is alright for a husband to use physical force on his wife, drew a lot of negative attention to the group.

Yes, that was clearly misunderstood. The Qur'an says that one should "beat" a disobedient woman (4:34), not use physical force.

It led Concordia University's Muslim Students' Association to cancel a planned speech that was to be held Friday night, but a Montreal group affiliated with the Muslim Association of Canada found another venue for another iERA lecturer to speak.

And Hamza Andreas Tzortzis drew quite a crowd, with roughly 500 people packing the hall on Laurentien Blvd.

Tzortzis defended his chairman, saying Green's statements were taken out of context.

"We say not only are they misquotes," he said, "they are full of innuendos, almost like gossip."

The words peace and love were repeated many times during the conference. One of the speakers started by pointing to all the scrutiny surrounding the group in the past few days, saying while it's disappointing it has also motivated them to get their message out and get that message straight[.]

David Alexanderson came from Toronto to hear the conference and said he feels all the attention may not be a bad thing.

"It makes me feel very happy to see that you guys are coming out and creating dialogue," he said. "So hopefully you can take this and go back to your community and people can feel whatever they feel from those comments."

Pass the bong, Alexanderson.

The jihadists from Somalia's Al-Shabaab have threatened Kenya: "your skyscrapers will be destroyed, your tourism will disappear." In other words, they are threatening to turn the place into Somalia. "U.S. embassy warns of imminent threat in Kenya," by Yara Bayoumy for Reuters, October 22:

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The U.S. embassy in Kenya warned of a threat to American citizens in the country after Nairobi launched a cross-border operation against Islamist militants in Somalia.

The embassy in a note to U.S. citizens living in or visiting Kenya said on Saturday that reprisal attacks could be directed at "prominent Kenyan facilities and areas where foreigners are known to congregate, such as malls and night clubs."

The statement said the embassy had taken measures to limit official U.S. government travel to Kenya.

Kenya launched its boldest incursion yet into its anarchic neighbor six days ago after a wave of kidnappings against foreigners that Nairobi has blamed on the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants.

The rebels have denied responsibility for the kidnappings and said Nairobi was using them as a pretext for an attack.

The rebels have warned Nairobi to withdraw from its southern strongholds or risk bringing the "flames of war" into Kenya.

"The people of the United States have become fed up with moral corruption of the country’s officials, they added." That is certainly true.

Leftist/Islamic Supremacist Alliance Update: "Tehran students hold demo in solidarity with Occupy Wall St," from the Tehran Times, October 22:

TEHRAN –A number of students from universities across Tehran held a demonstration outside the Swiss Embassy on Saturday to express their solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Iran and the United States do not have diplomatic relations, and the Swiss Embassy in Tehran hosts the U.S. Interests Section in Iran.

The demonstrators chanted slogans in support of the protesters and denounced the crackdown on the protests.

The students also set the flags of the United States and the Zionist regime on fire and chanted “Down with the United States,” “Death to Israel,” “Down with Capitalism,” and other slogans.

A number of students also delivered speeches at the event, in which they said that true democracy could only be established under the banner of religion.

They also said that the Occupy Wall Street movement has been inspired by the tide of popular uprisings rolling across the Middle East and North Africa region.

The people of the United States have become fed up with moral corruption of the country’s officials, they added.

Analysts say demonstrations in Western countries which followed the Occupy Wall Street movement mark the start of a new uprising against the greed of the capitalism.

Ramin Shamsaii, a student who was present at the demonstration, said liberal democracy is intended to “deceive” people. Shamsaii said “real democracy is only realized under the umbrella of religious democracy.”

He added so long as religious democracy is not established “the world will remain in darkness.”...

"Religious democracy" = Sharia = Islamic supremacism.

Gratitude. "Afghanistan to back Pakistan if wars with U.S.: Karzai," by Augustine Anthony for Reuters, October 22 (thanks to Evan):

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Afghanistan would support Pakistan in case of military conflict between Pakistan and the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview to a private Pakistani TV channel broadcast on Saturday....

"God forbid, If ever there is a war between Pakistan and America, Afghanistan will side with Pakistan," he said in the interview to Geo television.

"If Pakistan is attacked and if the people of Pakistan needs Afghanistan's help, Afghanistan will be there with you."...

Karzai said tensions between the United States and Pakistan did not have any impact in his country's attitude toward Pakistan....

Afghans have long been suspicious of Pakistan's intentions in their country and question its promise to help bring peace. Karzai repeated that concern in his remarks.

"Please brother, stop using all methods that hurt us and that are now hurting you.

"Let's engage from a different platform, a platform in which the two brothers only progress toward a better future in peace and harmony," he said....

SHAH ALAM, Oct 22 — Himpunan Sejuta Umat ['Gathering of a Million Faithful'] said today the problem of Muslim apostasy in Malaysia was greater than what has been reported and suggested this was part of a global plan to destroy Islam.

Himpun chairman Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid said while the government had released statistics on the number of Muslims who left the faith, this was just a fraction of those who had converted from Islam.

“That’s what was reported. It’s the ones that were not reported that we’re worried about because there are a lot that weren’t reported,” he told reporters here after closing the Himpun rally that saw just 5,000 Muslims turning up.

Azmi singled out Evangelical Christians as the key threat to Islam in Malaysia, and vowed that Himpun would ensure their plans to destroy Islam would not succeed.

“The enemies of Islam are global. Islam has been a problem to many of the Western Zionist movements,” he said.

“It is a well-known fact. There are people who see Islam as a target.”

Speakers at Himpun had earlier linked the Evangelicals to the global Zionist movement and alleged that the Christian faction viewed Islam as an obstacle” that must be overcome.

Azmi added that there was proof that the Evangelicals were actively trying to convert Muslims in Malaysia but did not cite his sources.

Himpunan Sejuta Umat was organised by various right-wing religious groups calling for Muslims to rise up and fight the “challenge of Christianisation”.

The mass rally was mooted following the controversial August 3 raid by Selangor Islamic authorities on Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC), where it was alleged that Christians were converting Muslims.

It is illegal to proselytise Muslims in Malaysia.

With racial tension stoked in recent years by church firebombings and the cow head protest, today’s rally could resurrect fears of growing Islamisation among non-Muslims and more liberal Malays despite its poor turnout.

What race is Islam again? And who's stoking all that tension?

Democracy on the march! Of course, the U.S. today is little better. You can't go to prison yet for saying something that Muslims deem offensive, but that is coming in due course, for the first step has already been taken: forbidding telling the truth about Islam for fear of offending Muslims. Punishing those who dare to tell the truth about Islam anyway is the eventual next step in our long, slow slide toward Sharia. "Egyptian sentenced to 3 years for insulting Islam in his Facebook postings," from the Associated Press, Updated: Saturday, October 22:

CAIRO — Egypt’s state media says a Cairo court has sentenced a man to three years in prison for postings on Facebook deemed to be inciting sectarianism and in contempt of Islam.

The MENA state news agency said Saturday a the misdemeanor court found Ayman Mansour had intentionally mocked Islam and used “outrageous and scurrilous” language in describing the religion’s holy book, the Quran, and its prophet and believers.

The court said freedom of belief doesn’t excuse contempt that may offend believers and “subject the regime and the country’s security to serious dangers.”

Egypt is grappling with an increasingly assertive ultraconservative Islamist trend, and recent clashes between the military police and Coptic Christians have heightened fears of increasing sectarian strife.

Note to AP: there is nothing "ultraconservative" about quashing the freedom of speech and persecuting Christians. AP, like all news agencies these days, has abandoned all pretense and labels as "conservative" anything they dislike, and as "liberal" anything they like. So we get the paradox that one is "conservative" for wanting to impose Sharia, and one is "conservative" for also resisting the imposition of Sharia.

SHAH ALAM: Himpun (Himpunan Sejuta Umat Islam) ['Gathering of a Million Faithful'] got underway at the Shah Alam Stadium with speeches and the singing of religious songs Saturday.

Among the VIPs at the gathering were Perkasa president Datuk Ibrahim Ali and Selangor executive councillor Datuk Hassan Ali.

The people had arrived since noon under an overcast sky. Most media organisations reported the number of people present at 5,000. The stadium can seat 88,000. Participants at the rally were also seen with brochures titled Siapa bertanggung jawab kristiankan Melayu diSelangor (Who is responsible for Christianing the Malays in Selangor).

Event organizers have given their word that this event is 'non political'.

"They betrayed Islam," he said, because they had boyfriends and didn't want to wear hijabs. This report also details the many occasions on which the child protection system failed to protect the victims through procedural bungling, including interviewing the children in their parents' presence after hearing of the parents' threat to kill them, and a general climate of denial about the seriousness of the situation.

"‘I would do it again’; court hears horror of alleged honour killing," by Christine Blatchford for the National Post, October 21 (thanks to Michael):

KINGSTON, Ont. — It’s the Canadian Maple Leaf that flies high over the picturesque locks at Kingston Mills near this historic city, but on the night of June 30, 2009, it might just as well have been the black-red-and-green flag of Afghanistan, with its sacred line proclaiming the greatness of Allah.

What happened at the locks that night, Crown prosecutors alleged in Ontario Superior Court Thursday, was a so-called “honour killing,” the culmination of a violent misogynist Afghan culture that had been transplanted holus-bolus years earlier into the heart of central Canada.

“May the devil s— on their graves,” Mohammad Shafia told his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 20 days after the bodies of the couple’s three teenage daughters and Mr. Shafia’s first wife were recovered from a car in the water at the locks.

Found dead by drowning in a black Nissan Mr. Shafia had bought just eight days earlier – the suggestion implicit that he got it for that very purpose — were Rona Amir Mohammad, the barren wife who had been presented to the children and outsiders both as an “auntie,” and rebellious daughters Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti.

Charged with four counts each of first-degree murder are Mr. Shafia, Ms. Yahya and their oldest son Hamed, who was 18 at the time. All are pleading not guilty.

The ghastly conversation was captured on a Kingston Police wiretap, prosecutor Laurie Lacelle told Judge Robert Maranger and a jury.

In another snippet recorded by the device police had placed in a family car, Mr. Shafia told Ms. Yahya, “They committed treason themselves. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam. They betrayed our religion…they betrayed everything.”

He said whenever he saw the pictures taken by Zainab and Sahar on their cell phones – these were goofy shots of them posing in bras and panties, or with their forbidden boyfriends — “I am consoled.

“I say to myself, ‘You did well.’ Were they to come to life, I would do it again.”

In a detailed opening address of 90 minutes, Ms. Lacelle told the jurors they would hear from a variety of witnesses, including those to whom Rona Mohammad and the children had confided their fear of Mr. Shafia and Hamed.

In fact, what was most galling about the prosecutor’s overview of the evidence to come was how very openly the teenagers had rebelled against their parents — once, from a street corner in Montreal where the family lived, they begged a stranger to call 911 for them because they were so afraid to go home — and how little Canadian authorities and Canadian law helped them.

In fact, Quebec child protection authorities twice investigated complaints from Sahar’s school, once little more than three weeks before the four bodies were found.

In the first instance, Ms. Lacelle said, the social worker deemed the complaint to be “founded” – true, in other words – but closed the file anyway when Sahar wouldn’t talk to her once she learned that the worker would be obligated to tell her parents what she’d told her.

The next time she interviewed the girl two days later, “Sahar was wearing the hijab” and claimed things had improved at home.

In the second instance, though police in Montreal interviewed the children separately and had them open up about their maltreatment – including the fact that Mr. Shafia allegedly “often threatened to kill them” – the child protection worker interviewed the girls in the presence of their parents.

Unsurprisingly, they clammed up or recanted their earlier allegations, and the worker closed the file.

Though the family – Mr. Shafia, two wives and a total of seven children – left Afghanistan in 1992, they didn’t emigrate to Canada until June of 2007, with Rona Mohammad following six months later on a visitor’s visa.

She left a diary, found by police, which detailed the alleged beatings she suffered at her husband’s hands and the cruelty dished out to her by her fertile replacement, Ms. Yahya, who allegedly told her, “Your life is in my hands” and, “You are not his wife; you are my servant.” [...]

Though Mr. Shafia and Hamed may have appeared the picture of successful and Westernized men – the father was wealthy, owned a shopping mall in Laval and had contracted to build an upscale home, and the family had lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai – behind closed doors, they might as well have been back in Afghanistan.

The oldest son Hamed was the head of the household when Mr. Shafia was away. He had a driver’s licence and his own cell phone, used his father’s silver Lexus, and helped him in business.

The daughters, meanwhile, had phones registered to either father or son, and Zainab was kept out of school for a full year after the family discovered she had a boyfriend.

It was her running away, in the spring of 2009, to a women’s shelter which sparked the family’s downward spiral, Ms. Lacelle told the jurors.

But Sahar, too, was rebelling. She had a boyfriend. She loved makeup and clothes, like her big sister. She wanted to be a gynecologist, and was moved by the plight of her native sisters in Afghanistan.

Once, miserable at facing the prospect of having to wear a hijab, she tried to kill herself. According to Rona Mohammad’s diary, Ms. Yahya snapped, “She can go to hell; let her kill herself.”

But it was the little girl, Geeti, who fought her parents most ferociously and who begged most blatantly for help.

“She told her school,” Ms. Lacelle said. “She told the police. She told youth protection.” ....

Disaster Number 1: The risk of behaving for the sake of political correctness as if terrorist threats from all corners are of equivalent magnitude, when they are not. Disaster Number 2: Refusing to engage ideology, reducing counter-terror efforts to fighting a tactic, and not its cause.

This move, though not the first of its kind under the Obama administration, will not make Americans safer. It will certainly not win the hearts and minds of jihadists or their sympathizers, who have their own reasons for hating us that are wholly independent of, say, what is in a training manual.

It will only leave authorities fighting jihadist terrorism with one hand tied ever more tightly behind their backs, and fighting a manufactured, but officially approved version of reality that is ever more removed from the inconvenient, uncomfortable, unofficial one. More on this story. "Obama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says," from The Daily Caller, October 21:

Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole confirmed on Wednesday that the Obama administration was pulling back all training materials used for the law enforcement and national security communities, in order to eliminate all references to Islam that some Muslim groups have claimed are offensive.

“I recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security,” Cole told a panel at the George Washington University law school.

The move comes after complaints from advocacy organizations including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and others identified as Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the 2004 Holy Land Foundation terror fundraising trial.

In a Wednesday Los Angeles Times op-ed, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) president Salam al-Marayati threatened the FBI with a total cutoff of cooperation between American Muslims and law enforcement if the agency failed to revise its law enforcement training materials.

Maintaining the training materials in their current state “will undermine the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim American community,” al-Marayati wrote.

Multiple online sources detail MPAC’s close alignment with CAIR.

In his op-ed, Al-Marayati demanded that the Justice Department and the FBI “issue a clear and unequivocal apology to the Muslim American community” and “establish a thorough and transparent vetting process in selecting its trainers and materials.”

Specifically, al-Marayati called for a new “interagency task force” to review the training materials — a task force including representatives of the Islamist organizations the FBI is tasked with monitoring.

Some believe the Obama administration’s Justice Department will go even further.

“The Attorney General has announced what sounds like reprogramming if they find people who have actually received training” that Islamist groups find objectionable, Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney told The Daily Caller. Gaffney is co-author of a report, published by the Center, titled “Sharia: The Threat to America.”

Dwight C. Holton, the U.S. Attorney in Oregon said he had spoken with Holder directly about the issue of the terror training materials. Holton is the federal prosecutor who announced the arrest of so-called “Christmas tree bomber” Mohamed Osman Mohamud in 2010. That announcement made no mention of Mohamud’s Muslim faith.

“I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this president, this attorney general and Department of Justice stands for,” Holton said Wednesday. “They will not be tolerated.”

Such training materials “pose a significant threat to national security, because they play into the false narrative propagated by terrorists that the United States is at war with Islam,” he added...

On the contrary, they address why Muslims have declared themselves, in their own words, to be at war with the United States in the name of Islam.

Wonderful Copenhagen: Wonderfulness may vary. "Islamists seek to introduce ‘Sharia zones," from the Copenhagen Post, October 21:

A fundamentalist Islamic group wants to set up zones in Copenhagen where Islamic Sharia Law should be upheld.

The group, ‘The Call to Islam’, belongs to a branch of Islam called Salafism, whose followers in the UK attempted to introduce similar Sharia zones in London earlier this summer.

According to Jyllands-Posten newspaper, the group is led by the imam Abu Ahmed, who has taught several people subsequently linked to terrorist activities.

The Call to Islam intends to start patrolling the Copenhagen neighbourhood of Tingbjerg before extending into Nørrebro and eventually the whole of Denmark. Muslims found to be drinking and gambling would be reprimanded for breaking Islamic code.

The Muslimernes Fællesråd, an umbrella organisation representing over 40,000 Muslims from several organisations, has denounced the plans.

“We should definitely take them seriously and enter into dialogue with them,” spokesperson Mustafa Gezen told Jyllands-Posten. “We should not ignore their extreme inclinations in our society. The problem is that many young people are susceptible to these beliefs. We need to start at the primary school level, to stress the importance of democracy.”

The denunciation is most welcome, but the recommendations can be all too easily ignored by those who are determined to go ahead with their plans. This initiative for the enforcement of a parallel, supremacist, totalitarian legal system must be stopped in its tracks, lest rewarding it with inaction encourages its spread.

The deputy mayor for integration, Anna Mee Allerslev, told Jyllands-Posten Tueday that she was previously aware of the group and their plans.

“A while ago I asked our employees to head out and intensify their work to engage with them,” she said. “But it’s important that we don’t talk it up too much because they are only a small group in Tingbjerg. But it’s important that we pay attention to the problem.”

Allerslev added that she had called a meeting with Islamic group Islamisk Trossamfund and the Muslimernes Fællesråd to discuss how to prevent the radicalisation of Islamic youth. She also stated that the City Council was in contact with the authorities in London who have many years’ experience dealing with similar groups.

According to the City Council, there are nine Salafists patrolling Tingbjerg. The group has a core support of about 50 individuals in Copenhagen who are joined by several hundred additional supporters at study meetings.

One can only imagine that the contrast in private and public discourse on this visit with our "Frenemy" and Ally is particularly stark. Whether what is said after the photo-ops will get Islamabad to lift a finger (no, not that finger) is another matter altogether. "Effigy of Hillary Clinton is burned by baying mob in Pakistan after America demands crack down on Islamist militants destabilising Afghanistan," by Leon Watson for the Daily Mail, October 21:

A mob burned an effigy of Hillary Clinton today after she intensified pressure on Pakistan to crack down on militants destabilising Afghanistan.

The U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned America and Pakistan cannot walk away from their relationship despite frustration on both sides.

She said: 'There is frustration on both sides, which I recognise.

'We are going to stay the course, and do everything we can to try to overcome the difficulties that we have faced together. Because we both have too much at stake. We cannot walk away.'

For the second time in two days, Clinton pressed Pakistani authorities to step up efforts against the Haqqani militant network, which is based in the country's rugged tribal region, and is blamed for attacks both inside Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan.

After leading an unusually large and powerful U.S. delegation, including CIA director David Petraeus and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, for four hours of talks with Pakistani officials last night, Clinton met with Pakistan's president and foreign minister to make the case.

'We should be able to agree that for too long extremists have been able to operate here in Pakistan and from Pakistani soil,' she said. 'No one who targets innocent civilians, whether they be Pakistanis, Afghans, Americans or anyone else should be tolerated or protected.'

Following Clinton's comments, protesters belonging to the United Citizen Action group burnt an effigy of the U.S. Secretary of State in Multan, in Pakistan's Punjab Province.

The U.S. has grown increasingly impatient with Pakistan's refusal to take military action against the Taliban-linked Haqqani network and its ambivalence, if not hostility, to supporting Afghan attempts to reconcile Taliban fighters into society.

Clinton made clear that that was no longer acceptable while American officials warned if Pakistan continued to balk, the U.S. would act unilaterally to end the militant threat.

'Pakistan has a critical role to play in supporting Afghan reconciliation and ending the conflict,' Clinton told reporters at a joint press conference with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

'We look to Pakistan to take strong steps to deny Afghan insurgents safe havens and to encourage the Taliban to enter negotiations in good faith.'

The Haqqani group is considered the greatest threat to American troops in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials have accused Pakistan's military spy agency, the ISI, of providing it with support - an allegation denied by Islamabad....

How sure is the African Union that al-Shabaab is using their own dead? They have shown they are more than willing to make all the dead bodies they need. In any event, "war is deceit" (Sahih Bukhari 4.52.267). "AU: Somali militants 'dressed up' bodies for stunt," by Abdi Guled and Katharine Houreld for the Associated Press, October 21:

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Al-Qaida-linked militants claimed to have killed 70 foreign African Union peacekeepers but an eyewitness said many of the bodies put on display were likely Somali government soldiers. An AU spokesman said Friday that the insurgents had stolen uniforms and dressed up scores of their own dead.

The militants said the bodies were proof they are still capable of putting up a fight despite coming under attack on two fronts.

African Union troops and government soldiers pushed the al-Shabab militia from their last bases in the capital on Thursday, AU spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda said. And Kenyan troops supporting a pro-government militia have pushed at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) inside Somalia in the past week.

Al-Shabab has retreated before the Kenyan forces so far, but the militants have struck back in the capital with a series of bombings — including a truck bomb that killed over 100 people. On Thursday, they put up a bloody fight when AU forces arrived in Deynile, al-Shabab's last base in Mogadishu.

The militants showed around 60 bodies after the fierce fighting, according to several eyewitnesses. Photos show that some of those displayed wore flak jackets and helmets — equipment that is issued to AU soldiers but not common among government troops or insurgents. But many other bodies were only dressed in green camouflage uniforms.

One eyewitness, a photographer at the scene, said he counted 58 bodies. There were about 30 men in the line who were clearly Somali and some wore tattered government-issued uniforms, he said. The origin of nine bodies was unclear because their faces were down in the sand or for other reasons, he said.

But 19 others wore the type of uniform given to Burundian troops and looked like foreigners, he said. The militants also displayed a Bible and some crucifixes, items unlikely to be carried by Muslim Somalis. He did not see any identity documents, he said.

"Unlikely to be carried by Muslim Somalis," but there are also the Somali Christians al-Shabaab has killed. One of al-Shabaab's most recent Christian victims was killed near Deynile.

The eyewitness spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals because his observations contradicted the militants' account.

Ankunda said that 10 soldiers had been killed and two were missing after Thursday's battle. The bodies of the 10 dead soldiers were safely in AU hands, he said. An internal AU document seen by The Associated Press said that 38 soldiers also had been wounded.

"It's a manipulated picture," Ankunda said. "They dressed up their own casualties ... I think they've been keeping some uniforms."

Later, he said that the uniforms were so new that the Burundians had not even been issued them yet....

Mohammed Wali Zazi was previously "convicted of destroying evidence of a failed plot to bomb New York City’s subways." "New York Bomb-Plotter’s Father Pleads Guilty to Visa Fraud," by Thom Weidlich for Bloomberg, October 21 (thanks to Bill):

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. citizen from Afghanistan, convicted of destroying evidence of a failed plot to bomb New York City’s subways, pleaded guilty to lying on an immigration form.

Mohammed Wali Zazi, 56, admitted today before U.S. District Judge John Gleeson in Brooklyn, New York, that he committed visa fraud between December 2006 and January 2007 when he said his nephew was his son.

“Amanullah was not my biological son and I told my attorney to mark it as my real son,” the elder Zazi told the judge through an interpreter, referring to his nephew.

On July 22, a jury convicted Zazi, a former New York City taxi driver who lives in the Denver area, of obstructing justice in the case of his son, Najibullah Zazi, who admitted to participating in the subway plot.

Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty in February 2010 to supporting al-Qaeda and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction in a 2009 plot to detonate bombs on New York subways around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks....

Brooklyn prosecutors previously agreed to drop the visa- fraud charge so it could be moved to federal court in Manhattan. After his jury conviction, Mohammed Wali Zazi agreed to move it back to Brooklyn.

In the elder Zazi’s trial, prosecutors said he directed family members to destroy bomb-making materials, including liquid chemicals, that were part of the probe into his son, and that he conspired with family members to lie to agents looking into the subway plot in 2009.

The new conviction brings a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, though the nonbinding guideline range is up to six months. He faces a maximum of 40 years on the other charges. He’s scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 2....

Tarek Mehanna's library manifests a deep Misunderstanding of the Religion of Peace™. "Feds to cite ‘library’ in terror trial," by John Zaremba in the Boston Herald, October 20:

Federal prosecutors plan to use what one terrorism expert called a “Jihad library” — including a call to arms from the Taliban’s spiritual leader — in their case against an accused al-Qaeda reject from Sudbury who is set to stand trial next week.

The writings include a letter to all Muslims from Mullah Omar and others with titles such as “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad,” “Make Martyrdom What You Seek” and “Guiding the Confused on the Permissibility of Killing the Prisoners.”

It’s all part of 800 pieces of evidence in the prosecution’s case against Tarek Mehanna, 29, of Sudbury, charged with providing and conspiring to support terrorists.

“Looks like a Jihad library,” said John Pike, director of the terrorism research group GlobalSecurity.org, when shown the titles of some of the entries. “The titles contain words and phrases like ‘jihad’ and ‘martyrdom’ and ‘killing the prisoners,’ which tends to leave little to the imagination.”

Mehanna, an American of Egyptian descent, was arrested in 2009 after years on the FBI’s radar.

Feds allege he promoted jihad among followers of his blog, sought terrorist training in Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan and was once rejected by the Taliban for having a lack of experience.

Mehanna’s lawyers earlier this year criticized the prosecution’s case as “paper-thin” and heavily reliant on protected free speech. They admitted some of his actions — smiling and pointing skyward in a photo at Ground Zero, for example — were “crass, crude and sometimes just plain stupid” but not indicative of a terror plot. One of his lawyers, Janice Bassil, could not be reached yesterday.

The writings in the feds’ evidence file include “the usual jihadi rants about the urgent need to kill infidels wherever they may be found,” Pike said, while those in the defense file include “the usual stuff about the inner jihad being more important than armed struggle, and all the awful things the Americans have done that might have gotten the defendant riled up.”

Prosecutors will need more than Mehanna’s reading list to score a conviction — even in the estimation of Robert Spencer, who writes the blog Jihad Watch and has become controversial for his stands on Islamic extremism.

Only among those who want to obscure the truth, Zaremba.

“There’s no way they can or should convict him on the basis of his library. If that were the case, I’d be in jail myself,” Spencer said. “Tarek Mehanna would envy my library.

“The existence of such a library is circumstantial,” he said. “But I would be a very dangerous character if I had these books and believed in them.”

Not that I'm not a dangerous character as it is.

In "Hyatt quislings cave to Islamic supremacists" in WND today, Pamela Geller weighs in on the cancellation of her event in Houston by a dhimmi Hyatt hotel under pressure from Islamic supremacist enemies of free speech and truth:

Free speech, the cornerstone of our constitutional republic, is in serious jeopardy. Under the Shariah, criticism of Islam is blasphemy (punishable by death in Muslims countries living under the Shariah). This is the death of free speech in the continuing Islamization of America, as I saw vividly Tuesday night when I spoke in Houston, Texas. But free people and free speech ultimately prevailed, despite the best efforts of Islamic supremacists to crush them. Hyatt's cancellation of a tea-party event at which I was to speak, and the reaction of freedom lovers to it, best illustrates why I wrote my book "Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance": to show what Islamic supremacists are doing in America today, and how we must fight back.

I was scheduled to speak Tuesday evening for the Sugar Land Tea Party at the Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land. But Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) thugs intimidated the hotel where the event was scheduled to take place into canceling the event altogether. Giving Tea Party organizers little time to find a new venue, the Hyatt Place in Sugar Land caved to Islamic pressure and agreed to enforce the blasphemy law under the Shariah.

The cowards and dhimmis at Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land received a couple of threatening calls, and they surrendered to Islamic supremacists without even firing a shot. Hyatt spokesman Jamie Zimmerman said: "Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land respects the various opinions expressed by our guests and visitors. In this particular situation, the changing security needs required for the safety of our guests and others on the hotel property and to avoid business disruption prompted us to ask the organizers to move it to an alternate location. We are pleased that the organizers were able to identify a venue better equipped to provide services to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone involved with the event."

But the Hyatt doesn't really respect "various opinions" at all. Mind you, where does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stay and entertain his murderous comrades when he comes to New York? The Hyatt. And remember also that billionaire Penny Pritzker owns the Hyatt, and was also the national finance chair for Barack Obama when he ran for president in 2008.

The quisling cowards at the Hyatt Place Sugar Land caved to intimidation, but that didn't stop freedom lovers from coming to hear me speak. The event was held at the Sugar Land Community Center, and the house was packed. Hundreds came out to hear what the Shariah forbids: the truth. It was an amazing evening. I was struck by the number of apostates (former Muslims) in the house. Gd bless Texas!

Still, there was a small group of anti-Geller Islamic supremacist protesters outside the venue. And who was leading them? Farha Ahmed, the lawyer for chemical weapons jihadist Lady al-Qaida. Ahmed is trying to infiltrate the Republican Party by running for office. She ran for Sugar Land City Council District 4 but was defeated, thanks to great Americans who alerted Texans to the subversive politician in their midst. Ahmed lied about her involvement in the Lady al-Qaida case. Ahmed lost despite help from the craven quisling government officials like the local district attorney and others, who wrote glowing letters to their constituents endorsing her, and despite the fact that her terror links and alliances were scrubbed from the web.

But remember, the enemy never sleeps and never quits. So she will be back. She protested free speech under the sign, "Republicans Hate Bigotry," but wouldn't let anyone photograph her with the sign. Stealth, baby, stealth....

Read it all.

The term "Islamist" is in common use to refer to Muslim individuals and organizations that adhere to Islamic law's political aspects (most notably its denial of any legitimacy of a separation between religion and the state) and consequently most fiercely oppose America, Israel and the West in general. The implication is that Islam itself, in its authentic form, has no requisite political aspect, and no incompatibility with Western values or democratic government.

The problem with this is that it is a Western, artificial distinction, imposed by non-Muslims upon the Islamic world and lacking any real substance with reference to Islamic law as it has always been formulated by the Sunni and Shi'ite madhahib (schools of jurisprudence). Islam has always been political, and the union of religion and the state has always been essential to its political program; the idea that all this can and should be separated from Islam proper is the wishful thinking of Western analysts who do not wish to face the implications of the fact that these ideas represent mainstream Islamic thinking.

In line with this, I recently received this email from a Jihad Watch reader in Canada:

A conversation with several friends on Facebook erupted into something quite extraordinary. An 18 year old Muslim student, from Western University and born in Mississauga had this to say about the distinction between Islam and Islamism:

"case and point on why you dont understand Islam. No one makes this distinction [between Islam and Islamism] other then the Western world, for the sake of having a tidy little system to classify everything. Our religion and political ideology are one. Furthermore, I really wouldnt use the term islamist or Islamism. Many muslims, including myself, find the term deeply offensive."

In other words, IN CANADA, there is an entire generation of Muslims who openly subscribe to 'Islamism' as indistinguishable from Islam.

And that should come as no surprise. Except to willfully blind non-Muslim analysts in the West.

Hertz has tried to make reasonable accommodations, including a prayer room. As a Hertz spokesman explained, "this issue arose when breaks for prayers were extended for unacceptably long periods beyond 10 minutes for nonreligious activities."

In that regard, the refusal to compromise gives the appearance that this case is ultimately about putting prayer breaks and the amount of paid time taken for them beyond the oversight of supervisors, in a way that would not be afforded to non-Muslim workers.

"Hertz fires 25 Muslim drivers who refuse to clock out," by Lornet Turnbull for the Seattle Times, October 20:

Hertz has sent termination letters to 25 drivers at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after they refused to agree to clock out for daily breaks, during which they normally pray.

The workers — all Somali Muslims who drive the company's rental cars to and from the airport for cleaning and refueling — were among 34 Hertz employees suspended Sept. 30 for failing to clock out before breaks.

The rental-car company at the time said some of the workers were taking longer than the 10 minutes allowed. The workers usually take two paid breaks during a regular eight-hour shift.

Nine of the 34 suspended drivers signed the agreement and have returned to their jobs, the company said.

Officials with Teamsters Local 117, which represents the workers, said the two sides had tried to negotiate an agreement that would have allowed the workers to return to their pre-suspension status, under which they wouldn't have to clock out to pray.

But they were unable to agree.

Paul Zilly, spokesman for the union, said the workers were given an ultimatum to sign the document to clock out.

"They were debating, going back and forth," he said. "They all felt it was a contractual violation." He said that if Hertz believed certain employees were abusing the break policies, then it should have dealt with them individually, rather than penalizing an entire group.

"There may have been some taking longer than 10 minutes, but why single out the entire group based on their religion?"

A Hertz spokesman said many of the workers had been with the company for 15 years, and Hertz went out of its way to accommodate all of them, setting up a prayer room at the airport site.

The company had made it clear to the suspended workers that if they wanted to be reinstated they needed to agree to the clock-out conditions by the end of the day Thursday, said spokesman Rich Broome.

"We're disappointed that the rest of the transporters did not take us up on what we thought was a reasonable resolution of this matter — reserving their right to pray during paid breaks," Broome said.

"We felt clocking out is a fair way to maintain order while keeping our operations running smoothly."

The Teamsters represents about 79 Hertz drivers who earn between $9.15 and $9.95 an hour. Most are Muslim.

All company employees are allowed two paid 10-minute breaks during an eight-hour shift — time they can use however they choose.

The Teamsters said the requirement for workers to clock out for that break is not in the contact and the firm had agreed during negotiations last year it would not require it.

The union said the company implemented a unilateral change on the day it suspended the drivers without first negotiating with the union, a contractual violation.

The union has filed grievances against Hertz with the National Labor Relations Board and said it's filing religious discrimination charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Broome said the company and the workers had reached an EEOC settlement two years ago, in which workers agreed they would clock out for their two breaks.

The company had been informing workers that they needed to clock out for some time before finally posting a notice to that effect on the day they were suspended.

Those who clocked out on that day were not suspended, the company said.

Obama's Department of Sharia in action again -- and note that no one batted an eye over the calls to limit the freedom of speech and to stop telling the truth about Islam and jihad. "Progressives, Islamists huddle at Justice Department," by Neil Munro at the Daily Caller, October 21:

Top Justice Department officials convened a meeting Wednesday where invited Islamist advocates lobbied them for cutbacks in anti-terror funding, changes in agents’ training manuals, additional curbs on investigators and a legal declaration that U.S. citizens’ criticism of Islam constitutes racial discrimination.

The department’s “civil rights lawyers are top of the line — I say this with utter honesty — I know they can come up with a way” to redefine criticism as discrimination, said Sahar Aziz, a female, Egyptian-American lawyer.

“I’d be willing to give a shot at it,” said Aziz, who is a fellow at the Michigan-based Muslim advocacy group, the Institute for Social Policy & Understanding.

The audience of Islamist advocates and department officials included Tom Perez, who heads the department’s division of civil rights.

“We must continue to have the open and honest and critical dialogue that you saw in the robust debate,” Perez responded in an enthusiastic closing speech a few minutes after Aziz made her demands at the event....

Progressives ally with the Islamic lobby because “they think it will be a political voting bloc that will be reliably Democratic,” said Robert Spencer, an author and expert on Islam.

None of the Islamist advocates of civil rights officials in attendance, including Perez, objected to Aziz’s call for free-speech restrictions....

The word “Muslim,” she said, “has become racialized. … I don’t accept this formalistic cop-out that this is all about religion.”

Aziz did not offer any evidence for her claim, which she said justifies the use of Title VI anti-discrimination laws against institutions and individuals who argue that Islamic texts spur Islamic violence.

This legal redefinition, she said, would also “take [federal] money away from local police departments and fusion centers who are spying on all of us.”

Aziz also argued against the commonplace police practice of informally talking with people in communities, including Muslim communities. “This has been a real problem with this outreach stuff,” she said. Muslims “are acting in good faith, and then they find their imams, who were going to outreach meetings, were being spied on,” she complained. “Some have been deported. Some have been prosecuted.”...

“People are going in good faith” to talk with police, Aziz said. “They’re being very honest about what their grievances are. They’re telling the government, ‘This what we want you to do … [and] we want you not to spy on our community.’”...

Aziz’s advocacy was supported by a second Islamist advocate, [the Hamas-linked] Islamic Society of North America president Mohamed Magid. He argued that “teaching people that all Muslims are a threat to the country… is against the law and the Constitution.”

Magid asked Perez to change the federal government’s rules governing terror investigations, for more private meetings with top justice department officials, for the reeducation of FBI agents, and for more people to oppose criticism of Islam, which he labelled “religious bigotry and hate.”

In 2009 the federal government named Magid’s organization an unindicted co-conspirator in the successful 2009 trial of three Muslims who smuggled $12 million to the Islamist terror group Hamas. Two of the smugglers received life sentences....

Progressives, including Holton and Perez, choose to ignore the Islamists’ stated goals, Spencer said. “They assume — and force us to assume on pain of charges of ‘Islamophobia’ — that all Muslims are moderate, peaceful and have no intentions of bringing Sharia [Islamic law] here,” said Spencer. “No amount of evidence to the contrary, no amount of jihadi plots, and no number of demands for accommodation of Sharia’s provisions, ever disabuses them of this dogma.”

Justice Department officials declined to comment to The Daily Caller.

When the session ended, Perez — a Maryland resident, a progressive and a former staffer to Sen. Ted Kennedy — climbed the stage to embrace Imam Magid, who was born in Sudan and trained at a Saudi fundamentalist seminary.

Even a casual observer can see that Iran and Turkey are not honest about their actions in the international arena.

These two states have long been preparing for jihad worldwide.

The Turks have long supported the jihad in the North Caucasus, and Iran supports Hizballah.

Most recently a partner of Iran and Turkey in the Caucasus-Azerbaijan has announced the construction of a new road linking Azerbaijan with Turkey. And the establishment of a branch of the "Pasha Bank" in Tbilisi. ”Pasha Bank” is the largest bank in Azerbaijan. The other day in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku there was a conference in the hotel "Europe" of the terrorist organization IHH, which addressed the topic of establishing relations with other similar organizations. And it all took place against the background of the construction of a railroad connecting Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey.

There is further evidence that Iran, Azerbaijan and Turkey are increasingly trying to expand their influence in the region. The Azerbaijan oil company "Sokar" intends to build a refinery in Turkey for 5.5 billion in U.S. dollars. It should be said that the company "Sokar" has an excellent relationship with the Iranian President.

Azerbaijan and Turkey have put many millions of dollars into Georgia's economy to create projects that will help Iran legitimize its finances in the West.

These projects are long-ripened in the minds of jihadists. In 1997, after the war in Chechnya, there came to Tbilisi in Georgia from Iran via Azerbaijan one of the Vice Chairmen of the Anti-Terrorist Center of the Chechen Republic, Hunkar Pasha Israpilov. He ostensibly came on business.

At a meeting with representatives of law enforcement bodies of Georgia, and several businessmen, he showed a few hundred-dollar bills, said that the money was from Iran and asked law enforcement officials to verify their authenticity. In Georgia, they were convinced that the notes were genuine.

Grinning, the "guest" of Iran said that they were actually fake bills that were printed in Iran on a printing press that the Iranians had seized during the war with Iraq, taking it from supporters of Saddam Hussein. The "guest" also said that similar banknotes were available in Turkey. Chechens now have to aid the country's economy by laundering this money.

I do not know whether the treaty took place then, but the fact is that today many branches of Iranian and Turkish banks have opened in Georgia and the Caucasus. And through them comes the funding for projects such as railway and auto lines connecting Iran and Turkey, and many other economic projects.

A few days ago, Turkey and Iran refused to purchase Russian gas. There are reasonable conditions to ensure that Turkey will receive Iranian gas through the territory of Georgia.

Two Israeli businessmen, Ronn Fuchs and Zeev Frenkel, who wanted to recover ownership of the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which was illegally confiscated from them in 1996, went to court against the Georgian authorities. And they won their case in the International Court of Arbitration. They were then illegally arrested and have spent the last year in a Georgian prison.

According to them, Georgia prison officials jeered at them and fed them pork (which is contrary to their religion). They awakened them several times at night to search their cell, and did not give them drugs that had been prescribed by a physician. In prison Zeev Frenkel had a myocardial infarction.

These two elderly businessmen repeatedly asked the President, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel for help. But despite support and letters from senior officials, their position is still unchanged.

They're claiming to apologize for canceling a Pamela Geller event at the behest of Hamas-linked CAIR, but no one seems to have received the apology. More on this story. "Heat gets turned up in fight over warnings about Islam: Hotel chain claims to apologize after being accused of enforcing Shariah law," by Bob Unruh for WND, October 20:

The temperature is rising in the dispute that erupted earlier this week when the Hyatt hotel in Sugar Land, Texas, abruptly canceled a tea-party event at which author and Atlas Shrugs founder Pamela Geller was scheduled to speak on the dangers of Islam.

Geller has blogged about it ("The quisling cowards at the Hyatt Place Sugar Land caved to intimidation"), the story has spread to European media outlets (the Daily Mail of London) and a wave of emails and telephone calls has been getting the chain's attention.

Now the company has contacted reporters with a statement that claims an apology has been issued, but Geller says the apology wasn't delivered to her yet. The company didn't respond to a query from WND about to whom the apology was delivered.

The argument is over the hotel chain's decision that because of "security" issues it would not allow the tea party-linked event at which Geller was scheduled to speak Tuesday night to be held on its premises.

The "security" issues reportedly were telephone calls made by Muslim interests who opposed Geller's right to speak about her concerns regarding the advance of Islam, and specifically its Shariah religious law, inside the United States, she reported.

Geller likened the hotel's cancellation to the enforcing of "blasphemy" laws under Islamic Shariah, because she was prevented from expressing a negative opinion about the advance of Islam. In nations under Islamic rule, criticism of Islam is banned and sometimes is a death-penalty offense.

Geller, however, argues she has a free-speech right under the U.S. Constitution to express her opinion about the religion in America.

The hotel chain said in an initial statement that it was a "business" decision. Shortly, it expanded that to say, "In light of the business disruptions anticipated with this event, it has been moved to an alternate location. The hotel thanks the organizers of the event for their cooperation in relocating the event."

Hours later that statement was expanded to:

Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land respects the various opinions expressed by our guests and visitors. In this particular situation, the changing security needs required for the safety of our guests and others on the hotel property and to avoid business disruption prompted us to ask the organizers to move it to an alternate location. We are pleased that the organizers were able to identify a venue better equipped to provide services to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone involved with the event.

In a statement issued by Hyatt today, the chain moved even further backward:

We've received several comments about the event that was recently relocated from Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land. In a recent phone conversation with the event organizer, we apologized for not working hard enough with the group to address concerns about potential business disruptions the way we should have to find a resolution. Hyatt respects the diversity of opinions expressed by guests and visitors at our hotels, and we do not make business decisions based on a guest's or a group's political or religious views. This group, like all guests or groups, is welcome at Hyatt hotels, and we would work closely with them in an effort to address any concerns that may arise with future events.

Not good enough, and not even logical, Geller told WND.

She cited a 2008 visit by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a Hyatt in New York in which thousands of people protested his presence. Yet, his visit was not canceled because of a "business" decision.

The Sugar Land decision was based on a handful of telephone calls to the hotel expressing opposition, according to her reports....

Qur'an 4:34 allows for physical violence (yes, it says to hit) against "disobedient women." Islamic law is inconsistent at best on whether parents who kill their children face any consequences at all. It is no surprise, then, that Muslims commit 91 percent of "honor killings" worldwide.

Even in Canada, in an update on this story. "Family saw slain girls as treacherous for having boyfriends, court hears," by Allison Jones for the Canadian Press, October 20 (thanks to Kenneth):

KINGSTON, Ont. - A Montreal family couldn't bear the "treachery" of their three teenaged daughters having boyfriends, so they drowned them and the father's first wife, pushing a car into a canal and staging the scene to look like an implausible accident, court heard Thursday.

Days after the bodies were found the father was recorded saying, "There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, 20, are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder.

Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Shafia's first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a submerged black Nissan Sentra discovered June 30, 2009 in the Rideau Canal. The family had stopped in Kingston on their way home from a trip to Niagara Falls.

An expert will be called to testify about honour killings and how in extreme cases, killing can be seen in some cultures as a way to restore honour to a family, the Crown attorney said Thursday at the outset of the trial. Disobedience by a female member of the family can cause shame and taint family honour, she said.

Laurie Lacelle quoted police wiretaps made surreptitiously in the days after the deaths that show the family's concern for their honour.

"Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour," Shafia said. "Let's leave our destiny to God, and may God never make me, you or your mother honourless...There is nothing more valuable than our honour."

When police began to suspect the three were involved in the deaths, they told the family they were examining a camera near the scene for clues, in the hopes this would prompt discussion among the Shafias in their car, which the police had bugged. They scoffed and immediately suspected police were bluffing.

"If they had had any proof they would have come for us a long time ago," Shafia said.

Another wiretap recorded Shafia and Yahya talking about their daughters 20 days after they died.

"If we remain alive...we have no tension thinking our daughter is in the arms of this or that boy, this or that man," Shafia said on a wiretap. "God's curse on them for generations. May the devil ...(expletive) on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?"

"There can be no treachery, no violation more than this," Lacelle quoted Shafia as saying on the wiretaps. "They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam...They betrayed everything."...

Al-Shabaab finds a way to be even more evil than before: "The hostage-takers are even trying to sell the remains." "'Barbarians' demand ransom for Frenchwoman's body," from Agence France-Presse, October 20:

France on Thursday denounced as "barbarians" Somali kidnappers who were demanding a ransom for the body of a disabled Frenchwoman who died while in their captivity.

France said Wednesday that 66-year-old Marie Dedieu, who was kidnapped on October 1 and taken to Somalia, had died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication.

Dedieu had been in a wheelchair and was suffering from cancer.

"The hostage-takers are even trying to sell the remains, it could not be more despicable," French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet told the i-TELE news network.

"Seizing a woman of this age, who is sick and paralysed, and not giving her her medication, allowing her to develop septicaemia from which she apparently died, and then proposing to sell her remains! These are not people who deserve anything but contempt," Longuet said.

"Those who committed this unspeakable act are nothing but a gang of barbarians," President Nicolas Sarkozy told AFP during a visit to a waste treatment centre in western France.

"This 66-year-old woman, gravely ill, who had cancer, who was quadriplegic, was kidnapped and not given the medication that she needed," he said.

"Barbarians who act this way, I don't think we can show much weakness towards them."

Longuet said the French military was not planning any action against the kidnappers in Somalia because they were "a small band, a small minority, an exception who dishonour this territory."

A gang of armed men seized Dedieu from Manda Island in Kenya's Lamu archipelago earlier this month and fled by sea to Somalia, fighting off an attempt by Kenya's navy to stop them.

France has demanded the immediate and unconditional return of her remains.

Kenya has blamed Islamist Shebab rebels in Somalia for a spate of recent kidnappings of foreigners and this week launched an unprecedented incursion into Somalia against the militants.

The assassination plot against Adel al-Jubeir is by no means the only iron that Iran has in the fire; more conventionally, the Islamic Republic does business through proxies like Hizballah, which is active well into South America, Central America, and Mexico, as well as Canada. There are links all around to the drug trade, as is reported to be the case with the planned attack on al-Jubeir as well.

It is not at all surprising that a regime espousing an apocalyptic jihadist ideology and seeking to shape world affairs to hasten the return of the Mahdi (the 12th imam, to most Shi'ites), would seek to escalate its operations from proxies to more direct action.

An update on this story. "U.S. fears more plots from Iran's Quds Force," by Phil Stewart for Reuters, October 20:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States believes Iran's shadowy Quds Force is becoming increasingly aggressive overseas and may be working on other international plots beyond the alleged plan to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, three U.S. officials told Reuters.

U.S. allegations last week of a foiled plot in Washington have escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. They have also renewed Washington's focus on the Quds Force, the covert operations arm of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is believed to have sponsored attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East -- but never before in the United States.

"They're being more aggressive ... not only in Iraq but worldwide," one senior U.S. official said in an interview. The official and others insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record and because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

U.S. officials have long charged that the Quds Force -- the Arabic word for Jerusalem -- has used proxies to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The Quds Force, whose power within Iran is believed to be growing, is also active in Lebanon, the Gulf, Syria and elsewhere, officials said.

Many Iran specialists have reacted skeptically to the disclosure of an alleged Iranian plot within the United States itself. Tehran has dismissed the charges as a fabrication.

Some foreign nations briefed on the plot have raised questions. While President Barack Obama has so far demanded tougher sanctions on Iran and not a military reprisal, representatives of those nations are nonetheless wary, given the flawed intelligence case President George W. Bush made for war in Iraq.

Even U.S. officials now convinced of the plot's authenticity acknowledged they were initially doubtful due to the case's odd facts, including the bumbling nature of the Iranian-American now in custody, and his approach to a supposed Mexican drug cartel figure who happened to be a U.S. federal informant.

U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters declined to provide details of the evidence that the Quds Force may have other plots in the works. But two officials stressed they were based on more than just speculation or analysis.

"These are not merely aspirational plots dreamed up by the Quds Force. In fact, there is active planning around them," a second senior U.S. official told Reuters. Both senior officials played down concerns any attack was imminent.

A third U.S. official said the recklessness of the alleged attempt to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington suggested that Quds "may be involved in other actions."

In the wake of the U.S. government's disclosure of the alleged plot, counterterrorism investigators in Britain are examining the possibility that other plots hatched in Iran were under way, a European government source said.

But the source said he and his colleagues were unaware of any current Iranian plots similar to the one the Americans said they had uncovered and disrupted.

U.S. officials said they believed Iran's Quds Force had expanded its power in recent years, exerting more control over the country's foreign policy.

Its commander, Qasem Suleimani, a brigadier general, has led the group's efforts to broaden Iran's influence in the Middle East, including by supporting Iraq factions that oppose the U.S. presence.

"His prominence within the Quds Force cannot be overstated. He is directly responsible for everything the Quds Force does," one U.S. military official, who is an expert on Iran, told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, described Suleimani as "arguably the second most powerful man in Iran after the supreme leader," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The United States has blamed Iran for an upswing in attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq over the summer that made June the deadliest month for U.S. personnel there since 2008. The United States also accuses Tehran of supplying weapons to Afghan militants, although on a far smaller scale than in Iraq.

In recent years, Suleimani's Quds Force has been "meddling in more places," the first senior U.S. official said.

"There are opportunities they think they can exploit in various places in the Middle East, that either they've got some foothold, and we're on one side, and they're on the other," the official said....

There is no compulsion in religion (Qur'an 2:256), but to use the old Clinton Qualifier, that depends on your definition of compulsion. Islam itself is contradictory on this point, as Islamic law is rife with various forms of subtle and not-so-subtle coercion to submit, up to and including the choices afforded to unbelievers by Qur'an 9:29: conversion, subjugation, or war. But hey, no compulsion or anything. Just an offer you can't refuse if life can be made sufficiently uncomfortable, humiliating, or dangerous for your intransigence.

That is the situation in which this community finds itself. "Conversions threaten Pakistan’s 'Macedonian' tribe," from Dawn, October 20 (thanks to Anup):

BUMBORET VALLEY: Nestled among the valleys of Pakistan’s mountainous northwest, a tiny religious community that claims descent from Alexander the Great’s army is under increasing pressure from radicals bent on converting them to Islam.

The Kalash, who number just about 3,500 in Pakistan’s population of 180 million, are spread over three valleys along the border with Afghanistan.

For centuries they practiced polytheism and animal sacrifice without interference from members of Pakistan’s Muslim majority.

But now they are under increasing danger from proselytising Muslim militants just across the border, and a hardline interpretation of Islam creeping through mainstream society —as Pook Shireen discovered.

See also: Afghanistan's Nuristan, formerly Kafiristan.

After falling unconscious during a car accident, the mid-20s member of the paramilitary Chitral Scouts woke to find that people with him had converted him to Islam.

“Some of the Muslim people here try to influence the Kalash or encourage them by reading certain verses to them from the Quran,” said his mother, Shingerai Bibi.

“The men that were with him read verses of the Quran and then when he woke up they said to him, ‘You are a convert now to Islam’. So he converted.”

The conversion was a shock for his family. But they were lucky compared with other religious minorities under threat from growing religious conservatism that is destabilising Pakistan.

Therein lies the assumption that it is "religious conservatism," whatever that is supposed to mean in a given context, rather than any one religion's teachings, that pose a problem.

In May 2010, more than 80 Ahmadis were killed in attacks on two worship places in Lahore.

Then in March this year, the Christian minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, whose job it was to protect groups like the Kalash, was assassinated outside his home in the capital, Islamabad.

Smooth co-existence

The lush green Kalash valleys, which sit below snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush, have been a magnet for tourists, both for the scenery and for the people, who are indigenous to the area.

Most are fair and with light eyes, which they say proves their descent from the army of Alexander of Macedonia that passed through the area in the 4th century BC to invade India.

The community brews its own wine and women are not veiled.

But the smooth co-existence between the Kalash and Muslims has been fading in recent months and the area is suffering from many of the religious tensions marring the rest of Pakistan.

The conversions are causing splits among the Kalash —converts become outcasts overnight, described by many as “dead to their families”.

“When a Kalash converts we don’t live with them in our houses anymore,” said farmer Asil Khan, sitting on a neighbour’s balcony.

“Our festivals and our culture are different. They can’t take part in the festivals or the way we live.”...

But no death penalty, apparently, as a convert to Islam who changes his mind would face.

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." - Winston Churchill

The crocodile in Pakistan is only getting stronger and hungrier. An update on this story. "Judge who sentenced Salman Taseer’s murderer removed," by Jibran Khan for Asia News, October 20:

Lahore (AsiaNews) – The Lahore High Court (LHC) repatriated [sic] Anti-terrorism Court (ATC) Judge Pervez Ali Shah, who announced the death sentence of Mumtaz Qadri, the security guard who murdered Punjab Governor Salman Taseer for defending Asia Bibi, a woman unjustly sentenced to death on blasphemy charges. District and Sessions Judge Moqurab Khan will replace Shah as the ATC judge in Rawalpindi. The Rawalpindi Bar Association had set a five-day deadline for a nationwide strike if Shah was not suspended or transferred.

Mumtaz Qadri has appealed to the Islamabad High Court (IHC) against his verdict. A division bench of the IHC suspended the death sentence on an application by Mumtaz Qadri`s defence lawyer, former LHC Chief Justice Khawaja Sharif. A final decision in his appeal is pending before the IHC.

Sunni Ittehad (SI), a radical Islamic movement, has already announced a "Remove the government March" on behalf of Mumtaz Qadri on 21 November from Rawalpindi to Karachi. And other pro-Qadri protests were announced after the Friday prayers in Pakistan’s major cities.

Humanitarian organisations have condemned the punishment on humanitarian grounds, saying that “life imprisonment is a better option.”

“Once again the judiciary has been pressured by the lawyers and a judge has been transferred for taking the decision for what he thought was right in the eyes of the law,” Fr Rehmat Hakim, from the Diocese of Islamabad, told AsiaNews. “Islamic religious groups have already made the government take a u-turn on the blasphemy law. These groups are becoming powerful each passing day.”

An "Algerian man" and a "Pakistani citizen." But Pamela Geller is quite right: "It transcends borders, nationalities, continents ...... the ideology trumps all. Which is why I find it so amusing when news reports identify the country (Moroccan man, Pakistani, Algerian, blah, blah) because their nationality is as relevant as the color of their shoes."

"Jihad Jane Conspirators Indicted in Philadelphia for Supporting Terrorists," by Sophia Pearson for Bloomberg, October 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Two people were indicted in Philadelphia on charges they supported terrorists in the “Jihad Jane” terror plot.

Ali Charaf Damache, 46, an Algerian man who resided in Ireland, and Mohammad Hassan Khalid, 18, a Pakistani citizen residing in Maryland, with one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. Damache was also charged with one count of attempted identity theft to facilitate an act of international terrorism, Philadelphia U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger said today in a statement....

Damache, also known as “theblackflag” and Khalid allegedly helped Colleen LaRose, also known as Jihad Jane, provide logistical and financial support and recruitment services in a plot to kill overseas. LaRose pleaded guilty in February on charges she plotted to recruit terrorists and murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks. She is awaiting sentencing with another woman, Jamie Paulin Ramirez, who pleaded guilty in March to charges she conspired with LaRose to support and train terrorists.

Extradition From Ireland

Prosecutors intend to seek Damache’s extradition from Ireland where he was arrested in March last year on unrelated charges. Khalid, who was arrested in Ellicott City, Maryland, in July, will make his first court appearance next week. If convicted Damache faces as much as 45 years in prison and Khalid faces a potential sentence of 15 years, prosecutors said....

According to the indictment, Damache and Khalid helped devise and coordinate a “jihad” organization of men and women from Europe and the U.S. The group was divided into teams for planning, research, action, recruitment and finance, prosecutors said in the statement. Some traveled to South Asia for explosives training and returned to Europe to “wage violent jihad,” prosecutors said. The group allegedly sought women who had passports and the ability to travel to and around Europe.

What, oh what, might have moved these ordinary Minnesotans to turn to terror?

Did Ali stand for the judge when the verdict was read, or continue to show proper Islamic contempt for his jahili authority? The AP article doesn't say. "2 Minnesota Women Convicted of Funneling Money to Terror Group in Somalia," from Associated Press, October 20 (thanks to Colin):

MINNEAPOLIS -- A jury has convicted two Minnesota women accused of funneling money to a terrorist group in Somalia.

Jurors returned their verdicts in federal court in Minneapolis Thursday.

Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan were charged with conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Ali also faced 12 counts of providing such support, while Hassan faced two counts of lying to the FBI.

They have been found guilty on all counts.

Prosecutors say the women were part of a "deadly pipeline" that routed money and fighters from the U.S. to Somalia. Their attorneys say they were helping refugees....

Last week, “Saudi Arabia’s religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid for casting a magic spell on a local family and ‘turning its life upside down.’” The maid “confessed” to using sorcery, and “commission experts took the magic items to their office and managed to dismantle and stop the spell.”

Far from being absurd aberrations to be dismissed, such accounts, which are becoming better known thanks to the Internet, are stark reminders of the incompatibility between the Western and Muslim worldviews, or, more to the point, the difficulty Western peoples have transcending their own paradigms and understanding the Muslim worldview in its own right—above and beyond the issue of sorcery.

In his book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Robert Reilly, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, helps explain the Muslim worldview by thoroughly documenting the historic and doctrinal roots behind it; by refreshingly bypassing the overly dramatized question of “what went wrong,” he explains the more pressing “why it went wrong.”

The book is a reminder of the importance of epistemology: before understanding Muslim acts, one must understand the Muslim mind that initiates them. We discover that Shakespeare’s dictum “Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” in Islam becomes “nothing good or evil but Allah says so.”

The author sheds light on the struggles of the different schools of Islam, showing how by the 10th century, the fatalistic, deterministic schools triumphed, delivering the death blow, not only to the notion of free will, but natural law as well: “a theological deformation … produced a dysfunctional culture.” From here one can understand the full impact of the popular assertion “the doors of ijtihad [intellectualizing] closed in the 10th century.”

Reilly chronicles how the giants of Muslim philosophy, such as Ghazali and Ashari, concluded that knowledge was unknowable, that moral truths can only be ascertained through revelation. Accordingly, all knowledge—the very bounds of reality—came to be limited to the words of the Quran and its pronouncer, Islam’s prophet Muhammad.

The ramifications of such intellectual calcification are immense: “All acts are in themselves morally neutral”; “Allah does not command certain behavior because it is good; it is good because he commands it. Likewise, he does not forbid murder because it is bad; it is bad because he forbids it.”

Equivocations, such as the following by Ashari, become commonplace: “Lying is evil only because Allah has declared it to be evil…. And if he declared it to be good it would be good; and if he commanded it, no one could gainsay him.” Of course and as Ashari knew, the Islamic deity and his prophet are on record permitting and even encouraging Muslims to deceive.

Similarly, the spirit of inquiry perishes: “the only thing worth knowing is whether a specific action is, according to Shari ‘a: obligatory, recommended, permitted, discouraged, or forbidden. The rest is irrelevant.” It is precisely for this reason that in Islam, the law—what is right or wrong, how one should live—trumps “theology,” the latter designated as kalam, that is, mere “words.” This is also why in the last millennium Spain alone has produced more books than the Arab world in its entirety.

Likewise in the realm of science: Reilly cites a Pakistani physicist—not an uneducated, impoverished “radical”—saying it is un-Islamic to believe that combining hydrogen and water makes water; rather, Muslims are “supposed to say that when you bring hydrogen and oxygen together then by the will of Allah [which need not always be consistent] water was created.”

The Closing of the Muslim Mind explains the singularity of Muslim epistemology and its antithesis to Western sensibilities: it explains why a maid is arrested and charged with sorcery and the dread of bewitched animals; explains why adult “breastfeeding” and habitual lying pose no moral problems; explains why top Muslim clerics insist the world is flat and ingesting the feces and urine of Muhammad is salutary; explains why jihadists believe their terror is pious and a libidinous paradise awaits them.

All these “alternate” ways of thinking make sense when one accepts that, in the purely Muslim mind, intuitive reasoning, the human conscience, and even common sense take a backseat to the literal words of Allah and his prophet, seen as the founts of all truth and reality—or, inevitably from a non-Muslim perspective, the words of a deluded or deceiving 7th century Arab.

Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published Islam-specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He writes a weekly column for Jihad Watch.

The "new," post-revolutionary Egypt, fresh from the "Arab Spring," is complicit in Hamas' mistreatment of Gilad Shalit through its appalling state television interview with him while he was still in custody. Hamas gunmen were still in the room when the interviewer asked him if he would work for the release of the rest of the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, among other ridiculous and abusive questions.

The full video, beginning with the "you look fine" remark, can be found in this BBC report, which also notes that the interviewer "also appeared to seek credit for Egypt, stating that Egyptian authorities had mediated the release and asking Sgt Shalit why he thought the mediation had worked." The Egyptians had to hold up Shalit's release for a moment of national preening and self-congratulation.

Regardless of Gilad Shalit's official legal status as a Hamas hostage, the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners remains the international standard. Hamas violated that document right and left in its treatment of Shalit, and Egypt piled on its own violation of Article 13, which calls for prisoners to be protected from "public curiosity." The director of Egyptian state TV said himself it was too good a scoop to pass up -- Shalit's well-being be damned.

Following the massacre of over 20 Christian protesters, the violation of the Geneva Convention is but another strike against the "new" Egypt's ability and willingness to abide by international standards for human rights.

Other points of contrast between the treatment of Shalit and the prisoners for whom he was exchanged follow below, and the contrasting images of their conditions upon their release prove the difference. "The prisoner comparison," from YNet News, October 19:

In the days before Gilad Shalit was returned to Israel, various Hamas spokesmen boasted that he was treated well by his captors, "in line with the tenants of Islam." Meanwhile, other Palestinians slammed the imprisonment terms in Israeli jails as exceptionally harsh and cruel.

Following the completion of the Shalit swap, Ynetnews presents a comparison between the jail terms of Palestinian security detainees held in Israel and the treatment accorded to Gilad Shalit by Hamas.

Leisure and entertainment: Based on initial statements, Shalit was able to watch Arabic-language television and listen to Arabic-language radio. Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners are given books and have access to 10 television channels.

Physical activity: Gilad Shalit's pale skin and his apparent difficulty in handling sunlight in the early moments of his release indicate that he was deprived of sunlight, a fact reinforced by statements from his father, Noam. Moreover, Gilad was held in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners are allowed to exercise and walk outside in the sun every day. In addition, inmates can attend prayer sessions and religious classes.

Visits: Nobody visited Gilad Shalit in captivity, including Red Cross representatives. In Israel, close relatives of Palestinian inmates are allowed to visit every two weeks. In addition, Palestinian detainees are allowed to hug children aged up to 8.

The interviewer asks Shalit why he only gave one interview in all these years.

Communication with the world: Gilad only sent one videotape, one audiotape, and three letters (largely dictated by his captors.) Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners are entitled to meet lawyers and Red Cross representatives and can mail up to four letters each month.

Medical treatment: Gilad, who requires eyeglasses, arrived in Israel following his captivity without his glasses. Some experts said his vision may have been hampered had he been without glasses for years. Shalit's father, Noam, added that his son is suffering from shrapnel wounds that were not treated by Hamas. Meanwhile, Palestinian inmates are entitled to regular medical treatments, including dental work and eye exams.

Food: At this time, the quantity and quality of Gilad's food in captivity is unknown. However, he returned to Israel visibly slimmer and weaker. Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners are given three full meals a day. They also receive some NIS 1,200 (roughly $350) per month from various organizations and use it to shop at the prison's canteen.

What much of the West is tragically unaware of, with major policy implications, is the difference between Fatah and the PLO as they address their Arabic-speaking audience and Fatah and the PLO as they address their Western audiences. And still, people blame Israel for the stalemate in the "peace process."

"Abbas greets newly released Palestinian prisoners: You are freedom fighters," from Haaretz, October 18:

The Gaza Strip and West Bank gave a jubilant welcome on Tuesday to hundreds of Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held for five years by the enclave's Islamist rulers, Hamas.

Fire-crackers, klaxons and cheering carloads of flag-waving young men raised the noise level steadily in Gaza city as thousands converged on a central square for a mass rally with speeches scheduled by Hamas leaders and well-known militants just liberated in the swap mediated by Egypt.

In Ramallah, thousands packed into the headquarters of the Palestinian presidency to greet prisoners released into the West Bank. President Mahmoud Abbas and Hassan Youssef, a senior member of the Hamas group, both delivered speeches in a rare show of national unity.

"We thank God for your return and your safety," Abbas said, greeting the prisoners. "You are freedom fighters and holy warriors for the sake of God and the homeland." He also said that Israel had promised him to free more prisoners following the two-stage swap. It was the first mention of such a release.

"We hope soon to see [Marwan] Barghouti and [Ahmed] Saadat, as well as every prisoner freed," Abbas told the thousands of cheering supporters and relatives, referring to two high-profile prisoners who Israel had refused to release.

Yousef said the deal "gives the Palestinians hope that more prisoners can be released."

Gaza declared a national holiday and schools were closed.

The road from the Egyptian border with Egypt was turned into a military zone and sealed off. Dozens of masked, heavily-armed men of the Izz el-Deen Al-Qassam militia waited in convoy to escort buses carrying the freed men north to Gaza city.

"I think the deal represents something great for the Palestinian people. Those who are still in jail are happy for those who have been released." said Hamas deputy leader in exile, Moussa Abu Marzouk, who greeted prisoners arriving in Egypt from Israel.

Patriotic songs blared from loudspeakers as prisoners arrived to a heroes' welcome at the Rafah crossing. Some kissed the soil as they arrived. Some were carried on the shoulders of happy relatives. Women ululated and men chanted Allahu akbar [God is greatest].

Hamas leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, joined scores of officials to greet freed prisoners coming in from Egypt, along with hundreds of family members impatient for the big reunion.

Haniyeh kissed their foreheads, paying special respect to Yehya Al-Sinwar, a top Hamas security strategist who spent 23 years in jail, and his deputy Rawhi Mushtaha who was also serving a life sentence.

"Thank you to the forces of the resistance for returning us as liberated heroes," said one prisoner.

In the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinians waving flags of Palestinian parties including Hamas and the Fatah movement led by Abbas were gathered over the course of the morning at the crossing where they expected Israel to set the prisoners free, dancing, singing and playing national songs all morning.

In Gaza, a densely-packed sprawl of low-rise concrete on the Mediterranean coast in sight of Israel, thousands gathered for a mass rally around a stage backed by a mural bearing portraits of top militants who were not released, with the words: "We will not forget you."

The web of electricity cables slung over Gaza's main streets was decorated with the green flags of Hamas. The streets were full of men in pick-ups, convertibles and rickshaw trucks waving the brightly-colored banners of Gaza's militant factions.

A wall painting lampooned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, depicting him with his face ground into the dirt by the boot of a gunman, signing a paper with words "swap deal".

Hamas, whose gunmen seized Shalit in a cross-border raid in 2006, has declared the prisoner exchange a victory over Israel and a vindication of its policy of armed resistance over the peace-seeking policy of Abbas.

Israel is setting free 1,027 Palestinians in return for the liberty of Shalit. Some have spent 30 years behind bars for violent attacks against Israel and its occupation of land taken in the 1967 Six-Day War.

More than 100 of the 477 prisoners released in the first phase of the exchange were taken to the West Bank. The rest were brought to Gaza, apart from 41 who were due to fly out from Cairo to exile in Turkey, Syria or Qatar.

Hamas and other Gaza militant groups have vowed to seize more Israeli hostages for exchange until all 5,000 Palestinians still in Israeli prisons are released.

"The rest of the prisoners must be released because if they are not released in a normal way they will be released in other ways," said Hamas deputy leader Abu Marzouk.

Accidental? Sure, the army just happened to get in the way of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's bullets. Later, the captive soldiers' necks happened to get in the way of their machetes.

Yeah. That's it. These things happen. "Philippine leader says no offensive despite Muslim rebel killing of 19 soldiers; army grieves," from the Associated Press:

MANILA, Philippines — President Benigno Aquino III said Thursday he would not resort to ordering an army offensive against Muslim guerrillas who killed 19 army soldiers in the southern Philippines despite a clamor for tougher government action.

Tuesday’s intense fighting on southern Basilan island between army special forces and members of the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front killed 25 combatants, including six guerrillas. It was some of the deadliest fighting since 2008, when peace talks bogged down and ignited widespread clashes that killed hundreds and displaced 750,000 people.

A cease-fire guarded by a Malaysia-led peacekeeping contingent had held until Tuesday.

The rebels have waged a bloody insurgency for self-rule in the southern Mindanao region, the homeland of minority Muslims in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines. The conflict has killed more than 120,000 people in nearly four decades.

The military and the guerrillas accused each other of instigating Tuesday’s clash. Both planned to protest before a government-rebel truce committee.

Army officials, angered by their heavy loss, also publicly disagreed with officials handling peace talks with the Moro rebels. Government negotiator Marvic Leonen said the clash was accidental and peace talks would proceed.

“Maybe in his perspective that was a misencounter because he doesn’t treat the rebels anymore as enemies,” army spokesman Col. Antonio Parlade told DZRH radio.

Parlade said six of the soldiers ran out of ammunition while the gunbattle raged and were taken captive by the guerrillas. They were later found dead with hack wounds, sparking anger in the 120,000-strong military.....

It sure sounds like the MILF jihadists are really committed to peace, doesn't it?

It sufficed for authorities that the radio show host cautioned the imam that they were in Sweden, though the imam said he didn't care; that didn't matter. Authorities do appear to have approached the issue with kid gloves, as one can't help but wonder how light a touch they would have used had this exchange involved a religion other than Islam. Here, a spokesman explained, "The statement was based on personal faith and the ceiling is pretty high when it comes to that kind of statement."

An update on this story. "Imam's on-air death threat 'not hate speech'," from The Local, October 20 (thanks to Twostellas):

It was not hate speech when Swedish public service broadcaster Sveriges Radio (SR) featured a programme in which a Somali imam called for all converts from Islam to be killed, the Swedish Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern, JK) has ruled.

The motivation for the decision not to open up an investigation into the matter was that the presenter protested against what the imam said immediately following the controversial statement.

The decision said that ”the programme features opinions that could be taken as a threat aginst those who have converted from Islam”.

However, due to the responses from the presenter, the Chancellor has decided not to investigate the matter further.

The programme in question was a panel discussion and was broadcast live by SR International's Somali service.

The initial police report was filed by Erik Johansson, at the Swedish Evangelical Mission (Evangeliska Fosterlands-Stiftelsen - EFS), after friends told him of the imam's words underlining every Muslim's responsibility to kill anyone who leaves Islam.

"I received a call from my Somali friends who had heard the programme. I don't speak the language myself and when they explained to me, I concluded that this wasn't a message which should be on an SR channel," Erik Johansson told The Local at the time.

Johansson also contacted Sveriges Radio in order to register his dismay that the item was left available on their website for more than two weeks. Soon after his telephone call the programme was removed from the website.

In a comment to the Christian newspaper Dagen following the report, SR International head Ingemar Löfgren said that he decided to pull the transcript from SR's website pending receipt of an official translation, pointing out that he is responsible for several channels broadcast in languages which he does not speak.

"If an imam calls for other Muslims to kill converts, then we have a journalistic responsibility... If he didn't get any follow-up questions then we have failed in our journalistic responsibility," he said.

Erik Johansson told The Local that the journalist had reminded the imam that they were in Sweden, to which the imam had replied that the same rules apply here.

Had the presenter not reacted as he did to the imam's statements, JK might have investigated the matter further.

”It's hard to say if we would or not. The statement was based on personal faith and the ceiling is pretty high when it comes to that kind of statement,” said Marcus Agnvall, of the the Chancellor's office to newspaper Dagen...

No further obstacles remain to a hardline Sharia regime in Libya. "Gaddafi killed as Libya's revolt claims hometown," by Rania El Gamal and Tim Gaynor for Reuters, October 20:

SIRTE, Libya | Thu Oct 20, 2011 9:09am EDT

(Reuters) - Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya's interim rulers said.

His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.

"He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head," National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."

Mlegta told Reuters earlier that Gaddafi, who was in his late 60s, was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked. He said he had been taken away by an ambulance.

There was no independent confirmation of his remarks.

An anti-Gaddafi fighter said Gaddafi had been found hiding in a hole in the ground and had said "Don't shoot, don't shoot" to the men who grabbed him....

The "pro-democracy" protesters thought they were demonizing him by drawing a Star of David on his picture

The chant is emblematic of the replacement of Gaddafi's bizarre Islamosocialist cult of personality with a straight Sharia regime populated by al-Qaeda elements. It is likely that the new America-backed regime will compete with the Gaddafi regime in its hatred for America and the West, and become noted for being even more anti-American than he was.

"Gaddafi captured and wounded near Sirte: NTC official," by Rania El Gamal for Reuters, October 20:

SIRTE, Libya | Thu Oct 20, 2011 7:50am EDT

(Reuters) - Deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs near his hometown of Sirte at dawn on Thursday, National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid said.

Majid reported the capture after Libyan interim government fighters took the town on Thursday, extinguishing the last significant resistance by forces loyal to the former leader and ending a two-month siege.

"He's captured. He's wounded in both legs ... He's been taken away by ambulance," the senior NTC military official told Reuters by telephone.

Gaddafi was trying to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked, Majid said. The head of Gaddafi's armed forces Abu Bakr Younus Jabr had been killed during the capture of the Libyan ex-leader, he added....

In the capital Tripoli, sounds of gun shots were heard and people cheered in the street: "God is Great, God is Great, Gaddafi has been captured."

Al-Shabaab has denied the existence of a massive famine and forced Somalis seeking aid back into the famine zone. They have launched suicide bombings and killed civilians indiscriminately. And that is to say nothing of the everyday violence and abuse heaped on Somalis by al-Shabaab -- all the more so for the few non-Muslims they find. Somalis who are even suspected of being Christian are denied aid.

Yes, there actually is a way to make life in Somalia even worse at the hands of al-Shabaab: to try living it as a non-Muslim. "Islamic Extremists in Somalia Behead 17-year-old Christian," from Compass Direct News, October 19:

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 19 (CDN) — Militants from the Islamic extremist al Shabaab beheaded a 17-year-old Somali Christian near Mogadishu last month, a journalist in the Somali capital told Compass.

The militants, who have vowed to rid Somalia of Christianity, killed Guled Jama Muktar on Sept. 25 in his home near Deynile, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from Mogadishu. The Islamic extremist group had been monitoring his family since the Christians arrived in Somalia from Kenya in 2008, said the source in Mogadishu, who requested anonymity.

The Islamic militants, who are fighting the transitional government for control of the country, knew from their observations of the family that they were Christians, the source said.

“I personally know this family as Christians who used to have secret Bible meetings in their house,” he said.

Based on talks with the boy’s parents and their neighbors, the source said al Shabaab members arrived at Muktar’s home at 6 a.m., when his parents, whose names are withheld for security reasons, were already at work at their retail space at the Hamarweyne market on the outskirts of Mogadishu.

The extremists found Muktar as he was preparing to go to school, he said.

“The neighbors heard screaming coming from the house, and then it immediately stopped,” the source said. “After awhile, they saw a white car leaving the homestead.”

The neighbors informed the parents, who hurriedly returned home from their market stall. They buried their son’s body quickly, fearing the militants would kill them as well, returned to their market space and then fled to an unknown destination, the source said.

“When the incident happened, the parents called to tell me that their son had been killed and that they feared for their lives,” the source said. “Since then, I have not heard from them.”

On the outskirts of Hudur City in Bakool region in southwestern Somalia, a kidnapped Christian convert from Islam was found decapitated on Sept. 2. Juma Nuradin Kamil was forced into a car by three suspected Islamic extremists from the al Shabaab terrorist group on Aug. 21, area sources said. After members of his community thoroughly combed the area looking for him, at 2 p.m. on Sept. 2 one of them found Kamil’s body dumped on a street.

Muslim extremists from al Shabaab, which has ties to al Qaeda, control the area some 400 kilometers (249 miles) from Mogadishu.

A Christian who saw Kamil’s body said it bore the marks of an al Shabaab killing, according to a leader in Somalia’s underground church who lives in another city.

“It is usual for the al Shabaab to decapitate those they suspect to have embraced the Christian faith, or sympathizers of western ideals,” the leader said.

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

With estimates of al Shabaab’s size ranging from 3,000 to 7,000, the insurgents seek to impose a strict version of sharia (Islamic law), but the government in Mogadishu fighting to retain control of the country treats Christians little better than the al Shabaab extremists do. While proclaiming himself a moderate, President Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed has embraced a version of sharia that mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam....

Muhammad ordered: "If anyone changes his religion, kill him" (Sahih Bukhari 9.84.57).

The damage that will be caused by the jihad terrorists freed for Gilad Shalit could be incalculable and catastrophic. "Freed would-be suicide bomber tells kids to be like her," from Reuters, October 19 (thanks to Softly Bob):

GAZA - A would-be Palestinian suicide bomber freed by Israel in the prisoner swap for soldier Gilad Schalit told cheering schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip the day after her release on Wednesday she hoped they would follow her example.

"I hope you will walk the same path we took and God willing, we will see some of you as martyrs," Wafa al-Biss told dozens of children who came to her home in the northern Gaza Strip.

Biss was traveling to Beersheba's Soroka hospital for medical treatment in 2005 when Israeli soldiers at the Erez border crossing noticed she was walking strangely. They found 10 kilograms (22 lbs) of explosives had been sewn into her underwear.

A member of al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, Biss was sentenced to a 12-year term for planning to blow herself up.

After she spoke, the children cheered and waved Palestinian flags and chanted: "We will give souls and blood to redeem the prisoners. We will give souls and blood for you, Palestine."

Biss said she had planned to blow herself up at the checkpoint but her detonator malfunctioned.

"Unfortunately, the button did not work at the last minute before I was to be martyred," Biss told Reuters.

She said she had not yet adjusted to her freedom and arose early on Wednesday for prison roll call.

"This morning I woke up in my room, wore my scarf and stood up awaiting the line-up time before I realized I was home and not in jail," she said.

Once she settles back to her routine, Biss said she plans to complete university psychology studies but added that she remained defiant in the face of Israeli warnings to act against those who return to militancy.

"We will pursue our struggle and (Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu) knows that. Arrests will not deter us from our strong battles and confrontation in the face of Zionist arrogance in the land of Palestine," she said....

...I read your book.

This is good. After all, why should five Muslims who say they entered the country on September 11, and who broke into a courthouse in the middle of the night after visiting high-security facilities all over the country (they had "'photographs of infrastructure' including photos of shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings"), and who apparently took something into the building and left it there, be investigated for terrorism? After all, don't burglars always leave behind something in the places they break into and steal from? Obviously this was a simple burglary, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a greasy Islamophobe. More on this story. "5 Foreign Nationals In Custody After Attempted Break-In at Texas Courthouse, Authorities Say," from FoxNews.com, October 19 (thanks to CWR):

The FBI and local police said Wednesday they were trying to figure out why five French-Moroccan nationals tried to break into a Texas courthouse in the middle of the night.

At least five foreign nationals are in custody after the attempted break-in at the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio, which triggered a bomb scare and FBI terror investigation, a source close to the case tells FoxNews.com.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the suspects are believed to be of French-Moroccan descent.

FBI agents and a bomb squad were called to the courthouse after three men were found inside the building early Wednesday.

The men, along with two others who were outside in an RV, were arrested by San Antonio police. The five suspects are currently being questioned by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

"We're looking into all aspects of these individuals," FBI spokesman Erik Vasys told FoxNews.com.

Documents found inside the van showed the men, all in their 20s, had traveled extensively to high-level security facilities around the country, according to local media reports. Investigators also told the Associated Press that 90-day visas, maps, cell phones and computers were found inside the vehicle.

The source declined to comment on whether any bomb-making materials were found at the scene, saying only that the suspects' motive is still under investigation.

Police said two of the men climbed a fire escape and entered an unlocked door on the fourth floor of the courthouse at around 2 a.m., KHOU.com reports.

The men allegedly told investigators that they were visiting from out of town and said they were trying to get a tour of the city, according to the station.

That makes sense. I often break into courthouses at 2AM when I am in strange cities and looking for a tour. Don't you?

Sheriff's department spokesman Louis Antu told the Associated Press that there's no information to indicate that the incident might be affiliated with terrorism. He said the case is being investigated as burglary of a building.

Antu said the FBI and immigration authorities are involved because the men are not from the U.S. Antu said the men, whose names have not yet been released, were taken to a jail holding facility.

"Inside the van, officials say they found 'photographs of infrastructure' including photos of shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings which they say were taken in cities nationwide."

More on this story. "Courthouse Arrests May Have Terror Link," by Jim Forsyth for WOAL.com, October 19 (thanks to Kenneth):

Five men in their twenties, described as French-Moroccan Muslims, are being questioned by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and by officials of the Department of Homeland Security after they were arrested inside the 120 year old Bexar County Courthouse in downtown San Antonio shortly before 2 this morning, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Officials say three of the men crawled through a window to get into the 120 year old Courthouse, which is a landmark in downtown San Antonio, and theother [sic] two were found in a van parked in front of the building.

Inside the van, officials say they found "photographs of infrastructure" including photos of shopping malls, water systems, courthouses and other public buildings which they say were taken in cities nationwide.

"They got travel documents, parking passes, they have been all over the country," one law enforcement officials who asked not to be identified told 1200 WOAI's Michael Board on the scene. "A lot of photographic equipment, a lot of documentation equipment inside their vehicle."

Officials say the five men entered the country legally on visas from Heathrow Airport in London. They didn't immediately know how long the men have been in the U.S., or what places they may have visited....

"They are going to be held for interrogation by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the joint terrorism task force," the law enforcement source said.

The men are described as in their early twenties. One law enforcement official said the men told him they climbed to the fourth floor of the courthouse at 2AM "to get a better view of the city."

There is a military intelligence convention underway at the city's Convention Center several blocks away, with top intelligence officials including White House officials set to speak, but investigators didn't say whether there was any connection....

"All that, coupled with the fact why they can't explain why they are in the building at 1:22 in the morning raises questions," the law enforcement officer said.

Indeed.

Deceit. Bungling. Lather, rinse, repeat. An update on this story. "Ground Zero mosque honcho provides shady proof of property tax pay with doctored statements," by Erin Einhorn for the New York Daily News, October 19 (thanks to Twostellas):

The real estate developer who wants to put a mosque near Ground Zero tried to pull a fast one Tuesday about his property tax woes.

When the Daily News contacted developer Sharif el-Gamal about the $30,000 he owed the city in back property taxes for the future Islamic center in lower Manhattan, he insisted he had already taken care of it.

"The check was sent in," Gamal insisted to The News during an interview about 3:30 p.m. "The taxes have been paid."

Gamal was supposed to be making quarterly payments for a $224,000 tax bill his company had run up last year on the Park Place building.

But he missed a scheduled $30,000 payment that was due on Oct. 3.

When the Daily News asked for proof of payment, Gamal forwarded an email receipt from the city Finance Department's online payment system showing a $30,435.11 payment made on Oct. 5 at 1:54 p.m.

The email receipt Gamal forwarded had a receipt number of WWW23334165.

There was a problem, however.

The Finance Department says that payment was actually made yesterday at 3:55 p.m. - roughly half an hour after Gamal claimed he'd already paid.

The Finance Department sent over what they say is the real receipt, which had the same code number of WWW23334165.

It was dated Tuesday.

City officials say receipt numbers are sequential and that the one in question was issued Tuesday - not two weeks ago as Gamal claimed in his apparently doctored proof of payment.

Gamal apparently also sent reporters from different news organizations receipts with different time stamps.

When asked about the discrepancy, Gamal responded by email that the receipt was "forwarded to me from one of my staff members."

He did not respond to requests for further explanation.

The mosque project has apparently encountered money troubles as fund-raising has stalled.

Gamal is also in a financial dispute with Con Ed over lease payments the utility says he owes for a portion of the Park Place building owned by Con Ed.

The jihadists will try, and have already tried. The abduction of an Israeli soldier was believed to be one of the goals of the Eilat attack earlier this year. It is possible that Hamas may now find it too much of a political liability to behave as it did in its kidnapping of Shalit in 2006, as the thugs who control Gaza currently pretend to act as like as much of a state as they suppose they have to.

However, that leaves numerous other jihadist groups, splinter groups, and freelancers that do not control territory, who can do the dirty work on behalf of the broader jihad against Israel. "Samir Kuntar: Kidnap more soldiers," by Roi Kais for YNet News, October 19:

The Shalit deal proves that resistance and resistance alone is the only way to free prisoners, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar said Wednesday. Kuntar was released in 2008 together with four Hezbollah men in exchange for the bodies of abducted soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

Another study in contrasts.

Kuntar called on Palestinian organizations to kidnap more soldiers in order to bring about the release of the remaining prisoners held in Israel.

In an interview with Hezbollah's Al-Nour TV station, Kuntar said: "From the first day Shalit was kidnapped, the enemy wasted its resources on obtaining a piece of information on his whereabouts. It was always confident it would get to him. This was the attitude for five years until the last moment of the prisoner exchange. But it failed miserably in a 360 square meter area which the enemy knows through and through."

Kuntar also stressed the historic importance of the deal and explained that Israel went back on its terms of the Oslo Accords – refusal to free prisoners from Israel and east Jerusalem. During the interview, Palestinian prisoners who were released as part of the deal and knew Kuntar from prison went on the air.

Kuntar was the commander of a four-man cell which took Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat hostage in Naharia in 1979. The second daughter Yael was strangled to death in her mother's arms as they were hiding in the attic. When he realized he could not escape, Kuntar murdered the father and daughter...

"Investigators said documentation found inside the RV showed the men have done extensive traveling to high-level security facilities around the country." -- KENS5.com

Will the Islamophobia never end?

This story has already been sanitized and rendered politically correct. Below is the story as I found it moments ago at the KSAT link. But I took a minute to search for an embed code for the KSAT video (didn't find one), and while I was searching, the story was changed. As you can see at the link, the headline is now "5 Arrested In Break-In At Bexar County Courthouse," and the lede has been changed from "Three men described by law enforcement officials as Muslim..." to "Five men of foreign descent..." Hamas-linked CAIR will be so pleased.

Here is the original form of the story: "3 Arrested In Break-In At Bexar County Courthouse," from KSAT.com, October 19 (thanks to Ron):

SAN ANTONIO -- Three men described by law enforcement officials as Muslim were taken into custody early Wednesday morning after a break-in at the Bexar County Courthouse. Two of the men are on the FBI's watch list.

Bexar County sheriff's officials responded to a burglary alarm at 1 a.m. and found two men walking outside the building, sheriff's officials said.

The men were arrested after sheriff's officials determined they broke into the building through a door on the fourth floor, sheriff's officials said.

Surveillance video showed the men walking into the building with an item in their hands, but they did not have the item when they walked out of the courthouse, sheriff's officials said. Investigators have not said whether that item was recovered of what it may be.

Sheriff's officials apprehended a third man who was inside a recreational vehicle in the parking lot of the building. The RV contained several documents and proof the men had been traveling across the country for some time, sheriff's officials said.

The men told authorities they broke into the courthouse to get a scenic view of San Antonio, but investigators said the circumstances surrounding the break-in are suspicious.

Investigators said the men, all in their early 20s, are not U.S. citizens and told investigators they came into the country on Sept. 11, but it wasn't clear what year they entered the country. Investigators also determined two of the three men are on the FBI's watch list. Their names have not been released.

As of 7 a.m., the men had been charged with burglary, but sheriff's officials said they would be interrogated by the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Joint Terrorist Task Force.

Authorities swept through the courthouse to look for explosives but nothing was found.

Sheriff's officials said the courthouse will open at its normal hour on Wednesday.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 18 — The Nasyid Artists Association of Malaysia (Munsyid) will take part in the Himpun gathering this weekend in a show of support and solidarity.

A coalition of Muslim groups are planning a rally called ‘Himpunan Sejuta Umat’ (Himpun), or ‘Gathering of a Million Faithful’, against Christians “challenging the sovereignty of Islam” this Saturday.

A million? The intended venue is a sports stadium that only holds about 80,000.

Organised by various right-wing groups such as Perkasa with the backing of both Umno and PAS Youth, the gathering could further raise religious tensions that have intensified in recent months following allegations of the proselytism of Muslims by Christians.

Raising religious tensions? Religious persecution of non Muslims by Muslims would be a far more apt description.

Representing 60 Nasyid artists in Malaysia, Munsyid will provide entertainment at the Shah Alam Stadium during the intermission of the Himpun event, which has been themed ‘Selamatkan Akidah Umat’, or ‘Save the Believers’ Creed’.

“We will use mainstream media, music and concert activities to help curb and stop this trend from prevailing,” said Munsyid advisor and Rabbani mentor, Sohibul Fadhil, at a press conference today.

“Proselytism of Muslims has been carried out through social services and entertainment, in a planned and civil manner on the pretext of religious tolerance.

See how those infidels are always plotting and conspiring against Islam? Again, no actual evidence is required; the Christians' mere presence in Malaysia is deemed as sufficient offense. That's why the Muslims are presumably planning a fresh binge of religious intolerance to remedy the 'problem'.  And to show us greater insight into this problem is the PAS Youth chief Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi, as quoted in "PAS divided over rally", by Sira Habibu, The Star, 19 Oct 2011:

[Nasrudin] said attempts to sway the faith of Muslims were being made via the 5F traps: food that is non-halal and harmful; fun that makes them idle to their religious commitments; broken families; films that are mind-corrupting; and fashion-wear that is sexually stimulating.

Food, films, fun and fashion -- who would have guessed that the followers of the 'perfect religion' were so vulnerable?

In "Obama's Department of Shariah" in World Net Daily this morning, Pamela Geller discusses the remarkable Islamization of the Obama Department of Justice. For more on this phenomenon, see her essential book, Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.

In the continuing Islamization of the Department of Justice, Barack Obama's DOJ filed a lawsuit against a Chicago-area school district for not allowing Safoorah Khan, a Muslim teacher at MacArthur Middle School, to take time off to make the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, thereby abandoning her students for a month. The DOJ sued the school district and last week forced it to give Khan $75,000 in lost back pay, compensatory damages and attorneys' fees.

The Berkeley School District didn't deny Khan's request because they hated Muslims. The school needed her. That's why they said no. She was the only math lab teacher and was a new hire on probation – she had only been on the job for nine months. Why take a job you can't do? Why take a job that you plan on leaving for a month? Islamic supremacism.

Khan herself made that clear when she said: "I'm glad that we settled, and I hope this does set a precedent. I hope they realize that hajj means a lot to Muslims and there will be more and more people taking the trip. I hope this helps people and their employers to accommodate Muslims and their requests."

In other words, employers better get used to changing the way they operate their businesses in order to accommodate Muslim demands, or else.

Your taxpayer dollars at work: to sue on behalf of an Islamic supremacist and to force the school district to pay 75K in jizya, the tribute money Islamic law requires non-Muslims to pay to Muslims.

Obama's Department of Shariah filed this outrageous lawsuit against the school district in December 2010, not to ensure the kids get a good education, mind you, but more importantly, to ensure that the Muslims get special rights and extraordinary accommodation. Obama's Department of Shariah sued to ensure the kids got the shaft but the teacher got the hajj.

This is the same DOJ's Eric Holder who spoke at the Muslim Advocates dinner a few months back and reassured Muslims of "DOJ's anti-bias focus."

This is the same DOJ that scuttled the prosecutions against Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups, i.e. CAIR et al.

This is the same DOJ that is creating Muslim majority legislative districts by converting a religious class into a racial one.

This is the same Eric Holder who sued a New Jersey county demanding that a correction facility change its rules to allow a Muslim prison guard to wear a khimar, an Islamic head covering, even though it's a choke hazard and she will be among prisoners.

The Department of Justice sponsored a booth at the Muslim Brotherhood front ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) convention underwritten by, among others, the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas-linked CAIR.

Further, Obama's Department of Justice dropped the "charges" against the Muslims who blew up the USS Cole.

Read it all.

Shahsavari after his Allahu-akbaring

Nothing to do with terrorism, of course. "Passenger: 'You're all going to die,'" by Joe Gamm for the Amarillo Globe-News, October 18 (thanks to Debbie):

Somewhere in the heavens above Amarillo, angry shouts rang out from the back of Southwest Airlines Flight 3683.

“You’re all going to die,” a man dressed in black screamed at passengers Tuesday afternoon. “You’re all going to hell. Allahu Akbar,” translated as God is great in Arabic.

Federal authorities arrested Ali Reza Shahsavari, 29, of Indialantic, Fla., onboard the Boeing 737 after pilots made an emergency landing at Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport at 3:30 p.m. He is being held in the Randall County jail on a federal charge of interfering with a flight crew.

None of the 136 passengers and five crew members on the flight from Los Angeles to Kansas City was hurt, said Brad Hawkins, spokesman for Dallas-based Southwest.

Police said the incident began with Shahsavari arguing with another passenger. The flight crew separated the men, said Amarillo police Cpl. Jerry Neufeld.

Shahsavari went into a bathroom and yelled obscenities from the rear of the plane, said passenger Doug Oerding, of Sacramento, Calif. Attendants tried to calm Shahsavari before a female flight attendant finally succeeded in quieting him. Oerding said.

As the tension mounted, the aircraft began to gain speed and descend, Oerding said. The slender Navy veteran said he put his shoes back on in preparation to act.

“All of us guys were looking at him like, ‘Are we going to have to do something?’” Oerding said after finishing a cigarette outside the Amarillo terminal while waiting to reboard the plane.

Amarillo Aviation Director Patrick Rhodes said an emergency call was placed about 3:30 p.m. to the control tower at Rick Husband. The caller initially reported a male passenger was attempting to break into the cockpit, Rhodes said. Amarillo police said the call came from the cockpit.

“He was being disruptive and unruly on the flight, but he was not specifically trying to break into the cockpit,” Rhodes said.

Not specifically!

When the plane reached a gate at the airport, police boarded it and arrested Shahsavari without incident, Neufeld said.

“He was waiting at the door when we went in,” Neufeld said. “He cooperated with officers.”

FBI Special Agent Mark White, based in Dallas, said the event did not appear to be an act of terrorism. He described Shahsavari as a U.S. citizen who might have experienced an episode of mental illness.

“It sounded like he sort of lost control of himself,” White said....

Of course! How could terrorism possibly be involved in the case of a Muslim shouting "Allahu akbar" on an airplane and telling the passengers that they were all going to die? He must be mentally ill!

TSA agents removed Shahsavari’s luggage from the plane, searched it and turned it over to his unidentified sister, who was traveling with him, Neufeld said.

The sister stayed in Amarillo overnight, Neufeld said. He said there was a language barrier for investigators attempting to interview Shahsavari, who is of Iranian descent. Shahsavari was born in Mississippi, Neufeld said....

Certainly for many who are born in Mississippi there is a language barrier.

Yesterday I was on the Michael Coren Show on Toronto's Sun TV discussing a wide range of matters. (Video thanks to Eeyore.)

National Review this morning is running a hit piece by Matt Duss of the hard-Left Center for American Progress, entitled "Horowitz and Spencer’s Islamophobia." It is a response to this piece by David Horowitz and me.

National Review contacted me yesterday and offered me a chance to reply to Duss's piece at The Corner: "A Response to Matt Duss: Defamation by Any Other Name . . .":

Indicative of Matt Duss’s dishonesty in his response to the article I cowrote with David Horowitz about the manipulative neologism “Islamophobia” is his initial labeling of us as “anti-Muslim activists,” and his characterization of our work as “the dissemination of hateful anti-Muslim ideas.” This appellation is not only inaccurate; it is highly defamatory, as it is intended to mislead Duss’s readers into assuming that we oppose a group of people out of sheer racism or bigotry, rather than a radically intolerant and oppressive ideology.

In reality, neither David Horowitz nor I are “anti-Muslim,” as I have stated many times. It is neither “anti-Muslim” nor “hateful” to stand for human rights for all people, including Muslims, and to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women, all of which are denied under traditional forms of Sharia.

Duss claims that we are part of “an organized campaign to spread misinformation about the religious faith of millions of Americans” – while denying, with a blithe disregard for self-contradiction, that he is “peddling ‘conspiracy theories’” about us. He makes much of the fact that the reliably Leftist Anti-Defamation League has smeared us also, asking rhetorically, “should the Anti-Defamation League also be lumped among the ‘jihadist apologists’?” Why not? Why should it be surprising that an organization that consistently follows a far-Left political line would follow it in this also?

Above all, however, like the CAP report itself, Duss does not and cannot provide any evidence either that any such “organized campaign to spread misinformation” exists, or that anything that Horowitz or I or any of the other targeted “Islamophobes” have said is false. He does try, however. He quotes, as if it is self-evidently false, my statement that Islam “is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers,” but offers no refutation of it.

If Duss can produce evidence of another major world religion with a developed doctrine or tradition of warfare against unbelievers (the Crusades, for those who may wish to toss them in here, did not proceed on the basis of any such Christian doctrine; no sect of Christianity ever taught as a matter of faith that believers were obligated to make war upon unbelievers), or that the sects of Islam and schools of Islamic law do not contain such developed doctrines and traditions, I will duly retract. But with Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, endorsing (as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community”) a manual of Islamic law that declares that Muslims must wage war “upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians...until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” Duss may find such a refutation rough going.

Duss shows a similar lack of knowledge of Islamic doctrine and law when he attempts to refute my statement that “there is no form of Sharia that does not contain… [the] death penalty for apostasy” by asserting that I am “obviously ignorant of the manner in which Islam is practiced by millions of sharia-adherent Muslims in the United States.” The ignorance is his: Muslims in the U.S. do not adhere to Sharia in its fullness, as no less an authority than the Ground Zero Mosque imam Faisal Abdul Rauf recently affirmed when he said that “the only truly clashing area” between Islamic law and modern Western society “is the penal code, and no Muslim has the intention of introducing that to America.” So if Rauf affirms that Muslims in America do not adhere to the Sharia penal code, and Duss affirms that Muslims in America are “sharia-adherent,” whom should we believe? I will go with the internationally renowned imam over the non-Muslim Leftist ideologue, thank you. And as for whether or not there is actually a form of Sharia, that is, a school of Islamic jurisprudence, that does not teach that apostates deserve death, I challenge Duss to find it. But he will search in vain.

Duss then claims that “the unmistakable implication of these claims is that all observant Muslims should be viewed with suspicion simply by virtue of being observant Muslims,” and that “that’s obviously Islamophobic.” In reality, the unmistakable implication of these facts is only that there are aspects of traditional Islamic law that are incompatible with Constitutional values. Here again, Rauf himself says nothing less. Is he, too, an “Islamophobe”?

In concluding his new smear piece, Duss complains that National Review published our article in the first place, and pleads that we be read out of honorable American conservatism. Here he exposes his real agenda in all its ugliness. Duss’s Center for American Progress, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and other Leftist and Islamic supremacist groups are conducting an ongoing campaign to discredit and marginalize everyone who dares to stand up against the jihad and Islamic supremacism. They are bent on destroying every last individual who does not adopt a warmly positive stance toward the spread of Sharia in the West and all other manifestations of the advancing jihad. The stakes are very high. If we don't resist this Islamic supremacist thuggery, Duss and his Islamic supremacist allies will succeed in stamping out all discussion of the truth about Islam and jihad, thereby rendering us mute and defenseless before its advance. That’s why we have to resist now, at every step, and continue to expose this propagandistic “Islamophobia” campaign.

See also David Horowitz's response to Duss here.

Put another shrimp on the barbie for me. In late November and early December I'll be making my first tour of Australia, speaking in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Cairns. Details here.

Video thanks to Eeyore.

In Human Events this morning I discuss who is really responsible for suspicion of Muslims in the U.S.:

The idea that hatred and bigotry motivates suspicion of Muslims in the U.S. has become so commonplace that Muslims are now claiming it is even behind the prosecution of jihad terror cases.

Last Friday, a federal jury convicted three North Carolina Muslims, Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi, and Hysen Sherifi, of plotting jihad terror attacks against the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., as well as against targets abroad. According to prosecutors, the primary motive of the three was to kill those whom they believed to be enemies of Islam. But after the verdict was announced, Hysen Sherifi’s mother shouted that the prosecutors were “racist vultures.”

This is the same old story we have seen played out so many, many, many times: Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, instead of owning up to what they tried to do for their religion and facing their punishment like the warriors they claim to be, Islamic jihadists and their supporters claim victim status. They grant nothing, they admit nothing.

Although this is a transparent attempt to deflect scrutiny and avoid suspicion, it actually arouses more suspicion of Muslims in the U.S., because people aren’t stupid: They see stories like the one about this North Carolina jihad plot and know that racism and post-9/11 paranoia had nothing to do with this conviction, which was based on clear evidence that was duly weighed by an impartial jury.

People know that concerns about Muslims in America stem not from bigotry, but from the numerous jihad terror plots that have been hatched in the name of Islam. And they see the disingenuousness and finger-pointing of Muslim leaders in America who should be, if they really were what they claim to be, acknowledging the problem of jihadist sentiments among Muslims in the U.S., and working sincerely to root it out. If Muslim groups in America ever even once admitted that there really was a problem of young Muslims turning to jihad terror in this country, then a great deal of the suspicion of Muslims in America would dissipate, because non-Muslims would see that Muslim leaders were at least making a good-faith effort to deal with the problem. Instead, they don’t even admit that there is a problem.

When suspicions arise, however, even that doesn’t make Muslim leaders in the U.S. start to be more honest. Instead, they ascribe it to a rise in “Islamophobia”—for example, the prominent Muslim spokesman Reza Aslan is traveling around the country peddling the claim that “whatever is fearful, whatever is frightening, whatever is uncomfortable, is being tagged as Islam.”

This is so absurd it beggars belief: Aslan pretends that jihad terror plots are not happening, and that concern about Muslims in this country is therefore sheer nativism and bigotry. His sleazy dishonesty, however, then ends up creating more of the concern about Muslims here that he sees as evidence of this nativism, so that actually he himself and others like him, as well as Muslims like Omar Aly Hassan, Ziyad Yaghi, and Hysen Sherifi, are the ones who are really responsible for any suspicion of Muslims that actually exists....

There is more.

The interview was but one parting shot of psychological warfare. The report below says Shalit had been "freed," but that armed, masked Hamas members were still in the area, and as shown above, they were still in the room.

The questions range from asinine to abusive. The Egyptians and Hamas could not help but make Shalit, as obviously frail as he was, jump through one more hoop where he must have worried Hamas might change its mind or add additional complications if he said the wrong thing.

The director of Egyptian state TV, which has already shown its readiness to be party to abuses of human rights recently, claimed in a New York Times report that it was just too juicy a story to pass up. Shalit was not "free" at that point, however, and what the Egyptians could also not pass up was the chance to stand between the hostage soldier and his family and country that much longer.

"Israel 'shocked' at Egypt TV Schalit interview," by Tia Goldenberg for the Associated Press, October 18:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli officials harshly criticized an Egyptian television interview with soldier Gilad Schalit minutes after Hamas militants freed him in a prisoner swap Tuesday, saying the questioning was inappropriate and insensitive.

In the interview aired on Egyptian state television, a gaunt, sallow and uncomfortable looking Schalit appeared to struggle to speak at times, and his breathing was noticeably labored as he awkwardly answered questions. The footage, along with earlier Egyptian TV video showing Schalit being transferred to Egypt, were the first images seen of the soldier after more than five years in Hamas captivity.

Armed Hamas militants were in the area during the interview. One of them stood behind Schalit's chair, wearing a a black face mask, a green headband of the Qassam brigades — Hamas' military wing — and a video camera in his hand.

"You have known what it is like to be in captivity," the interviewer Shahira Amin said to Schalit. "There are more than 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Will you help campaign for their release?" she asked.

"What has the experience brought you? Has it made you stronger?" she asked at another point. And, brushing aside the fact Hamas had barred anyone from visiting Schalit, she asked him why he only gave one interview while held captive.

An Israeli official questioned the ethics of the journalists involved.

"We are all shocked that a so-called interview was forced on (Schalit) before he could even talk to his family or set foot on Israeli soil," the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a sensitive diplomatic matter, but said the sentiment was widely shared in official Israeli ranks.

Israeli security officials told Israeli YNet News that the interview was a violation of the deal for Schalit's release.

However, an Egyptian security official said the Egyptian information minister asked the intelligence chief for an exclusive interview with Schalit. According to the official, Israel allowed only one cameraman from Egyptian TV to film inside the tent where Egyptian and Israeli intelligence officials were meeting with Schalit. It was not a condition in the deal but a request from Egypt. The interviewer said it was not coerced.

An ashen-faced Schalit answered a range of questions on his captivity and what he thought of the 1,027 Palestinian prisoners released for his freedom.

He was then handed over to Israeli officials and only then given a medical examination, where doctors determined he showed signs of malnutrition and lack of exposure to sunlight....

The father of one says his son had been "'misled' into thinking he could fight a holy war." "Two Cardiff men, 18, held by Kenyan anti-terror police," from BBC News, October 18:

Two 18-year-old men from Cardiff are being questioned by anti-terrorism police in Kenya.

Authorities in Kenya say the pair were arrested while crossing the border into Somalia.

The father of one man, of Somali descent, said he had flown out to save his son who had been "misled" into thinking he could fight a holy war.

Kenyan police say were under investigation by the anti-terrorism unit and are expected to be deported.

The other man is also a UK citizen, who is of Pakistani descent according to police.

A joint statement from the Muslim community in Cardiff said they were thankful the two men were safe and well and they were anxiously awaiting their return.

The father of the Somali Briton told the BBC he travelled to Kenya after his son disappeared from the family home in Cardiff.

Abdirhman Haji Abdallah told the BBC Somali Service in an interview: "He was brainwashed and taken away from us and he was told that he was going to fight a holy war in Somalia. So I travelled to Nairobi in an effort to save him."

He alerted the High Commission in Nairobi as well as the Kenyan police and gave them a photograph of his son....

Al-Shabaab: just doing what they do best. An update on this story. "Somalia bomber hits as Kenya ministers visit Mogadishu," from BBC News, October 18:

A car bomb has exploded outside the former foreign ministry in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, killing five people including the suicide bomber.

The attack came as Kenya's defence and foreign ministers were holding talks nearby with the Somali government.

Kenya sent troops to Somalia on Sunday to fight Islamist al-Shabab militants it blames for a spate of kidnappings.

There have been contradictory statements from both countries about the presence of the Kenyan force.

A Somali government general, Yusuf Dhumal, told the BBC Somali Service on Tuesday from the village of Taabto, that his troops were with the Kenyan force heading towards an al-Shabab-held town of Afmadow, 120km (75 miles) from the border.

Al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia, has denied carrying out any abductions and has warned of attacks in Kenya unless the troops withdraw. [...]

The UN-backed transitional government in Mogadishu has refused to admit that the Kenyan troops are inside Somalia.

Mr Wetangula, who on Monday had said Kenya troops were in Somalia, said the talks with Somali officials had centred on bilateral relations and the fight against al-Shabab.

But his colleague Mr Haji, in an interview in Somali at Mogadishu airport, categorically denied that Kenyan troops were in Somalia.

"The Kenyan government did not declare anything of the sort... no Kenyan troops have been deployed to Somalia," he told the BBC.

He said that Kenya had always refused to be part of the African Union force in Mogadishu in order to ensure good neighbourly relations.

The BBC's Nairobi bureau editor David Okwembah says the defence minister may have given a contradictory message as he was addressing a Somali audience.

UPDATE: Pamela Geller has the last laugh.

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Pamela Geller is scheduled to speak in Houston tonight, but the original venue for her talk, Hyatt Place, has caved to Islamic supremacist thugs and canceled her talk.

The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacist groups are conducting an ongoing campaign to discredit and marginalize everyone who dares to stand up against the jihad and Islamic supremacism. Central to this campaign is pressure against any organization or venue that dares to host a freedom fighter -- hence Hamas-linked CAIR's efforts to intimidate the FBI and the military into dropping invitations to me and other counter-jihadists, and its pressure on universities and private groups that host events featuring pro-freedom activists.

In Hamas-linked CAIR's "Islamophobia" report, "Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States 2009-2010," the group claims that "it is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes," but this is just another lie: Hamas-linked CAIR names no one who "question[s] Islam and Muslims" but is not, in its view, an "Islamophobe," and in reality, everyone who stands for freedom against the jihad, Sharia and Islamic supremacism gets branded with this propagandistic and manipulative label. Hamas-linked CAIR is bent on marginalizing and discrediting every last individual who does not adopt a warmly positive stance toward the spread of Sharia in the West and all other manifestations of the advancing jihad.

Hamas-linked CAIR and its Islamic supremacist and Leftist allies are open enemies of the freedom of speech, and they're relentless in bringing pressure on any individual, group or venue that dares to step out of the political correct dhimmi lockstep. That's why we have to match them at every point. Wherever they succeed in intimidating a group or venue into dropping a talk by a freedom fighter, we have to bring just as much pressure to bear for the cause of justice, and let that group or venue know that we do not appreciate their failure to stand up for Constitutional principles when challenged. So please contact the Hyatt Place in Houston and tell them that since they canceled the Geller event, you will be staying elsewhere:

Hyatt Place Houston/Sugar Land
16730 Creek Bend Drive
Sugar Land, TX 77478, USA
Phone: +1 281 491 0300 Fax: +1 281 491 0325
Farley Kern
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Tel: +1 312 780 5506
farley.kern@hyatt.com

The stakes are very high. If we don't resist this Islamic supremacist thuggery, the Islamic supremacists will succeed in stamping out all discussion of the truth about Islam and jihad, thereby rendering us mute and defenseless before its advance. That's why we have to resist now, at every step, before it's too late. Contact the Hyatt. But don't just complain: host a counter-jihadist in your area. Stand for freedom.

The photos paired above are posted as they appear at the Telegraph today. Today is a day for a study in contrasts between Israel and the various Palestinian factions: the treatment of prisoners, the value of human life, and the contrast in fundamental values: Shalit was a solider in the wrong place at the wrong time, abducted and held hostage by jihadist, terrorist thugs. The Palestinian prisoners were in prison for a reason -- many reasons, including murder.

Above all, today illustrates the intensity of the double standard to which Israel is held among its neighbors; for so many, however far backward Israel bends will never be "good enough" so long as it so rudely insists on continuing to exist.

"Israeli military: Schalit suffering malnutrition," by Daniella Cheslow for the Associated Press, October 18:

TEL NOF AIR BASE, Israel (AP) — An Israeli military official says the freed Israeli soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, is showing signs of malnutrition and lack of exposure to the sun after five years in Hamas captivity.

Schalit was examined by military doctors after being freed earlier Tuesday by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity under military protocol.

Schalit has appeared weak, pale and extremely thin in an Egyptian TV interview and video clips released by the Israeli military. [...]

Gilad Schalit, in a brief interview with Egyptian TV before being transferred to Israel, said he was "very excited" to taste freedom and had missed his family and friends. He said he feared he would remain in captivity "many more years" and worried since being told of the deal last week that last-minute hitches might cause it to collapse.

"Of course I missed my family. I missed friends, meeting people to talk to people, and not to sit all day, to do the same things," he said.

But Schalit's physical appearance raised questions about the condition of his captivity in the hands of the Hamas militant group. The 25-year-old appeared pale and gaunt, shifted in his seat, struggled to breathe and seemed to mumble as he answered the questions.

Later, video released by the military showed him being helped into an army jeep after crossing the border into Israel, and walking gingerly down a set of steps from a military caravan after changing his clothes into a fresh army uniform. Still, military officials said a physical exam had found him to be in good shape.

Later, he was flown on a helicopter to an air base in central Israel for a reunion with his family hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu told an audience that he understood the pain of Israeli families who lost relatives in Palestinian violence, but that Israel's ethos of doing everything possible to bring its soldiers home safely forced him to act.

He also issued a staunch warning to the freed militants. "We will continue to fight terror and every released terrorist who returns to terror will be held accountable," he said.

Those concerns were underscored with comments by one of the freed prisoners, Hamas militant leader Yehia Sinwar, who called on the movement to kidnap more soldiers....

Bart Ehrman is a New Testament scholar; according to Answering Muslims, "Muslims love to quote Bart Ehrman, because Ehrman criticizes the New Testament....he holds that it hasn't been perfectly preserved, that it contains contradictions, and that it isn't the inspired Word of God..."

But in the video above (via Answering Muslims, with thanks to The Religion of Peace), he offers a very brief and simple explanation of why he doesn't undertake similar study of the Qur'an: he doesn't want to get murdered.

Well, no one wants to get murdered, but people who have not feared to go wherever the truth may take them are more worthy of emulation than those who cower before violent intimidation. It is true that there has been less critical study of the Qur'an and the origins of Islam than there has of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, and this can largely be attributed to fear of violence.

But a small group of courageous scholars are pursuing such investigations of Islam, and in my next book, I discuss their discoveries. Yesterday I turned in the completed manuscript of my new book, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins, to its publisher, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). It will be out in the spring. In it, I discuss the surprisingly shaky historical foundations of Islam, including in-depth examinations of the earliest records of Muhammad's life, and the little-known story of the origins of the Qur'an.

I expect that the book will be...controversial. But to those who might be moved by it to violence, I say, unlike Ehrman, that I will never, ever bow to violent intimidation. And also: Why are you so afraid of the truth?

Harmonic convergence in Libya, too

The Leftist/Islamic Supremacist Alliance generally manifests itself as Leftist Useful Idiots doing the bidding of their Islamic Supremacist masters. And maybe here we are again. "Islamic Awakening Has Reached Americans," from the Ahlul Bayt News Agency, October 18 (thanks to Twostellas):

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Hamid Reza Taraqqi, international affairs deputy of the Islamic Coalition Party added that the Islamic Awakening movement changed the mind of American and European people, making them aware of the real roots of economic and political crises in the west.

He referred to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and said in the wake of the recent developments in the Middle East, people in the US realized that the world’s economic problems originate from injustices done by economic cartels and big corporations.

Islam emphasizes that people’s money should not be in the hands of a few wealthy and based on a Hadith by Imam Reza (AS), one of the signs of anti-Divine governments is accumulation of people’s wealth in the hands of a few, Mr. Taraqqi noted, adding this is happening in the West where the wealth of the majority is in the hands of a minority.

He said when western nations saw how the Islamic awakening rid nations in the Middle East of their tyrant governments, they, too, decided to uproot the main reason behind their problems and troubles.

Taraqqi also highlighted the role of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in disclosing the nature of western governments and their dependence on Zionism and big corporations.

And that churches are being closed due to "lake of attention." I don't know if these numbers are accurate or not, but the assertion itself is significant. With the increased presence of Muslims in France, or even with the widespread perception that their numbers are increasing, will come calls for the implementation of more and more aspects of Sharia. "Number of mosque is greater than churches in France," from the Ahlul Bayt News Agency, October 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - In charge of Muslim council Syed Muhammad Mosavi said that 2000 mosques are constructed in last one decade and 150 mosques are under construction in this country and 4000 mosques are needed to be constructed in next decade.

Daily Lakawaix reported that only 10 churches were constructed in last 10 years and 40 churches are closed due to lake [sic] of attention and many churches are being purchased by the Muslims and they are constructing mosques over there.

An American office wrote in their web site that Islam is spreading very fast in France door of mosques are always open for the Muslims. Now number of mosque is greater than churches in France. And 25 million people are totally religious and 19 million Catholics are acting on their religion.

"Islamic justice," they call this. And it certainly saves on court costs. But when it comes to women being raped, the ease with which the accused can declare their innocence takes on a less appealing edge. 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. "Pak court dispenses Islamic justice," from the Press Trust of India, October 18 (thanks to Twostellas):

LAHORE, 18 OCT: In an example of dispensing justice in an Islamic way, a Pakistani court confirmed the interim bail of six top government officials after they swore on the Quran that they were innocent of a scam involving millions of rupees.

During a hearing of the matter last week, a Division Bench of Lahore High Court headed by Chief Justice Mr Ijaz Chaudhry took strict notice of the constant extension in the interim bail of the accused persons over the past year and announced it would give a decision on confirming their bail at the next hearing. Yesterday, when proceedings started in the High Court, the Chief Justice asked the accused to take oath on the Quran in order to decide the matter without further delay.

The accused took an oath on the Quran and claimed they had not embezzled a single rupee. At this, the Chief Justice confirmed their interim bail and directed the accused to deposit Rs 500,000 each as surety. Pakistan's Anti-Corruption Establishment had registered a case against the six officials in June last year on the direction of the Punjab government.

The difference in treatment raises reasonable questions. With six high-profile jihad suspects in this situation, the court arguably appears to be playing a waiting game with Britain, hoping London will drop the cases after a certain amount of time has passed. That would afford the court a kind of "pocket veto" that saves it the political fallout of having to say "yes" or "no" outright.

"Judges' £2.5m delay in extraditing six UK terror suspects... but they were quick to seal hacker Gary's fate," by James Slack and Michael Seamark for the Daily Mail, October 18:

European human rights judges are costing the British taxpayer millions of pounds by stalling the extradition of six of the world’s most wanted Islamist terror suspects.

The independent panel that has been reviewing extradition laws will today accuse the European Court of Human Rights of being inefficient and slow.

The six terror suspects – who include hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza – have been languishing in British jails for a combined total of almost 50 years.

The cost to the taxpayer of their incarceration alone is an estimated £2.5million. They are accused of running terror training camps, plotting atrocities and running extremist websites.

But the controversial European court has halted their extradition to the U.S. in case their human rights are breached by lengthy jail sentences. The court has allowed their cases to drag on for years.

Campaigners point to the stark difference between the way the court has dealt with terror suspects and its treatment of Asperger’s sufferer Gary McKinnon.

Whatever the particulars of McKinnon's case may be, it shows the court is capable of moving quickly.

Gary, who searched NASA computers from his North London home looking for evidence of ‘little green men’, is facing extradition to the U.S. on computer hacking charges.

But the European judges dismissed his appeal against extradition in little more than a day.

Gary’s extradition, under the Extradition Act, is the subject of the Daily Mail’s ‘An Affront to British Justice’ campaign.

It was temporarily halted by Home Secretary Theresa May last year. She wants to examine advice on whether the 45-year-old is fit to be sent abroad.

Today the review panel, established by the Home Office and led by Lord Justice Scott Baker, will urge ministers to put pressure on the Strasbourg court to reform the way it works.

In particular, it wants cases to be dealt with much more quickly.

The Government, which has been embroiled in a long row with the court over votes for prisoners, will jump at the chance to issue a rebuke to the judges over terror.

The Mail has learnt that the six cases involve terror suspects that the U.S. is desperate to put on trial.

They include hate-preacher Abu Hamza and his trusted lieutenant Haroon Aswat – who are wanted by the U.S. authorities for allegedly plotting to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon.

Hamza’s case alone has already cost the public purse £1.1million in legal aid.

He was jailed for seven years in February 2006 for preaching hate and inciting murder at Finsbury Park Mosque in North London.

He would be eligible for release but remains in jail while his extradition case continues. If Strasbourg rules definitively that he cannot be extradited, officials would have little option but to release him on to Britain’s streets.

Two other men, Baba Ahmad and Seyla Ahsan, are accused of conspiracy to commit terrorist atrocities overseas and supporting terrorist groups.

They have been held in British jails – at a cost of £50,000 each per year – for between five and seven years while they fight extradition on human rights grounds.

Another man, Khalid al-Fawwaz, who is considered one of the U.S.’s most wanted terror suspects, has been in jail here since 1999.

Allegedly an associate of Osama Bin Laden, he was arrested over bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa which killed more than 200 in 1998.

The sixth man, Adel Abdul Bary, is also wanted in connection with the embassy bombings and has been held in prison for 13 years.

All have exhausted their rights of appeal in UK courts and are being held in high-security detention.

The European court has stalled extradition on the grounds that the lengthy jail terms they face if convicted may breach their human rights....

“Contact with the [Pakistani military] when these incidents are going on is often nonexistent. We usually can’t get a hold of these guys. When we do get a hold of these guys, they say they are not aware or can’t see it. Looking at the terrain, it is very hard to believe.”

"Tensions