January 2013 Archives

The Leftist/Islamic supremacist propaganda machine is crowing today about their victory over the freedom of speech and the truth about Islam and jihad in Worcester, Massachusetts -- and Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald is enraged that Pamela Geller and I have the temerity to fight back against the endless barrage of libel, defamation, and smears that he and his colleagues constantly direct at us and our work. In a screed at Salon today that is remarkable for its hypocrisy, projection, and leaps of logic, Seitz-Wald sketches out his ideal world, in which Geller and I shut up, stop fighting for human rights, and allow them to demonize and destroy us completely as they march forward confidently to authoritarianism, a tightly controlled single-viewpoint public square, and Sharia.

Well, sorry, Alex. I am never shutting up, and I am never giving up. Every day's headlines shows yet again that what I am saying is true (and rather obvious) and that your defamation and lies are in service of a truly sinister agenda: enabling jihad violence and Islamic supremacism.

Note the "anti-Muslim" in the headline and first paragraph -- as if fighting for the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and equality of rights for all people were actually a fight to deny a group of people their rights. This is a common defamation tactic from the Left and Islamic supremacists, but it reveals more about them than about me: if fighting for human rights for all is "anti-Muslim," Alex Seitz-Wald and others who use the phrase must think those freedoms are incompatible with being Muslim. So Alex Seitz-Wald turns out to be a greasy Islamophobe.

"Catholic diocese boots anti-Muslim speaker," by Alex Seitz-Wald for Salon, January 31 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Add this to the increasing marginalization of radical anti-Muslim views: A Catholic diocese in Massachusetts today rescinded its invitation to Robert Spencer, a prominent anti-Muslim writer and activist, to speak about Islam at an upcoming conference....

The response from Spencer and Geller was predictable: Blame the media. Writing at FrontPage, Spencer claimed that he was “informed” that the Boston Globe’s reporter, Lisa Wangsness, “instigated the entire controversy” and that she “asked [Muslim groups] to call the diocese and demand the cancellation.” Spencer published his entire, lengthy email exchange with Wangsness, including her phone number and email address, along with a correspondence with Wangsness’ editor. They declined to comment in an email to Salon.

I was indeed informed that Wangsness asked people to call the diocese and demand that my talk be canceled. I did indeed publish her email address and phone number. Seitz-Wald postures as if this were something heinous, without bothering to mention that I asked people to contact her and "politely and firmly" register their disapproval with her flagrant bias and unethical behavior. He doesn't mention that I gave out her Boston Globe email address and phone number, which are easily obtainable public information. Reporters who have unpublished phone numbers and email addresses don't get much reporting done.

Seitz-Wald never complained when his comrade in the "Islamophobia" industry, Reza Aslan's tiny gunsel Nathan Lean, published on Twitter information about where he thought I lived, in an obvious attempt to frighten and intimidate me into silence in light of the many death threats I've received from the jihadis Seitz-Wald and Lean think I'm so hateful for opposing. Lean's publishing what he thought was real personal information about my whereabouts got no protest from Seitz-Wald, but my initiating a phone and email campaign of protest against a Leftist journalist's unethical conduct, after the manner of innumerable such campaigns initiated by the likes of Hamas-linked CAIR and other pals of Seitz-Wald -- now, that's beyond the pale! "Right wingers" aren't supposed to fight back!

Geller picked up the same line of attack, writing, today, “I am surprised that Lisa Wangsness didn’t shout allahu akbar at her attack and victory over the free exchange of ideas.”

This is typical for a group of people who want the First Amendment to work only in their favor. They cry foul any time anyone writes something critical of their work, condemning the supposed infringement on their freedom of speech, yet they turn around and try to bully critical voices in far more aggressive ways than any action directed at them.

The audacity of Seitz-Wald's projection here is astounding. Geller and I are constantly hounded by these people. The whole idea that we are "bigots," "racists," "hatemongers" and the like for resisting jihad and Islamic supremacism is a Big Lie they have invented and pound out every chance they get. And so desperately insecure and authoritarian-inclined are Leftists and Islamic supremacists that they can't bear the thought of our speaking anywhere -- they are determined to drive us out of the public square and render our message outside the bounds of acceptable discourse, and so every time we speak anywhere, they mount protests. They demand that we be canceled (and they succeeded in Worcester), and if that fails, they show up to yell obscenities and insults at us from the audience to try to drown us out and prevent us from speaking. They relentlessly retail lies, half-truths and distortions about what we say and do, trying to stigmatize us so that no one will dare invite us to speak for fear of all the controversy that will inevitably ensue.

Yet even if they were to succeed in demonizing us utterly, such that everyone will fear to have anything to do with us, their enterprise in a larger sense is doomed to failure, because what we say is true, and its truth grows clearer all the time. That's why they have to keep the heat on, and make it ever hotter, as hot as they can, for us and for every freedom fighter -- only by a never-ending barrage can propaganda succeed in drowning out the truth, and even when that barrage seems to have succeeded, the blades of grass will always poke through the concrete. Seitz-Wald and his friends know this, also -- and so they know they have to yell all the louder, and smear us all the more energetically, in their increasingly desperate attempt to obscure the truth.

Pamela Geller makes a superb point on this: "Seitz-Wald claims that we 'want the First Amendment to work only in their favor.' Uh, wrong. I only want the First Amendment to work. Period. I want to be able to run my ads without having to file six-figure First Amendment lawsuits. I want to speak and not get canceled. I want a scintilla of truth to be reported about the work I do. Just for starters, we are anti-jihad, not anti-Muslim. No matter how many tens of thousands of posts, columns and books I write to the contrary or how many Muslim girls we help get to safe houses -- these tools propagandize and carry water for the most notorious Islamic supremacists. Seitz-Wald shills for the most brutal and extreme ideology on the face of the earth and he is pulling moral superiority. What he lacks in spine and guts he compensates for in cojones."

Any journalists or public advocates who cross them are bound to have their emails published and a string of ad hominem attacks thrown their way in a manner than can only be intended to intimidate. This effectively silences many critics, who may feel it’s not worth incurring the hate to write about Geller or Spencer.

I had to laugh. It seems as if every few days I am writing a response to another critical article defaming me and disparaging my work. There hasn't been any silencing of any critics as far as I can tell. Nor have I ever published the email address of a reporter before, because I never before asked people to complain about the conduct of an irresponsible journalist. And as for "ad hominem attacks," I laughed even harder. Seitz-Wald here is accusing us of exactly what he and his friends are actually guilty of: they keep up an endless stream of ad hominem attacks in order to effectively silence us, doing their best to intimidate people into being afraid to associate with us.

Of this reporter, for instance, Geller once said it was “only a matter of time before he is getting measured for a suicide vest.” She called a Jewish group in Chicago that spoke out against her anti-Muslim bus and subway ads “Judenrat,” as in Jews who collaborated with Nazis.

Alex, you left out that I called you a "dim bulb" for calling a column of mine an interview and then admitting you hadn't even read it before pouring out your vitriol. He provides no link to that one -- probably because he doesn't want anyone to see a post that includes much more than just that name (which he richly deserves): a comprehensive evisceration of his factual assertions, logical deductions, and journalistic integrity.

Seitz-Wald is firmly ensconced in the Left's academic and media echo chamber, where only one perspective is heard and challenges are not allowed. Guys like him are amazed when their work is not received with fawning praise. In contrast, Geller and I know that every mainstream media reporter who ever contacts us is going to try to make us look as bad as possible, and that our views will never get a fair hearing in that mainstream. We know we're not going to get a fair shake, and just hope we can get enough in to show someone who is reading a truth of which he may have been unaware.

That’s fine and they have the right to call anyone whatever they want, just as the diocese is free to rescind its invitation to Spencer and the Muslim groups are free to criticize it and the Globe is free to write about it, but you can’t have it both ways. It seems Spencer and Geller are not interested in “the free exchange of ideas,” as Geller said, but rather licence [sic] to express themselves with impunity and without criticism.

More projection! He accuses us of not being interested in the free exchange of ideas, when it is I who have asked innumerable Leftist and Islamic supremacist spokesmen and writers to engage in discussion or debate, on my ABN show or in another venue, and they have almost all refused. Meanwhile, when I write substantive responses to opposing views, there is hardly ever a response -- no discussion, no free exchange of ideas. Here are two recent ones: responses to Haroon Moghul and Harris Zafar. Moghul and Zafar did not bother to respond to the points I raised; they didn't have to, because the propaganda machine they serve had already sufficiently demonized me with ad hominem attacks that they didn't think it necessary to reply to the "Islamophobic bigot."

And one final irony. Seitz-Wald is whining about Wangsness's freedom of speech, but remember: the Globe reporter didn't just "write about it," but (if my sources are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them) worked to make sure that I would not be heard in Worcester. Free exchange of ideas, indeed. But perhaps I shouldn't expect more rigorous thinking from such a dim bulb as Alex Seitz-Wald.

Dawkins is the victim here of a very common Islamic supremacist tactic: to claim that any criticism of any jihadist action is a criticism of all Muslims, such criticism being not allowed under any circumstances in acceptable public discourse. The mainstream media and Islamic supremacist spokesmen did the same thing with our AFDI ad above, claiming that we were calling all Muslims "savages," as if every last Muslim supported the bloody and savage jihad against Israeli civilians.

And so Dawkins has to explain the obvious, as we do again and again and again, that he didn't mean all Muslims, and as he does, and as we do, the original point is lost -- which is the goal of this absurd Islamic supremacist victimhood posturing in the first place. Dawkins' original point was that those who destroyed the manuscripts in Timbuktu were barbarians. And they were. And they were acting in the name of Islam and its contempt for everything it considers jahiliyya, the society of unbelievers. Instead of addressing that, and determining to combat these ideas among their fellow Muslims, these Muslims went after Dawkins. So it always is: instead of fighting against the violent jihadists they profess to oppose, Islamic supremacists in the U.S. focus all their energy on attacking the non-Muslims who dare to oppose those jihadists.

"'A priceless heritage destroyed by Islamic barbarians': Atheist Professor Dawkins outrages Muslims with comments over Mali extremists wrecking library," by Mark Duell in the Daily Mail, January 31:

Atheist Richard Dawkins has outraged Muslims after describing looters who destroyed manuscripts in Mali as ‘Islamic barbarians’.

The 71-year-old author of The God Delusion was referring to the severe damage caused by Islamist extremists to a sacred library in Timbuktu but his remarks were seen as insulting to all Muslims.

Oxford University academic Professor Dawkins told his 600,000 Twitter followers on Tuesday: ‘Like Alexandria, like Bamiyan, Timbuktu's priceless manuscript heritage destroyed by Islamic barbarians.’

But his comments were criticised, with some followers claiming he was unjustly attacking Islam and others saying he should be considering vandalism committed by Christians, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Muslim Twitter user ‘Shawa5i Al Nasseri’ from the United Arab Emirates said: 'You call us barbarians, truly no respect', before later adding: 'How do you explain this "destroyed by Islamic barbarians?”’

Professor Dawkins responded to the comments by saying: ‘You mean you were one of those who burned the books in Timbuktu? No? I thought not. So I wasn't calling you a barbarian was I.’

He also said to all of his followers: ‘I was calling Islamic BARBARIANS barbarians’, adding: ‘By “Islamic barbarians” I mean those Muslims who are also barbarians. I do not of course mean all Muslims.’

Professor Dawkins later added: ‘Xtian (Christian) barbarians murder abortion doctors. Most Xtians (Christians) are not barbarians. Stalin was an atheist barbarian. Most atheists are not barbarians.’

On Monday Islamists were said to have burned down the world-famous Ahmed Baba Institute library containing priceless manuscripts and artefacts.'...

What could go wrong? "State Dept. Recruits Muslim Foreign Service Officers at Jihadist Conf.," from Judicial Watch, January 30 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The Obama administration is covertly recruiting Muslims to work at the State Department as Foreign Service officers representing the United States in one of 265 American embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions worldwide.

It appears to be part of the administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes a variety of controversial moves. Among them Homeland Security meetings with extremist Islamic organizations, sending an America-bashing mosque leader (Feisal Abdul Rauf) who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks on a Middle Eastern outreach mission and revamping the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.

Now comes news of a secretive State Department campaign, discovered in the course of a Judicial Watch investigation, to add Muslims to its roster. Presumably, the new recruits will be deployed around the globe to help the agency fulfill its mission of promoting the country’s international relations. The campaign seems to be headed by Mark Ward, the Deputy Special Coordinator in the State Department’s Office of Middle East Transition.

Ward held a 90-minute seminar at a recent convention sponsored by two groups—Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)—with known ties to radical Islam. Both nonprofits are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known as the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda. In fact, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that MAS was founded as the U.S. chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood which strives to indoctrinate the world with Islamic Sharia law.      

Yet there was a U.S. State Department official, side by side at a radical Islamic powwow in Chicago with a number of speakers who advocate violent jihad. Among them was Kifah Mustapha, a fundraiser at terrorist organization (Holy Land Foundation) convicted of funneling millions to Hamas and Jamal Badawi, a MAS founder who praised the jihad of Gaza terrorists during a speech titled “Understanding Jihad and Martyrdom.”

Read it all.

I am very honored to note that a newly formed group, the Creative Zionist Coalition, is giving me a Righteous Gentile award at its Purim party in Santa Monica on February 24. The circumstances are a bit unusual, and Pamela Geller, who is also receiving an award there, wrote this piece about. "Taunting the Lions in the Lions’ Den," by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in the Jewish Press, January 30:

It is a rare instance when Muslims publicly make amends to Jews for their vicious anti-Semitism and then underwrite a Zionist event honoring two fierce Zionists. In fact, we don’t know of any time this has happened other than this one: the newly formed Creative Zionist Coalition (CZC) is holding a Purim gala honoring Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer at Santa Monica’s Shangri-La Hotel, which is owned by a woman who has lost a case for anti-Semitic discrimination. She is appealing, but meanwhile, she has reached out to Zionist protesters and invited them to hold an event that exposes and repudiates Islamic anti-Semitism.

It’s a remarkable story. In 2010, the Muslim owner of the Shangri-La Hotel, Tamie Adaya, told an employee to “get the f—king Jews out of the pool.” The Jews were at the hotel for a fundraising event for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces (FIDF).  The FIDF volunteers who were thrown out of the Shangri-La Hotel’s pool sued Adaya in a California state court. The jury determined the hotel owner had committed various acts of anti-Semitism and returned a verdict against Adaya, finding that she had repeatedly violated the California Civil Rights Act and committed various other acts of discrimination against the group of 18 plaintiffs.

When word spread about Adaya’s anti-Semitism, two Jewish activists, Orit Arfa, at the time the executive director of the Western Region of ZOA, and Steven Goldberg (who is the National Vice Chairman of the Zionist Organization of America), scheduled a demonstration in front of the Shangri-La Hotel. Facing a public relations disaster, Adaya sent a hotel employee to meet Arfa and Goldberg and promise that if they called off the protest, she would host an event for them at the Shangri-La at her own expense.

Goldberg and Arfa agreed. Goldberg explains that Adaya’s “agreement was with me personally, not with anyone else or any organization, that I had the right to give the party to whatever organization I wanted, and I chose to make it the Creative Zionist Coalition.” This was fitting, since Arfa was the driving force behind the protest against the Shangri-La.

The sincerity of Adaya’s repentance has been discussed at length. This is not really at issue. No one involved in the CZC event thinks she has had a change of heart. Goldberg explains: “I personally made the decision to cancel the protest because I thought a single protest that would just last a couple of hours was less of a victory than a public statement by Adaya supporting the State of Israel and condemning anti-Semitism, donations by Adaya to an Israeli charity to benefit wounded IDF veterans and another Israeli charity to benefit the Israeli victims of Arab terror, and a free pro-Israel party at the hotel. I stand by that decision. I have no doubt that Adaya is an anti-Semite, and I thought all this would humiliate her. I still think so. I expect she will be getting a lot of heat from MPAC, CAIR and other Muslim groups as the party approaches. The whole point of this is to be in her face on this.”

It is just what we should be doing: confronting Islamic anti-Semitism, refusing to back down, and demanding that Muslims make public actions affirming universal human rights and human dignity. The event at the Shangri-La Hotel on February 24 is a first: a Muslim underwriting an event honoring two leading voices against Islamic anti-Semitism. This is a major event: whatever is in her heart, a devout Muslim is publicly acknowledging that Islamic anti-Semitism is wrong, and making public amends for it.

Goldberg sums it up: “We are all going into the lions den to taunt the lions. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

The "heart of the land of non-belief"? You'd almost get the impression that their hatred of the U.S. and Europe has something to do with Islam. But I am sure that Abdul Cader Asmal and Omid Safi are working hard to set them straight.

"U.S. faces new Al Qaeda threat as terror group's 'strike map' is revealed," by Simon Tomlinson for the Daily Mail, January 31:

Al Qaeda has issued a new threat to carry out 'earth-shattering, shocking and terrifying' attacks on the U.S. and Europe, it emerged today.

In a posting on a jihadist website, the terror group said the 'coming strikes' would target the 'heart of the land of non-belief' as well as countries aiding France in its crackdown on rebels in Mali.

The unidentified writer claimed the attacks would be 'group and lone-wolf operations, in addition to the use of booby-trapped vehicles'.

U.S. officials say they are taking the threat seriously.

The message, posted on the Ansar al Mujahideen network on Sunday, carried the headline: 'Map of Al Qaeda and its future strikes'.

'The answer for it, in short: The coming strikes by al Qaeda, with God’s Might, will be in the heart of the land of nonbelief, America, and in France, Denmark, other countries in Europe, in the countries that helped and are helping France, and in other places that shall be named by al Qaeda at other times.'

The message, translated by The Washington Times, says the attacks will be 'strong, serious, alarming, earth-shattering, shocking and terrifying.'

All attacks would be recorded and published, it added.

It goes on to warn France and those supporting its assault on Al Qaeda insurgents in Mali that they are facing a 'long war of attrition'....

On my ABN show last night I interviewed the world's premier scholar of early Islamic history, Ibn Warraq.

Here is the Boston Globe's story today, with my comments interspersed. You can see my exchanges with Globe reporter Lisa Wangsness, who (I'm told) exhorted people to call the diocese to get my talk canceled, here.

Please contact the diocese of Worcester and let them know, politely and courteously, that you disapprove of their capitulation to Islamic supremacists and refusal to give me an opportunity to answer their charges or get a fair hearing.

Spokesman for the diocese Raymond Delisle: rdelisle@worcesterdiocese.org
Bishop Robert McManus: rmcmanus@worcesterdiocese.org
Diocese of Worcester: 508-791-7171

"Catholic event cancels talk by Islam critic," by Lisa Wangsness for the Boston Globe, January 31:

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester rescinded an invitation Wednesday to Robert Spencer, a Catholic whose work depicts Islam as an inherently violent religion, to speak at its annual Catholic Men’s Conference in March.

My work depicts Islam the way Islam is depicted in the Qur'an and Sunnah, and by Muslim leaders around the world. I just report on what they say. If they say Islam is inherently violent, and they do, in hundreds of ways, every day, in all parts of the globe, then I report on that. This is a very common Islamic supremacist tactic to try to deflect attention away from the numerous calls to hatred of and violence against Infidels by Muslim clerics: to claim that non-Muslim foes of jihad and Islamic supremacism are "linking Islam to terrorism" in some unacceptable and illegitimate way when they report on how Muslim clerics link Islam to terrorism. And here we have a Boston Globe reporter using their tactic.

The invitation was withdrawn after Muslims in Massachusetts expressed concerns to the diocese about the appearance of Spencer, scheduled to be a featured speaker at the DCU Center on March 16.

They "expressed concerns," all right. They "expressed concerns" in a highly defamatory screed that you can read here. No one in the diocese of Worcester made any attempt to verify its charges. They just fell in line without question, like good dhimmis.

Note also that I have been told that Lisa Wangsness herself, the Boston Globe reporter, exhorted people to call the diocese of Worcester and ask that my talk be canceled. She denies this, but I don't know why my sources would invent such a story if it weren't true. It's extraordinarily irresponsible behavior from a "journalist," of course, but journalistic integrity is pretty much a thing of the past these days, and virtually all mainstream media journalists are propagandists for causes rather than objective reporters, so I am not all that surprised.

Spencer is director of the blog Jihad Watch and a leader of the American Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, both of which are seen as anti-Muslim groups by some organizations that monitor extremism.

I expect that Lisa Wangsness did not mention by name the "organizations that monitor extremism" because even Boston Globe readers would recognize that the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for American Progress are hard-Left propaganda groups that smear conservatives for cash, rather than engage in genuine and impartial analysis.

His books include “Stealth Jihad: How ­Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,” “The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant ­Religion,” and “Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics.” On his blog, he has argued that jihad is a central tenet of the faith.

No honest Muslim would deny that jihad is a central tenet of the faith. Many in the West argue that it is solely a spiritual struggle to improve oneself, as we see in Hamas-linked CAIR's cynical and deceptive #MyJihad campaign. However, all too many of their coreligionists around the world daily confirm that they regard jihad as involving warfare against Infidels. Classic Islamic theology holds that both meanings are correct -- thus to declare that it is a spiritual struggle alone is inaccurate and deceptive, as is claiming that it is not a central tenet of Islam.

After the Globe sought comment on his scheduled appearance from the diocese and from Muslim organizations Wednesday, the Islamic Council of New England sent an e-mail urging Catholic leaders to cancel ­Spencer’s appearance. The diocese agreed to do so shortly ­after receiving the e-mail.

“Although the intention of the conference organizers was to have a presenter on Islam from a Catholic’s perspective, we are asking Robert Spencer to not come to the Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference, given that his presence is being seen as harmful to Catholic–Islamic relations both locally and nationally,” Raymond ­Delisle, a spokesman for the ­diocese, said in a statement ­issued to the Globe.

Raymond Delisle never asked me not to come. He never communicated with me at all. He never sought my response to the Islamic Council's libelous letter. In any case, I am thinking going to the Worcester Catholic Men's Conference anyway. I am told that many of the organizers and attendees wanted to hear my presentation, so maybe I will give it in a hallway, or on the sidewalk outside.

The conference is a religious and social gathering for Catholic men, as well as their male friends and relatives, that typically includes talks from prominent Catholic men, a Mass said by the bishop, and the opportunity to attend confession.

Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal, cochairman of communications for the Islamic Council of New England, called the cancellation of Spencer’s speech “very reassuring” and said it was consistent with longstanding good relations between the Muslim and Catholic communities in Massachusetts.

“Somebody may have been blindsided by Robert Spencer, not knowing exactly what kind of hatemonger he was,” he said.

Blindsided by me? I was the only one blindsided here -- as I said last night, tried, convicted and executed without any chance to tell my side of the story or clear my name. Neither Lisa Wangsness nor Raymond Delisle had the wit to ask Abdul Asmal who among critics of jihad and Islamic supremacism he does not regard as a "hatemonger" -- this kind of defamation is also a tactic, one that is used against everyone who dares speak out against Sharia-justified warfare against and persecution of non-Muslims, oppression of women, etc.

Spencer, in an e-mail late Wednesday afternoon, said the diocese had not notified him of the cancellation.

“If it does turn out to be true,” he said in another e-mail, “it is new evidence of the cowardice of Roman Catholic officials in confronting the reality of Muslim persecution of Christians and their inability to grasp the importance [of] basing genuine dialogue between religions on truth, however ­unpleasant, rather than on wishful thinking and comforting fictions.”

In an earlier e-mail, he ­defended his work.

“There is nothing hateful or bigoted about what I say,” he said. “My work is in defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law.”

In September, the American Freedom Defense Initiative posted ads in the New York subway system that referred to ­Islamists who opposed the state of Israel as “savages.” The group is now running a second series of ads featuring photographs of the burning World Trade Center alongside a quotation attributed to the Koran: “Soon we shall cast terror into the hearts of unbelievers.”

Sheesh. The Qur'an is online in multiple places, and the ad gives the chapter and verse number: 3:151. Wangsness could have looked it up. Instead, she implies that I made it up. That's "journalism" for you. In any case, those who destroyed the World Trade Center were, by their own account, motivated by verses of the Qur'an like that one. So what exactly is the problem with the ad? And this fact is denied and obfuscated everywhere today, while Islamic supremacists advance the same Sharia agenda of the 9/11 hijackers by different means -- hence the need for the ad in the first place.

In any case, at least Wangsness had the integrity to note that our other ad referred to "­Islamists who opposed the state of Israel" as “savages” -- many of her "journalist" colleagues made the false claim that the ad referred to all Muslims as "savages." As she stated it, who could have any problem with our assertion? The "­Islamists who opposed the state of Israel” passed out candies to celebrate the brutal murders of the Fogel family, including small children. That's not savage?

Spencer was a leading opponent of the Park51 project to build a mosque and Islamic ­cultural center in lower ­Manhattan, which he has referred to on his blog as the ­“Islamist supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero.”

Never once did I refer to it by this phrase. Not once. I did refer to it as an "Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero," which is close to what Wangsness said, but not the same thing. Again, that's "journalism" for you. Anyway, the phrase was apt. The people behind the mosque had ties to Palestinian jihadis and the Muslim Brotherhood -- hence "Islamic supremacist." It was slated to be a 16-story structure that aped the architecture of the destroyed World Trade Center towers -- hence "mega-mosque." And it was to be built on the site of a building that was extensively damaged in the 9/11 attacks -- hence "at Ground Zero."

He has also raised alarms about multiculturalism and what he believes to be the threat of Sharia, Islamic religious law, undermining American courts and civil rights across the world.

It isn't just what I believe: Sharia has already been used as a determining factor in court cases in 23 states. And if Wangsness doesn't believe that Sharia undermines civil rights across the world, let her go to Riyadh or Tehran and venture outside with her head uncovered. Let her go to Khartoum or Islamabad and publicly criticize Muhammad. Let her go to Cairo or Karachi and ask the local Christians how they're faring.

Oren Segal, codirector of the Anti-Defamation League’s ­Center on Extremism, called Spencer “the godfather of the anti-Muslim movement in this country.”

The Godfather. I love it. The offer I make is truth, but unfortunately they can and do refuse it.

Anyway, the "anti-Muslim" part is just a smear. My work is dedicated to the defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. To characterize it as "anti-Muslim" is to imply that I want to deprive Muslims of due process or have them victimized by vigilantes, or worse. It is another tactic to try to turn people of good will away not just from my work, but from that of anyone resisting the jihad; the "anti-Muslim" label is designed to intimidate people into thinking that there's something wrong with opposing jihadists and Islamic supremacists.

Segal said there are legitimate concerns about people motivated by radical interpretations of Islam, which he said his organization has spoken out about forcefully. But Spencer, he said, is part of “a cottage ­industry . . . that under the guise of fighting radical Islam is actually demonizing an entire religion.”

Spencer, in another e-mail, said that the Anti-Defamation League “has unwisely ventured into leftist advocacy politics, spending more time combating friends of Israel on the right rather than enemies of Israel on the left. Its record in this is nothing short of shameful.”

Spencer says on his blog, ­Jihad Watch, where he posts many times a day, that he does not believe all Muslims espouse violence or that Islam is a monolithic faith.

But he calls ­violent jihad a “central element of Islamic theology,” citing a Koranic verse that says, in part, “Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them [captive] and ­besiege them and prepare for them each ambush.”

Omid Safi, an Islamic studies scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that there are indeed references like that to holy war in the ­Koran and that some ­Muslims in different periods of history have used them to justify their actions.

That does not mean, he said, that most modern ­Muslims accept them literally.

“If we go flipping through each other’s scriptures to persuade ourselves that other people’s scriptures contain violent elements, then that’s a losing game for all of us,” Safi said. “The question is: How do we make sense of them, and which ones do we call upon to live our lives today?”

In the Gospel of Matthew, he notes, Jesus says, “I come not to bring peace, but the sword.”

Yeah, that's why we see armed Christian groups making war against non-Christians worldwide, and quoting this verse. Of course, we don't see any such thing, and yet we do see armed jihadis all around the world making war against non-Muslims and justifying their actions by reference to the Qur'an. The difference is stark, and shows up the dishonesty of Safi's remarks.

Omid Safi is no stranger to dishonesty. He's an extremely dishonest pseudo-academic of extraordinarily low character. He has falsely claimed that I threatened to kill him and his family. He has a long-standing hatred of me based on my daring to challenge his dismissal of me with the manipulative Muslim Brotherhood neologism of "Islamophobe" and my outrageous offer to come to the class where he was discussing my work and engage in discussion and debate with him and his students.

Threatening to kill someone is a felony offense. Yet Omid Safi has never brought charges against me. Why? Because he is lying. I never threatened him or anyone. He is merely engaging in defamation. I complained to officials at the University of North Carolina about his highly unethical behavior, but got no action, of course, because his opinions are politically correct and mine aren't. So now we have an academic liar being cited as a source by a highly biased advocacy "journalist."

Also, this is more evidence of Wangsness's relentless bias. I want to know how she dug Safi up. Why did a Boston Globe reporter writing about a Massachusetts conference go to an academic in North Carolina to get comment on me? Why not someone from Harvard or Boston University or Tufts or any number of local universities? Was it because someone tipped her off that Safi would reliably provide negative comment on Spencer? Who did the tipping off?

Safi also said that Spencer has no formal training in Islamic studies or Arabic.

The Arabic charge is just a dodge. Does Safi really expect us to believe that "slay the idolaters" becomes "give the idolaters a hug" when rendered in Arabic?

Asked about his credentials, Spencer replied that his critics’ real problem is not his training.

“What I say about Islam is not unusual or eccentric,” he said. “Numerous scholars who have the credentials that those you have spoken with require, and many ex-Muslims, have made the same observations about Islamic doctrine that I have.”

Amjad Bahnassi, a member and occasional spokesman for the Worcester Islamic Center, said the Muslim community in the city generally has an excellent relationship with the ­Catholic Church.

Bahnassi said he counts a number of priests as friends and regularly speaks at ­Catholic churches about Islam. Next month he is scheduled to speak at Anna Maria College and Assumption College.

“I would have liked for them if they wanted to know about Islam’s view of Christianity to ask a Muslim,” he said of the ­organizers of the Catholic Men’s Conference.

Yes, they are sure to get an honest answer from the likes of the people who wrote the letter quoted here.

This was the third jihad attack this week against polio workers. And it's no wonder: last summer, a Pakistani Muslim cleric said that polio vaccinations were un-Islamic. More recently, the Taliban was murdering people who were administering the polio vaccine in Pakistan. And the quest for Islamic purity continues.

"Roadside bomb kills 2 polio workers in NW Pakistan," by Hussain Afzal for the Associated Press, January 30 (thanks to Kenneth):

PARACHINAR, Pakistan — A roadside bomb killed two Pakistani polio workers on their way to vaccinate children in a northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border on Thursday, an official said.

The two men were on their way to Malikhel village as part of the U.N.-backed anti-polio campaign when the bomb hit their motorcycle, said government administrator Yousuf Rahim.

The attack - the third this week against polio workers in Pakistan - took place in the Kurram region, a known militant stronghold.

On Tuesday, gunmen riding on a motorcycle shot and killed a policeman protecting a polio team in Gullu Dheri village of Swabi district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The polio workers escaped unharmed in that attack.

In a separate incident in the northwest on Tuesday, a man wounded a polio worker with an axe.

Rahim said it was not immediately clear if the two workers killed Thursday were the actual target of the bombing. Javed Husain, a doctor at a hospital in the town of Parachinar, said the slain men were working as contractors for the government-run anti-polio program in the area.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but suspicion fell on Islamic militants.

Some of the militants oppose the vaccination campaign, accuse health workers of acting as spies for the U.S. and claim the polio vaccine is intended to make Muslim children sterile.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the crippling disease is endemic. The virus usually infects children living in unsanitary conditions; it attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyze. As many as 56 polio cases were reported in Pakistan during 2012, down from 190 the previous year, according to the United Nations.

Most of the new cases in Pakistan were in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children.

In December, gunmen killed nine polio workers in similar attacks across Pakistan, prompting authorities to suspend the vaccination campaign in the troubled areas. The U.N. also suspended its field operations in December as a result of the attacks, though it has since resumed some activities.

Jews and the Crusades
by Ibn Warraq
Part 5
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4

2.2 Explanations of the Massacres of 1096.

Nonetheless, even if we discount the details to be found in these chronicles, “general corroboration exists in the contemporary Latin and later Hebrew sources that riots occurred and that some Jews killed their families and themselves”. [1]

The Jews were the first people to suffer as the first band of crusaders wound their way to the East through the Rhineland, which was the center of intellectual life of Ashkenazic [Northern European] Jewry, with its two great, vibrant communities of Mainz and Worms. In general, the Jewish communities in Northern Europe had seen great growth during the tenth and eleventh century but Jews were never considered the equals of Christians, and were constantly reminded of the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church that they were in error though they had once “possessed the truth of revelation, misread it, and thereby forfeited their covenantal relationship with the Deity”. [2] And of course, the Jews were held responsible for the Crucifixion of Christ, the Savior they should have accepted. These negative attitudes were embodied in the central rituals of the Church, and were passed onto large parts of the Christian populace. The Church did call for the toleration of Jews in their midst, where they were allowed to practice their religion, as long the Christians authorities assessed and ruled that the Jews were not a threat to Christians and Christianity.

There seem to also have been political, social and economic reasons for the persecution of the Jews in Europe. However, reading historians’ accounts of the “reasons” for, and “causes” of, Christian antisemitism leaves one with an uneasy feeling that somehow Christians were being excused since there were “good reasons” for their antipathies towards Jews, and that the Jews somehow “had it coming to them”. Though I should emphasize that no respectable Western historian ever explicitly states anything like this, and has never used terms like “had it coming to them”, or that there were “good reasons” for the Christians’ hatred. However, all rationalizing explanations of antisemitism engender such misgivings. Here are two rationalizing explanations of the rise of Christian antisemitism at the time of the First Crusade. Sir Steven Runciman wrote, “The prohibition of usury in western Christian countries and its strict control in Byzantium left them [the Jews] an open field for the establishment of money-lending houses throughout Christendom. Their technical skill and long traditions made them pre-eminent also in the practice of medicine. Except long ago in Visigothic Spain they had never undergone serious persecution in the West. They had no civic rights; but both lay and ecclesiastical authorities were pleased to give special protection to such useful members of the community. The kings of France and Germany had always befriended them; and they were shown particular favour by the archbishops of the great cities of the Rhineland. But the peasants and poorer townsmen increasingly in need of money as a cash economy replaced the older economy of services, fell more and more into their debt and in consequence felt more and more resentment against them; while the Jews, lacking legal security, charged high rates of interest and extracted exorbitant profits wherever the benevolence of the local ruler supported them.

[1] Idem.
[2] Robert Chazan, op.cit., p.28.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

While Christians face escalating persecution from Muslims in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere, the Catholic Church temporizes, ignores the victims, and plays at "dialogue" with Islamic supremacist groups whose announced intent is to "build bridges" with non-Muslims. Such bridges are really just proselytizing mechanisms to convert them to Islam, not an attempt to engage in genuine dialogue: "The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam." -- Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, chapter 10.

And so it was that I was scheduled to appear at a Catholic Men's Conference in Worcester, Massachusetts on March 16, until today, when the Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Robert McManus, directed that my appearance be canceled. McManus was under pressure from Islamic supremacist groups who were calling and emailing the diocese demanding that he cancel my appearance. I've been informed that they were asked to call the diocese and demand the cancellation by a Boston Globe reporter named Lisa J. Wangsness, who contacted me this morning and appears to have instigated the entire controversy.

This isn't about me. Robert Spencer will eventually go away, whatever happens. Do Bishop Robert McManus and Lisa J. Wangsness, and the Roman Catholic Church and the mainstream media in general, think that when I go away, their troubles will be over? Do they think that if they make nice with Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. that Christians will not be persecuted in Muslim countries, and that persecution will not escalate? Do they think that when all the writers and activists who are smeared as "Islamophobes" are finally silenced that a new era of peace and harmony will dawn between the West and the Muslim world?

Such an era will not dawn. When we are silenced, the troubles of the enlightened kuffar who have placed all their hopes in "dialogue" will just be beginning. But when their own turn comes, as it inevitably will, there will be no one left to speak up for them.

Here is my exchange with Lisa Wangsness of the Boston Globe:

1. Wangsness to Spencer:

Message: Hi Mr. Spencer, I am a reporter for the Boston Globe, and I am working on a story about your upcoming speech at the Diocese of Worcester's Catholic Men's Conference. I wanted to ask you about what you plan to talk about and about some of your critics' assessments of your views, which some characterize as hate speech or anti-Muslim bigotry.

This story is for tomorrow's paper, so if there is any way you could
call me back at your earliest convenience I would very much appreciate
it.

Thanks,
Lisa Wangsness 617 543 1272
LWangsness@globe.com

2. Spencer to Wangsness:

There is nothing hateful or bigoted about what I say. My work is in defense of the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the equality of rights of all people before the law. Islamic supremacist groups like the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations make spurious charges of hate speech and anti-Muslim bigotry against anyone and everyone who dares to stand up against the human rights abuses and violence that are justified with reference to Islamic law by those who perpetrate them. It is a cynical tactic designed to fool people and intimidate them away from resisting jihad and Islamic supremacism.

If you have any further questions, I can be reached at this email address.

RS

3. Wangsness to Spencer:

Thanks very much.

Several of those I've spoken with say you lack the credentials to speak with any authority on Islam -- you are not a Muslim, you hold no degrees in Islamic studies and you are not an Arabic speaker. Could you please respond to this?

Thanks again,
Lisa

4. Spencer to Wangsness:

Everything I have written in twelve books on Islam is documented from Muslim sources. No one needs take my word for anything -- they can check it out themselves. What I say about Islam is not unusual or eccentric -- numerous scholars who have the credentials that those you have spoken with require, and many ex-Muslims, have made the same observations about Islamic doctrine that I have. Karen Armstrong and I have both written two books about Muhammad. She is not a Muslim, holds no degrees in Islamic studies and is not an Arabic speaker. Yet they have no problem with her books and would probably recommend them. What is the difference? She paints a warmly positive view of Muhammad whereas I quote the material from the Muslim sources showing him acting violently, counseling warfare against non-Muslims, having his foes murdered, etc. This is material that those you have spoken with would rather not be known. The fact that they demand what they claim are validating credentials from me but do not demand the same from Armstrong indicates that their criticism is not with the accuracy of my work, but is motivated by another agenda. And the fact that they make these spurious arguments about credentials shows that they cannot dispute the accuracy of my work, and so have to make ad hominem attacks instead.

5. Wangsness to Spencer:

Thanks very much.

I wanted to also ask whether it is accurate that you are a member of [redacted] and that you live in [redacted]?

And can you say something about the subject you'll be speaking about in Worcester -- that is, what are your basic views on Islam's view of Christianity?

6. Spencer to Wangsness:

Because of the many death threats I receive from the coreligionists of those with whom you are speaking, I make no public statements about my personal life or place of residence. (Have they spoken out against such violent intimidation?)

I will be elucidating Islam's view of Christianity based on the statements of the Qur'an and Hadith, particularly the Qur'an verses 2:62-65, 5:17, 5:51, 5:72, 5:112-116, 9:29-31, and 61:6.

Also, Lisa, this discussion has centered solely around "bigotry" and credentials. Have you asked those with whom you are speaking about the innocent victims of jihad attacks around the world today? Have you asked them if there is any critic of jihad whom they DON'T find "bigoted" and "lacking in credentials," and if so, why they target ALL of us with these same smears? Have you asked them if there is any criticism of jihad terror and Islamic supremacism that they find acceptable? Have you asked them who among them speaks out against the slaughter of non-Muslims by jihadists in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, Thailand? Have you asked them who among them speaks out against Sharia's institutionalized oppression of women and non-Muslims? Have you asked them who among them speaks out for the apostates from Islam who live under a perpetual death sentence for the crime of exercising their freedom of conscience?

Or is your questioning proceeding solely according to their agenda?

And finally, have you asked the victims of jihad what they think about my work and the work of those with whom you are speaking?

Thanks for your time.

7. Wangsness to Spencer:

Thanks. I think it is fair to say that the ADL and others have quite strenuously condemned violence perpetrated by radical Islamists....

8. Spencer to Wangsness:

The ADL has unwisely ventured into Leftist advocacy politics, spending more time combating friends of Israel on the right rather than enemies of Israel on the left. Its record in this is nothing short of shameful.

Then, almost four hours later:

9. Wangsness to Spencer:

Hi Mr. Spencer, the Diocese tells me they have disinvited you from the conference because of concerns about how your appearance could affect Islamic-Catholic relations locally and nationally. I wanted to see whether you had a response to this development? Thanks very much, Lisa

10. Spencer to Wangsness:

They haven't had the courtesy to tell me. If it does turn out to be true, it is new evidence of the cowardice of Roman Catholic officials in confronting the reality of Muslim persecution of Christians and their inability to grasp the importance basing genuine dialogue between religions on truth, however unpleasant, rather than on wishful thinking and comforting fictions.

11. Wangsness to Spencer:

Ok, thanks....

After speaking to sources who told me that Wangsness asked people to call the diocese and ask that my appearance be canceled, I wrote her this:

12. Spencer to Wangsness:

I'm hearing you were behind this, getting people to call the diocese. How interesting. How does that square with your supposed commitment to objective journalism?

13. Wangsness to Spencer:

I reached out to people to solicit comment on your appearance, but if people called the diocese, they did so on their own. I did not and would not tell anyone to call anyone.

14. Spencer to Wangsness:

That's not what I was told.

And another:

Lisa, please be so kind as to answer these questions for the piece I am writing on this:

1. Whom did you contact in order to get information about me?
2. Whom did you direct to call the Bishop's office?
3. On what basis do you consider their information reliable?
4. At what point do you consider it appropriate for a reporter to cross the line from reporting the news to trying to influence events?
5. Have you ever read the Quran or studied Islam?

Thanks -- I look forward to receiving your answers.

15. Wangsness to Spencer:

I am on deadline at the moment and have referred this to my editors.

16. Spencer to Wangsness:

No problem. If you could just send a complete list of those whom you solicited for comment and asked to call the bishop, I'd be obliged.

I will be most interested to see your piece, particularly in how you describe the organizations I expect you contacted.

17. Wangsness to Spencer:

You can contact my editor, Steve Smith, at stsmith@globe.com or 617 929 3100.

18. Spencer to Steve Smith:

Hi Steve. I am doing a piece on recent events surrounding a talk I was scheduled to give in Massachusetts in March, and particularly on media bias and advocacy for causes and groups masquerading as objective journalism.

In connection with that I am asking for your comment on reports I have received that Lisa J. Wangsness directed people to call the Diocese of Worcester and ask them to have my appearance canceled.

Also, I'd much appreciate it if you or she could answer the following questions that I sent to her earlier (the "you" in them is, of course, Lisa J. Wangsness):

1. Whom did you contact in order to get information about me?
2. Whom did you direct to call the Bishop's office?
3. On what basis do you consider their information reliable?
4. At what point do you consider it appropriate for a reporter to cross the line from reporting the news to trying to influence events?
5. Have you ever read the Quran or studied Islam?

Many thanks and regards
Robert Spencer

No answer from Smith.

Meanwhile, one of the conference organizers sent me a letter that an Islamic supremacist leader in Worcester sent to the Roman Catholic diocese of Worcester:

From: A C DR ASMAL [mailto:acasmal@msn.com]

Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 2:31 PM

To: david michael; riaz khan; nabeel khudairi; sulieman mohammed; naim assil; naseemakhan@yahoo.com

Cc: Vito nicastro; ray helmick; Jerome maryon; Yusufi vali; Wangsness, Lisa J; diane kessler

Subject: A MATTER OF GRAVE CONCERN

Importance: High

Father David Michael, 1/30/2013
Archdiocese of Boston.

Dear David,

Please see the note from Yusufi Vali who is the current Executive Director of the ISBCC
He has received a note from the Globe that arch-Islamophobe Robert Spencer who masquerades as a Catholic has been invited to talk on Islam at the invitation of the Worcester Archdiocese.

Mr Spencer has a very deep rooted Islamophobia and argues by selective quoting of sacred passages taken totally out of context , and exploits any and every opportunity he gets to link the lunatic act of a Muslim in any part of the world as a direct consequence of Islam.

He is not an academician, nor does he have a modicum of understanding of Islam.

We in the Boston community who have enjoyed such a warm tradition of mutual respect with all our Christian friends both in the Acrhdiocese of Boston and at the Massachusetts Council of Churches are appalled that a person with such reprehensible credentials should be invited to speak to the Catholics in Worcester.

This is an appeal to you through his Eminence Cardinal O'Malley to exercise whatever influence you can to expose Mr Spencer for the hatemonger he is and get his invitation rescinded.

Thank you for your efforts

Abdul Cader Asmal MD
Co-chair of Communications
Islamic Council of New England.

ps I am copying Dr Vito Nicastro, Fr Ray Helmick, and Jerome Maryon Esq all comitted Catholic friends of the Muslim community,as well as Rev Laura Everett at MCC and Rev Dianne Kessler former EX Director of MCC
and Ms Lisa Wangsness at the Boston Globe

I was given no chance to respond to this tissue of libel. The diocese never contacted me. Instead, Raymond Delisle, Spokesman for the Diocese of Worcester, gave this statement to Lisa Wangsness:

Lisa,

Here is a statement from me for your story.

Although the intention of the conference organizers was to have a presenter on Islam from a Catholic’s perspective, we are asking Robert Spencer to not come to the Worcester Catholic Men’s Conference given that his presence is being seen as harmful to Catholic–Islamic relations both locally and nationally.

Raymond Delisle, Spokesman for the Diocese of Worcester

The rapidity and one-sidedness of the diocese's reaction was inexcusable -- I was tried, convicted and executed without evidence, without investigation, and without a moment's thought.

Tell them what you think. Please write to Lisa Wangsness and Steve Smith at the Globe, politely and firmly, deploring her collusion with Islamic supremacist libels and her exhorting people to contact the diocese. Tell them that this is deplorable behavior even by the standards of contemporary journalism, and that Lisa Wangsness should be reprimanded and fired.

And please also contact Raymond Delisle and Bishop McManus, asking that they not capitulate to Islamic supremacist lies, and reinstate my appearance, or at very least give me a fair hearing in a face-to-face meeting (for which I will travel from California or wherever I am when he can meet me to Massachusetts at my own expense to attend).

Lisa Wangsness: LWangsness@globe.com
Steve Smith: stsmith@globe.com

Raymond Delisle: rdelisle@worcesterdiocese.org
Bishop Robert McManus: rmcmanus@worcesterdiocese.org
Diocese of Worcester: 508-791-7171

UPDATE: I received this from Steve Smith of the Globe. It contradicts what I was told by informed sources about Wangsness's activities:

Good evening, Mr. Spencer.

Lisa Wangsness, the Globe’s religion reporter, sought comment on your scheduled appearance from the Diocese of Worcester, local Muslim organizations, and other groups. As you know, she also reached out to you for comment. She was gathering facts and comments for a story on your appearance. She did not direct anyone she interviewed to make calls or send e-mails urging cancellation of your appearance. It is our policy not to discuss work before publication.

Stephen Smith
City editor
Boston Globe

SECOND UPDATE: Jihad Watch reader Charles notes:

Abdul Cader Asmal is a backer of Tarek Mehanna, identified as his “friend and ally” in this article: http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/12/tarek-mehanna-victimized-by-racist.html Other statements of support for Mehanna by Asmal: http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/03/08/muslim_community_rallies_behind_sudbury_man_charged_by_the_fbi/?page=full

http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=65161172

Fine with Detroit

Banned in Detroit

Predictable Sharia compliance in Detroit on our latest AFDI ad. Pamela Geller explains: "Our message parallels the atheist ads. Since they were accepted, I modeled this ad after theirs, to see if the freedom of speech applied to criticism of Islam in our cowardly and politically correct age. This is the same government agency that refused to run our "Leaving Islam?" ads that were designed to help Muslim girls who wanted to lead more Western lives escape dangerous devout households. SMART refused. My legal team, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise of the American Freedom Law Center and I sued. We won. They appealed to the 6th circuit court (a sharia-sensitive court). The Sixth Circuit said that the ad was a political ad -- SMART doesn't run political ads. So in my quest to fight on, I wanted to point out their hypocrisy as we go back to court. This rejection does just that.  We fight on."

"Conservative’s Anti-Muhammad Ad Rejected by Detroit Transit System — But Can You Guess Which Ad Was Accepted?," by Billy Hallowell for The Blaze, January 30 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Religious advertisements have been known to spark intense debate. Consider the anti-God billboards that are regularly posted by non-theist groups like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists. But it isn’t only non-believers who invoke controversy with their messaging.

Pamela Geller and her American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) have also come under intense scrutiny for subway and bus ads that target Islamic extremism. Now, the AFDI is embroiled in a new battle over a proposed anti-Muhammad ad that was rejected this week by Detroit’s Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) bus system.

In an e-mail to TheBlaze on Tuesday evening, the AFDI president noted that, while SMART previously accepted an “anti-God” atheist ad from the Detroit Coalition for Reason (DCOR), the public transit company has rejected her organization’s ad. This is particularly interesting, seeing as the AFDI modeled its design almost entirely after the DCOR’s banner.

“Our ad, same ad, with one word flipped, was rejected,” Geller told TheBlaze.

The original atheist design featured clouds and the words, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” The organization’s web address was also present to the bottom left of the ad, sending Internet users to a web site that encourages people to “shine the light of reason” and to reject faith and religion.

As you can see [above], AFDI ad looks almost entirely similar to the aforementioned description. The only difference between the designs is that the word “God” is swapped out for “Muhammad,” the holy prophet in the Islamic faith. And the web address in the latter ad encourages those viewing it to go to TheTruthAboutMuhammad.com, a web site that wages some potentially-offensive allegations against the religious figure.

Obviously the similarities were intentional, with Geller telling TheBlaze that her quest to see the Muhammad ad get placed had everything to do with examining free speech as it applies to the Islamic faith.

“This message parallels the atheist ads — ‘Don’t Believe in God? You’re Not Alone’ — that ran previously,” she explained. “Since they were accepted, I modeled this ad after them to see if the freedom of speech applied to criticism of Islam in our cowardly and politically correct age.”

In a letter that Geller forwarded to TheBlaze, CBS Outdoor’s Howard Marcus rejected the ad, citing a past legal battle that AFDI waged against SMART over a previous rejection.

“The proposed advertisement submitted by Pamela Geller has been reviewed under SMART’s content policy. SMART, consistent with its review process, also reviewed the referred-to website: thetruthaboutmuhammed.com,” read Marcus’ e-mail. “Consistent with its policy, with the Sixth Circuit opinion in AFDI v SMART, and consistent with other law, SMART declines to post the advertisement.”

Geller, who is less-than-content with the decision not to allow the Muhammad ad, called SMART’s response to her request “sharia compliance in accordance with blasphemy laws under Islam.”...

Indeed.

"Among Israeli officials' chief fears is that Assad will pass chemical weapons or sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah."

"Syria confirms Israeli jets bombed military site," by Ben Hubbard for the Associated Press, January 30:

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel conducted a rare airstrike on a military target inside Syria, foreign officials and Syrian state TV said Wednesday, amid fears President Bashar Assad's regime is providing weapons to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

A statement from the Syrian military read aloud on state TV confirmed the strike, saying the jets bombed a military research center in the area of Jamraya, northwest of the capital, Damascus.

The statement said the center was responsible for "raising the level of resistance and self-defense" of Syria's military. It said the strike destroyed the center and a nearby building, killing two workers and wounding five others.

U.S. and regional security officials reported the strike earlier Wednesday but did not say exactly where it took place.

Regional security officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah, Lebanon's most powerful military force. Among Israeli officials' chief fears is that Assad will pass chemical weapons or sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah — something that could change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel's ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

The regional officials said the shipment Israel was planning to strike included Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically "game-changing" in the hands of Hezbollah by enabling the group to carry out fiercer attacks on Israel and shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones.

Hezbollah has committed to Israel's destruction and has gone to war against the Jewish state in the past.

A U.S. official confirmed the strike, saying it hit a convoy of trucks....

We have seen a government come to power that has arrogated for itself dictatorial powers and inspired massive protests in Egypt. It has set in motion the Sharia's institutionalized discrimination against women and non-Muslims. The President has been revealed as making numerous vile antisemitic statements and declaring that there should be no negotiations with Israel. And she is worried that the "revolution" might be "hijacked by extremists"? What does she think Morsi and his gang are?

"Hillary Clinton on Egypt: ‘We Must Make Sure the Revolution Isn’t Hijacked By Extremists,’" from Fox News, January 29 (thanks to EH):

Hillary Clinton went ‘On the Record’ with Greta Van Susteren in her final days as secretary of state. Regarding the escalating crisis in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt, Van Susteren asked Clinton her thoughts on what’s going to unfold and if the U.S. should intervene.

Clinton said, “I think that post the Arab revolutions that took place in Egypt, and Libya, and Tunisia, […] there was always going to be a period of adjustment.”

She said the U.S. must work with the international community and the people in Egypt to ensure that the revolution isn’t hijacked by extremists. Clinton acknowledged that “it’s hard” to go from decades under one man or one party rule to democracy.

Van Susteren asked about President Mohammed Morsi’s past statements about Israel and an Egyptian senior aide recently saying that the Holocaust didn’t exist. She asked pointedly, “Is Morsi with us or against us?”

Clinton answered, “We were quite concerned about those statements and the Egyptian presidency repudiated them and reaffirmed a commitment to the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.”

Having spoken with Morsi, Clinton says he has “a lot of the right intentions.” She remained cautious, saying, “We have to you know, keep pushing forward and yet call it like we see it when we think something is not appropriate.”

Former associate calls Morsi a "master of disguise"

The devout Hasan

An earlier report said that his attorneys were asking that he be spared the death penalty because the first judge committed the egregious offense of commanding that he be held to army regulations and his beard be shaved. "Fort Hood suspect still faces possible execution," by Angela K. Brown for the Associated Press, January 30 (thanks to all who sent this in):

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) -- The Army psychiatrist charged in the Fort Hood shooting rampage still faces the death penalty if convicted in the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation, a judge ruled Wednesday.

The judge, Col. Tara Osborn, was expected to rule later on Maj. Nidal Hasan's request to plead guilty to 13 counts of premeditated murder in the 2009 attack on the Texas Army post. However, Army rules prohibit a judge from accepting a guilty plea in a death penalty case, so her earlier ruling Wednesday indicates he would not be allowed to plead guilty as long as that punishment option remains on the table.

Defense attorneys argued that Hasan should be spared a possible death sentence because the military justice system's process for deciding capital cases is inconsistent. They also claim Fort Hood's commanding general was not impartial when he decided in July 2011 that Hasan would face the death penalty and had been influenced by high-ranking government officials.

Hasan, 42, paralyzed from the waist down after being shot by police the day of the rampage, sat in a wheelchair next to his attorneys with a thick black beard during the first of three scheduled days of pretrial proceedings.

The American-born Muslim also is charged with 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. He faces execution or life in military prison without parole if convicted. A trial date has not been set.

Witnesses have said that a gunman wearing an Army combat uniform opened fire after shouting "Allahu Akbar!" - or "God is great!" in Arabic - inside a crowded medical building on Nov. 5, 2009, where deploying and returning soldiers received vaccines and other tests. Hasan was also about to deploy to Afghanistan.

Hasan's trial was to start in August but was put on hold when he appealed the former judge's order saying his beard would be forcibly shaved before the court-martial unless he shaved it. Although facial hair violates Army rules, Hasan first showed up in court in June with a beard, later saying it was required by his Muslim faith....

He murdered 13 people because of his Muslim faith. It should not be given any special accommodation.

West Bengal authorities, anticipating Muslim protests, did not want him to come. Instead of standing up for the freedom of speech against violent intimidation, they become the willing enforcers of Sharia restrictions on criticism of Islam.

"Salman Rushdie's Kolkata visit cancelled over security concerns," from India Today, January 31 (thanks to Lookmann):

In a most unusual incident, controversial author Salman Rushdie, who was scheduled to visit Kolkata on Wednesday to promote Deepa Mehta's film based on his book 'Midnight's Children', was not allowed to come to Kolkata owing to security reasons.

The author of 'Satanic Verses' was supposed to come to Kolkata for promoting the film along with director Deepa Mehta and main cast Rahul Bose. But the visit had to be cancelled at the eleventh hour.

Deepa Mehta also cancelled her visit to Kolkata where she was scheduled to participate in an interactive session on her film at the second edition of Kolkata Literary Meet (KLM) being held at the Kolkata Book Fair. The film based on Rushdie's novel 'Midnight's Children' will hit the cinema halls on Friday.

Sources said the West Bengal government did not want the controversial author in the city anticipating there might be protests by some religious groups. A few years ago there were protests against the visit of Bengali writer Tasleema Nasreen that led to serious law and order problem in Kolkata.

Asked whether the state government stopped Rushdie from coming to Kolkata, home secretary Basudeb Banerjee told MAIL TODAY: "Initially we did not have any information about his arrival. I got the information at around 10 pm last night (Tuesday) from the police. They said Rushdie was not coming to Kolkata as they came to know from their counterparts in Mumbai that his visit was cancelled."

Banerjee said somebody like him (Rushdie) coming to Kolkata obviously had some serious implications. "Special security arrangements were needed for him. But as per I know there were no plans at all,"

Kolkata police joint commissioner (headquarters) Javed Shamim said that they did not have any prior information of Rushdie's visit to Kolkata. "I have nothing to say about Rushdi's visit. This much I can tell you. Please don't ask me anything more," Shamim told MAIL TODAY.

Organisers of the literary fest at the Kolkata Book Fair, however, said the police had asked them for a written guarantee that the author would not attend the meet. Sources also said the police had told the organisers if Rushdie came to the city he would be sent back immediately in the next flight.

Sources in Publishers and Book Sellers' Guild, the body responsible for organising the Book Fair, also said that phone calls from senior city police officers and "a senior minister" started coming from Tuesday afternoon directing them to cancel Rushdie's programme at the fair.

Last year Rushdie had withdrawn his name from the Jaipur Literature Festival after reports of a death threat. He was also forced to abandon plans to address the gathering by a video link after protesters threatened to march at the venue.

Meanwhile, anticipating Rushdie's arrival in the city around a hundred people from various Muslim groups had gathered at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) airport in the morning to protest against his visit. After the airport police told them the author was not coming to Kolkata from Mumbai, they gradually dispersed.

This politically correct self-censorship will only lead to more honor killings, because it perpetuates the denial and obfuscation about the Islamic justifications for such murders.

Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

The Palestinian Authority gives pardons or suspended sentences for honor murders. Iraqi women have asked for tougher sentences for Islamic honor murderers, who get off lightly now. Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but "the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour 'provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.'" And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that "Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values."

In light of all this, until authorities get the courage to tell the truth about honor killing, there will be many more such murders.

"Behzti playwright accuses BBC of 'extraordinary' censorship of 'honour killings' episode," by Adam Sherwin for The Independent, January 29:

A leading playwright has accused the BBC of an “extraordinary” act of censorship after the corporation told her to cut key lines from a drama about “honour killings” which will be broadcast by Radio 4 this week.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose controversial play Behzti was pulled from a Birmingham theatre in 2004 following protests from the Sikh community, wrote an episode for Radio 4’s DCI Stone series, which will be broadcast in the Afternoon Drama slot.

Bhatti’s episode, called Heart Of Darkness and due to air on Friday, tells the story of an investigation into the killing of a 16 year-old Asian girl, whose dumped body is found after being stabbed to death.

"Asian" is the Sharia-compliant British media's euphemism for "Muslim."

When it emerges that the girl was a victim of an “honour killing”, DCI Stone is told by his bosses is to treat the case “sensitively” because of her Muslim heritage.

“A week before recording I got an email from the producer saying the BBC compliance department had asked them to take lines out,” Bhatti told the Index On Censorship conference on artistic freedom of expression in the UK, held at the South Bank.

“At the end, a character says: ‘There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right.’ The compliance department came back and said ‘we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings.’

“It’s an extraordinary and awful situation. They said the lines were offensive but they absolutely were not. We live in a fear-ridden culture.

“Unbelievably, what the compliance department said was if you can find a factual example of community pressure leading to an honour killing, you can have the line. But it’s a drama, a story.

“It’s a crucial part of that story. I was very disappointed given my previous experience of censorship. If you take out the line, the whole thing changes, it’s a betrayal of the character and the truth of the unfolding story.”...

A Radio 4 spokesman said: “This is a hard-hitting drama about the realities of honour killing in Britain. A single line in the script could be taken to infer that the pressure and motivation to commit such a crime in a family comes from the wider Muslim community, potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing. Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was asked to amend this line in the normal editorial process of script development.”

Sir Nicolas Serota, director of the Tate, told the conference that there was no “easy path” to free expression in the arts. “In pushing against boundaries, artists help us to question the values of our society...art is a vital space where those values can be discussed,” he said.

Sir Nicolas defended the Tate’s decision to withdraw from display God is Great, 1991, a work by John Latham featuring copies of the Bible, a Koran and a Talmud, which have been physically manipulated, in 2005.

The Tate was advised by Muslim community leaders showing the work, shortly after the July 7 bombings, could provoke protests....

Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre, warned that arts institutions could become victims of “self-censorship”, as the threat of funding cuts makes bodies avoid presenting works which might provoke a public backlash....

This warning is way too late. We are already there.

Over at PJMedia I discuss John Kerry's howlingly false statements about Pakistan helping us find Osama bin Laden:

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported last Thursday, no doubt with some relief, that during his confirmation hearing for his nomination as secretary of State, Senator John Kerry declared that he opposed cutting American aid to Pakistan, which he saw as a “‘dramatic, draconian and sledge-hammer’ measure. Senator Kerry also said that Pakistan’s role in leading the United States to Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad had not been sufficiently appreciated.”

Who is Kerry kidding? The Pakistani government didn’t help the U.S. find bin Laden. In fact, they were enraged that they had not been filled in on the details of the hunt, which was a wise decision in light of the jihadist ties of the ISI, the Pakistani spy service.

How enraged were they? Let’s recall how events unfolded in May 2011, just after bin Laden was killed. The day his killing became known, May 2, 2011, 800 Pakistanis held a rally in Quetta, proclaiming:

Bin Laden was the hero of the Muslim world and after his martyrdom he has won the title of great mujahed.

But that was only 800 people. The vast majority of Pakistanis rejected the views of this tiny minority of extremists, right? Wrong. By just over a week after bin Laden’s death, 100,000 Osama bin Laden posters had been sold in Pakistan. Two weeks after his death, 4,000 bin Laden supporters rallied in Lahore to protest the killing of bin Laden, chanting “America is the worst enemy of humanity!” A nationwide poll conducted at that time found 51 percent of Pakistanis saying that they felt grief over bin Laden’s death.

Of course, none of this means that the Pakistani government didn’t help the U.S. find bin Laden, even if its cooperation was unpopular with its own people. However, that wasn’t the case, either. The CIA confirmed just after the raid that Pakistani officials had not been informed about it for fear that they would “jeopardize the mission.” This fear appeared to be amply justified when Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir gave the U.S. a warning: “There shall not be any doubt that any repetition of such an act [i.e., the bin Laden raid] will have disastrous consequences.”

A Pakistani opposition leader, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, lamented: “This is the biggest tragedy in the history of Pakistan after the fall of East Pakistan in 1971.” He added: “Heads should roll.” There were prayers for bin Laden in Pakistan’s National Assembly. The nation’s parliament condemned the raid and even threatened the U.S. with sanctions.

Does John Kerry really not know any of this, or does he just hope that we don’t? His appointment represents a continuation of policies that have failed again and again, and seem to be immune to evaluation in light of how they have played out on the world stage. There is at this point no reason whatsoever for the U.S. to continue to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Pakistan.....

There is more.

And Morsi repeats Qur'anic curses of Jews. The main obstacle to these Islamic supremacists declaring jihad against Israel is that they would lose American aid; once Obama works around that, the jihad will begin.

"Aide to Egyptian President Morsi claims Holocaust a US hoax," by Paul Alster for FoxNews.com, January 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

HAIFA, Israel – A key figure in Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's government called the Holocaust a hoax cooked up by U.S. intelligence operatives and claimed the 6 million Jews who were killed by Nazis simply moved to the U.S.

The outrageous claims, by Fathi Shihab-Eddim, a senior figure close to President Morsi who is now responsible for appointing the editors of all state-run Egyptian newspapers, came as the world marked Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, and also as the U.S. continues to assess its relationship with the increasingly radical Arab state.

“The myth of the Holocaust is an industry that America invented,” Shihab-Eddim said, leaving no room for doubt that the Egyptian government -- like Iran's -- has at the very least significant elements that deny one of history's best documented genocides.

“U.S. intelligence agencies in cooperation with their counterparts in allied nations during World War II created it [the Holocaust] to destroy the image of their opponents in Germany, and to justify war and massive destruction against military and civilian facilities of the Axis powers, and especially to hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the atomic bomb,” Shihab-Eddim said....

One got life in prison, the other got forty years -- so clearly these were very serious offenses. Yet Muslim organizations in the U.S. still have no program anywhere to prevent Muslims in this country from coming to believe that jihad has something to do with waging war against non-Muslims, even though they denounce as a "racist" and an "Islamophobe" anyone who dares to suggest that some Muslims here might believe such a thing. Some might object that Hamas-linked CAIR's #MyJihad campaign is just that, but it is actually no such thing: the flat assertion that someone's jihad is building a snowman with the kids doesn't negate or cancel or impinge in any way upon the possibility that someone else's jihad is murdering Infidels.

"Two Iraqis living in US sentenced in terrorism case," from AFP, January 30 (thanks to Lookmann):

AFP - A US judge sentenced two Iraqi men living in Kentucky to federal prison for their role in a plot to ship weapons to Iraqi insurgents and raise money for the Al-Qaeda terror network.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, was sentenced to life in federal prison while his accomplice Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, was sentenced to 40 years in prison followed by supervised release, the US Justice Department said.

Both had pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges, but were not charged with plotting attacks within the United States.

The two Iraqis who were living in Bowling Green, in the southern state of Kentucky, "participated in terrorist activities overseas and attempted to continue providing material support to terrorists while they lived here in the United States," said Lisa Monaco, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

"With today's sentences, both men are being held accountable," Monaco said.

Authorities arrested Hammadi and Alwan in an FBI sting involving an undercover agent posing as part of a group sending money and weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

Alwan, whose fingerprints were found on an unexploded roadside bomb found in Iraq, pleaded guilty in December 2011 to all counts of a 23-count federal indictment that included conspiracy to kill US nationals abroad and export Stinger shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

In August 2012 Hammadi pleaded guilty to a 12-count indictment that included similar charges.

Alwan however received a reduced sentence because he cooperated with authorities, the Justice Department said.

An undercover FBI agent posing as an Al-Qaeda agent met with Alwan and recorded their meetings starting in August 2010.

"From September 2010 through May 2011, Alwan participated in ten separate operations to send weapons and money that he believed were destined for terrorists in Iraq," the Justice Department said.

In January 2011 Alwan recruited Hammadi, and until May 2011 the two helped ship money and weapons -- including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns, and Stinger missiles -- that they believed were destined "for terrorists in Iraq."...

While Obama sends money and weapons to Islamic supremacist authoritarians, Israel does the work of defending the free world. "Israel hits target in Syria border area: sources," from Reuters, January 30 (thanks to Charles):

(Reuters) - Israeli forces have attacked a target on the Syrian-Lebanese border overnight, a Western diplomat and three regional security sources said on Wednesday, at a time of growing concern in the Jewish state over the fate of Syrian chemical and conventional weapons.

The sources, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, had no further information about what might have been hit or where precisely the attack happened.

The Lebanese army reported a heavy presence of Israeli jets over its territory throughout the night.

"There was definitely a hit in the border area," one security source said. A Western diplomat in the region who asked about the strike said "something has happened", without elaborating....

Over at Atlas Shrugs I explain yet again how Islamic supremacists refuse to debate or defend the claims they insist upon with such arrogance:

TNN reported Monday that “a group of scholars who are also members of the powerful All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has invited controversial author Salman Rushdie to debate on Islam and the Prophet’s life. This is a significant change of position from the general Muslim view which has opposed Rushdie’s visit to India ever since his controversial novel The Satanic Verses created a storm in the 1980s.”

Mumbai is an ironic place for them to make a public stand claiming that Islam is a Religion of Peace, but Islamic supremacists never suffer from any shortages of chutzpah. Anyway, they don’t really want to debate Rushdie so much as interrogate him: “...let us invite Rushdie to this city and answer our questions. If he has the guts he should explain to us why he wrote such a blasphemous book.”

Typical. Islamic supremacists and their Leftists allies almost never agree to a free, open, even-handed debate with someone who genuinely opposes their agenda. It’s as if they’re aware of how flimsy their arguments are, and how easily they could be shown up. The list of Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. who have rejected my invitation to debate has grown very long, and gets longer almost daily. They uniformly say -- another indication of how they all work from the same talking points fed to them from higher-ups -- that I am too stupid to bother debating, as if the falsity of what I say is self-evident; or that I am too evil to debate, as they don’t want the taint of debating a greasy Islamophobe; or that I am too insignificant to debate, as their stature is so much greater than mine that they don’t want to give me and my views credibility by engaging us in discussion.

These are transparent enough as dodges, but I’ll explain why they're dodges anyway, in case there is any doubt. I may be very stupid indeed, but since I have two bestselling books, many other popular ones, and a website that gets 25,000 to 30,000 unique visitors a day, demonstrating that stupidity in live action would do a world of good for the purveyors of the “Islamophobia” myth. The same goes for my alleged evil: I may indeed be as terrible a fellow as they say, but that would seem to be all the more reason why it would be imperative for them to try to limit my influence. And they certainly do that, with no fewer than three hate websites now devoted almost completely to character assassination of me and supposed “refutations” of my work -- but none of these have any real bite unless they can stand up to rebuttal, and meet and best me in head-on discussion; yet they all clearly fear to do that. Finally, their claim that they’d be giving me credibility by debating me is clearly contrary to logic: if they defeated me, they’d be taking away any credibility I might have -- so evidently it is their awareness that they can’t actually defeat me that keeps them from taking up the challenge.

And so we have the spectacle of the stupid, evil, credibility-bereft “Islamophobe” writing reasoned refutations of the deceitful and misleading writings of the likes of Haroon Moghul and Harris Zafar, and in response, their ignoring these refutations entirely or slinging ad hominem smears. They have no interest in genuine, respectful, reasoned dialogue.

The problem with their approach is that anyone who still is interested in reasoned dialogue in our increasingly darkened age can see who is offering evidence and is willing to defend his views, and who is simply shying ad hominem bricks and then hiding behind contemptuous claims to an intellectual superiority that has been neither earned nor demonstrated, but only assumed.

I can understand why men like Zafar and Moghul and all the rest of them fear debating me: they know that what I say is true. And I know that they can’t say that, even if they know it in their heart of hearts. So they come up with excuses and excuses, just as the lion tamer, whip ripped out of hand, grabs the nearest chair to keep the lion at bay. But the lion is the truth, and despite their best efforts, it keeps coming closer, closer, closer.

Jews and the Crusades
by Ibn Warraq
Part 4
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3

PART TWO: THE MASSACRES OF 1096.
2.1. The Sources.

Our knowledge of the events of 1096 is derived from both Christian and Hebrew sources. However the Christian material on the persecution of the Jews is slight. “The only crusade chroniclers who mention the bands that devastated a number of northern European Jewish communities were Ekkehard of Aura and Albert of Aix”. [1] Ekkehard gives a brief description of the attacks of 1096, Albert gives a little more detail, and they corroborate to some extent the Jewish sources, but in all their accounts do not add up to much.

The Jewish sources, three in all, describe more fully the assaults on Jews and their responses. Robert Chazan [2], a Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University who has devoted some twenty years to this subject conveniently refers to them, in his European Jewry and the First Crusade, as L, the lengthy narrative, often attributed to Solomon bar Samson, and S, the shortest of the three, sometimes called the Mainz Anonymous. The third text, P, perhaps the least interesting, contains original elegiac poetry with the name-acrostic Eliezer bar Nathan and is ascribed to that twelfth-century Mainz rabbinic authority. However, there is considerable debate as to the reliablity of the Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade. While Robert Chazan is convinced of their reliability, Ivan Marcus [3], Professor at Yale University, heeding the advice of Salo Baron thinks far more basic work needs to be done before one can decide. Marcus writes, “Many scholars have dealt with the subjects treated here. The texts, are very problematic, and Chazan has not heeded Salo Baron's call over thirty years ago: ‘a renewed scrutiny of all the available sources might justify a new truly critical edition of these chronicles’ (A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd rev. ed., 4 [1957], 286). It is still a desideratum. Although they are relatively short - L is only twelve and a half folio pages - they are complex. Parallel passages are sometimes found in two or more of the texts, and some contain blank spaces due to omissions or erasures. Ultraviolet inspection might recover some of these, but that requires examining the manuscripts, not just the microfilms. Not only should the erasures be examined but several scholars' corrections and emendations must also be systematically evaluated. Thus, M. Brann published a detailed review of the Neubauer and Stern edition (Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 37 [1893], 285-88), in which he noted several errors of transcription and unnecessary emendations. Dozens of additional corrections are in Nathan Porges's lengthy articles (Revue des études juives 25 [1892], 181-201; 26 [1893], 183-97). The corrections in these studies have been ignored here. Another scholar, also not mentioned, studied the way the three texts are related. Isaiah Sonne (Revue des études juives 96 [1933], 123-24) concluded that the editor of L made use of P and S. He observed that when the blocks of text common to L and P refer to Christianity, the term tsahan ("stench") is used; when blocks common to L and S appear, the term tinnuf ("filth") is found, and when blocks parallel to all three texts occur, both terms appear. Chazan's contrary view that P is derived from L and that S and L are older does not account for Sonne's evidence, which is not discussed. And since P is just as important as L and S, a translation of it should have been included in a book basing itself on these three short texts…. Before a reasonably accurate translation can be made, we first need a new critical edition of the Hebrew texts that is based on a thorough consideration of the manuscripts themselves, all previous scholarly literature on them, and a careful appreciation for the characteristic features of Ashkenazic Hebrew. The Latin sources should also be translated and appended.”

There are further problems that are not addressed by Chazan. These so-called chronicles are not documentary records that can be taken at face value, rather “[t]hey are highly edited, rhetorically colored, and liturgically motivated literary reworkings of circular letters and oral reports, written for definite purposes. The narrators were concerned with praising and exonerating local pious Jew who felt compelled to kill their own families and then commit suicide. To make their case, they insisted on using a Temple typology: Jews are pictured as pure sacrifices who may not be touched by polluting, impure Christians. The martyrs acted justifiably as both Temple priests and as holy sacrifices. The narrators quantified only the martyrs and ignored or downplayed the Jews who did convert, as Baron noted. That these sources are literary texts, even though of a special type, is also clear from their obvious differences of style. In L, lengthy prayers frame the accounts of attacks on several towns, their Jews' defensive political reactions, and subsequent acts of martyrdom. In P, very brief descriptions of a limited number of episodes introduce liturgical poems. And in S, an attention to the Christian townsmen and other human factors also serves to interpret the events portrayed.” [4]

[1] Robert Chazan. European Jewry and the First Crusade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, p. 39.
[2] Ibid., pp. 38-50.
[3] Ivan G. Marcus. Review of European Jewry and the First Crusade by Robert Chazan in Speculum, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 1989), pp. 685-688.
[4] Ivan Marcus op. cit., p. 686.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

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

Where did Mufti Abdel Akhar Hammad get the idea that this verse should be taken at face value? Doesn't he know Arabic? Doesn't he know not to take this verse out of context? Doesn't he know that such passages only applied to Muhammad's time? How did a greasy Islamophobe and misunderstander of Islam and jihad get to be the Mufti of Jama'a al-Islamiya?

"Black Bloc must die, say Jihad and Jama'a al-Islamiya," from Al-Masry Al-Youm, January 29:

The Islamist party of the Jihad Organization and Jama'a al-Islamiya has said the ways of dealing with banditry specified in the Quran must be applied to Black Bloc members, which means they must be killed.

“God orders us to kill, crucify or cut off the hands and feet of those who spread mischief on earth,” said Jama'a al-Islamiya Mufti Abdel Akhar Hammad, citing a verse from the Quran. “The president must give that order.”

Mohamed Samra of the Jihad Organization said that the Black Bloc group is financed from abroad and must be killed, and that the National Salvation Front members must be arrested and charged with incitement to riot.

Last week, Cairo witnessed the first appearance groups describing themselves as the Black Bloc. Decked in black and wearing masks, they clashed with police forces at Qasr al-Aini Street on Thursday. They said they would fight with the police if it targeted protesters. Previously unknown, the Black Bloc's goals remain unclear and its members generally avoid media contact.

Officials from the Muslim Brotherhood and state-run media have accused the group of violence, including attempting to set the presidential palace on fire, attacking the Brotherhood's headquarters, looting government institutions, blocking the railways and exchanging fire with security forces.

However, it is still unclear to what extent the Black Bloc has played a role in any of the violent incidents reported over the past few days, or if they are actually armed. The group is a largely unknown one whose motives remain unclear, and its members generally refuse to speak to the media.

Earlier on Tuesday, Prosecutor General Talaat Abdallah ordered police and deputized members of the Armed Forces to arrest all suspected members of the Black Bloc.

State-run news agency MENA reported that Hassan Yassin, the head of the Public Prosecution's technical office and the prosecution's spokesperson, is claiming that the prosecution has proof that the Black Bloc is carrying out terrorist activities.

No further information was available as to the nature of this evidence or the alleged terrorist activities.

"War is deceit," said Muhammad. But underneath it all, Morsi seems to be a fanatically Jew-hating Islamic supremacist. "Radical Past: Former Associate Calls Morsi a 'Master of Disguise,'" by Dieter Bednarz and Volkhard Windfuhr in Spiegel, January 28 (thanks to Nicolas):

Is Mohammed Morsi a peacebroker or a virulent anti-Semite? A former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who has known Morsi for 13 years, believes that behind the Egyptian president's veneer of goodwill towards Israel lies a deep-seated hatred.

Mohammed Morsi can be very sympathetic, even toward Jews, as evidenced by an extremely friendly letter the Egyptian president sent to Israel last October. The president had personally written the letter of accreditation, for his new ambassador in Tel Aviv, to his counterpart Shimon Peres, whom he addressed as a "Dear Friend." In the letter, Morsi clearly invoked the "good relations" that "fortunately exist between our countries," and pledged to "preserve and strengthen" them.

The government in Jerusalem had not expected such warm words from a president who had emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood. Unsure whether they were perhaps the victims of a forgery, the Israelis published the letter. But Cairo confirmed that it was indeed genuine, and Jerusalem reacted with relief. The Jewish state had lost a reliable partner with the ouster of Morsi's predecessor Hosni Mubarak, and now there was hope that perhaps Morsi would not confirm all of Israel's fears.

But the Egyptian president, who is visiting Berlin this week and will meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel, a champion of Israel, appears to be a man with two faces. He is conciliatory as Egypt's leader, saying that he wants to be the "president of all Egyptians," even though only about a quarter of the country's 50 million eligible voters voted for him. And, of course, he insists that his country will fulfill all of its obligations from the Mubarak era, including both the peace treaty with Israel and a policy of close cooperation with the United States.

In mid-January, however, Western diplomats and politicians saw a very different Mohammed Morsi, a man filled with hate for the "Zionist entity," the term Islamists use for the Jewish state. An almost three-year-old video, published by the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), depicts an Islamist who is practically foaming at the mouth, as he rants about the Israelis in an interview with an Arab network. Speaking in a deep and firm voice, he calls them "bloodsuckers" and "warmongers," and says that there can be no peace with these "descendants of apes and pigs."

It was apparently more than just a regrettable moment of madness for Morsi, claims a prominent former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. After all, he says, the current president served as general inspector of the Muslim Brotherhood for years, which put him in charge of the group's online service. That service includes quotes about Israelis and Jews that testify to the same hatred as the lapses in the video.

Despite outrage internationally and at the White House over the video, Morsi was unperturbed by the furor over his remarks. In the end, his spokesman said that Morsi's words had been taken out of context, but offered no further explanation or apology. When SPIEGEL reporters appeared at the presidential palace in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis last week after having received approval for an interview with Morsi, they were turned away.

All a Pretense

To comprehend the Egyptian president and grasp how the Muslim Brotherhood shapes its members, it helps to speak with men who knew Morsi during his time with the Islamist organization -- and who also have the courage to speak openly about the group. Abdel-Jalil el-Sharnoubi, 38, talks about how dangerous this can be. Last October, after he had spoken about quitting the Brotherhood to Egyptian newspapers and in TV appearances, masked men opened fire on Sharnoubi's car with submachine guns....

When they first met in 2000, both men were already successful. Sharnoubi, the son of an imam in the Nile delta, joined the Brotherhood at 13. He eventually advanced within the regimented organization to become a member of its information committee. Morsi, for his part, had made it into the Egyptian parliament. Because members of the Muslim Brotherhood were not allowed to run for political office under Mubarak, Morsi masqueraded as an "independent." The two men had had "a lot of contact with each other" to further their goal of spreading the Brotherhood's message as widely as possible, says Sharnoubi.

For information expert Sharnoubi, Morsi was "a typical man from the country, a fellah with peasant origins who quickly integrated himself into the machine." At the time, claims Sharnoubi, Morsi was "downright submissive to the Brotherhood's leadership." Morsi was apparently completely opposed to the Brotherhood becoming more open, as Sharnoubi had advocated. "He fought against any internal democratization."

It seemed "inconceivable" to Sharnoubi that Morsi's group would one day assume power in Egypt. In fact, he says, he would have "found it even less likely" that Morsi, a modest member of parliament, would become president. Even in the highest government position, Morsi cannot have shed the Brotherhood's mission like an old suit, says Sharnoubi. "A man like Morsi, with such deep convictions, can't do that. If we hear anything else from him, it'll be a pretense." He explains that Morsi owes his survival under autocrat Mubarak to this "talent for assimilation," and that he is a "master of disguise."...

The people's verdict on the "strict" version of Sharia that the Islamic supremacists had imposed. Apparently Mali is being overrun with greasy Islamophobes. "Suspected Islamists hunted down and beaten in liberated Mali towns," by Jerome Delay and Krista Larson for The Associated Press, January 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

GAO, MALI—It was payback time Tuesday in the newly liberated town of Gao in Mali, with residents hunting down and beating suspected Islamist extremists who had not fled with their brothers-in-arms as Malian and French military forces closed in and retook the town.

Malian troops bundled the men into an army truck, their hands bound behind their backs. For the better part of a year, the Al-Qaeda-linked extremists had banned music, insisted women cover themselves and began carrying out public executions and amputations in the towns of northern Mali that they controlled.

Now the Islamists' control of the cities has slipped, with the provincial capitals of Gao and Timbuktu coming back under government authority in quick succession with the arrival of French and Malian troops. They also may have lost control of a third key city, Kidal.

France, the former colonial ruler, began sending in troops, helicopters and warplanes on Jan. 11 to turn the tide after the armed Islamists began encroaching on the south, toward the capital. French and Malian troops seized Gao during the weekend, welcomed by joyous crowds. They took Timbuktu on Monday. The Islamists gave up both cities and retreated into the desert.

But not all of them left.

Members of a youth militia, the Gao Patrolmen, went house-to-house hunting down suspected Islamic extremists in Gao. Abdul Karim Samba, spokesman for the group, said men were scouring the town for remnants of the extremist Islamist group known as the Movement for Unity and Oneness of the Jihad, or MUJAO.

“They are the Islamists who have gone into their homes to hide, so we've been rounding them up to hand them to the military,” he told The Associated Press.

On Tuesday, Tuareg fighters from a secular rebel group said they also were now in charge of Kidal.

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad — Azawad is the Tuareg's name for their homeland — appears to have taken advantage of the French-led military offensive to assert themselves in Kidal. Phone lines were down there, making it difficult to independently confirm the group's claim. The loss of Kidal would mean the Islamists no longer control any of the northern provincial capitals that they had seized last April.

On its website, the NMLA said it is ready to work with French troops and fight terror organizations. However, it said it would refuse to allow Malian soldiers in Kidal and the other towns under its control in northeastern Mali, following allegations that the troops killed civilians suspected of having links to the Islamists.

Timbuktu Mayor Ousmane Halle said Tuesday he hopes to return home in the next 48 hours from the capital but that the Islamists had destroyed part of the airport's runway before leaving, making it hard for planes to land.

Halle had a message for Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of the extremist group, Ansar Dine, which imposed strict Shariah law in Timbuktu last year and forced thousands to flee in fear.

“In one of the meetings I had with Iyad Ag Ghali, he told me that the whole world knows he is the master of Timbuktu. But today it's me that is the mayor of Timbuktu, and he is on the run like an animal,” Halle told AP.

To help battle the Islamists in their desert hideouts, a U.S. military official says the Pentagon is considering setting up a drone base in northwest Africa to increase intelligence collection....

The French military operation has so far met little resistance though experts warn it will be harder to hold on to the towns than it was to recapture them from the Islamists....

And the honor murderer is planning to appeal, complaining that this sentence is excessive. Perhaps a tougher sentence for a young man who stabbed his sister 107 times to cleanse his family's honor would be "racist."

"Teen in Sweden jailed eight years for honour killing," from Agence France-Presse, January 29 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Stockholm: A Swedish court on Tuesday sentenced a 17-year-old man to eight years in prison for stabbing his sister 107 times in what judges called an honour killing.

The teen, who was 16 at the time, was convicted of killing his 19-year-old sister at her home in the southwestern town of Landskrona on April 23 last year.

He had called emergency services and said a masked attacker had killed her, but investigators said his story didn't hold up against evidence found at the scene.

"The court found the man guilty of the murder and that the motive was to restore the family's honour," the Lund district court said in a statement.

It said that "despite the man's young age," it was sentencing him "to a long prison sentence, and has set it at eight years."

The names and nationalities of the brother and sister were not disclosed, but media described the family as being of Iraqi origin.

The sister had told friends and family that she was worried her life was in danger, after she fled from Iraq, where she had been reportedly married against her will to an older man whom she claimed beat and raped her.

Once in Sweden, she contacted social services in Landskrona, but she said they did not take her family's threats against her seriously, Swedish media reported.

The court meanwhile refused to pay damages to the victim's mother and a half-sister born to the same father, arguing the relatives did not have a close relationship with the deceased.

The lawyer for the convicted teen called the sentence "extremely harsh" and said he planned to appeal.

"War is deceit," said Muhammad. And when he was annoyed by Ka‘b bin Al-Ashraf's verses mocking him, he allowed one of his followers to deceive Ka‘b in order to get close enough to kill him. Muhammad asked: “Who is willing to kill Ka‘b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?" One of the Muslims, Muhammad bin Maslama answered, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” When Muhammad said that he would, Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab).” Muhammad responded: “You may say it.” Muhammad bin Maslama duly lied to Ka‘b, luring him into his trap, and murdered him. (Bukhari 5.59.369)

"Suicide blast kills two near Somali president's palace," by Abdi Sheikh for Reuters, January 29 (thanks to Kenneth):

(Reuters) - An Islamist militant persuaded Somali government officials he had defected, then walked up to the president's palace compound on Tuesday and blew himself up near the gates, killing at least two soldiers, witnesses and rebels said.

Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels said the early morning suicide attack was the start of a new campaign against the country's Western-backed government and its leaders.

Palace officials said Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was abroad at the time and Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid, whose house was near the site of the explosion, was not injured.

The attack was a reminder of the threat still posed by al Shabaab, even after African peacekeepers pushed it out of the capital last year and forced it to retreat to the south....

Government officials said the attacker, Ali Abdi Hared, told them he had defected from the rebels and went on to join the country's security services on January 14.

Hared frequently visited the palace guards and was given an official pass to the palace, officials and guards at the scene said.

The government had been "rehabilitating and investigating" Hared, Somalia's information minister, Abdullahi Ilmooge, told Reuters. "The bomber was a national security soldier. The bomber had defected from al Shabaab," he added.

"A RENEWED CAMPAIGN"

When Hared walked up on Tuesday morning, the guards said they carried out a routine check and found he was wearing an explosive jacket.

The guards tried to prevent him from detonating his device, but it went off. "The man blew up himself near a wall between the Ethiopian embassy and the Somali PM's residence," Ahmed Ali, a Somali soldier at the presidential palace told Reuters.

"One guard died there and then. Another died of his wounds. They were all the guards of the prime minister," he added.

Al Shabaab - which wants to impose its strict version of Islamic law, or Sharia - said it killed seven soldiers in the attack and warned there would be more to come.

As I have pointed out many times, there is no non-strict version of Sharia. There is only implementation or non-implementation of its various provisions.

"The operation is part of a renewed campaign of attacks against Western puppets in Somalia, reminding them that the Mujahideen will get into them, whatever security precautions they take," the movement said in a statement....

Will Obama rush to defend the principle of the freedom of speech, and explain its importance to the Egyptian authorities? Not a chance. Obama and Hillary Clinton immediately moved against the freedom of speech when the riots that were putatively over this film first broke out. Clinton said: "We're going to have that person arrested and prosecuted." And indeed, as was pointed out last week during her Benghazi testimony, the only person in prison now is the Muhammad filmmaker, not anyone involved in the Benghazi jihad murders.

"Egypt: death penalties for makers of anti-Islam film upheld," from ANSAmed, January 29 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO - After the green light given by the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Cairo's Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the death sentences of seven Egyptian citizens involved in the film 'Innocence of Muslims', whose trailer caused deadly unrest throughout the Arab world in September. A co-defendant, US Pastor Terry Jones, was sentenced to five years in prison.

The seven, all Coptic Christians who reside in the US, were found guilty of insulting Islam and threatening national unity.

Among them is Nikolas Bassili, who directed the film that sparked the fatal protests. In Cairo, protesters scaled the walls of the US embassy and ripped the Stars and Stripes off the flagpole at the center of the compound. (ANSAmed).

The implications of the cross being carved onto Marissa Kucuk's corpse are not explored (no surprise there) in this Economist story: the Economist has never shown any willingness to discuss the jihad against non-Muslims. "Horrific attacks against Armenians," from the Economist, January 29 (thanks to Lookmann):

MARISSA Kucuk was a little old Armenian lady who lived on her own in Samatya..., a picturesque neighbourhood of Istanbul where Christians and Muslims used to rub along peacefully. On December 28th Ms Kucuk, 85, was found dead in her apartment. She had been stabbed, repeatedly. Relatives said a crucifix was carved onto her naked corpse.

Last week, a masked assailant attacked another elderly Armenian as she was entering her apartment. He punched her in the head. When she fell to the ground he began kicking her. “My mother’s mouth was filled with blood…the neighbours came to the rescue when she screamed for help and the man fled,” Maryam Yelegen, told AGOS, a Turkish Armenian weekly.

The attack marks the fifth in the past two months against elderly Armenian women (one has lost an eye). All of the attacks took place in Samatya, which is home to some 8,000 Armenians and the seat of the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate. Opinion remains divided as to whether these are organised hate crimes targeting non-Muslims or just random theft. Istanbul’s governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, insists that it was the latter. “The incident was inspired by robbery, there were no racial motives. Be sure we will find the perpetrators. Good night,” he tweeted to some 100,000 followers.

Some of the victims were, indeed, robbed. The Turkish police are said to be concentrating their investigation on a man in his thirties as a potential suspect. Turkey’s Human Rights Association remains unswayed. “The attacks were carried out with racist motives,” it concluded in a report that was published last week.

Either way, the attacks have dredged up memories of the mass slaughter of about a million Ottoman Armenians in 1915. “The attacks highlight the unbearable heaviness of being Armenian in Turkey,” says Khatchig Mouradian an Armenian activist and academic who lost ancestors in the killings.

Academic opinion worldwide tilts towards the view that these constituted genocide. Turkey refutes this saying the majority died of illness and hunger during forced deportations to the Syrian desert. Those who dared to challenge the official line (among them Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s sole Nobel laureate for literature) have faced prosecution and death threats. But none as much as Hrant Dink, the outspoken Armenian journalist who founded AGOS as a platform for unfettered debate about 1915. He was murdered in 2007 by an ultra-nationalist youth outside his office in the heart of Istanbul. Mr Dink’s family insists that the killer was acting under orders from rogue ultra-nationalist elements within the security forces, who, in turn, were probably linked to a Byzantine plot known as “Kafes” or Cage.

Scores of suspects, including three admirals tied to Kafes are being tried on charges of conspiring to murder Christians in Turkey. Their alleged aim was to intimidate Christians into leaving for good, place the blame on Turkey’s Islam-tinged Justice and Development (AK) Party and thus lay the ground for the army to intervene. The 2007 murders of three Christian missionaries in the eastern province of Malatya (their throats were slit) are believed to be part of Kafes. Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a lawyer for the victims, sees parallels between the Kafes plot and “the ultra-nationalist mentality informing 1915” which tends to view “citizens of Armenian descent as disloyal and untrustworthy.”

Fresh evidence emerged last week suggesting that local gendarmerie officials kept thousands of pages worth of files on missionaries and other Christians in Malatya. But the defence argues that the evidence was “sexed up” by prosecutors as in the Sledgehammer case, another alleged coup plot. Independent forensic experts have supported these claims.

In any case Mr Cengiz says had the Kafes suspects not been brought to trial attacks against Christians would have continued. Many credit AK for easing pressure on non-Muslims. A small but vocal group of Turkish historians now openly talk about genocide. Bookstores have entire shelves devoted to the topic. Tens of thousands of illegal migrants from the neighbouring Republic of Armenia with which Turkey has no official ties work in Istanbul, as the authorities look the other way. “Reconciliation” projects between Turks and Armenians have become so commonplace that hawks on both sides no longer blink.

Yet the message from the government is somewhat mixed. Mehmet Nihat Omeroglu, the controversial judge who upheld a conviction of Mr Dink for “insulting Turkishness”, was recently sworn in by the parliament as the head of the newly created ombudsman institution. The case was widely publicised and helped to whip up nationalist fervour against Mr Dink. Mr Omeroğlu apparently has no regrets. “We made our decision on this case on the basis of our conscience,” the ombudsman told Radikal, a liberal daily.

Last summer, a Pakistani Muslim cleric said that polio vaccinations were un-Islamic. More recently, the Taliban was murdering people who were administering the polio vaccine in Pakistan. And the quest for Islamic purity continues.

"Policeman killed in attack on polio vaccination team in Swabi," from Dawn, January 29:

SWABI: Unknown gunmen attacked a polio immunisation team in Gullu Dheri area of Swabi district on Monday killing a policeman who was escorting the team.

The two assailants, who were riding a motorcycle, fled from the area after the attack.

SHO of Swabi police station told Dawn.com that the two lady health workers, comprising the anti-polio team, remained unhurt and were sent back to their unit, adding that the anti-polio campaign continued in other parts of the province.

The body of the deceased policeman was shifted to the District headquarters Hospital Swabi.

Dr Riaz, incharge of the polio campaign said that 538 teams, comprising of 754 lady health workers, were operating for the eradication of the polio virus and that each team was escorted by a policeman.

He further said that a meeting would be held with the DCO and DPO to discuss the future of the three-day immunisation campaign which was scheduled from Jan 28 till Jan 30.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attack till the filing of this report.

Nine polio workers were killed in a string of attacks targeting the immunisation workers across the country in Dec 2012.

Don’t miss this episode of the internet's premier gabfest, the Glazov Gang: it features Mike Finch, the Chief Operating Officer at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Dwight Schultz, a Hollywood actor who played Murdock on NBC’s The-A-Team. They discuss how Hillary became the first Obama Administration official to admit that jihad exists.

The discussion, which occurred in Part I above, focuses on how the Secretary of State contradicted four years of the administration’s jihad denial in her recent Benghazi testimony. And yet there has not been one word from the media about Hillary letting the jihadist cat out of the bag. Read my take on this development here. In Part II, the Gang unravels why Leftists are waging war on the heroic truth-teller, Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Jews and the Crusades
by Ibn Warraq
Part 3
Part 1 / Part 2

Before 1096.

Since Sir Steven argues that Islamic intolerance began after the Crusasdes, here are examples of the persecution of Jews in Islamic lands before 1096: the massacre of more than 6000 Jews in Fez (Morocco) in 1033; of the hundreds of Jews killed between 1010 and 1013 near Cordoba, and other parts of Muslim Spain; of the massacre of the entire Jewish community of roughly 4000 in Granada during the Muslim riots of 1066. Referring to the latter massacre, Robert Wistrich writes: “This was a disaster, as serious as that which overtook the Rhineland Jews thirty years later during the First Crusade, yet it has rarely received much scholarly attention.” Wistrich continues: “In Kairouan [Tunisia] the Jews were persecuted and forced to leave in 1016, returning later only to be expelled again.” [1]

What of the putative “culture of conviviencia,” that is, the Golden Age of Tolerance in Spain before, it is claimed, it was destroyed by the intolerance of the Almohads. Unfortunately, “The Golden Age” also turns out to be a myth, invented, ironically, by the Jews themselves. The myth may well have originated as early as the twelfth century, when Abraham Ibn Daud in his Sefer ha-Qabbalah contrasted an idealised period of tolerance of the salons of Toledo in contrast to the contemporary barbarism of the Berber dynasty. But the myth took a firm grip on the imagination of the Jews in the nineteenth century thanks to the bibliographer Moritz Steinschneider and historian Heinrich Graetz, and perhaps the influence of Benjamin Disraeli's novel Coningsby, published in 1844. Here is a passage from the latter novel giving a romantic picture of Muslim Spain, “...that fair and unrivaled civilization in which the children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves. During these halcyon centuries, it is difficult to distinguish the followers of Moses from the votary of Mohammed. Both alike built palaces, gardens and fountains; filled equally the highest offices of state, competed in an extensive and enlightened commerce, rivaled each other in renowned universities.” [2] Against a background of a rise in the pseudo-scientific racism of the nineteenth century, Jane Gerber has observed that Jewish historians looked to Islam “...for support, seeking real or imagined allies and models of tolerance in the East. The cult of a powerful, dazzling and brilliant Andalusia in the midst of an ignorant and intolerant Europe formed an important component in these contemporary intellectual currents.” [3] But Gerber concludes her sober assessment of the Golden Age Myth with these reflections, “The aristocratic bearing of a select class of courtiers and poets, however, should not blind us to the reality that this tightly knit circle of leaders and aspirants to power was neither the whole of Spanish Jewish history nor of Spanish Jewish society. Their gilded moments of the tenth and eleventh century are but a brief chapter in a longer saga. No doubt, Ibn Daud's polemic provided consolation and inspiration to a crisis-ridden twelfth century elite, just as the golden age imagery could comfort dejected exiles after 1492. It suited the needs of nineteenth century advocates of Jewish emancipation in Europe or the twentieth century contestants in the ongoing debate over Palestine....The history of the Jews in Muslim lands, especially Muslim Spain, needs to be studied on its own terms, without myth or countermyth.” [4]

Some scholars, such as the great historian Shlomo Dov Goitein (d. 1985), taking into account the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza, revised their ideas about the situation of Jews in Islamic lands. [5] Another example of a scholar who changed his mind was Léon Poliakov, author of the monumental work The History of Antisemitism, which appeared in four volumes in French between 1955 and 1978. In Volume Two [6], Poliakov paints, on the whole, a very favorable picture of the treatment of the Jews under Islam. He finds Muhammad, a man of genius, “simple, humane, and wise” [23] and Islam, “a religion of tolerance above all.”[28]. Astonishingly, Poliakov devotes a meagre two lines to the persecution of the Jews. Two lines in which he downplays all the acts of intolerance such as the massacre of Banu Qurayza, or the expulsion of the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir, while the political assassinations or torture of Jewish leaders and writers are not mentioned at all! Poliakov goes out of his way to contrast what he believes is the essentially benign attitude of the Muslims to the intolerance of the Christians who were, according to him, far more “inclined to plunge…into bloodbaths” [28]. He really seems to have convinced himself that the Jews and Christians lived, on the whole, “peacefully and prosperously in all parts of the Islamic Empire until our time” [37]. However, when he was in his eighties, he came into contact with the work of Bat Ye’or on the dhimmis, or the plight, persecution and periodic massacres of non-Muslims under Islam, and changed his mind completely. [7] Just a few weeks before his death in 1997, Poliakov agreed to write a preface [8] to the French edition of my book, Why I am Not a Muslim, [Pourquoi je ne suis pas musulman]. Unfortunately, before he had finished his preface, Poliakov tripped on the stairs when coming down from his library, banged his head severely, and later died in hospital at the age of 87.

[1] Robert Wistrich. Antisemitism -- The Longest Hatred. Schocken Books, New York, 1991, p. 196.
[2] Benjamin Disraeli. Coningsby, Book IV, Ch. X, quoted in Bernard Lewis, Islam in History, New York, 1973, p. 317 n.15.
[3] Jane Gerber. Towards an Understanding of the Term: 'The Golden Age' as an Historical Reality in ed. Aviva Doron, The Heritage of the Jews of Spain, Tel Aviv: Levinsky College of Education Publishing House, 1994, p.16.
[4] Ibid., pp. 21-22.
[5] Shlomo Dov Goitein, “Evidence on the Muslim Poll Tax from Non-Muslim Sources: A Geniza Study,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) 6 (1963): 278-95, repinted in Andrew Bostom , The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2008, pp. 481-488.
[6] Léon Poliakov, The History of Antisemitism. Vol.II From Mohammed to the Marranos, Trans. by Natalie Gerardi [Original French Edn., Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1961] Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 19-81.
[7] Personal communication from Bat Ye’or.
[8] Personal communication from Léon Poliakov.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

These jihadists are playing the Gitmo kuffar judge like a cheap fiddle, just as their fellow jihad mass murderer, Nidal Malik Hasan, is manipulating his own courtroom kuffar. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has already won permission to wear a U.S. Military camouflage vest and to get court dismissed early so he can get his sleep. KSM is wringing every accommodation he can from his witless dhimmi judge. For the judge to rule against such requests would of course be "Islamophobic."

But the jihadist is still not satisfied, of course, and has now gone silent.

"Sept. 11 defendants delay hearing after pulling silent act on Gitmo judge," from the Associated Press, January 28:

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba — Two Sept. 11 defendants delayed the start of their hearing Monday at Guantanamo when they refused to respond to questions from their judge in the case.

Defense lawyers didn't say what prompted the silent protest by self-proclaimed terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and one of five co-defendants at the military tribunal on the US base in Cuba. Mohammed refused to say whether he approved the hiring of another attorney for him. Fellow defendant Walid bin Attash refused to say why he wanted a military lawyer removed from his team.

Their silence Monday delayed by about an hour the start of a four-day hearing on pretrial motions for the five Guantanamo prisoners charges in the death penalty case. The judge eventually granted the changes without statements from the men.

Good thing al-Qaeda is on the ropes, as Obama assures us. Imagine what they'd be able to accomplish if they were strong, confident, and advancing. "Algeria gas pipeline attack kills two guards," by Alex Spillius in the Telegraph, January 28 (thanks to Alan of England):

Two security guards protecting a gas pipeline were killed and seven others wounded in an attack southwest of the Algerian capital, as Islamist terrorists once again targeted the country’s vital oil and gas industry.

Militants from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb launched a series of homemade rockets late on Sunday night towards a pipeline that runs north from the Sahara desert’s Hassi R’Mel field.

The largest in Algeria and the second largest gas field in the world, most of its product passes through coastal cities and on to southern Europe.

Army units were alerted and searched for the attackers in vain around Ain Chikh, on the southern edge of the Kabylie mountain region that has become the last hideout of al-Qaeda’s branch in northern Algeria. The frequency of terrorist attacks has dropped in Algeria’s populated north in the past few years, though in August 2011 militants showed their ability to target local security forces with a suicide bombing of the military academy....

Cementing the Muslim Brotherhood in power and moving to break all resistance to its Sharia tyranny. "BREAKING: Egypt army granted right to arrest civilians," by Joseph Mayton for Bikya News, January 28 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

CAIRO: The Egyptian government gave the armed forces the authority to arrest civilians on Monday, local media have reported a source from the cabinet as saying.

It comes as violence continues on Cairo’s Nile River corniche between police and protesters near Tahrir Square.

The move to grant the military the ability to arrest civilians is not likely to go over well with activists, especially after thousands of Egyptians were tried in military courts following the removal of Hosni Mubarak from power in February 2012 and the military rule of the country that lasted until President Mohamed Morsi was sworn into power in June last year.

The latest violence follows the announcement of a state of emergency by President Mohamed Morsi in all Suez Canal cities for 30 days after days of violence has left over 45 people dead in Port Said, Suez and Ismaileya.

“As you all know, I have previously affirmed I am against any exceptional measures but I also affirmed I will take action. And here I am taking action, to stop the bloodshed and maintain security, against rioters and law breakers,” Morsi stated, addressing the nation in a televised speech.

Morsi imposed curfew in Port Said, Suez, and Ismaileya from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. during the 30-day state of emergency.

The president said that the revolution has deviated from its peaceful course.

He saluted policemen and the Armed Forces and extended his condolences to all Egyptians for all the lives lost during the past few days.

On Monday, as Egypt awoke to the smell of tear gas across downtown Cairo, police and protesters were continuing to fight along the same bridge that marked the morning of January 28, 2011, as violence has overtaken the country in the past four days.

January 28 is expected to be another day of battles as Egyptians appear to be refusing to relent on their demands for change. With Muslim Brotherhood Morsi refusing to acquiesce, the country is bracing for days more of violence. In honor of January 28, 2011, which was dubbed “Friday of Rage” Egyptian activists have issued a statement that includes their demands.

The revolutionary powers said that the Egyptian people now know without doubt that they are ruled by a new gang; the Muslim Brotherhood group that seeks power over the entire country and uses all possible methods to break up the opposition, including murder....

In pursuit of their jihad, Boko Haram has murdered "at least 3,000 people in the past three years." Yet to investigate the murderous belief system that leads them to this orgy of blood and gore, and to formulate ways to resist it, would be "Islamophobic."

"Gunmen kill eight in northeastern Nigeria," from AGI, January 28 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

(AGI) - Abuja, Jan 28 - Gunmen killed eight people in the northeastern part of Nigeria, the main stronghold of Boko Haram Islamic fundamentalists. The bodies were found in the state of Borno on Sunday. A local police officer said the reason for the killings is unclear, and that Boko Haram is the main suspect.

The Islamist group, also called the African Taliban, is responsible for the death of at least 3,000 people in the past three years.

Fabius wants Western countries to fund the rebels in order to keep the jihadists at bay. However, he offers no means to distinguish the rebels who are not jihadists from those who are. And "Islamic militants have been the most organized fighters battling government troops." So France is essentially urging funding of the people it is fighting in Mali. "Al-Qaida-linked group claims deadly Syria blast," by Barbara Surk for the Associated Press, January 28 (thanks to Maxwell):

BEIRUT (AP) — An al-Qaida-linked group fighting alongside Syrian rebels claimed responsibility Monday for a suicide car bombing that reportedly killed dozens of President Bashar Assad's loyalists last week.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius pleaded for countries to honor their pledges of funding and other aid to the Syrian opposition to keep the country out of the hands of Islamist militant groups.

"If we don't give the means to the Syrian people to go achieve their freedom, there is a risk, and we all know it exists, that massacres and antagonisms amplify, and that extremism and terrorism prevail.

"Chaos is not tomorrow, it is today, and we need to end it. We need to end it in a peaceful way and that means increased and concrete support to the Syrian National Coalition."

Islamic militants have been the most organized fighters battling government troops in the 22-month-old conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed. Their growing prominence has fueled fears that Muslim radicals might try to hijack the revolt, and has contributed to the West's hesitance to equip the opposition with sophisticated weapons.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida and has declared a terrorist organization, said in a statement posted online that one of its suicide bombers detonated a car bomb last Monday at the headquarters of a pro-government militia in the central province of Hama. It said the bomber drove a truck packed with explosives to the militia's complex in the town of Salamiya and blew himself up "to give the tyrannical regime a taste" of violence it has been inflicting on the Syrian people.

Activists said at least 42 people, mostly pro-Assad militiamen, were killed in the blast. The government did not say how many people were killed, although state-run SANA news agency published photographs of what it said was a funeral procession for the blast's victims on Wednesday. In one of the photographs, a dozen men are seen standing behind 11 caskets, wrapped into a Syrian flag.

Jabhat al-Nusra has previously targeted government institutions in Damascus with suicide bombers and has led successful attacks on military bases and strategic territory in the country's north....

In France, Fabius pleaded for countries to keep their promises of financial aid to the Syrian opposition or risk compromising the legitimacy of the Syrian National Coalition in the eyes of the people fighting the Assad regime.

The opposition coalition was formed in November. More than 100 countries have back the umbrella group, decreeing it the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. France was the first to confer such recognition.

"We have to give the Syrian people a clear signal: We are at your side," Fabius told representatives of some 50 nations....

And al-Qaeda's.

In other words, Muslims should focus on bringing about another genocide of the Jews. And Ahmadinejad emphasized that Muslims should follow "the guidelines" of Muhammad. Somehow Iran's Thug-In-Chief seems to have misunderstood the Islamic prophet's peaceful, Gandhi-like teachings.

"Ahmadinejad: Muslims should mobilize resources to uproot Zionism," from the Islamic Republic News Agency, January 27 (thanks to Block Ness):

Tehran, Jan 27, IRNA - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that all Muslims should mobilize their resources to uproot Zionism.

He made the remarks in his speech to the 26th international conference on Islamic Unity.

He said that the prime goal of the Muslims should be terminating the issue of Zionism.

''World Muslims should forge unity in their struggle with bullying powers and by the time that the Zionist usurpers commit crimes through occupation and vandalism. It is not advisable to sit idle and take no action.''

Elsewhere in his speech, he said that it is not possible to attain unity without having a unique leadership.

The only leader who can guide Muslim World is the guidelines of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), he underlined.

"All differences and discords among Muslims have roots in our misunderstanding of Holy Quran and guidelines of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Today we need leadership similar to the Prophet to get the Muslim World united."

Criticizing management of the global economy led by the US, he said the US has taken helm of global economy which aims to transfer the wealth of world nations into the pockets of certain governments.

US budget deficit stood at dlrs 1,600 billion, he said adding that the US Federal Reserve is printing banknotes without reserve which creates worsening poverty around the globe.

"Enemies of humanity claim they are administering the world. They claim to be advocates of freedom and democracy around the world but under such circumstances, they should not say that they advocate freedom of Muslims. They must call for liberation of all world nations as well as the US people from rein of Zionists."

An especially strenuous fitness session: "Militant groups clash in Pakistan, 24 killed," by Riaz Khan for the Associated Press, January 26 (thanks to Maxwell):

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — 'Two Islamic militant groups clashed Saturday over control of a prized valley in northwest Pakistan, killing at least 24 people and wounding dozens more, officials said.

Arshad Khan of the Khyber tribal region said the fighting between the two Islamic militant groups began Friday in Tirah valley, near the Afghan border, when the militant group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, captured the base of another militant group, Ansarul Islam. Ansarul Islam tried to retake the base and fighting continued into Saturday.

The Pakistani military has been battling a stubborn insurgency in northwest Pakistan in rugged tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.

The remote valley, tucked in mountainous terrain, is highly valued by militant groups as a base of operations. It's difficult for the Pakistani military to enter the area, which allows militants easy access to Afghanistan and other tribal areas of Pakistan.

Most of the dead were militants, but some local tribesmen also were killed, according to a Pakistani military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to disclose the information to the media....

Good news: "Israeli Source Confirms Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Plant Exploded," by Chana Ya'ar for Israel National News, January 28 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

An Israeli intelligence source has confirmed Iran’s Fordow underground nuclear uranium enrichment facility sustained major damage in a “mega explosion” that occurred last week.

Fordow, which contains at least 2,700 centrifuges for uranium enrichment, is located deep beneath a mountain near the Iranian city of Qom.

Some 200 workers were trapped inside the facility at the time, according to a report published Monday by The Times, a UK-based newspaper.

The report quoted an Israeli official as saying “We’re still in the early stages of trying to comprehend what happened and the extend of its significance.” The source added that it was not yet known whether the explosion was “an act of sabotage or incidental.”

The official declined to reveal whether Israeli aircraft had been in the vicinity at the time of the explosion.

Iran has denied that any explosion occurred at the facility, claiming in a statement to the official IRNA news agency that reports of the blast were nothing more than “Western propaganda.”

News of the explosion was reported Friday by the U.S.-based WND website.

Bravo.

An act of Islamic piety. As the caliph Umar is supposed to have said when ordering the library of Alexandria to be burned: "If the books agree with the Qur'an, they are superfluous. If they disagree with it, they are heretical."

"Islamist rebels torch Timbuktu manuscript library: mayor," from Reuters, January 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):

DAKAR (Reuters) - Islamist fighters fleeing Mali's ancient Saharan city of Timbuktu as French and Malian troops closed in set fire to a South African-funded library there containing thousands of priceless manuscripts, the city's mayor said on Monday.

"The rebels sit fire to the newly-constructed Ahmed Baba Institute built by the South Africans ... this happened four days ago," Halle Ousmane told Reuters by telephone from Bamako. He said he had received the information from his chief of communications who had travelled south from the city a day ago.

Ousmane was not able to immediately say how much the building had been damaged. French and Malian troops were securing the city on Monday.

The mayor said the Islamist rebels, who had occupied the fabled trading town since a Tuareg-led rebellion captured it on April 1 from government forces, also torched his office and the home of a member of parliament.

The Ahmed Baba Institute, one of several libraries and collections in the city containing fragile ancient documents dating back to the 13th century, is named after a Timbuktu-born contemporary of William Shakespeare and houses more than 20,000 scholarly manuscripts. Some were stored in underground vaults.

Fighters from the Islamist alliance in north Mali, which groups AQIM with Malian Islamist group Ansar Dine and AQIM splinter MUJWA, had also destroyed ancient shrines sacred to moderate Sufi Moslems, provoking international outrage.

They had also applied amputations for thieves and stoning of adulterers under sharia law.

Jews and the Crusades
by Ibn Warraq
Part 2
Part 1

IX.34: O you who believe! Lo! many of the (Jewish) rabbis and the (Christian) monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar (men) from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings of a painful doom.

V.63–64: Why do not the rabbis and the priests forbid their evil-speaking and devouring of illicit gain? Verily evil is their handiwork. The Jews say, “Allah’s hands are fettered.” Their hands are fettered, and they are cursed for what they have said! On the contrary, His hands are spread open. He bestows as He wills. That which has been revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the arrogance and unbelief of many among them. We have cast enmity and hatred among them until the Day of Resurrection. Every time they light the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it. They hasten to spread corruption throughout the earth, but Allah does not love corrupters!

V.70–71: We made a covenant with the Israelites and sent forth apostles among them. But whenever an apostle came to them with a message that did not suit their fancies, some they accused of lying and others they put to death. They thought no harm would follow: they were blind and deaf. God is ever watching their actions.

V.82: Indeed, you will surely find that the most vehement of men in enmity to those who believe are the Jews and the polytheists.

V.51: O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is one of them.

V.57: O you who believe! Choose not for friends such of those who received the Scripture [Jews and Christians] before you, and of the disbelievers, as make jest and sport of your religion. But keep your duty to Allah of you are true believers.

V.59: Say: O, People of the Scripture [Jews and Christians]! Do you blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed aforetime, and because most of you are evil-doers?

V.66: Among them [Jews and Christians] there are people who are moderate, but many of them are of evil conduct.

XXXIII.26: He brought down from their strongholds those who had supported them from among the People of the Book [Jews of Bani Qurayza] and cast terror into their hearts, so that some you killed and others you took captive.

V.60: Say: “Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom [i.e., Jews] God has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil. Worse is the plight of these, and they have strayed farther from the right path.”

It is there in the Sira [1]:

“Kill any Jews that falls into your power,” said the Prophet. (p. 369).

The killing of Ibn Sunayna,and its admiration leading someone to convert to Islam (ibid.).

The killing of Sallam ibn Abu’l-Huqayq (pp. 482-483)

The assassination of Ka‘b b. al-Ashraf, who wrote verses against Muhammad (pp. 364–69).

The raid against the Jewish tribe of the Banu‘l-Nadir and their banishment (437–45).

The extermination of the Banu Qurayza, between six hundred and eight hundred men (pp. 461–69).

The killing of al-Yusayr (pp. 665–66).

It is there in the other Muslim historians [2]:

“Then occurred the sariyyah (raid) of Salim Ibn Umayr al-Amri against Abu Afak, the Jew, in (the month of) Shawwal in the beginning of the twentieth month from the hijrah (immigration from Mecca to Medina in 622 C.E.) of the Apostle of Allah. Abu Afak, was from Banu Amr Ibn Awf, and was an old man who had attained the age of 120. He was a Jew, and used to instigate the people against the Apostle of Allah, and composed (satirical) verses (about Muhammad). Salim Ibn Umayr, who was one of the great weepers and who had participated in Badr, said, “I take a vow that I shall either kill Abu Afak or die before him.” He waited for an opportunity until a hot night came, and Abu Afak slept in an open place. Salim Ibn Umayr knew it, so he placed the sword on his liver and pressed it till it reached his bed. The enemy of Allah screamed and the people who were his followers, rushed to him, took him to his house and interred him.

It is there in the Hadith [3]:
Bani An-Nadir and Bani Quraiza fought, so the Prophet (Muhammad) exiled Bani An-Nadir and allowed Bani Quraiza to remain at their places. He then killed their men and distributed their women, children and property among the Muslims, but some of them came to the Prophet and he granted them safety, and they embraced Islam. He exiled all the Jews from Medina. They were the Jews of Bani Qainuqa, the tribe of Abdullah bin Salam and the Jews of Bani Haritha and all the other Jews of Medina.

[1] Ibn Ishaq. The Life of Muhammad, trans. Alfred Guillaume 1955: reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.
[2] Ibn Sa‘d, Kitab al-Tabaqåt al Kabir, trans. S. M. Haq (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1972), vol. 1, p. 32.
[3] al-Bukhāri, The Book of al-Maghazi (Raids), trans M. Muhsin Khan, vol. 5, book 59 of Saḥiḥ (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 1987), Hadith no. 362, p. 241.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

Mumbai is an ironic place for them to make a public stand claiming that Islam is a Religion of Peace, but Islamic supremacists never suffer from any shortages of chutzpah. Anyway, they don't really want to debate Rushdie so much as interrogate him: "...let us invite Rushdie to this city and answer our questions. If he has the guts he should explain to us why he wrote such a blasphemous book."

Typical. Islamic supremacists and their Leftists allies almost never agree to a free, open, even-handed debate with someone who genuinely opposes their agenda. It's as if they're aware of how flimsy their arguments are, and how easily they could be shown up. The list of Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. who have rejected my invitation to debate has grown very long, and gets longer almost daily. They uniformly say -- another indication of how they all work from the same talking points fed to them from higher-ups -- that I am too stupid to bother debating, as if the falsity of what I say is self-evident; or that I am too evil to debate, as they don't want the taint of debating a greasy Islamophobe; or that I am too insignificant to debate, as their stature is so much greater than mine that they don't want to give me and my views credibility by engaging us in discussion.

These are transparent enough as dodges, but I'll explain why they're dodges anyway, in case there is any doubt. I may be very stupid indeed, but since I have two bestselling books, many other popular ones, and a website that gets 25,000 to 30,000 unique visitors a day, demonstrating that stupidity in live action would do a world of good for the purveyors of the "Islamophobia" myth. The same goes for my alleged evil: I may indeed be as terrible a fellow as they say, but that would seem to be all the more reason why it would be imperative for them to try to limit my influence. And they certainly do that, with no fewer than three hate websites now devoted almost completely to character assassination of me and supposed "refutations" of my work -- but none of these have any real bite unless they can stand up to rebuttal, and meet and best me in head-on discussion; yet they all clearly fear to do that. Finally, their claim that they'd be giving me credibility by debating me is clearly contrary to logic: if they defeated me, they'd be taking away any credibility I might have -- so evidently it is their awareness that they can't actually defeat me that keeps them from taking up the challenge.

And so we have the spectacle of the stupid, evil, credibility-bereft "Islamophobe" writing reasoned refutations of the deceitful and misleading writings of the likes of Haroon Moghul and Harris Zafar, and in response, their ignoring these refutations entirely or slinging ad hominem smears. They have no interest in genuine, respectful, reasoned dialogue.

The problem with their approach is that anyone who still is interested in reasoned dialogue in our increasingly darkened age can see who is offering evidence and is willing to defend his views, and who is simply shying ad hominem bricks and then hiding behind contemptuous claims to an intellectual superiority that has been neither earned nor demonstrated, but only assumed.

I can understand why men like Zafar and Moghul and all the rest of them fear debating me: they know that what I say is true. And I know that they can't say that, even if they know it in their heart of hearts. So they come up with excuses and excuses, just as the lion tamer, whip ripped out of hand, grabs the nearest chair to keep the lion at bay. But the lion is the truth, and despite their best efforts, it keeps coming closer, closer, closer.

"Muslim scholars challenge Rushdie to debate on Islam," by Mohammed Wajihuddin for TNN, January 28:

MUMBAI: A group of scholars who are also members of the powerful All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has invited controversial author Salman Rushdie to debate on Islam and the Prophet' s life. This is a significant change of position from the general Muslim view which has opposed Rushdie's visit to India ever since his controversial novel The Satanic Verses created a storm in the 1980s.

The scholars who favour a dialogue with Rushdie were participating in a seminar on Azmat-e-Rasool (the Prophet's greatness) on Sunday in Mumbai.

Rushdie reportedly wants to visit Mumbai to promote Deepa Mehta-directed movie Midnight's Children, based on his novel of the same name.

Many at the seminar, organized by Wahdat-e-Islami Hind, an NGO not known for its charitable views on Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, were surprised when senior lawyer and member of AIMPLB Yusuf Muchala proposed: "Instead of opposing his visit to Mumbai, let us invite Rushdie to this city and answer our questions. If he has the guts he should explain to us why he wrote such a blasphemous book."

Muchalla, who heads the personal law board's legal cell, also appealed to the Muslims not to resort to violent protests against Rushdie.

Echoing Muchala, Dr Shakil Samdani, a professor of law at Aligarh Muslim University and a speaker at the Wahdat-e-Islami Hind seminar, told TOI: "Rushdie should listen to the sane voices of the Muslims. Instead of issuing death threats against him and opposing his visit to India, Muslims must try to engage him in an informed debate."

Wahdat-e-Islami members were among the Muslims who had forced the Rajasthan government to ask Rushdie not to participate in the Jaipur Literary Fest last year. They also forced JLF organizers to cancel Nasreen's participation this year.

What a brittle, frightened, insecure culture. "Iran sentences American pastor Saeed Abedini to 8 years in prison," from FoxNews, January 27 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, an American imprisoned in Iran on charges of evangelizing, was sentenced this morning to eight years in prison.

According to the American Center for Law and Justice, Abedini was verbally sentenced in Tehran by Judge Pir-Abassi, known as the “hanging judge,” to eight years in prison for threatening the national security of Iran through his leadership in Christian house churches. He will serve the time in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, known as one of the most brutal.

The evidence, the ACLJ reports, was based on Abedini’s activities primarily during the early 2000s, when house churches were not considered a threat in Iran.

“This is a real travesty – a mockery of justice,” Jordan Sekulow, Executive Director of the ACLJ, who represents Pastor Saeed’s wife and children living in the U.S., said in a statement. “From the very beginning, Iranian authorities have lied about all aspects of this case, even releasing rumors of his expected release. Iran has not only abused its own laws, it has trampled on the fundamentals of human rights. We call on the citizens of the world to rise up in protest. We call on governments around the world to stand and defend Pastor Saeed.”

Although the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations with Iran, National Security Council spokesperson Bernadette Meehan said in a statement Sunday the administration is "deeply disappointed that Saeed Abedini has been sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran on a charge related to his religious beliefs.

"We condemn Iran's continued violation of the universal right of freedom of religion and we call on the Iranian authorities to release Mr. Abedini."...

The exact crimes he is accused of only became public on Monday, when the prosecutor outlined charges that Abedini undermined the Iranian government by creating a network of Christian house churches and that he was attempting to sway Iranian youth away from Islam.

"This trial apparently is focused on 13 years ago, when Pastor Saeed converted from Islam to Christianity,” Sekulow said in a statement to FoxNews.com last week....

The Muslim Brotherhood reaches beyond Egypt. "UAE Charges 94 in Alleged Islamist Coup Plot," from the Associated Press, January 27 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The United Arab Emirates says 94 people face charges for allegedly trying to overthrow the state as part of widening crackdowns on Islamist groups with suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sunday's statement by the official news agency WAM did not name the Emirati suspects, but authorities have been waging systematic arrests against perceived dissidents for months.

The crackdowns have brought complaints from rights groups and raised tensions with Egypt, which is led by Muslim Brotherhood member President Mohammed Morsi.

The statement quotes UAE Attorney General Salem Saeed Kubaish as alleging that the suspects built a secret network to plot the coup and raised money through real estate and other deals. It also claims the suspects had links to the Muslim Brotherhood and others for expertise and financial support.

"Reza Aslan recalled a saying that likened the Sharia to water, since ‘it takes the form of any vessel it is poured into.’"

It is amazing that the whole audience doesn't erupt into laughter when the clownish Islamic supremacist Aslan emits these howlers. Sharia in reality is marked by a remarkable uniformity: the four Sunni madhahib agree on about 75% of all rulings. Whenever and wherever we see Sharia implemented, it looks essentially the same. Changes and variations come in when Sharia provisions are relaxed or dropped altogether, as in secular Turkey -- but that is not some different version of Sharia, it is no Sharia at all.

Mali Islamic supremacists move to ban music, just as they have in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Mali and Afghanistan are separated by immense distance and differences of language and culture. But Sharia in both is markedly similar.

Hadith Qudsi 19:5: "The Prophet said that Allah commanded him to destroy all the musical instruments, idols, crosses and all the trappings of ignorance." (The Hadith Qudsi, or holy Hadith, are those in which Muhammad transmits the words of Allah, although those words are not in the Qur'an.)

Muhammad also said:

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

(2) "On the Day of Resurrection, Allah will pour molten lead into the ears of whoever sits listening to a songstress."

(3) "Song makes hypocrisy grow in the heart as water does herbage."

(4) "This community will experience the swallowing up of some people by the earth, metamorphosis of some into animals, and being rained upon with stones." Someone asked, "When will this be, O Messenger of Allah?" and he said, "When songstresses and musical instruments appear and wine is held to be lawful."

(5) "There will be peoples of my Community who will hold fornication, silk, wine, and musical instruments to be lawful ...." -- 'Umdat al-Salik r40.0

"Mali musicians forced out by Islamic rebels," from CBC News, January 27:

As Islamic radicals clamp down on much of Mali, the rich musical culture of the country is threatened.

There are reports of instruments being broken and music being banned in the north, except the singing of verses of the Qur'an.

Canada is weighing whether to extend its mission in Mali, as French and African troops move into the nation to push back Islamic rebels who have taken the north of the country.

Many musicians have fled the country and are in refugee camps in bordering Burkino Faso.

In any case, the conflict has robbed most of them of their livelihood, as they can no longer play at weddings and festivals.

Ibrahima Diabaté, a Malian musician now living in Montreal, says he’s afraid his homeland’s vibrant musical culture is being destroyed....

Jews and the Crusades
by Ibn Warraq
Part 1

PART ONE: ISLAMIC ANTISEMITISM BEFORE 1096.

Sir Steven Runciman, in the conclusion to his highly influential, elegantly written The History of the Crusades [1], seems to imply that it was the Christian Crusaders who alone were responsible not only for the “growing intolerance amongst the Moslems”, but somehow also for the fading away of Muslim intellectual life, and the subsequent stagnation of Islamic culture: “…an intolerant faith is incapable of progress”. Runciman’s analysis is no different from so many others that write of Islamic history and culture: what are seen as positive aspects of Islamic Civilization are ecstatically praised, even exaggerated, and all the negative aspects are imputed to the arrival of pestilential Westerners, and where the Arabs, Persians and Muslims in general are seen as passive victims, and they are certainly not allowed any autonomy.

But pace Runciman, this will not do as history. Even a cursory glance at the plight of Jews under Muslims before the Crusades would be enough to refute Sir Steven’s rosy picture of an earlier interfaith utopia. All the persecutions of both Christians and Jews stem directly from the precepts and principles enshrined in the canonical texts of Islam: the Koran; the Sira, that is, Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad; the Hadith, that is, the Traditions, the record of the deeds and sayings of Muhammad and his companions; and the classical Muslim Koranic commentaries. In other words, “Muslim Jew hatred… dates back to the origins of Islam”. [2] It is there in the Koran:

V.51: O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who takes them for friends is one of them. (V.51)

VIII.67: It is not for any Prophet to have captives until he has made slaughter in the land

II.61: Wretchedness and baseness were stamped upon them (that is, the Jews), and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah’s revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression.

IV.44-46: Have you not seen those who have received a portion of the Scripture? They purchase error, and they want you to go astray from the path. But Allah knows best who your enemies are, and it is sufficient to have Allah as a friend. It is sufficient to have Allah as a helper. Some of the Jews pervert words from their meanings, and say, “We hear and we disobey,” and “Hear without hearing,” and “Heed us!” twisting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said, “We have heard and obey,” or “Hear and observe us” it would have been better for them and more upright. But Allah had cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.

IV.160-61: And for the evildoing of the Jews, We have forbidden them some good things that were previously permitted them, and because of their barring many from Allah’s way. And for their taking usury which was prohibited for them, and because of their consuming people’s wealth under false pretense. We have prepared for the unbelievers among them a painful punishment.

IX.29–31:Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture [Jews and Christians] as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah has forbidden by His Messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute [poll tax] readily, and are utterly subdued. The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah,” and the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” Those are the words of their mouths, conforming to the words of the unbelievers before them. Allah attack them! How perverse they are! They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords besides Allah, and so too the Messiah son of Mary, though they were commanded to serve but one God. There is no God but He. Allah is exalted above that which they deify beside Him.

[1] Steven Runciman. A History of the Crusades, Vol. III, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951, p.474
[2] Andrew Bostom. The Legacy of Islamic Anti-semitism, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2008, p.33

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." -- Qur'an 9:29

Muslim spokesmen in the West routinely claim that this verse has no applicability in the modern world. They're lying.

"Muslim Group Threatens Egypt's Coptic Christians; Tells Them to 'Pay Tribute,'" from the Christian Post, January 27 (thanks to David):

An armed Islamic movement calling itself the "Brigade of Muslims" released a statement on Saturday threatening Egypt's Coptic Christians and asking them to pay tribute.

"Egypt is an Islamic country and will be ruled according to Shariah," the statement added.

The movement threatened all Egyptian media professionals who "mock religion and Islamic rule," adding that it has a special list of media professionals and their persistence in mocking will result in the "shedding of their blood in the ugliest way."

The movement explained that it has been established because of the strife being plotted against the country and the plans of enemies of Islam, both at home and abroad.

The movement accused Copts of trying to create a "separate Coptic state," accused the National Salvation Front of involvement in the burning of Egypt, and accused the so-called corrupt media of distorting the image of Muslims and Islamic rule.

The movement noted its approach is jihad, and it would fight the Egyptian army and Interior Ministry if they do not stand up to "Copts and their helpers."

"Let the unbelievers and the hypocrites know we are as keen on dying for the sake of God as they are keen on life," the movement confirmed.

Islamic supremacists avowedly and proudly love death. A Muslim child preacher recently taunted those he has been taught to hate most: "Oh Zionists, we love death for the sake of Allah, just as much as you love life for the sake of Satan." Jihad mass murderer Mohamed Merah said that he "loved death more than they loved life." Nigerian jihadist Abubakar Shekau said: "I'm even longing for death, you vagabond."

Ayman al-Zawahiri's wife advised Muslim women: "I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instil in them a love for religion and death." And as one jihadist put it, "We love death. You love your life!" And another: "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death." That was from Afghan jihadist Maulana Inyadullah

Of course, this idea comes from the Qur'an itself: "Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful." -- Qur'an 62:6

This is nothing new. Jihadists have used drugs to fund their efforts for years. Years ago, in his study of the Taliban, journalist Ahmed Rashid reported: “Abdul Rashid, the head of the Taliban’s anti-drugs control force in Kandahar, spelt out the nature of his unique job. He is authorized to impose a strict ban on the growing of hashish, ‘because it is consumed by Afghans and Muslims.’ But, Rashid tells me without a hint of sarcasm, ‘Opium is permissible because it is consumed by kafirs [unbelievers] in the West and not by Muslims or Afghans.’” This seems to have been a common view among the Taliban. Another Taliban named Khaled asked, “Who cares if heroin is wreaking havoc in the West? It doesn’t matter; they aren’t Muslims.”

"Revealed: how Saharan caravans of cocaine help to fund al-Qaeda in terrorists' North African domain," by Colin Freeman in the Telegraph, January 26 (thanks to David):

Like everywhere else that has fallen under Islamist rule in northern Mali, the city of Gao on the edge of the Sahara is not a place where vice is tolerated. Drinking and dancing are banned, the city's two nightclubs have been burned down, and the only thing that passes for street entertainment is watching citizens being flogged in public for smoking.

Such all-encompassing piety, though, comes to a halt outside the high walls of the gaudy new villas on Gao's outskirts, which stand out amid the shanty towns overlooking the sand dunes.

Nicknamed "Cocainebougou" - which translates as "cocaine town" - the strip of mansions is home to the elite of the city's ancient smuggling community, which has trafficked goods across the Sahara since the 11 century, when Gao was better known than nearby Timbuktu.

Unlike their ancestors' cargoes of spices, salts and silks, the contraband that Gao's smugglers bring in today from Colombia is deemed strictly "haram", or forbidden, by Islam.

Yet the city's ever-zealous Islamist morality police have a good reason for turning a blind eye. For it is thanks to the trans-Saharan cocaine trade that Islamist groups like al-Qaeda have become a power in the region, building up formidable war chests to buy both arms and recruits.

"Cocainebougou is full of very rich traffickers, all with gleaming new SUVs," said one former resident of Gao, who asked not to be named. "But they and the Islamists have a very close relationship."

The cocaine trade first exploded in this region five years ago, as Latino cartels, faced with a saturated market in the US, sought new routes to get their product to Europe's borders. First the drug is shipped or flown across the Atlantic to lawless, corrupt coastal states like Guinea Bissau, then it is moved thousands of miles across the Sahara to Algeria, Morocco and Libya.

Already, the influx of drug cash into such a poor region has had a disastrously corrosive effect. In Guinea Bissau, for example, the cartels' limitless funds have bought up so many police, politicians and soldiers that it has been dubbed Africa's first "narco-state", with a military coup last April blamed on in-fighting over drug trade proceeds.

But while Britain and other Western nations have committed vast resources to fighting a similar narco-terror axis in the Taliban-controlled poppy fields of Afghanistan, the threat directly beneath Europe's belly has had rather less attention. The entire region has only a handful of Western counter-narcotics agents assigned to it, while many local police forces, such as in Guinea Bissau, lack even the cash to put petrol in their cars.

Now, though, the trade's potential to wreak far wider havoc has become horrifyingly clear, in helping to bankroll the al-Qaeda movements behind both the Islamist take-over of northern Mali and the murder of western workers at the Algerian gas facility earlier this month.

Among its most prominent beneficiaries is none other than Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed jihadist and smuggler who has claimed responsibility for the mass hostage-taking in al-Qaeda's name.

Nicknamed the Marlboro Man for his lucrative cigarette smuggling empire, Belmokhtar, who helped found Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, is thought to have diversified into drugs a few years ago, earning himself the moniker of "le narco-Islamiste" on the smuggling routes between Mali and his native Algeria.

More widely, AQIM is thought to levy "taxes" on other drug smugglers in return for safe passage, earning the group a direct subsidy from the cocaine that ends up in the clubs, bars and crack dens of Britain. As the US State Department puts it, AQIM provides "protection and permissions for traffickers moving product through areas they control".

As someone who boasts of fighting jihad in Afghanistan while just a teenager, Belmokhtar seems to have had no problem accommodating a sideline in "haram" contraband into his puritanical Islamic vision. As drugs are seen as a largely Western vice, jiihadists can argue that enabling them to flood into Europe is all part of a plan to weaken and corrupt the enemy....

When Kevin Carroll and Tommy Robinson receive $47 million in legal aid, I will stop saying that the British legal system is biased against them and in favor of jihadists and Islamic supremacists.

"Al Qaeda bomb plot gangs were handed £30m in legal aid to fund their defence," by James Slack in the Daily Mail, January 21 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Two gangs of Al Qaeda terrorists who plotted to inflict mass murder on the British public shared more than £30million in legal aid, it emerged last night.

Figures released by the Ministry of Justice show the astonishing sums being paid out by taxpayers to fund defence in criminal cases.

Recipients of huge amounts include the July 21 bombers, a group of Islamist fanatics behind the 2006 airline liquid bomb plot and a string of fraud cases.

The former fugitive Asil Nadir - who rented a £23,000-a-month London residence during his trial - received more than £1million in legal aid.

'Suffolk Strangler' Steven Wright, who murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich, was given £444,220 to pay for his defence.

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said of the revelations: ‘Of course everyone deserves a defence.

‘But when you look at costs involved in some cases, you have to ask whether we can afford to provide this level of support in criminal trials.

‘Criminal legal aid costs one billion a year, and at a time like this, you have to challenge whether we are getting appropriate value for taxpayers’ money.’

A breakdown published by Mr Grayling’s department details the most expensive legal aid cases in each of the last five financial years.

In 2007/08, the July 21 terrorism trial swallowed £7.1million. Muktar Ibrahim, Ramzi Mohammed, Yassin Omar and Hussain Osman were convicted of attempting to blow themselves up on the London transport network just two weeks after the 7/7 atrocity in 2005.

The four men tried to mirror the previous attack but their rucksacks, packed with explosives, failed to detonate. At their trial in 2007, they claimed it was a deliberate hoax to protest over the war in Iraq.

The following year the eight defendants in an alleged conspiracy to launch suicide bomb attacks on a succession of transatlantic airliners, using liquid bombs, cost £12.2million in legal aid. The plot led to draconian restrictions on what could be taken on flights.

The first jury failed to reach a verdict in the case - leading to re-trials which swallowed a further £14.8million. Ultimately, seven out of the eight original suspects were found guilty of conspiracy to murder....

Jihad Watch reader James sent me the above tweet, and I had to laugh.

I don't have a Qur'an! I just borrowed his!

Anyway, this "Muhammad Jack" character has no doubt gotten wind of my Zionist black arts that have cast all this and more into the Qur'an:

2:65 Jews are apes

“And well you know there were those among you [Jews] that transgressed the Sabbath, and We said to them, ‘Be you apes, miserably slinking!’

2:89 Unbelievers, particularly Jews, are accursed

“When there came to them [Jews] a Book from God, confirming what was with them -- and they aforetimes prayed for victory over the unbelievers -- when there came to them that they recognized, they disbelieved in it; and the curse of God is on the unbelievers.

2:191-193 Fight and kill unbelievers until “religion is God’s,” i.e. Islamic law rules all societies

“And slay them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them -- such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is God’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.”

3:28 Don’t take unbelievers as friends and allies, unless it is for “fear of them,” i.e. deceptively for protection of oneself or of Islam

“Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends, rather than the believers -- for whoso does that belongs not to God in anything -- unless you have a fear of them. God warns you that You beware of Him, and unto God is the homecoming.”

3:110-112 Muslims are the best of people, Jews have earned God’s anger

“You are the best nation ever brought forth to men, bidding to honour, and forbidding dishonour, and believing in God. Had the People of the Book believed, it were better for them; some of them are believers, but the most of them are ungodly. They will not harm you, except a little hurt; and if they fight with you, they will turn on you their backs; then they will not be helped. Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God’s anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God’s signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors.”

3:151 Terror

“We will cast into the hearts of the unbelievers terror, for that they have associated with God that for which He sent down never authority; their lodging shall be the Fire; evil is the lodging of the evildoers.”

3:181 Jews are bound for hell

“God has heard the saying of those who said, ‘Surely God is poor, and we are rich.’ We shall write down what they have said, and their slaying the Prophets without right, and We shall say, ‘Taste the chastisement of the burning.’”

4:3 Polygamy and sexual slavery

“If you fear that you will not act justly towards the orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, four; but if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one, or what your right hands own; so it is likelier you will not be partial.”

4:34 Beat disobedient women

“Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding the secret for God’s guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey you, look not for any way against them; God is All-high, All-great.”

4:89 Kill apostates

“They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of God; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

4:160 Jews do evil, turn people away from God

“And for the evildoing of those of Jewry, We have forbidden them certain good things that were permitted to them, and for their barring from God’s way many…”

5:17 Christians -- believers in divinity of Christ – are unbelievers

“They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Messiah, Mary’s son.’ Say: ‘Who then shall overrule God in any way if He desires to destroy the Messiah, Mary’s son, and his mother, and all those who are on earth?’ For to God belongs the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth, and all that is between them, creating what He will. God is powerful over everything.”

5:41 Jews listen to falsehood and pervert the meaning of their Scriptures

“O Messenger, let them not grieve thee that vie with one another in unbelief, such men as say with their mouths ‘We believe’ but their hearts believe not; and the Jews who listen to falsehood, listen to other folk, who have not come to thee, perverting words from their meanings, saying, ‘If you are given this, then take it; if you are not given it, beware!’ Whomsoever God desires to try, thou canst not avail him anything with God. Those are they whose hearts God desired not to purify; for them is degradation in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

5:51 Don’t take Jews and Christians as friends and allies

“O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends; they are friends of each other. Whoso of you makes them his friends is one of them. God guides not the people of the evildoers.”

5:59-60 Jews cursed, made into apes and swine

“Say: ‘People of the Book, do you blame us for any other cause than that we believe in God, and what has been sent down to us, and what was sent down before, and that most of you are ungodly?’ Say: ‘Shall I tell you of a recompense with God, worse than that? Whomsoever God has cursed, and with whom He is wroth, and made some of them apes and swine, and worshippers of idols -- they are worse situated, and have gone further astray from the right way.’”

5:64 Jews accursed

“The Jews have said, ‘God’s hand is fettered.’ Fettered are their hands, and they are cursed for what they have said. Nay, but His hands are outspread; He expends how He will. And what has been sent down to thee from thy Lord will surely increase many of them in insolence and unbelief; and We have cast between them enmity and hatred, till the Day of Resurrection. As often as they light a fire for war, God will extinguish it. They hasten about the earth, to do corruption there; and God loves not the workers of corruption.”

5:72 Christians are unbelievers

“They are unbelievers who say, ‘God is the Messiah, Mary’s son.’ For the Messiah said, ‘Children of Israel, serve God, my Lord and your Lord. Verily whoso associates with God anything, God shall prohibit him entrance to Paradise, and his refuge shall be the Fire; and wrongdoers shall have no helpers.’”

5:82 Jews most hostile to the Muslims

“Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews and the idolaters; and thou wilt surely find the nearest of them in love to the believers are those who say ‘We are Christians’; that, because some of them are priests and monks, and they wax not proud.”

6:91 Jews deny, conceal divine revelations

“They measured not God with His true measure when they said, ‘God has not sent down aught on any mortal.’ Say: ‘Who sent down the Book that Moses brought as a light and a guidance to men? You put it into parchments, revealing them, and hiding much; and you were taught that you knew not, you and your fathers.’ Say: ‘God.’ Then leave them alone, playing their game of plunging.”

6:146 Jews insolent

“And to those of Jewry We have forbidden every beast with claws; and of oxen and sheep We have forbidden them the fat of them, save what their backs carry, or their entrails, or what is mingled with bone; that We recompensed them for their insolence; surely We speak truly.”

7:166 Jews are apes

“And when they [Jews] turned in disdain from that forbidding We said to them, ‘Be you apes, miserably slinking!’”

8:12 God will terrorize unbelievers; Muslims should behead them

“When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!’”

8:39 Fight unbelievers until Islam reigns supreme

“Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is God’s entirely; then if they give over, surely God sees the things they do.”

8:60 Make war against enemies of God

“Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to terrify thereby the enemy of God and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; God knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of God shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5 Slay the idolaters

“Then, when the sacred months are drawn away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; God is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:28 Idolaters unclean

“O believers, the idolaters are indeed unclean; so let them not come near the Holy Mosque after this year of theirs. If you fear poverty, God shall surely enrich you of His bounty, if He will; God is All-knowing; All-wise.”

9:29 Fight and subjugate the Jews and Christians

“Fight those who believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden -- such men as practise not the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book -- until they pay the tribute out of hand and have been humbled.”

9:30 Jews and Christians assailed by God

“The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the Son of God’; the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the Son of God.’ That is the utterance of their mouths, conforming with the unbelievers before them. God assail them! How they are perverted!”

9:31 Jews and Christians have taken their clergy and holy men as lords

“They have taken their rabbis and their monks as lords apart from God, and the Messiah, Mary’s son -- and they were commanded to serve but One God; there is no god but He; glory be to Him, above that they associate.”

9:73 Be harsh with unbelievers

“O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and hypocrites, and be thou harsh with them; their refuge is Gehenna -- an evil homecoming!”

9:111 Paradise guaranteed to those who kill and are killed for Allah

“God has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of God; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon God in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Koran; and who fulfils his covenant truer than God? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123 Fight the unbelievers, be harsh with them

“O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that God is with the godfearing.”

47:4 Behead and slaughter the unbelievers; take others captive

“When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if God had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of God, He will not send their works astray.”

48:29 Be merciful to believers, not unbelievers

"Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and those who are with him are hard against the unbelievers, merciful one to another."

62:6 Jews should long for death

“Say: ‘You of Jewry, if you assert that you are the friends of God, apart from other men, then do you long for death, if you speak truly.’”

98:6 Unbelievers are the worst of creatures

“The unbelievers of the People of the Book and the idolaters shall be in the Fire of Gehenna, therein dwelling forever; those are the worst of creatures.”

Baroness Warsi is working from the same playbook that Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S., along with compromised academics like Haroon Moghul and a host of other rogues and hacks, use regularly: deflect attention from jihad terror and Islamic supremacism by claiming that the whole thing is a public relations problem trumped up by vicious, bigoted, racist, hateful "Islamophobes."

The whole thing is nonsense, of course. If anyone in Britain thinks Islam is incompatible with British life, it is because so many Muslims there behave as if it is. It is because of the rape gangs, the hate preachers, the thuggery on the streets, the jeering at returning military personnel, and all the rest. This kind of thing isn't caused by "Islamophobia." "Islamophobia," such as any actually exists, comes from it.

Journalist Enza Ferreri noted last September: "And former co-chairman of the Conservative Party Baroness Warsi, unelected, appointed to the House of Lords, amidst public expenses frauds scandals, breachings of both the Ministerial Code and rules on financial declarations, found time to run a business her partner in which, Abid Hussain, has been a leading member of Hizb ut Tahrir, a radical Islamic group the Conservatives promised to ban when they were in opposition."

Any attack on an innocent person is reprehensible. That bit about Hizb ut Tahrir makes it clear that Baroness Warsi may have a vested interest in exaggerating their frequency.

"Fewer than one in four people think Islam is compatible with British life, faith minister warns," by Tim Shipman for the Daily Mail, January 24 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Fewer than one in four British voters believes Islam is compatible with the British way of life, the UK's first Muslim woman Cabinet Minister reveals today.

Baroness Warsi will quote private police figures which show that more than half of race hate attacks in Britain are against Muslims as she condemns critics of Islam for peddling 'hate'.

Lady Warsi sparked huge controversy two years ago when she said Britain's approach to Muslims has made Islamophobia acceptable at middle class dinner parties.

But in a new speech today she accuses critics of Islam of being 'un-British' themselves by grouping ordinary Muslims with extremists.

The Minister for Faith and Communities reveals stark polling conducted by YouGov which found that just 24 per cent of voters think Islam is compatible with being British, while more than half disagree. Only 23 per cent say Islam is not a threat to Western civilisation.

An unrepentant Lady Warsi, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan, said that she was right to speak out before and will use the new evidence to warn that the 'underlying, unfounded mistrust' of Muslims is fuelling extremism.

In her speech to a group called Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks, which monitors violence against Muslims, Lady Warsi condemned politicians and the media for failing to do enough to combat negative views of Muslims.

'When I said that Islamophobia had "passed the dinner table test", I meant anti-Muslim sentiment had become so socially acceptable, it could be found even in the most civilised of settings.

'I got a fair amount of stick for making that statement. There were those who denied the problem existed. There were those who said talking about it was dangerous.

'But let me tell you what's really dangerous. It's when people are treated differently because they hold a different religious belief. It's when a country turns a blind eye towards that discrimination....

Of course. Who else could it be? "Iran: Syria's problems rooted in Zionist meddling," from Ynet News, January 27 (thanks to Alexander):

Iran reiterated Saturday its threats that any attack on Syria would be perceived as one on the Islamic Republic and will meet "a harsh response."

Tehran's IRNA news agency quoted Defense Minister Brigadier-General Ahmad Vahidi as saying that Syrian Army, which is "the vanguard of campaign against Zionist regime should not be weakened."

Iran has been Syrian President Bashar Assad's strongest allay since Syria plunged into civil war.

Tehran has supplied Damascus with funds, weapons and training; and has repeatedly vowed to send its army to Assad's aid should any attempt be made by the West to topple his regime.

The threats have become more strident following NATO's decision to send Patriot missile batteries to Turkey, which fears the civil war tearing its neighbor apart may morph into a war between them.

The first of six Patriot missile batteries placed near the Turkish-Syrian border went operational on Saturday.

Vahidi told reporters that "The Syrian crisis should be resolved through peaceful means and national dialogue between the warring parties."

He denounced any attempt to hasten said solution by the West, saying that "Any alien interference has so far brought only harmful consequences for the Syrian people.

"The Syrian problems have roots in covert and overt interference of the Zionists," he said adding that "Iran has always adopted a rational stand toward Syria."

Commenting on the Patriot deployment in Turkey, Vahidi said that "The move is not useful. We believe it will create misunderstanding among countries in the region.

"Enemies try to sow discord among Islamic states through masterminding various scenarios," he said....

These misunderstanders of Islam somehow got the crazy notions that Muslims should only submit to Sharia, and that Muslims should physically attack those whom they consider to be the enemies of Islam -- and that such attacks are called jihad. Ahmed Rehab, call your office!

"Jihadist Calls on Muslims in France to Become a 'Trojan Horse' and Attack French Civilians," from MEMRI, January 23:

The following is a message to France from the Mujahideen of Syria that was posted on the Internet on January 23, 2013.

Jihadist: This Message is addressed to the French Republic and its people from the Mujahideen of Syria, following the French government's decision to attack our noble brothers, who instated the shari'a, who fought polytheism, who spread monotheism in northern Mali – the law of Allah, the shari'a, the only legislation to which a Muslim may submit.

The most fundamental right of a Muslim is to live according to his religion, and his duty is to strive to instate it on the lands of Islam.

A Mujahid fights so that the word of Allah may reign supreme.

The simple reason that drives France and its allies to attack and kill those who establish the shari'a in Muslim countries is that they want to maintain the subservient regimes that agreed to be their vassals, to serve their interests in Muslim countries, and to oppress them with their tyranny.

As a result of the decision of the French government, which is not satisfied with preventing our virtuous sisters from donning the veil in accordance with Allah's decree, and with constantly fighting Islam and the Muslims...

Today, in addition to its presence alongside the Crusaders in Afghanistan, France has become the banner of heresy and of the enemies of Allah, by attacking Islamic Mali.

As a bitter consequence, we urge and encourage Muslims worldwide, as well as those living in France, to perform their religious duty like a Trojan horse – to hit French interests, their institutions, their military, and their civilians, on the national territory (of France), as well as abroad.

The aim is to terrorize them, so that the French people will have to blame their Satanic leaders for their decision, leading to the loss of the security and tranquility they once enjoyed.

They will not enjoy them anymore as long as France continues to act as an enemy of Islam and the Muslims.

We remain confident in the true promise of Allah that He will bring victory to those who support His religion, and that those who are slain for the sake of Allah will live in His Paradise, whereas the disbelievers who are killed are tormented in their graves, waiting to be fuel in the Hellfire.

I will conclude this statement by inviting you to join Islam, to read the Koran, and to follow His last Prophet and Messenger, who was sent in compassion to all of mankind to free them from submission to other men and from the worship of idols, and (to direct mankind) to submit to Allah and to worship Him exclusively.

Blow them up wherever they are, and slaughter them.

Expel them for the hills of Jerusalem and defeat them.

Whole buildings are missing there, so this should not come as any surprise. The worst part about this is that the money for these police cars and those buildings is somewhere: paying for some Afghan kleptocrat's villa or even funding the jihad against the U.S.

Your tax dollars at work on the fool's errand in Afghanistan: "US Wasted Millions Of Dollars On Afghan Police Cars That Don't Exist," by Paul Szoldra for Business Insider, January 24 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

The U.S. unnecessarily paid $6.3 million on contracts for Afghan police vehicles from April 2011 to September 2012, according to a report released last week from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

The latest gross overpayment stems largely from cash going to maintenance on vehicles that have been out of service for over a year or even had been destroyed.

As of November 2012, the U.S. has provided over 30,000 vehicles to the Afghan National Police (ANP), but the study shows a force still struggling with logistics and training needed to provide their own maintenance — forcing the U.S. to rely on outside contractors.

According to national security expert Anthony Cordesman, the U.S. is at least partly to blame.

"The bulk of the money actually spent inside Afghanistan went through poorly supervised military contracts and through aid projects where the emphasis was speed, projected starts, and measuring progress in terms of spending rather than results," he wrote in a brief for the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

This isn't the first such report from SIGAR. A cursory look at their website finds allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse as common in Afghanistan as dirt.

One report highlighted major problems with the country's financial sector, where the U.S. still has extremely limited visibility over the cash it doles out, "leaving [it] vulnerable to fraud or diversion to insurgents."

Other reports filed in late 2012 indicate that a trend of waste will continue, such as one showing the DoD paid $12.8 million for equipment that went completely unused, or another showing the U.S. government clueless over what happened with $201 million in fuel purchases for the Afghan National Army, due to records being shredded.

The total cost to the U.S. for the Afghan war, including war operations, diplomatic operations, and medical care for veterans totals $444 billion, according to a Mar 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service.

The ship was flying under the flag of St. Vincent and was registered as a cement bulk cargo ship. In reality, it was a Turkish ship loaded with weapons and bound for Libya, which a Greek paper speculated may have been on their way to the jihadists in Mali.

"SHOCK - Turkish Ship With Tonnes of Weapons Sails To Volos!," from HellasFrappe, January 25 (thanks to Joshua):

Port and customs officials were put on alert on Thursday after finding out that a cargo ship that had requested to be refueled (transit oil) at the port of Heracles (in Asteria Agrias) was carrying heavy weaponry and ammunition. Officials immediately informed the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance, Merchant Marine and the headquarters of the Hellenic Coast Guard. Following this, officials secured the area around the port and special forces from the Coast Guard conducted a thorough investigation.

According to a report from the Thessaly Journal, the ship "Alexandretta" -which was flying the flag of Saint Vincent- was from Turkey, and although it is registered as a cement bulk cargo ship was in all reality suspiciously transporting a huge quantity of weapons and ammunition. It said that unconfirmed reports also spoke of portable antiaircraft guns and anti-tank missiles, ammunition and infantry weapons such as Kalashnikov guns, etc.

The newspaper noted that the ship was bound for Libya, but also said that it could have been headed towards Mali (which boarders [sic] Libya) to arm Islamic rebels fighting there.

The newspaper, quoting reliable sources, said that as soon as Greek authorities were notified, they surrounded the ship, and prevented any embarking and disembarking to be conducted. For security purposes the ship was then forced to dock at the port of Volos, where it was immediately quarantined and under the watchful eye of competent authorities.

According to legislation, ships transporting weaponry -bound for countries such as Libya, Iran, Syria- are forbidden to pass through Greece. The newspaper said that the ship's capacity is 4,000 tonnes, but it did not disclose the exact weight of the cargo.

It should be reminded that Yemen authorities had discovered a similar shipment from a Turkish ship last November on the outskirts of the Anten port. The report in the Thessaly Journal noted that at the time, authorities were shocked to discover the $120 million shipment, and even more so when they uncovered that the ship was transporting 3,000 Turkish made pistols with silencers that were well hidden in biscuit boxes!

Since the government of Qatar is the former owner and still primary funder of al-Jazeera, maybe we will soon see Al Gore making a rose-colored documentary about the virtues of the Mali jihadists: The Inconvenient Jihad Murderers.

"Mali: analyst, Qatar is funding Islamists," by Alma Safira for ANSAmed, January 25 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - DOHA, JANUARY 25 - Qatar supports Mali's Islamists as it believes the movement is potentially key in the country's governance, according to Michael Stephens, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in Qatar cited by Doha News. 'The main motivation behind Qatar's support of Mali's Islamists is to ensure its business and the growth of its influence in the Arab and Islamic world', noted the analyst. The level of involvement of Qatar in the activities of Islamist rebels in Mali will soon emerge together with the truth on who is giving them weapons, noted the expert. Qatar denies such allegations but, if evidence proved the contrary, an end of diplomatic relations with France would be a battle which Qatar cannot expect to win, according to Stevens.

The scenario in Mali is for the country to split with a North held by Islamists indebted to Qatar and a South supported by western countries. Such a situation, according to Stevens, is part of Qatar's long-term vision as the country aims to improve bilateral relations with Mali and expand its influence in the Sahel area which is rich with hydrocarbons and precious metal reserves.

'The official version is that Qatar is funding for humanitarian reasons, through non-profit organizations, the areas controlled by rebels but France believes that Qatar is supporting rebels tied to Al Qaeda who are trying to seize power in Mali in order to use the country as a jihadist platform from which to launch a global initiative. The truth is nobody knows how deep relations are between Qatar and the rebels', wrote Stevens in the article published by Doha News....

What's the big deal? According to Hamas-linked CAIR, they'll just be working on getting in their exercise. Nothing to be concerned about. Go back to sleep.

"Iraqi tribes threaten to declare jihad in country," from Trend, January 26:

Local tribes in Al-Anbar province threaten to declare Jihad against the government and the army, Al Arabiya channel reported on Saturday.

According to the channel, they demand punishment of those responsible for the deaths of protesters from the government.

Anti-government rallies have been held since beginning of this month in Iraq.

Clashes recently broke out between police and protesters after Friday prayers in Iraqi city of Fallujah, where Sunnis live compactly.

The clashes killed at least five people and about 60 people were injured.

Meanwhile Tommy Robinson has languished in prison in inhuman conditions for a far less serious offense -- and people still deny that he is a political prisoner.

"Muslim abuser who 'didn't know' that sex with a girl of 13 was illegal is spared jail," by Paul Bentley for the Daily Mail, January 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A muslim who raped a 13-year-old girl he groomed on Facebook has been spared a prison sentence after a judge heard he went to an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless.

Adil Rashid, 18, claimed he was not aware that it was illegal for him to have sex with the girl because his education left him ignorant of British law.

Yesterday Judge Michael Stokes handed Rashid a suspended sentence, saying: ‘Although chronologically 18, it is quite clear from the reports that you are very naive and immature when it comes to sexual matters.’

Earlier Nottingham Crown Court heard that such crimes usually result in a four to seven-year prison sentence.

But the judge said that because Rashid was ‘passive’ and ‘lacking assertiveness’, sending him to jail might cause him ‘more damage than good’.

Rashid, from Birmingham, admitted he had sex with the girl, saying he had been ‘tempted by her’ after they met online.

They initially exchanged messages on Facebook before sending texts and chatting on the phone over a two-month period.

They then met up in Nottingham, where Rashid had booked a room at a Premier Inn.

The girl told police they stayed at the hotel for two hours and had sex after Rashid went to the bathroom and emerged wearing a condom.

Rashid then returned home and went straight to a mosque to pray. He was arrested the following week after the girl confessed what had happened to a school friend, who informed one of her teachers.

He told police he knew the girl was 13 but said he was initially reluctant to have sex before relenting after being seduced.

Earlier the court heard how Rashid had ‘little experience of women’ due to his education at an Islamic school in the UK, which cannot be named for legal reasons.

After his arrest, he told a psychologist that he did not know having sex with a 13-year-old was against the law. The court heard he found it was illegal only when he was informed by a family member.

In other interviews with psychologists, Rashid claimed he had been taught in his school that ‘women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground’.

When Judge Stokes said Rashid ‘must have known it was illegal, unless he was going round with his eyes shut’, defence lawyer Laban Leake said reports suggested Rashid had a ‘degree of sexual naivety’.

‘The school he attended, it is not going too far to say, can be described as a closed community and on this occasion this was perpetuated by his home life.

‘It is not too far to say that he may not have known that having sex with a 13-year-old girl was illegal.’ Judge Stokes sentenced Rashid to nine months youth custody, suspended for two years, along with a two-year probation supervision order....

Sharia meets technology

"Publishing these photos is a way to instil fear in the population so as to avoid any protests." Because fear is at the heart of any Sharia regime. Why fingers for robbery and not the whole hand, as per Qur'an 5:38? Unclear. Perhaps the jurists involved were "moderates."

"Iran unveils machine for amputating thieves’ fingers," from France24, January 25 (thanks to Alan of England):

One of Iran’s official press agencies published photos showing the public amputation of a thief's fingers on Wednesday. These show a man getting his finger chopped off with a machine resembling a rotary saw.

We contacted many of our Observers in Iran to ask them about this machine. Some of them had heard about it before, but many discovered its existence through these morbid photographs, which were reportedly taken on Thursday. According to the INSA press agency, the man shown getting his finger cut off was charged with robbery and adultery by a court in the southwestern city of Shiraz. He was also accused of being at the head of a criminal organisation. On top of losing one of his fingers, he was sentenced to three years in prison and 99 whip lashes.

No independent witnesses were able to recount the circumstances under which this amputation took place. Four photos of the scene published by the press agency were widely relayed on social media networks. Strangely enough, the man’s face did not betray any signs of suffering in the photos, though it is possible that he might have been drugged.

"Publishing these photos is a way to instil fear in the population so as to avoid any protests"

Contacted by FRANCE 24, the spokesperson for Iran Human Rights, Mahmoud Amiry-Moghaddam, who is based in Norway, explains: “What is surprising about this is that not only was this a public amputation, but that photos of it were distributed by official press agencies, and that they showed a machine that we had until yet never seen images of. We have noticed that the authorities have recently being making more and more publicity surrounding cases of corporal punishment. Every time we get closer to an election, the number of these incidents increases. And we’re getting quite close to the presidential election [slated for June]. I believe this is a strategy to instil fear in the population so as to avoid any protests.

Following the amputation, Ali Alghasi, Shiraz’s public prosecutor, announced that sentences against criminals would become increasingly severe, without explaining why.

On January 20, two thieves were hanged in public in Tehran. They had been caught thanks to video filmed by a street surveillance camera that showed them robbing a man at knifepoint. They had stolen the equivalent of 20 euros.

Why they were hanged is again unclear: Sharia prescribes amputation of the hand for theft (again, as per Qur'an 5:38. Perhaps they were repeat offenders.

Amputation, whipping, and even death by stoning are all legal forms of punishment under Iran’s Islamic penal code.

Of course, because all are prescribed for various offenses under Sharia.

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 51
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45 / Part 46 / Part 47 / Part 48 / Part 49 / Part 50

A new generation of Western scholars of the Middle Ages have been trying to put right the misconceptions that have grown up about the Crusades. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has argued “modern Western public opinion, Arab nationalism, and Pan-Islamism all share perceptions of crusading that have more to do with nineteenth-century European imperialism than with actuality”. [1] Muslims in particular have developed “mythistories” concerning the putative injuries they have received at the hands of the Crusaders. The first point that needs to be emphasized is that the Crusades “were proclaimed not only against Muslims, but also against pagan Wends, Balts and Lithuanians, shamanist Mongols, Orthodox Russians and Greeks, Cathar and Hussite heretics, and those Catholics whom the Church deemed to be its enemies”. [2]

Second, the Crusades were not “thoughtless explosions of barbarism”, rather their underlying rationale was relatively sophisticated, elaborated theologically by Christian nations that were threatened by Muslim invaders who had managed to reach into the heart of Europe, in central France in the eighth century and Vienna in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were a response to the desecration of the Christian shrines in the Holy Land, the destruction of churches, and the general persecution of Christians in the Near East. A Crusade to be considered legitimate had to fulfill strict criteria. “First, it must not be entered into lightly or for aggrandizement, but only for a legally sound reason, which has to be a reactive one.” It was, in other words, waged for purposes of repelling violence or injury and the imposition of justice on wrongdoers. A Crusade was never a war of conversion, rather a rightful attempt to recover Christian territory which had been injuriously seized in the past. “Second, it must be formally declared by an authority recognized as having the power to make such a declaration. Third, it must be waged justly.” [3]

The Crusaders were not colonialists, and the Crusades were not engaged in for economic reasons, as many Western Liberals and Liberal economists assumed; most crusaders would have laughed at the prospect of material gain. In fact, crusading became a financial burden as the expenses associated with warfare increased. They were far more concerned with saving not only Christendom from Islam, but also their souls. The role of penance has often been overlooked in crusading thought and practice; many crusaders believed that by taking part in a crusade they were able to repay the debt their sinfulness had incurred.

Nineteenth, and even early twentieth century Europeans unashamedly used crusader rhetoric and tendentious reading of crusader history to justify their imperial dreams of conquest. For example, after the First World War, “The French Mandate in Syria generated a wave of French historical literature, one theme of which was that the achievements of the crusaders provided the first chapter in a history that had culminated in modern imperialism”. [4] As we shall see, the newly emerging Arab nationalists took nineteenth-century rhetoric seriously. A second strand in false, modern interpretations of crusader history was furnished by European romanticism, as for example, manifested in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. As Riley-Smith summarized, “The novels [of Scott] painted a picture of crusaders who were brave and glamorous, but also vainglorious, avaricious, childish and boorish. Few of them were genuinely moved by religion or the crusade ideal; most had taken the cross out of pride, greed, or ambition. The worst of them were the brothers of the military orders, who may have been courageous and disciplined but were also arrogant, privileged, corrupt, voluptuous and unprincipled. An additional theme, the cultural superiority of the Muslims, which was only hinted at in the other novels, pervaded the The Talisman [1825]”. [5]

Many believe that modern Muslims have inherited from their medieval ancestors memories of crusader violence and destruction. But as Riley-Smith says, nothing could be further from the truth. [6] By the fourteenth century, in the Islamic world the Crusades had almost passed out of mind. Muslims had lost interest, and, in any case, they “looked back on the Crusades with indifference and complacency. In their eyes they had been the outright winners. They had driven the crusaders from the lands they had settled in the Levant and had been triumphant in the Balkans, occupying far more territory in Europe than the Western settlers had ever held in Syria and Palestine.” [7]

The Muslim world only began to take an interest in the Crusades again in the 1890s but seen through the prism of Western imperialist rhetoric and European romantic fantasies concocted by Walter Scott. The latter encouraged the myth of the culturally inferior crusaders faced with civilized, liberal, and modern-looking Muslims, and from the former the Muslims derived the equally false idea of a continuing Western assault. Many Arab Nationalists believed “their struggle for independence to be a predominantly Arab riposte to a crusade that was being waged against them. Since the 1970s, however, they have been challenged by a renewed and militant Pan-Islamism, the adherents of which have globalized the Nationalist interpretation of crusade history….” [8]

Thus we now have the spectacle of the modern Islamists very often invoking the Crusades. As Bin Laden wrote, “For the first time the Crusaders have managed to achieve their historic ambitions and dreams against our Islamic umma, gaining control over the Islamic holy places and the Holy Sanctuaries, and hegemony over the wealth and riches of our umma.” [9], and, “Ever since God made the Arabian Peninsula flat, created desert in it and surrounded it with seas, it has never suffered such a calamity as these Crusader hordes, that have spread in it like locusts, consuming its wealth and destroying its fertility”. [10] The battle, according to Bin Laden, is between Muslims-people of Islam- and the Global Crusaders. [11]

As Riley-Smith concludes, “It is this vision of a continuing crusade and of resistance to it that has suddenly and spectacularly forced itself on the world outside. The language employed is often feverish, but a Muslim does not have to be an extreme Islamist to hold the view that the West is still engaged in crusading….Having less to do with historical reality than with reactions to imperialism, the Nationalist and Islamist interpretations of crusade history help many people, moderates as well as extremists, to place the exploitation they believe they have suffered in a historical context and to satisfy their feelings of both superiority and humiliation”. [12]

[1] Jonathan Riley-Smith. The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 79.
[2] Ibid., p. 9.
[3] Ibid, pp. 11-12.
[4] Riley-Smith, p. 60.
[5] Riley-Smith, op. cit., p. 65.
[6] Riley-Smith, op.cit., p. 68.
[7] Riley-Smith, op.cit, p. 71.
[8] Riley-Smith, op.cit., p. 73.
[9] Osama bin Muhammad bin Laden. Messages to the World. Ed. Bruce Lawrence, trans. James Howarth. London and New York, 2005, p.16, quoted in Riley-Smith, p. 75.
[10] Bin Laden, op.cit.,p. 59, quoted in Riley-Smith, p. 75.
[11] Quoted in Riley-Smith, p. 75.
[12] Riley-Smith, p. 76.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

"It is becoming clear that al Qaeda is spreading in the Sahara."

"We achieved our central goal ... or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can't attack us again." -- Barack Obama, January 11, 2013

"As Muslim terrorists threaten attacks in Benghazi, Westerners flee," from Asia News, January 25 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Benghazi (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia have urged their citizens to leave the Libyan city of Benghazi due to a "specific, imminent threat to Westerners", linked to French action in Mali and the danger of new kidnappings by Muslim extremists.

According to British diplomatic sources, Islamists have threatened to carry out attacks against Western targets like the one on the US consulate on 11 September 2011 in which US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

Over the past two years since the anti-Gaddafi war, Benghazi has been one of the main recruiting centres for Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda fighters.

A senior Algerian officer claimed that the organisers of the Benghazi consulate attack are the same who seized the gas Tigantourine field in (in In Amenas, south-eastern Algeria) that left 38 hostages and 29 Muslim extremists dead.

The group recruited by Mokhtar Belmokhtar included several Egyptian jihadists active in Libya.

Sources in Algiers said that Mohamed-Lamine Bouchneb, the militant leading the attack at the site, had purchased arms for the assault in the Libyan capital, Tripoli.

The kidnappers gathered, undisturbed, at the southern Libyan town of Ghat, just across the border from Algeria, before their attack.

It is becoming clear that al Qaeda is spreading in the Sahara. On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to Congress about the events in Benghazi, warning that Jihadist groups have formed a complex alliance in North Africa with southern Libya and Mali as their main bases.

Indeed, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran militant who claimed overall responsibility for the Tigantourine attack, is believed to be based in Mali.

US State Department officials have said that some members of Ansar al-Shariah, the group that carried out the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had connections to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the militant groups now holding northern Mali.

This beard is waging a courtroom jihad

But his beard was not forcibly shaved. The judge who ordered this was removed for his horrifying "Islamophobia." The never-ending chutzpah of this jihad mass murderer and his attorneys is a disgrace, and that it is entertained at all is a sign of how compromised our military has become.

"Fort Hood shooting suspect wants death penalty out," by Angela K. Brown for the Associated Press, January 25 (thanks to Kenneth):

FORT WORTH, Texas — The new judge in the Fort Hood shooting rampage case faces a controversial decision next week: whether to spare Maj. Nidal Hasan a possible death sentence and let him plead guilty in the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation.

Defense attorneys said Hasan wants to plead guilty to 13 counts of premeditated murder, but Army rules prohibit a judge from accepting a guilty plea in a death penalty case. If the death sentence is removed, Hasan's punishment would be life without parole — which he already faces if convicted of the 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the 2009 attack on the Texas Army post.

The date for his long-delayed trial has not been set, but pretrial hearings are scheduled Wednesday through Friday so the new military judge, Col. Tara Osborn, can reconsider several defense requests previously rejected by the former judge. That judge was removed after the military's highest court said he appeared to show bias, a ruling that ended appeals that had delayed the case more than three months.

Defense attorneys argue that Hasan should be spared a possible death sentence because his rights have been violated — including by the former judge who ordered that Hasan's beard be forcibly shaved. Hasan first showed up in court in June with a beard, later saying it was required by his Muslim faith, but facial hair violates Army rules.

He also murdered thirteen people because of his Muslim faith. That should be taken into account as well.

Defense attorneys also claim Fort Hood's commanding general was not impartial when he decided in July 2011 that Hasan would face the death penalty, and had been influenced by high-ranking government officials. Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, has not yet entered a plea.

Osborn has full authority to decide on the death penalty issue because she is ruling on legal matters raised by the defense, said Jeff Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University School of Law in San Antonio.

"I think the case will go forward as a death penalty case, because it's dragged on for years, and if ever there was a case fitting of the death penalty, this is it," said Addicott, who is not involved in the Hasan case, adding that he believed Hasan is "a radical extremist ... and he has no remorse."

He said defense attorneys are simply trying to quickly end the case by having their client plead guilty and avoid a death sentence.

Witnesses have said that a gunman wearing an Army combat uniform opened fire after shouting "Allahu Akbar!" — or "God is great!" in Arabic — inside a crowded medical building on Nov. 5, 2009, where deploying and returning soldiers received vaccines and other tests. Hasan was also about to deploy to Afghanistan.

A Senate report released in 2011 said the FBI missed warning signs about Hasan, alleging he had become an Islamic extremist and a "ticking time bomb" before the rampage at Fort Hood, about 125 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Officials also said Hasan exchanged emails with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical U.S.-born Islamic cleric killed in Yemen in 2011 by a drone strike.

Osborn was appointed to oversee the Hasan case in December after the military's highest appeals court ousted the former judge, Col. Gregory Gross, and tossed out his order to have Hasan's beard forcibly shaved before his court-martial....

The opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are not going quietly. "Office of Egypt's Brotherhood torched in Ismailia," from Reuters, January 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):

ISMAILIA, Egypt, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Offices used by the Muslim Brotherhood's political party were set ablaze in the Egyptian city of Ismailia on Friday, witnesses said, as opponents of President Mohamed Mursi and his Islamist allies clashed with police in at least three other cities.

Witnesses said a group of youths had first broken into and ransacked the offices used by the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political arm.

Irfan, Irfan and Ashik: a trio of Misunderstanders of Islam

The BBC tells us they were "three men." Three "radicalised young men" who "despised" British people. Way down in the story we start hearing about al-Qaeda. Otherwise the BBC does its level best to prevent you from getting any inkling of the motivating ideology of these men.

"Birmingham terror suspects 'planned to kill British soldiers,'" from the BBC, January 25 (thanks to Mark):

Three men discussed using suicide vests, rucksack bombs and guns to kill British soldiers, a court has heard.

Irfan Naseer, Irfan Khalid and Ashik Ali, all of Birmingham, deny conduct in preparation of terrorist acts.

Prosecutors told Woolwich Crown Court the three men had "glorified" the 9/11 attacks and that Mr Ali made the claim about the plan to attack soldiers during a police interview.

But Mr Ali later told the court he did not intend to carry out such an attack.

The soldier attacks were said to be planned for April or May 2012.

The court has also heard the men were planning a bombing campaign which could have been bigger than the 7 July London attacks had they succeeded.

Brian Altman QC said the three were "radicalised young men", who "revered Osama Bin Laden".

And he said Mr Naseer and Mr Khalid returned from terror training "with radical ideas which they planned to put into action".

Police believed the men were hoping to detonate as many as eight rucksack bombs against multiple targets in the UK.
Suicide videos

Mr Naseer, from the Sparkhill area of Birmingham, and Mr Khalid, from the Sparkbrook area, are also accused of preparing for acts of terrorism by receiving training in Pakistan.

Mr Altman also told the court the men planned to kill British people "who they despised".

And Mr Altman said the men were "not the Four Lions", making reference to the "joke, would-be suicide bombers" portrayed in a fictional film about a group of British men planning a suicide attack within the UK.

The three were "deadly serious, hell-bent on achieving their goal", the prosecutor added.

The jury was told by prosecutors at the start of the trial that the pair had recorded suicide videos in Pakistan that would have been played to the world had their plot been completed.

During the trial, the jury heard the men had bought sports injury packs which prosecutors say contained chemicals useful in bomb-making.

Mr Naseer was allegedly planning to construct explosive devices and police recovered a partially burnt note that detailed a method to make a bomb.
'Naseeristan wonderland'

Mr Naseer told the jury that, in his conversations that were secretly recorded, he was in fact only pretending to be a terrorist to make himself look big.

He said he had posed as a trained plotter with al-Qaeda contacts because he had faced rumours in his local community that he was a Pakistani spy.

But Jonathan Whitfield QC, defending Mr Naseer, asked the jury: "Can you honestly see Mr Naseer running up and down a mountain lugging weapons... a rocket launcher?

"The only thing he's shot off is his mouth. Why would al-Qaeda waste a rocket launcher on Mr Naseer?

"The only places that Mr Naseer has been to are to are in his mind. The only guns he's used are on the computer. There's a wonderland he sometimes inhabits called Naseeristan.

"He does not deserve to be called a terrorist."

That's quite a defense: "I'm too much of a worm to have been a jihad terrorist."

Who is Kerry trying to fool? The Pakistani government didn't help the U.S. find bin Laden. In fact, they were enraged that they had not been filled in on the details of the hunt, which was a wise decision in light of the jihadist ties of the ISI, the Pakistani spy service. How enraged were they? Look:

Pakistani parliament condemns bin Laden raid, threatens U.S. with sanctions -- May 14, 2011

Pakistan: Prayers for Bin Laden in National Assembly -- May 11, 2011

U.S. suspects Pakistan leaked CIA station chief's name in retaliation for bin Laden raid -- May 10, 2011

Who sheltered bin Laden? Suspicion falls on Pakistan army chief -- May 9, 2011

Saudi Arabia and Turkey tried unsuccessfully to persuade Pakistan to hand over bin Laden to U.S. -- May 8, 2011

Bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for over 7 years -- May 7, 2011

Pakistan opposition leader on bin Laden killing: "This is the biggest tragedy in the history of Pakistan after the fall of East Pakistan in 1971" -- May 6, 2011

Pakistan warns U.S. of "disastrous consequences" for any more bin Laden-style raids -- May 6, 2011

Pakistan paying U.S. lobbyists to deny it helped bin Laden -- May 5, 2011

CIA confirms: Pakistanis not notified of OBL takedown over fears they would "jeopardize the mission" -- May 3, 2011

Pakistan's jihadist ties may have led U.S. to hit bin Laden alone -- May 2, 2011

Pakistani security forces protected Osama bin Laden for 10 years -- May 2, 2011

Huge numbers of people in Pakistan hated the bin Laden raid as well:

Most Pakistanis grieve for Osama bin Laden -- May 17, 2011

Pakistan: 4,000 rally to protest bin Laden killing, chant "America is the worst enemy of humanity!" -- May 15, 2011

Pakistan: Tiny Minority of Extremists buys 100,000 Osama bin Laden posters -- May 10, 2011

Pro-Osama rally in Pakistan: "Bin Laden was the hero of the Muslim world and after his martyrdom he has won the title of great mujahed" -- May 2, 2011

And this is still true:

Time to cut off Pakistan -- Robert Spencer, May 17, 2011

"Aid cut to Pakistan will be unkind, argues Kerry," by Anwar Iqbal in Dawn, January 24 (thanks to Lookmann):

WASHINGTON: Senator John Kerry, President Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of state, said during his confirmation hearing on Thursday that cutting US aid to Pakistan, would be a “dramatic, draconian and sledge-hammer” measure.

Senator Kerry also said that Pakistan’s role in leading the United States to Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad had not been sufficiently appreciated.

In his first appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his new role, Mr Kerry told the senators he foresaw a “more rapid” transition in Afghanistan, allowing an accelerated withdrawal of US troops before the 2014 deadline.

But the senator, who headed the committee before his nomination, assured the Afghans that America’s counter-terrorism mission in their country would continue beyond 2014.

It was Senator Rand Paul, a new Republican face in the committee, who suggested cutting US aid to Pakistan “if they do not release Dr Shakil Afridi” who, he said, was imprisoned for helping the CIA in locating Osama bin Laden. The Al Qaeda leader was killed in a US military raid on his compound in Abbottabad on May 2, 2011.

Mr Kerry informed the senator that he had discussed this issue directly with President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistan’s Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and like most Americans found it “incomprehensible if not repugnant, that somebody who helped us find Osama bin Laden is in jail in Pakistan”.

And “that bothers every American,” he added.

The senior US lawmaker, who stayed engaged with both Pakistan and Afghanistan as President Obama’s informal emissary during his first term, urged Senator Paul to also look at what the Pakistanis say.

“Pakistanis make the argument Dr Afridi did not know what he was doing, who he was specifically targeting … it was like a business for him,” he said, adding that this was no excuse for keeping the physician in jail.

But he said that he would stay engaged with Pakistan rather than resorting to “a pretty dramatic, draconian, sledge-hammer” approach of cutting US aid to the country Senator Paul had suggested.

Senator Kerry told the committee that the US had “a lot of interests” in this relationship, such as using Pakistani roads for sending critical supplies to US troops in Afghanistan.

The United States, he noted, was also receiving valuable on the ground intelligence cooperation from Pakistan, which also helped the Americans locate OBL.

What are the Muslims in the West doing to persuade their coreligionists that jihad-martyrdom suicide attacks is not actually allowed in Islam, despite the Qur'an's promise of Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (cf. Qur'an 9:111)? Why are all their efforts directed at shaming non-Muslims in the U.S. into thinking that there is something wrong with their noticing that those who support such attacks justify them on Islamic grounds?

"Suicide attack on Nato convoy kills five civilians in Afghanistan," from AFP, January 25 (thanks to all who sent this in):

KABUL: A suicide car bomber attacked a Nato convoy in Afghanistan’s strategic Kapisa province on Friday, killing at least five civilians and wounding 15, officials said.

No Nato troops were killed or injured in the attack in a village in Tagab district in the province, northeast of the capital Kabul, a spokesman for Nato’s US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) told AFP.

The explosion destroyed the wall of a house, killing four civilians inside, while a passerby on a motorcycle also died and 15 people were wounded, said the provincial police chief of security, Abdul Jalil Shamal.

A spokesman for Taliban insurgents, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a text message to AFP that 12 American troops had been killed and wounded. The Taliban regularly exaggerate their battlefield actions....

On Monday, a Taliban suicide squad stormed the traffic police headquarters at dawn, killing three police officers and unleashing a stand-off that lasted for more than eight hours.

Less than a week earlier, a squad of suicide bombers attacked the Afghan intelligence agency headquarters, killing at least one guard and wounding dozens of civilians.

From the anti-Muslim Brotherhood, anti-Morsi demonstrations in Tahrir Square today. (Thanks to Kenneth.)

No doubt Kerry has no idea that Morsi was invoking the Qur'an. But he was:

"This is what these occupiers of the land of Palestine know – these blood-suckers, who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs." -- Mohammad Morsi, President of Egypt

"And (remember, O Children of Israel) when We made a covenant with you and caused the mount to tower above you, (saying): Hold fast that which We have given you, and remember that which is therein, that ye may ward off (evil). Then, even after that, ye turned away, and if it had not been for the grace of Allah and His mercy ye had been among the losers. And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!" -- Qur'an 2:63-65

"Say: O People of the Scripture! Do ye blame us for aught else than that we believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed aforetime, and because most of you are evil-livers? Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road." -- Qur'an 5:59-60

"Ask them (O Muhammad) of the township that was by the sea, how they did break the Sabbath, how their big fish came unto them visibly upon their Sabbath day and on a day when they did not keep Sabbath came they not unto them. Thus did We try them for that they were evil-livers. And when a community among them said: Why preach ye to a folk whom Allah is about to destroy or punish with an awful doom, they said: In order to be free from guilt before your Lord, and that haply they may ward off (evil). And when they forgot that whereof they had been reminded, We rescued those who forbade wrong, and visited those who did wrong with dreadful punishment because they were evil-livers. So when they took pride in that which they had been forbidden, We said unto them: Be ye apes despised and loathed!" -- Qur'an 7:164-166

So when Morsi calls the contemporary Jews in Israel the "descendants of apes and pigs," he is saying that they're the descendants of the Sabbath-breaking Jews who defied Allah in these Qur'an passages. His epithet, in other words, is inherently Qur'anic. And now Kerry is calling his remarks "reprehensible." Will Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. demand that he apologize for calling Qur'an-based remarks "reprehensible"? Or will he get a free pass for his blasphemy because he is about to head up Muslim Appeasement Central, the U.S. State Department?

"John Kerry Defends Obama Admin’s F-16 Gifts to Muslim Brotherhood-Ruled Egypt," by Madeleine Morgenstern for The Blaze, January 24 (thanks to Bill):

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) on Thursday defended the Obama administration’s gift of four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt despite Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s newly-surfaced comments referring to Israelis as “descendents of apes and pigs.”

Kerry, during his confirmation hearing to be the next secretary of state, told Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) the foreign aid package was worked out in 2010 when Hosni Mubarak still ruled Egypt.

“The fact that sometimes other countries elect someone you don’t agree with doesn’t give us permission to walk away,” Kerry said.

He called Morsi’s comments “reprehensible” and “unacceptable by anyone’s standard.”

“Those comments set back possibilities of working towards mutual issues of mutual interest,” he said. “They are degrading comments, they’re unacceptable by anyone’s standard and I think they have to be apologized for.”

But he said despite Morsi’s words, Kerry said the U.S. has a “critical interest” in Egypt — hence following through on the aid package.

“Not everything lends itself to a simple classification, black or white,” Kerry said. “We have critical interests with Egypt, critical interests. Egypt has thus far supported, lived by peace agreements with Israel and has taken steps to deal with the problem of security in the Sinai. Those are vital to us, our security interests and the security interests of Israel.”

What indication does he have that Egypt is going to keep abiding by those peace agreements -- especially since the U.S. keeps showering gifts upon it with no regard for accountability?

I asked in writing about a previous story on this settlement: "'There was no evidence that the chain set out to deceive customers.' So why the $700,000 payout?" This story makes the answer clear: it is a form of tribute, of jizya. Now a Muslim attorney in Dearborn is angry that the payout is mostly going to various Muslim groups, not to those who were "injured" by eating "false halal" chicken sandwiches. The attorney for the Muslim who filed the complaint explains that there is no way to tell who ate the forbidden sandwiches, the money is going to various community charities.

That's reasonable enough, but it raises the larger question of just what this money is for. McDonald's, by giving money to the Huda Clinic and the Arab American National Museum (and a hefty amount to the attorneys), is showing its contrition and good will, its determination not to let this offense happen again, its anxiousness to appease its Muslim clientele. Given that there was no intent to deceive, this is not a good precedent, as it will just lead to more demands for further accommodation. Moreover, as David Wood points out, it demonstrates the inequality of treatment of Muslims and non-Muslims in Dearborn, where Christians are arrested just for answering Muslim questions about Christianity, and no one is paying them $700,000 for their hurt feelings.

Then there is the $20,000 to Ahmed Ahmed. What will the money do? He has eaten forbidden chicken, and thereby transgressed Allah's law. Will the $20,000 he receives relieve his anxiety over the possibility that he could be consigned to an eternity of drinking molten lead in hellfire (Qur'an 18:29) for this? Will Allah be more likely to forgive him because he finagled the kuffar out of $20,000 for a chicken sandwich?

The theological questions multiply.

An update on this story, and a Jizya Alert from Dearborn: "DEARBORN: Group wants share of settlement money over McDonald’s non-halal chicken," by Joe Slezak for the Press & Guide, January 24 (thanks to Lookmann):

DEARBORN — An attorney in the city is upset that those who ate chicken that was labeled as halal, but really wasn’t, won’t be sharing in the $700,000 awarded in a lawsuit.

McDonald’s and Finley’s Management Co. agreed Jan. 18 to pay the money over the non-halal chicken, which was served at the McDonald’s at 13158 Ford Road.

Ahmed Ahmed of Dearborn Heights filed the lawsuit in September 2011 after finding that the chicken wasn’t halal, which means that it didn’t meet Islamic requirements for preparing food.

Ahmed is expected to get $20,000, the Huda Clinic in Detroit is expected to get about $275,000, about $150,000 is expected to go to the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and about $230,000 is expected to go to attorneys. The exact amounts will be determined at a hearing.

Attorney Majed Moughni, who runs the Facebook site Dearborn Area Community Members, has started a campaign to have the money paid to those who ate the “haram” chicken, not those he said were not “injured.” He’s asking those who did to “like” the entry and leave contact information for themselves and others who ate the meat.

As of late Thursday afternoon, the campaign had nearly 700 “likes,” nearly 600 comments and 60 “shares.”

Moughni said in an email that the community is “showing its outrage over the sale of false halal chicken sandwiches.”

For food to meet the halal standard of preparation, God’s name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered. Islam forbids the consumption of pork.

Two of the four McDonald’s in the city advertise that they sell halal Chicken McNuggets and McChicken sandwiches, meaning that they have to get the meat from an approved halal provider. The other restaurant, at 14860 Michigan Ave., was not involved in the suit.

Ahmed’s attorney, Kassem Dakhlallah, told The Associated Press that there was no evidence of problems in production, but the Ford Road location sold non-halal chicken when it ran out of halal. Ahmed and Dakhlallah investigated the matter and sent a letter to McDonald’s Corp. and Finley’s Management Co., the franchisee, but didn’t get a response, so they filed a lawsuit as part of a class action in November 2011.

Dakhlallah told The AP that since it would be impossible to determine who ate haram chicken at the restaurant, both sides agreed to give money to community-based charities.

We just saw Westerners among those who carried out the jihad massacres at the Algerian gas plant. So apparently recruitment efforts like those of these men sometimes pay off. We have seen again and again in accounts of jihad recruitment that recruiters like Ocak and Lodin appeal to their targets on Islamic grounds, quoting the Qur'an, invoking Muhammad's example, and trying to awaken in them a sense of Islamic duty. Yet this is the one element of the appeal that non-Muslim counterterror analysts are forbidden to examine.

"2 convicted of al-Qaida membership in Germany," from the Associated Press, January 25 (thanks to Lookmann):

BERLIN (AP) — A German and an Austrian have been convicted of membership in al-Qaida and sentenced to several years in prison.

Yusuf Ocak, 27, from Luebeck, Germany, was also convicted of being a founding member of the German Taliban Mujahideen and was sentenced to 9 years in prison. Maqsood Lodin, 23, an Austrian of Afghan background, was sentenced to 6 years 9 months.

Both can appeal.

The pair met in July 2010 in Pakistan's Waziristan region and were assigned by al-Qaida to collect money and recruit members for the terrorist group in Europe upon returning there in the spring of 2011. Ocak also posted a threat video on the internet in 2009....

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 50
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45 / Part 46 / Part 47 / Part 48 / Part 49

"...They merely endeavored to interest Charlemagne in their favour; for neither the conquest of Spain, the invasion of France, the pillage of Greece and the two Sicilies, nor the entire subjugation of Africa, could for near eight centuries rouse the Christians to arms. If at last the shrieks of numberless victims slaughtered in the East; if the progress of the barbarians, who had already reached the gates of Constantinople, awakened Christendom, and impelled it to rise in its own defence, who can say that the cause of the holy wars was unjust? Contemplate Greece, if you would know the fate of a people subjected to the Muslim yoke. Would those, who at this day so loudly exult in the progress of knowledge, wish to live under a religion which burned the Alexandrian library, and which makes a merit of trampling mankind under foot, and holding literature and the arts in sovereign contempt.

“The Crusades, by weakening the Muslim hordes in the very center of Asia, prevented our falling prey to the Turks and Arabs: they did more, they saved us from our own revolutions; they suspended, by the peace of God, our intestine wars; and opened an outlet to that excess of population, which sooner or later occasion the ruin of states.

“With regard to the other results of the Crusades, people begin to admit that these military enterprise were favourable to the progress of science and civilization. Robertson has admirably discussed this subject in his Historical Disquisition concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India. I shall add, that in this estimate we must not omit the renown gained by the European arms in these distant expeditions.The time of these expeditions is the heroic period of our history, the period which gave birth to the epic poetry. Whatever diffuses a tinge of the marvellous over a nation, ought not to be despised by that very nation. In vain should we attempt to deny that there is something implanted in our hearts which excites in us a love of glory: man is not absolutely made of positive calculations of profit and loss; it would be debasing him too much to suppose so. It was by impressing upon the Romans the eternity of their city, that their chiefs led them on to the conquest of the world, and spurred them forward to achievements which have gained them everlasting renown.” [1]

Rodney Stark admirably sums up some of the modern wrong-headed interpretations of the Crusades: “ During the twentieth century, this self-interest thesis [of Gibbon and Mosheim] was developed into an elaborate “materialist” account of why the Crusades took place. The prolific Geoffrey Barraclough (1908–1984) wrote: “[O]ur verdict on the Crusades [is that it amounted to] colonial exploitation.” Or, as Karen Armstrong confided, these “were our first colonies.” A more extensive and sophisticated material explanation of why the knights went east was formulated by Hans Eberhard Mayer, who proposed that the Crusades alleviated a severe financial squeeze on Europe’s “knightly class.” According to Mayer and others who share his views, at this time there was a substantial and rapidly growing number of “surplus” sons, members of noble families who would not inherit and whom the heirs found it increasingly diffi cult to provide with even modest incomes. Hence, as Mayer put it, ‘the Crusade acted as a kind of safety valve for the knightly class . . . a class which looked upon the Crusade as a way of solving its material problems.’ Indeed, a group of American economists recently proposed that the crusaders hoped to get rich from the fl ow of pilgrims (comparing the shrines in Jerusalem with modern amusement parks) and that the pope sent the crusaders east in pursuit of “new markets” for the church, presumably to be gained by converting people away from Islam. It is thus no surprise that a leading college textbook on Western civilization informs students: ‘From the perspective of the pope and European monarchs, the crusades offered a way to rid Europe of contentious young nobles . . . [who] saw an opportunity to gain territory, riches, status, possibly a title, and even salvation.’ ”

Sir Steven Runciman’s elegantly written three-volume history held the field for many decades from 1950s onwards, and his summing up of the Crusades was very influential [2]:

“Seen in the perspective of history the whole Crusading movement was a vast fiasco….[T]he tenuous kingdom of Jerusalem and its sister principalities were a puny outcome from so much energy and enthusiasm….One of Pope Urban’s expressed aims in preaching the Crusades was to find some useful work for the turbulent and bellicose barons who otherwise spent their energy on civil wars at home; …[T]he chief benefit obtained by Western Christendom from the Crusades was negative….Even more harmful was the effect of the Holy War on the spirit of Islam. Any religion that is based on an exclusive Revelation is bound to show some contempt for the unbeliever. But Islam was not intolerant in its early days. Mahomet himself considered that Jews and Christians had received a partial revelation and were therefore not to be persecuted. …The Holy War begun by the Franks ruined [the] good realtions [between Christians and Muslims]. The savage intolerance shown by the Crusaders was answered by growing intolerance amongst the Moslems. The broad humanity of Saladin and his family was soon to be rare amongst their fellow-believers. By the time of the Mameluks, the Moslems were as narrow as the Franks….The harm done by the Crusades to Islam was small in comparison with that done by them to Eastern Christendom….[T]he destruction of Byzantium [by the Crusaders] was the result of deliberate malice. [The] greed and[ the]clumsiness [of the Crusaders] led them to indulge in irreparable destruction….It was the Crusaders themselves who wilfully broke down the defence of Christendom and this allowed the infidel to cross the Straits and penetrate into the heart of Europe…The chief motive that impelled the Christian armies eastward was faith…This genuine faith was often combined with unashamed greed….There was so much courage and so little honour, so much devotion and so little understanding. High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed, enterprise and endurance by a blind and narrow self-righteousness; and the Holy War itself was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God, which is a sin against the Holy Ghost.”

Rodney Stark sums up the prevailing wisdom: “during the Crusades, an expansionist, imperialistic Christendom brutalized, looted, and colonized a tolerant and peaceful Islam.” Stark then argues that this was “Not so. As will be seen, the Crusades were precipitated by Islamic provocations: by centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places. Although the Crusades were initiated by a plea from the pope, this had nothing to do with hopes of converting Islam. Nor were the Crusades organized and led by surplus sons, but by the heads of great families who were fully aware that the costs of crusading would far exceed the very modest material rewards that could be expected; most went at immense personal cost, some of them knowingly bankrupting themselves to go. Moreover, the crusader kingdoms that they established in the Holy Land, and that stood for nearly two centuries, were not colonies sustained by local exactions; rather, they required immense subsidies from Europe. In addition, it is utterly unreasonable to impose modern notions about proper military conduct on medieval warfare; both Christians and Muslims observed quite different rules of war. Unfortunately, even many of the most sympathetic and otherwise sensible historians of the Crusades are unable to accept that fact and are given to agonizing over the very idea that war can ever be “just”, revealing the pacifism that has become so widespread among academics. Finally, claims that Muslims have been harboring bitter resentments about the Crusades for a millennium are nonsense: Muslim antagonism about the Crusades did not appear until about 1900, in reaction against the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the onset of actual European colonialism in the Middle East. And anti-crusader feelings did not become intense until after the founding of the state of Israel.” [3]

[1] F.A. de Chateaubriand. Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary During the Years 1806 and 1807 Trans, by F. Shoberl, New York: Van Winkle and Wiley, 1814. pp.315-316; French edn.: Chateaubriand. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, ed. Jean-Claude Berchet, Paris: Folio Classique, p. 371-373.
[2] Steven Runciman. A History Of the Crusades, Vol.III The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951, pp. 469-480.
[3] Rodney Stark. God’s Battalions. The Case for the Crusades. New York: Harper One, 2009, pp.6-9.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

Last night on my weekly segment on Michael Coren's Sun TV show.

Mohamed Merah was the sadistic jihadist who murdered seven people, including three Jewish children, in France last year. Now the jihadists responsible for the jihad mass murders at the Algerian gas plant are promising more such jihad massacres in France. "Jihadist group delivers chilling threat to France," from The Local, January 22 (thanks to Lookmann):

The jihadist group believed to be behind the deadly hostage siege in Algeria has issued a series of alarming threats against France, warning that last week’s mass kidnapping at the In Amenas gas plant was “only the beginning.”

Speaking to French weekly Paris Match, the spokesman for the cell known as "Those Who Sign In Blood", which is headed by notorious Mokhtar Belmokhtar said "French crusaders, Zionist Jews and their minions, will pay for their aggression against Muslims in northern Mali."

In a warning deliberately aimed to stir up fear in France, the spokesman, who called himself Joulaybib, said there would be repeats of recent terror attacks carried out on French soil by self-proclaimed Islamist extremists.

“I hope France realizes that there will be dozens of Merahs and Kelkals," Joulaybib said.

Mohamed Merah was the 23-year-old French-Algerian gunman who caused terror throughout France in March 2012, when he killed seven people, including three French soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish schoolchildren in the south-western cities of Toulouse and Montauban. Khaled Khelkal was an Algerian terrorist who took part in a series of bomb attacks on the Paris metro in 1995.

Joulaybib, a Mauritanian national whose real name, according to Paris Match, is Hacen Ould Khalil, also promised that “the In Amenas attack is only the beginning."

Speaking by telephone, the Islamist spokesman also laid out the hostage-takers' three demands; an end to the French offensive against Islamist militants in Mali, the release of ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently imprisoned in the US for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, and the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist serving an 86-year jail sentence in the US....

Not exactly Suleiman the Magnificent, but he'll have to do for now

"Crusaders": jihadists live in an eternal glorious past. In any case, this new jihad group is vowing to repel with force any attempt to remove Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government. Will Ahmed Rehab of Hamas-linked CAIR fly over to Egypt to explain to them that jihad doesn't have to do with force, but with staying fit despite one's busy schedule? "New group Qaeda al-Jihad threatens to protect Egypt’s President," from the Voice of Russia, January 24 (thanks to Jacob):

An unknown group in Egypt, Qaeda al-Jihad has threatened to use force to protect President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood movement from any attack by secular forces and crusaders.

Its activist described Morsi as caliph and the vicar of God in Egypt, the daily Al-Quds al-Arabi said[.]

On Friday, in response to a call by the opposition, mass demonstrations will be held in many cities across the country. The demonstrators are planning to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that led to the ousted of President Hosni Mubarak and voice against the policy pursued by the incumbent President.

Moreover, the opposition has started insisting that Islamists have robbed the achievements of the revolution.

The deceptive and misleading #MyJihad campaign has apparently attracted at least one persistent Misunderstander of Islam. No doubt Hamas-linked CAIR's Ahmed Rehab is in deep talks with this fellow already, explaining to him that jihad doesn't really involve killing anyone, but is really just romping through the daisies.

(Thanks to CJ)

"This would be a moral outrage that is inexcusable." Yes. "American Mumbai plotter sentenced to 35 years," by Michael Tarm and Sophia Tareen for the Associated Press, January 24 (thanks to Kenneth):

CHICAGO (AP) -- An American drug dealer who had faced life in prison was sentenced instead to 35 years Thursday for helping plan the deadly 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India - a punishment prosecutors said reflected his broad cooperation with U.S. investigators but that a victim's family member called "an appalling dishonor."

It was David Coleman Headley's meticulous scouting missions that facilitated the assault by 10 gunmen from a Pakistani-based militant group on multiple targets in Mumbai, including the landmark Taj Mahal Hotel. TV cameras captured much of the three-day rampage often called India's 9/11. More than 160 people, including children, were killed.

Gee, AP, that's interesting. What kind of "militant group"?

Glimpses of the horror came through the teary testimony of one of the victims who described the gory scene as she huddled under a restaurant table with her friends as gunmen sprayed the room with bullets, then walked around executing men, women and children one by one. Her own clothes soaked with blood.

"I know what a bullet can do to every part of the human body," said Linda Ragsdale, a Tennessee children's author, who was shot. "I know the sound of life leaving a 13-year-old child. These are things I never needed to know, never needed to experience."

Headley faced life in prison, and at 52 years old, even a 35-year term could mean he'll never walk free. But federal prosecutors had asked for a more lenient 30 to 35 years, citing his extraordinary cooperation including as the government's star witness at the 2011 trial of a Chicago businessman convicted in a failed attack on a Danish newspaper.

Former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald spoke in court calling Headley's cooperation within 30 minutes of his 2009 arrest "unusual".

However, Ragsdale and other victims called the 35 years unjust for the severity of the violence.

U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said he considered the cooperation in imposing his sentence even though "the damage that was done was unfathomable." He cited a letter from Headley who vowed that he was a changed man, but Leinenweber said he didn't buy it.

"I don't have any faith in Mr. Headley when he says he's a changed person and believes in the American way of life," he said.

Headley, who did not address the court, showed no emotion when the sentence was announced. Security was tight at the packed hearing; dogs were walked through the lines of people waiting to get into the courtroom.

Prosecutors say Headley, who was born in the U.S. to a Pakistani father and American mother, was motivated in part by his hatred of India going back to his childhood. He changed his birth name from Daood Gilani in 2006 so he could travel to and from India more easily to do reconnaissance without raising suspicions.

He never pulled a trigger in the attack, but his contribution to the Pakistani-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, made the assault more deadly. He conducted meticulous scouting missions - videotaping and mapping targets - so the attackers who had never been to Mumbai adeptly found their way around.

One woman whose husband and daughter were killed in the attack said a lighter sentence would be "an appalling dishonor" to those killed.

"I feel that for the magnitude of the killings that took place, David Headley has lost his right to live as a free man," said Kia Scherr, who is currently in Mumbai. "This would be a moral outrage that is inexcusable."...

The Zionist media must be responsible for taking his benign and loving words out of context. In any case, in a meeting with U.S. senators, Morsi dug deeper into his Islamic antisemitism: "Morsi: Jewish-controlled media distorted my ‘apes and pigs’ remark," by Raphael Ahren for the Times of Israel, January 24 (thanks to Block Ness):

In a conversation with senior US lawmakers, Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi reportedly implied that the Jews control the US media and have distorted comments he made in the past about Zionists being “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs.”

The meeting earlier this month between Morsi and seven US senators deteriorated sharply and nearly derailed after he made the remarks, Foreign Policy magazine reported Wednesday.

Morsi, a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, came under fire recently after video surfaced of him calling Jews and Zionists “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

The senators’ meeting with Morsi was partially intended to receive clarification on his earlier comments.

At first, the Egyptian president defended himself by saying he did not harbor negative feelings about Judaism or Jewish people.

He then launched a diatribe about Israeli policies against the Palestinians, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) told Foreign Policy. “He was attempting to explain himself … then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is controlled by certain forces and they don’t view me favorably,’” Coons told the magazine’s The Cable blog.

Asked if Morsi specifically named the Jews as the forces that control the American media, Coons replied that all the senators believed the implication was obvious. “He did not say [the Jews], but I watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I,” Coons said. “I thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion.”

The US, which provides Egypt with financial aid, was disturbed by the 2010 video. After it surfaced, the US administration condemned Morsi, with White House spokesman Jay Carney calling the remarks “deeply offensive.”

On January 16, after the US senators visited Cairo, Morsi’s spokesman Yasser Ali said the president had told the lawmakers that his comments referred to “the Israeli aggression on Palestinians in Gaza” and had “been put into context.”

After the meeting, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who led the delegation, said he strongly disapproved of Morsi’s remarks about the Jews and Zionists, but decided to “leave it to the president to make any further comments on this matter that he may wish.”

But speaking to The Cable, Coons revealed that the Americans’ conversation with Morsi turned sour after they challenged him on his alleged anti-Semitic sentiments.

“The meeting then took a very sharply negative turn for some time. It really threatened to cause the entire meeting to come apart so that we could not continue,” Coons said. Several senators told Morsi that blaming the controversy over his ostensibly anti-Semitic statements on the Jews themselves was possibly even more problematic than his original comments.

“The conversation got so heated that eventually Senator McCain said to the group, ‘OK, we’ve pressed him as hard as we can while being in the boundaries of diplomacy,’” Coons said.

The rest of the meeting, which covered various other topics from financial aid for Egypt to Syria and Iran, was constructive, the senator said.

Oh good!

Kidnapping infidels and releasing them for ransom or killing them -- whichever is more advantageous for the Muslims -- is fully sanctioned in Islamic law: "As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)" — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.

"Somali Islamists threaten to execute Kenyan hostages," from AFP, January 24 (thanks to Twostellas):

Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab insurgents issued an ultimatum to Kenya on Wednesday to release all prisoners held on terrorism charges or they will execute all Kenyan hostages they hold.

Issuing a February 14 deadline, the extremist group demanded in messages posted on Twitter the release of "all Muslim prisoners held on so-called terrorism charges in Kenya".

Kenya must also "secure the release of Muslims extradited to Uganda for terrorism charges", it added, apparently referring to those jailed or on trial for the Shebab’s July 2010 twin bomb attacks that killed at least 74 people in Kampala.

The Shebab also released a video titled "the final message" with two men featured and a photograph of four others, who the Shebab said were Kenyan prisoners....

"Following the expiration of this period, all the kuffar (non-Muslim) Kenyan prisoners who appeared in the recent video will be executed," the Shebab added on Twitter....

That's their jihad. What's yours?

Sharia: coming soon to a theater near you. "EgyptAir reviews ‘hot’ in-flight movies after Islamist complaint," from Al Arabiya, January 24:

Egypt’s national airline said on Thursday it will analyze its onboard movies to make sure they respect “Egyptian values and customs,” following a complaint by a Muslim Brotherhood member who took offence at a film screened during one of its flights.

The head of Egypt’s Shoura council caused a stir during a flight from Sudan to Egypt when he called on the plane’s staff to stop screening a movie featuring “Hot Scenes,” according to an Egyptian daily.

Ahmed Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and parliament’s upper house speaker, wanted to put a stop to the screening of the movie on the flight. However, passengers on the flight rejected his requests to do so, according to the Egyptian privately owned Arabic daily Al Masry Al Youm.

In a statement, EgyptAir said he had “expressed reservations about one of the scenes” in the movie.

The statement did not name the film, but local media identified it as “Arees Mama,” or “Mother’s Suitor,” a decades-old movie starring the Egyptian actress Nelly.

A brief verbal altercation took place during the flight between the crew and the council delegation which was resolved when the captain intervened and lifted the television screens in front of the council members....

In a separate statement, EgyptAir said it would form a committee to review all films shown on its flights.

Roshdy Zakaria, chief executive of the state-run company, said the committee would pull films it deemed “depart from Egyptian values and customs.”

For a laugh? I thought we weren't allowed to laugh at Muslims with bombs

Their opponents are making bomb threats and planting actual bombs at EDL demos, and the leaders of the EDL are the ones who are in prison, on far less serious charges. "Bomb hoax sent to English Defence League ahead of Bristol march 'for a laugh' - Court," from The Bristol Post, January 23 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

A BOMB hoaxer sparked a security alert days before a controversial right-wing group marched through Bristol.

A court heard Sakander Mahmood sent a message to the English Defence League saying: "Fourteenth July in Bristol – You are getting bombed."

The threat to bomb the demonstration was made "just for a laugh", it is claimed – but was taken "very seriously" by police and the EDL, a volunteer for the organisation has told a jury.

The EDL march from Redcliffe Wharf to Queen Square, staged to protest at what it called the "Islamification" of Bristol, was the focus of a huge police operation to keep supporters of the right-wing group and anti-fascist counter demonstrators apart.

More than 1,000 officers from forces across the UK were on the streets of the city and two were injured in violent clashes. The operation cost the taxpayer about £500,000.

Police estimated about 300 EDL took part, with about 500 attending a counter-demonstration called We Are Bristol.

Yesterday a court heard that 26-year-old Mahmood, who lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, had the idea of making the threat after reading online that a car containing explosives had been intercepted on its way to another EDL rally.

Samuel Green, prosecuting, told the city's Crown Court how Mahmood told police who came to his home: "Yes. Hands up. Just for a laugh. They've got a march. I've put on a bomb threat."

He said the defendant claimed he got the idea for the bomb threat as he was on the internet and saw a news item, dated July 10, about the bomb found in a car on the motorway.

Mr Green said there was no suggestion the defendant was connected in any way to the motorway incident.

But Helen Gower, the personal assistant of EDL leader Tommy Robinson, told the court she was "very distressed" when the email sent to the group's website was forwarded to her on July 11, the day after Mahmood sent it.

Asked how seriously the organisation took the threat, Mrs Gower said: "Very seriously."

Mrs Gower, who gave evidence over a videolink from Kent, said she was concerned because the style of the email was similar to that used by Muslim hacking groups who had attacked the EDL website before.

She said she also feared for EDL supporters due to gather in Bristol.

Mrs Gower was asked about the news reports of a car stopped on the M1, a week before the threat was received. The car reportedly contained a nail bomb intended for use against the EDL.

Mrs Gower said the organisation decided that bomb threats should always be reported to police after the incident on the M1. She added that the EDL had received between 15 and 20 bomb threats through its website since 2010.

Mr Green told the jury it was irrelevant whether they agreed with the EDL and said the issue they had to decide was Mahmood's state of mind when he sent the email. He said he defendant must have realised the message would cause "fear, inconvenience and panic".

No doubt that was the idea.

Mahmood denies a charge of communicating a bomb hoax....

Western news articles about female genital mutilation routinely assert that it is solely a cultural practice, not justified by any religion. Yet again and again we see Muslim clerics -- such as Kiai Hajj Amin Ma'ruf, who is not an "extremist" but the head of Indonesia's largest Muslim organization, justifying it, and it is sanctioned in Islamic law.

"Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) (by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr 'clitoris' [this is called khufaadh 'female circumcision'])." -- 'Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64

"Islamic law permits by definition, by prophetic statement and by practice female circumcision" -- Australian Imam Afroz Ali

Sharia Alert from modern, moderate Indonesia: "Indonesian Ulema in favour of female circumcision: a 'human right,'" by Mathias Hariyadi for Asia News, January 24 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - The Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) is in favour of female circumcision (and men) that, although it can not be considered mandatory, it is still "morally recommended." This is shown by the words of the leader of the largest Islamic organization in the most populous Muslim country in the world. He warns, however, to avoid "excesses", coming to the removal or cutting of the clitoris. In the meantime, has come under investigation and will be prosecuted by a court "ethical" the judge who, in recent days, he "joked" about sexual violence to women, causing a veritable wave of outrage (see AsiaNews 15/01 / 2013 Ordinary Indonesians against judges and politicians who "justify" sexual violence).

The reference point for Islamic issues (such as the legality of a food and a drink), a "consultor" to the government in matters of faith, the body responsible for issuing fatwas - the answers on Muslim questions of faith and morals - the MUI has taken a position on female circumcision. And by the mouth of his head, Kiai Hajj Amin Ma'ruf, pointed out that it is an "advisable practise on moral grounds", at the same time, he rejects any attempt to declare this practice illegal or contrary to the principles. It comes under the sphere of "human rights," said the Islamist leader, and is "guaranteed by the Constitution."

"Female circumcision - said Amin - is commonly practiced by cutting out parts that cover the clitoris" and, at the same time, he invites believers to refrain from "excessive circumcision" that ends up becoming a real mutilation genital. He recalled that the Mui can not make this practice "mandatory", but "strongly rejects" the possible cancellation of this "tradition" which is performed in a "ritualistic ceremony" and also applies to men....

Racism? What race are Muslims again? I keep forgetting. And as for the Hagia Sophia, the Turks in Austria for some reason neglected to mention exactly how it became a mosque. On May 29, 1453, Islamic jihadists broke the siege of Constantinople and entered the city. Historian Steven Runciman notes that the Muslim soldiers "slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women, and children without discrimination. The blood ran in rivers down the steep streets from the heights of Petra toward the Golden Horn. But soon the lust for slaughter was assuaged. The soldiers realized that captives and precious objects would bring them greater profit." (The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 145.)

Some jihadists "made for the small but splendid churches by the walls, Saint George by the Charisian Gate, Saint John in Petra, and the lovely church of the monastery of the Holy Saviour in Chora, to strip them of their stores of plate and their vestments and everything else that could be torn from them. In the Chora they left the mosaics and frescoes, but they destroyed the icon of the Mother of God, the Hodigitria, the holiest picture in all Byzantium, painted, so men said, by Saint Luke himself. It had been taken there from its own church beside the Palace at the beginning of the siege, that its beneficient presence might be at hand to inspire the defenders on the walls. It was taken from its setting and hacked into four pieces." (P. 146.)

The jihadists also entered the Hagia Sophia, which for nearly a thousand years had been the grandest church in Christendom. The faithful had gathered within its hallowed walls to pray during the city’s last agony. The Muslims, according to Runciman, halted the celebration of Orthros (morning prayer); the priests, according to legend, took the sacred vessels and disappeared into the cathedral’s eastern wall, through which they shall return to complete the divine service one day. Muslim men then killed the elderly and weak and led the rest off into slavery. Then the Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror had a muezzin mount the pulpit and proclaim that there was no god but Allah and Muhammad was his prophet. The great church was transformed into a mosque, its gorgeous icons destroyed or covered with huge medallions bearing Islamic declarations of faith.

Once the Muslims had thoroughly subdued the entire city of Constantinople, they set out to Islamize it. According to the Muslim chronicler Hoca Sa’deddin, tutor of the sixteenth-century Sultans Murad III and Mehmet III, "churches which were within the city were emptied of their vile idols and cleansed from the filthy and idolatrous impurities and by the defacement of their images and the erection of Islamic prayer niches and pulpits many monasteries and chapels became the envy of the gardens of Paradise."

Now the sons and heirs of these bloody conquerors complain because they think a Lego set stereotypes them.

"Lego accused of racism with Star Wars set," by Matthew Day for the Telegraph, January 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Lego has been accused of racism by the Turkish community over a Star Wars model that supposedly resembles one of Istanbul’s most revered mosques.

Austria’s Turkish community said the model was based on Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul and that the accompanying figures depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.”

The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria released a statement calling for Lego to apologise for affronting religious and cultural feelings.

The anger was provoked by “Jabba’s Palace”, a model of the home of Jabba the Hutt from Lego’s Star Wars product range based on the blockbusting series of science fiction films.

Jabba is the large slug-like creature who holds Han Solo captive in the film Return of the Jedi, and his palace is the setting for several crucial scenes, including using Princess Leia as his slave.

Jabba’s domed home and accompanying watchtower bear, according to the statement, an unwanted resemblance to Istanbul’s great Hagia Sophia, and another mosque in Beirut.

A picture posted on the Cultural Community’s website includes the box for Jabba’s Palace with arrows pointing out similarities to a picture of the Hagia Sofia mosque.

A converted Christian basilica and famed for its massive domed roof, the Hagia Sofia is one of the most famous mosques in the world and served Istanbul’s Muslim community for over 500 years before becoming a museum in 1943. It is also regarded as one of the finest, and largest examples, of Byzantine architecture.

The Jabba case came to light after an Austrian Turk complained to the organisation after his sister had bought his son the box set.

Austria’s Turkish community also took issue with the figures that went with the palace, including Jabba.

“The terrorist Jabba the Hutt likes to smoke a hookah and have his victims killed,” said the statement posted on the organisation’s website.

Nobody who smokes a hookah ever has his victims killed. Everybody knows that.

“It is clear that the ugly figure of Jabba and the whole scene smacks of racial prejudice and vulgar insinuations against Asians and Orientals as people with deceitful and criminal personalities.”

The crimes associated with the figures, the statements adds, include terrorism, slavery, murder and human sacrifice.

Terrorism associated with Muslims? Who ever heard of such a thing? Must be greasy Islamophobes at work indeed.

Taking into account that many of the Lego figures carry weapons, the Turkish organisation also urged parents “not to buy toys of war or toys of discrimination” as the model goes against the “peaceful coexistence of different cultures in Europe”.

How did you guys get the Hagia Sophia in the first place?

As an indication of the anger felt over Jabba’s Palace, the organisation said it was considering taking legal action against Lego for inciting racial hatred and insulting human dignity.

Katharina Sasse, a public relations manager working on behalf of Lego, denied any link between Jabba’s Palace and the mosque.

“The Lego Star Wars product Jabba´s Palace does not reflect any actually existing buildings, people, or the mentioned mosque,” she said. “The Lego mini-figures are all modelled on characters from the movie.

“We regret that the product has caused the members of the Turkish cultural community to come to a wrong interpretation, but point out that when designing the product only the fictional content of the Star Wars saga were referred to.”

Now she tells us. My article in FrontPage this morning focuses on a largely overlooked aspect of Clinton's testimony yesterday:

After four years of pretending there is no jihad against the free world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blurted out the truth during her testimony on the Benghazi jihad massacre Wednesday: “We now face a spreading jihadist threat,” she said, adding: “We have to recognize this is a global movement.”

We do? Yet the Obama administration has for years steadfastly and repeatedly denied both that there was a jihadist threat at all and that it was a global movement. So far has the Obama administration been from acknowledging that there was a jihad threat that less than two months into Obama’s first term, on March 16, 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted proudly that in her first testimony to Congress, “I did not use the word ‘terrorism,’ I referred to ‘man-caused’ disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”

Even “terrorism,” absent a modifier, was a politically correct euphemism for jihad violence that demonstrated an unwillingness to examine the beliefs of the jihadists, for to have done so would have led straight into Islam. Those who described those dedicated to destroying the United States simply as “terrorists” generally did not want to admit that Islam had anything to do with that war. George W. Bush had started this ball rolling when he proclaimed Islam a “religion of peace” shortly after 9/11; however, Bush officials could and did explore the Islamic texts and teachings that illuminated jihadist motives and goals. Under Obama, it became official U.S. policy not to do so.

On May 13, 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Judiciary Committee, where he was questioned repeatedly by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) about whether the Fort Hood jihad mass murders, the attempted jihad car bombing in Times Square, and the Christmas underwear jihad bomber over Detroit could be attributed to “radical Islam.” Holder repeatedly refused to agree to this, going only so far as to say: “There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious.”

Noted Smith: “I don’t know why the administration has such difficulty acknowledging the obvious, which is that radical Islam might have incited these individuals. If you can’t name the enemy, then you’re going to have a hard time trying to respond to them.”

Indeed. Nonetheless, Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, who is the current Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, echoed Holder’s reluctance to say that Islam had anything to do with jihad terrorism on May 26, 2010, during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He declared: “Nor do we describe our enemies as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself or one’s community.” Brennan has repeated this many times, and has defined the enemy not as a global movement, but as a “small fringe of fanatics” consisting of al-Qaeda and “its terrorist affiliates.”

It was no surprise, then, that Brennan readily agreed in October 2011 to demands from Islamic supremacist groups with links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, to purge all training materials for law enforcement and intelligence agents of all mention of Islam or jihad. 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.”

In December 2011, when Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) asked Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism,” Stockton did his best to dodge the question and finally answered: “I don’t believe it’s helpful to frame our adversary as Islamic with any set of qualifiers that we might add, because we are not at war with Islam.”

This created numerous absurd situations, since Islamic jihadists so often spoke of Islam and jihad in explaining and justifying their actions, but the Obama administration plowed ahead anyway. Most notoriously, it characterized the November 2009 Fort Hood jihad massacre, when Major Nidal Hasan, a self-described “soldier of Allah” who had given numerous indications of his jihadist proclivities and was shouting “Allahu akbar” as he murdered thirteen Americans, not as Islamic jihad or even terrorism, but as “workplace violence.”

There is more.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 24 ― Despite facing heat for Datuk Ibrahim Ali’s bible-burning remark, Malay rights group Perkasa have insisted their president’s words were actually a “wake-up call” to prevent possible violence against distributors of bibles containing the word “Allah” and other Arabic scripts.

The group’s secretary-general, Syed Hassan Syed Ali, said Ibrahim has no problem facing the consequences of his remarks, including being questioned by the police due to the reports lodged against him.

“To the Perkasa president, he is sure not worried about these reports... because the investigation will surely be based on truth and justice,” he said in a statement sent to The Malaysian Insider.

But Syed Hassan maintained that Ibrahim’s statement was more to prevent possible physical violence and other untoward incidents, should these Malay-language bibles get into the hands of Muslim students.

If this is seen by Muslims who view this as an attempt at apostasy, the Perkasa leader said violence could be used against the book’s distributor.

“I very much understand my president’s statement because it is as a ‘wake-up call’ to all parties to prevent these untoward incidents.

“This is what the president fears because then there would be a physical attack between those of different faiths... this is not good for the nation,” he said.

Now, followers of which faith would physically attack those of other faiths? I'll leave that to your imagination.

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 49
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45 / Part 46 / Part 47 / Part 48

Gibbon also acknowledges that that many crusaders had mixed motives, that it was not a simple matter -- not all were moved by pure thoughts. It was much easier for the religious authorities to goad the masses into action by promises of absolution of their sins by fighting, not their brethren in Europe, but infidels in foreign lands, with possiblities of achieving immortality as Christian heroes:

“Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of enthusiasm ; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the assurance of divine aid. But I am equally persuaded, that in many it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading, principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel the stream of national manners. Against the private wars of the Barbarians, their bloody tournaments, licentious loves, and judicial duels, the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins; they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nations of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt, would immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid prospect of military glory.”

The vulgar masses were undoubtedly taken with visions of worldly gain, and they believed they would acquire wine, women, and land, and at the same time escape their own state of servitude in Europe:

“They could march with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were devoted to their arms: their fancy already grasped the golden sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private adventurer. Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries ; and their natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the tales of pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The vulgar, both the great and small, were taught to believe every wonder, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of mines and treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper, and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In this earthly paradise, each warrior depended on his sword to carve a plenteous and honourable establishment, which he measured only by the extent of his wishes. Their vassals and soldiers trusted their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of a Turkish emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and the flavour of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, were temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession, of the champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a powerful incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by feudal or ecclesiastical tyranny. Under this holy sign the peasants and burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the glebe, might escape from an haughty lord, and transplant themselves and their families to a land of liberty. The monk might release himself from the discipline of his convent : the debtor might suspend the accumulation of usury, and the pursuit of his creditors; and outlaws and malefactors of every cast might continue to brave the laws and elude the punishment of - their crimes.

“These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add the infinite series, the multiplying powers of example and fashion. The first proselytes became the warmest and most effectual missionaries of the cross : among their friends and countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense, of their holy vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority. The martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of cowardice ; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre of Christ, was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength; and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their companions, were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in their footsteps. The ignorance which magnified the hopes, diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated, the chiefs themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of their way and the state of their enemies ; and such was the stupidity of the people, that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that was not the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labours. Yet the more prudent of the crusaders, who were not sure that they should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna, provided themselves with those precious metals, which, in every country, are the representatives of every commodity. To defray, according to their rank, the expences of the road, princes alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and cattle, peasants their castles and the instruments of husbandry. The value of property was depreciated by the eager competition of multitudes ; while the price of arms and horses was raised to an exorbitant height by the wants and impatience of the buyers. Those who remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched by the epidemical disease : the sovereigns acquired at a cheap rate the domains of their vassals ; and the ecclesiastical purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of their prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewn on the garment, in cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin : an hot iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark ; and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his breast, was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest benefices of Palestine.”

The Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment view of the Crusades was led by Chateaubriand [1768-1848], who wrote: “The writers of the eighteenth century have taken pains to represent the Crusades in an odious light. I was one of the first to protest against this ignorance or injustice. The Crusades were not mad expeditions, as some writers have affected to call them either in their principle or in their results. The Christians were not the aggressors. If the subjects of Omar, setting out from Jerusalem, and making the circuit of Africa, invaded Sicily, Spain, nay, even France, where they were exterminated by Charles Martel, why should not the subjects of Philip I quitting France, make the circuit to Asia, to take vengeance on the descendants of Omar in Jerusalem itself?... Those who perceive in the crusades nothing but a mob of armed pilgrims running to rescue a tomb in Palestine, must take a very limited view of history. The point in question was not merely the deliverance of that sacred tomb, but likewise to decide which of the two should predominate in the world, a religion hostile to civilization, systematically favourable to ignorance, despotism, and slavery, or a religion which has revived among the moderns the spirit of learned antiquity and abolished servitude. Whoever reads the address of Pope Urban II, to the council of Clermont, must be convinced that the leaders in these military enterprises had not the petty views which have ascribed to them, and that they aspired to save the world from a new inundation of barbarians. The spirit of Islamism is persecution and conquest; the gospel, on the contrary, inculcates only toleration and peace. Accordingly the Christians endured for seven hundred and sixty-four years all the oppressions which the fanaticism of the Saracens impelled them to exercise.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

No end to the dissembling. "Hillary Clinton: ‘I Did Not Say That It Was About the Video for Libya,’" from Fox News, January 23 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, answering questions on the attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) pressed her on the anti-Islamic video that was originally blamed for the attack. “When you briefed us, you said unequivocally this was a result of a video and I remember in fact you got pretty upset about it when somebody suggested this was a terrorist attack.”

Clinton said, “I did not say … that it was about the video for Libya, it certainly was for many of the other places where we were watching these disturbances.”

Oh yes she did:

She didn't see requests that would have shown up the folly of the administration's support for the Libyan jihadists. "Choking up, Hillary Clinton says Benghazi is ‘personal,’" by Olivier Knox for Yahoo! News, January 23:

Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying before Congress on the deadly Sept. 11 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, choked up Wednesday as she assured lawmakers that the security of American diplomats was a “personal” issue for her.

“For me, this is not just a matter of policy—it’s personal,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in one of her final acts as America’s top diplomat.

Clinton’s voice broke as she recalled welcoming home the “flag-draped caskets” of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed in the terrorist strike at the consulate and putting her arms around bereaved family members.

Clinton, whose department has drawn heavy fire over the insufficient security arrangements at the American compound in Benghazi, praised diplomatic security officials. “I literally trust them with my life," she said. And she denied personally being aware of numerous requests for more security in Benghazi. "I didn't see those requests," Clinton added.

The secretary of state also said that American diplomats overseas cannot hide behind higher walls and more armed guards. “Our men and women who serve overseas understand that we accept a level of risk to protect the country we love,” she said. “They represent the best traditions of a bold and generous nation. They cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs.”

She rebuked those who may advocate that the U.S. take a more limited role on the world stage at a time when the “Arab Spring” has sown chaos across North Africa and the Muslim world. “We cannot afford to retreat now,” she said.

“When America is absent, especially from unstable environments, there are consequences," Clinton said. "Extremism takes root, our interests suffer, our security at home is threatened.”...

In the U.S., if you don't believe that Islam is a Religion of Peace and jihad is solely a benign spiritual struggle, you're a greasy Islamophobe, a bigot, a racist, an enemy of all that is good. But somehow Muslims the world over keep misunderstanding Islam's core teachings of peace and spiritual self-improvement, and keep getting the crazy idea that jihad has something to do with violence. Sunni-Shi'ite Jihad Update: "Suicide bomb blast at a Shiite mosque in Iraq kills 42," from Agence France-Presse, January 23:

Samarra: A suicide bomb at a funeral in a Shiite mosque in north Iraq killed at least 42 people on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of deadly violence amid a political crisis engulfing the country.

The attack, which also left 75 people wounded, struck at the Sayid al-Shuhada mosque in Tuz Khurmatu, 175 kilometres (110 miles) north of Baghdad, and targeted the funeral of a relative of a politician who was killed a day earlier.

No group claimed responsibility, but Sunni militants often launch attacks in a bid to destabilise the government and push Iraq back towards the sectarian violence that blighted it from 2005 to 2008.

Niyazi Moamer Oghlu, the secretary general of the provincial council of Salaheddin, which surrounds Tuz Khurmatu, put the toll from the attack at 42 dead and 75 wounded.

"Corpses are on the ground of the Husseiniyah (Shiite mosque)," said Shallal Abdul, mayor of Tuz Khurmatu, which lies 175 kilometres (110 miles) north of Baghdad. "The suicide bomber managed to enter and blow himself up in the middle of the mourners."

Among the wounded were officials and tribal leaders, including Ali Hashem Mukhtar, the deputy chief of the Iraqi Turkman Front and a provincial councillor in Salaheddin, which surrounds Tuz Khurmatu.

The funeral had been for Mukhtar's brother-in-law, who was shot dead in Tuz on Tuesday afternoon....

This is the kind of law that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation wants to impose upon the U.S. and Europe, with willing cooperation from Western Leftists and the mainstream media. The Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News, among others, have recently published calls for restrictions on the free speech of those who dare to criticize the global jihad and Islamic supremacism.

"Man gets 5 years for insulting Islam on Facebook," from The Jakarta Post, January 23:

The Bandung High Court has added one more year to the prison term of Sebastian Joe, who was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for the blasphemy of Islam by the Ciamis District Court in West Java.

The high court decided on Tuesday to give Sebastian a higher sentence as it used the 2008 Information and Electronic Transaction (ITE) Law as a lex specialis (special law), instead of the Criminal Code (KUHP) used by the district court, said Sebastian’s lawyer, Anang Fitriana, as quoted by tempo.co on Wednesday.

Sebastian was reported by the Ciamis chapter of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) last year for a Facebook status he made, which they considered insulting to Islam.

In PJ Media this morning, I discuss the overlooked lessons of the recent Algeria jihad mass murders:

At the height of the hostage crisis in Algeria, one of the kidnappers explained: “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” As of Sunday evening, this exercise in religious education had claimed eighty-one lives and left BP’s natural gas plant in Algeria in a state of ruin, booby-trapped with mines and explosives.

Further indication of the hostage-taker’s mindset came from one Algerian who escaped and later recounted: “The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels. We will kill them, they said.” According to the Telegraph, “They allowed locals to go free, saying they did not want to hurt Muslims. Some locals were forced to recite parts of the Koran to prove they were Muslims.”

Clearly the hostage-takers’ religion was important – indeed central – to their motives and goals for undertaking this savage attack; yet mainstream media coverage has followed the usual patterns, downplaying or ignoring outright what the attackers said about what they were hoping to accomplish, since these statements lead to questions about Islam that they would prefer not be asked.

Yet they must be asked: we have now in the last few months seen bloody massacres carried out in the name of Islam in at this natural gas plant and at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi; a brutal Sharia regime come to power in northern Mali; and escalating persecution of Christians in Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Muslim spokesmen and groups in the U.S. routinely dismiss concerns about such things by asserting that their view of Islam, and that of Muslims in the U.S. and the vast majority of Muslims worldwide, is completely different from that of the Muslims who perpetrate these attacks, and that therefore anyone who wonders if such violence in the name of Islam will ever become commonplace in the U.S. is simply “Islamophobic” and hateful.

Maybe so. Certainly this line has so thoroughly convinced government, law enforcement, and media elites that no discussion or dissent is permitted anymore from these claims, as if they were hallowed religious dogma. Nonetheless, it is ill-advised not to take the trouble to understand one who is determined to destroy you. The hostage-takers in Algeria said they wanted to teach Americans what Islam is. It would be foolish, and ultimately fatal, not to consider exactly what message they wanted us to get about Islam.

The core of the message may be found in a statement attributed in Islamic tradition to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam:

I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah. (Bukhari 1.2.24)

Muhammad must fight against people until they confess that Allah is the only god and Muhammad is his messenger, and if they do, their lives and property are safe from him – in other words, if one does not confess that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is prophet, one’s life and property are not safe from the Muslims. In taking hostages in the first place, moreover, the jihadis were on firm Islamic ground: kidnapping infidels and later deciding to kill them is fully sanctioned in Islamic law. “As for the captives,” says the Islamic jurist al-Mawardi’s Laws of Islamic Governance,

the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them.

There is more.

“This is the result of the Arab Spring. I hope the Americans are conscious of this.” They aren't. None of those who are in power are conscious of it, anyway.

"Some Algeria Attackers Are Placed at Benghazi," by Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 22 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

ALGIERS — Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in Libya in September, a senior Algerian official said Tuesday.

The Egyptians involved in both attacks were killed by Algerian forces during the four-day ordeal that ended in the deaths of at least 38 hostages and 29 kidnappers, the official said. But three of the militants were captured alive, and one of them described the Egyptians’ role in both assaults under interrogation by the Algerian security services, the official said.

If confirmed, the link between two of the most brazen assaults in recent memory would reinforce the transborder character of the jihadist groups now striking across the Sahara. American officials have long warned that the region’s volatile mix of porous borders, turbulent states, weapons and ranks of fighters with similar ideologies creates a dangerous landscape in which extremists are trying to collaborate across vast distances.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to testify before Congress on Wednesday about the Libyan attack that killed the American ambassador and three staff members, raised the specter of regional cooperation among extremists soon after the mission in Benghazi was overrun.

In particular, she said the Islamist militant takeover of northern Mali had created a “safe haven” for terrorists to “extend their reach” and work with other extremists in North Africa, “as we tragically saw in Benghazi,” though she offered no clear evidence of such ties.

Now the Algerians say the plot to seize the gas complex in the desert was hatched in northern Mali as well. Indeed, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the veteran militant who has claimed overall responsibility for the siege, is believed to be based there.

But the Algerian official did not say why the captured kidnapper’s assertion — that some fighters had taken part in both the Benghazi and Algerian attacks — should be considered trustworthy. Nor did he say whether it was obtained under duress.

Instead, he focused on the chaos unleashed by the recent uprisings throughout the region, leaving large ungoverned areas where extremists can flourish.

“This is the result of the Arab Spring,” said the official said, who spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations into the hostage crisis were still under way. “I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

American counterterrorism and intelligence officials have said that some members of Ansar al-Shariah, the group that carried out the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had connections to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the militant groups now holding northern Mali. But American officials have also said that the Qaeda affiliate played no role in directing or instigating that Benghazi attack.

Similarly, Egyptian security officials said they believed that a longtime Islamist militant from Egypt was involved in the gas field attack, but the officials did not know of any connection to the Benghazi attack as well.

Algeria was firmly opposed to the Western intervention to help topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya in 2011, and this nation’s conservative leadership viewed the Arab Spring with deep suspicion, making no secret of its desire to avoid any such occurrences....

The Navarran artist Abel Azcona, international exponent of performance art, is receiving threats because of his work "Eating a Koran", in which he eats pages from the book sacred to Muslims.

The piece forms part of an invetigation [sic] project initiated during a residency on the topic of religious fundamentalism and the need to "nourish ourselves with fiction, lies and fear". Specifically, this project consists of an installation, a performance and a video work, in which the artist eats a copy of the Koran over eight hours as a critique of religious radicalism. "I believe in freedom of expression, provocation and artistic freedom, and I will certainly continue doing so today, tomorrow and always," comments Abel Azcona, who has been threated by anonymous letters, emails and SMS.

"I believe in art as a critical tool and to create debate about the politics of identity", adds the Navarran artist, who has received criticism ever since he started in performance art, "but they will never change my way of thinking and working; what's more, the threats clarify my path, and I know that I am in the right." For that reason he will go on using art "as a critical weapon for whoever wants to feel it and listen to it." Source: Deia.com H/T: Maria José

Over at Atlas Shrugs I discuss the latest example of the mainstream media's suicidal taste for restrictions on the freedom of speech:

Ahmadi spokesmen like the strutting Qasim Rashid and the execrable Harris Zafar, the author of a recent Washington Post op-ed, carry water for the same Islamic supremacists who would cheerfully slit their throats if they were back in Pakistan, and instead target those who stand up for the Ahmadis and decry their persecution. In the WaPo, Zafar offered a manifesto for the destruction of the freedom of speech worthy of a true totalitarian – and emblematic of the Islamic supremacist war on free speech and all criticism of Islam.

“The difference between Islam’s view on free speech and the view promoted by free speech advocates these days,” Zafar asserts, “is the intention and ultimate goal each seeks to promote. Whereas many secularists champion individual privileges, Islam promotes the principle of uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people. Both endorse freedom for people to express themselves, but Islam promotes unity, whereas modern-day free speech advocates promote individualism.”

This glossy Orwellian language, “uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people,” actually means “imposing Sharia upon mankind, and subjugating non-Muslims as inferiors under its rule.” That’s the unity Zafar envisions, as the Ahmadis teach Sharia supremacy even as they eschew violent jihad. Zafar makes this clear when he says that “the ultimate goal of Islam is to unite mankind under a single banner of peace.” The only unity of mankind that Islam’s core texts envision is that of the rule of Islamic law and the concomitant denial of basic rights to non-Muslims.

“In order to unite mankind,” Zafar continues, “Islam instructs to only use speech to be truthful, do good to others, and be fair and respectful. It attempts to pre-empt [sic] frictions by prescribing rules of conduct which guarantee for all people not only freedom of speech but also fairness, absolute justice, and the right of disagreement.”

Actually, Islam doesn’t allow for the freedom of speech at all. And its idea of “fairness” and “absolute justice” includes the death penalty for apostates and institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims and women.

Zafar attempts to base his argument on Islam’s foundational book: “The Koran instructs people to speak the truth (33:71), to speak in a manner that is best (17:54), to speak to others kindly (2:84) and to refrain from inappropriate speech (4:149). With Islam’s guidance to purify our intentions, it promotes free speech when our intention is to serve a good purpose, promote peace, bring people closer to God and unite mankind. If, however, our intentions are to insult others or promote disorder or division, we should refrain.” He does not, however, mention Koran 3:28, which warns believers not to take unbelievers as friends (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something like alliance), “unless you have a fear of them.” This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used in the Arabic is tuqātan (تُقَاةً), the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the familiar term taqiyya. The Koran commentator Ibn Kathir says that the phrase rendered here as “unless you have a fear of them” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.” While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” The Sunnis of Al-Qaeda, among others, practice it today.

With evident distaste, Zafar claims that “the most vocal proponents of freedom of speech, however, call us towards a different path, where people can say anything and everything on their mind. With no restraint on speech at all, every form of provocation would exist, thereby cultivating confrontation and antagonism. They insist this freedom entitles them the legal privilege to insult others. This is neither democracy nor freedom of speech. It fosters animosity, resentment and disorder.”

Note the sleight of hand: “With no restraint on speech at all, every form of provocation would exist, thereby cultivating confrontation and antagonism.” Zafar is implying that the Muslims who riot and kill because of perceived affronts to Islam are not responsible for their own actions, but that those who supposedly provoked them are. This is an increasingly widespread confusion in the West, willfully spread by people like Zafar and his Islamic supremacist allies. In reality, the only person responsible for his actions is the person who is acting, not anyone else. You may provoke me in a hundred ways, but my response is my own, which I choose from a range of possible responses, and only I am responsible for it.

But having established that if someone riots and kills in response to someone else’s speech, the fault lies with the speaker, not the rioter, Zafar drives his point home: speech must be restricted in the interests of “world peace”: “Treating speech as supreme at the expense of world peace and harmony is an incredibly flawed concept. No matter how important the cause of free speech, it still pales in comparison to the cause of world peace and unity.”

And who will decide what speech accords with “world peace and harmony,” and what speech does not? Why, Islamic supremacists like Zafar, of course. The argument that calling attention to the motives and goals of jihadists and Islamic supremacists so that free people can more effectively resist them will be dismissed out of hand.

But Zafar doesn’t want us to worry about that, for he assures us that “Islam does not prescribe any worldly punishment for unseemly speech. So people who insult should not be persecuted. Islam grants everyone the right to express disagreements with others. After all, the Prophet Muhammad called differences of opinion a blessing in society and never sought to censor or threaten those who verbally attacked him.”

Actually, according to a manual of Islamic law certified as reliable by al-Azhar, the foremost institution in Sunni Islam, Islam mandates death for non-Muslim subjects of the Islamic state who mention “something impermissible about Allah, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), or Islam” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o11.10).

Zafar plows on, however, as his argument becomes ever more fanciful, false, and divorced from reality: “According to the Koran, disbelievers called [Muhammad] ‘a mad man,’ ‘a victim of deception,’ a ‘fabricator’ and treated him as a liar. Some claimed he was taught by another person instead of receiving revelations from God. They called the Koran ‘confused dreams’ and ‘mere stories of the past’ and even tore it into pieces. Through this all, he courageously endured all verbal assaults. Rather than calling for any punishment, the Koran instructs us to ‘overlook their annoying talk’ and ‘bear patiently what they say.’ The lesson here for all Muslims is that we are not to be afraid of insults. Rather, we must have the same courage as our Prophet to face such insults in the eye and respond with forbearance and calm, righteous speech. Muslims must learn how their faith instructs them to respond when they are verbally attacked. No riots; no violence. We respond to speech with speech, but our speech is to be better and more dignified.”

This sounds great, except for the fact that none of it is true. Actually, Muhammad responded to insults by ordering the murder of those who insulted him, including Abu ‘Afak, who was over one hundred years old, and the poetess ‘Asma bint Marwan. Abu ‘Afak was killed in his sleep, in response to Muhammad's question, “Who will avenge me on this scoundrel?” Similarly, Muhammad on another occasion cried out, “Will no one rid me of this daughter of Marwan?” One of his followers, ‘Umayr ibn ‘Adi, went to her house that night, where he found her sleeping next to her children. The youngest, a nursing babe, was in her arms. But that didn’t stop ‘Umayr from murdering her and the baby as well. Muhammad commended him: “You have done a great service to Allah and His Messenger, ‘Umayr!” (Ibn Ishaq, 674-676)

Then there was Ka‘b bin Al-Ashraf. Muhammad asked: “Who is willing to kill Ka‘b bin Al-Ashraf who has hurt Allah and His Apostle?" One of the Muslims, Muhammad bin Maslama answered, “O Allah’s Apostle! Would you like that I kill him?” When Muhammad said that he would, Muhammad bin Maslama said, “Then allow me to say a (false) thing (i.e. to deceive Kab).” Muhammad responded: “You may say it.” Muhammad bin Maslama duly lied to Ka‘b, luring him into his trap, and murdered him. (Bukhari 5.59.369)

Perhaps mindful of such material despite his denial that it exists, Zafar then slyly calls for restrictions on the freedom of speech of those whose speech he finds offensive – all in the name of “uniting people,” of course: “So while antagonists and enemies of peace create slanderous videos, cartoons or advertisements – like the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ film, Pamela Geller’s new ignorant NYC subway ads and Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon about Prophet Muhammad – let us not fall for their claim that an individual’s privilege to say whatever they want is more important than the higher principle of uniting people and saving this planet from a path of animosity, hatred and destruction. Rather than falsely accusing Islam of censorship, let us understand the beauty of giving higher consideration to mankind over our own personal privileges. And let us listen to the wisdom of the Khalifa of Islam, His Holiness Mirza Masroor Ahmad, who said: ‘Let it not be that in the name of freedom of speech the peace of the entire world be destroyed.’”

Instead, Zafar and Ahmad would have it that authoritarian controls on speech be imposed in the name of a spurious Islamic peace.

Sharia in action in Nigeria: eating monkey and pork meat is haram; murdering those who sell it is pleasing to Allah. "Suspected Islamists kill 23 in two Nigeria attacks," by Ibrahim Mshelizza for Reuters, January 22 (thanks to Lookmann):

(Reuters) - Gunmen killed 23 people in northern Nigeria in attacks that appeared to target gamblers and people selling 'forbidden' meat that Islamist militants disapprove of, officials and locals said on Tuesday.

In the deadliest attack, late on Monday, gunmen opened fire at a market in the town of Damboa, targeting local hunters who sell bush meat from animals such as monkeys and pigs, which strict Muslims are forbidden to eat, a local official said.

"Gunmen suspected to be members of BH (Islamist sect Boko Haram) came to the town market and shot dead 13 local hunters on the spot while five others died from their injuries at the hospital," Alhaji Abba Ahmed said. "They came to the market in a Volkswagen Golf car, carried out the operation and left."

In a separate attack in the north's biggest city of Kano, some 500 km (310 miles) west of Damboa, on Tuesday, suspected Boko Haram members riding on motorbikes shot dead five people playing an outdoor board game, witnesses and a hospital source who received the bodies said. Two others were wounded....

Boko Haram wants to carve an Islamic state out of Nigeria, a country of 170 million people split roughly evenly between Christians and Muslims. The insurgency is seen as the top security threat to Africa's leading oil and gas producer.

Nigeria plans to deploy around 1,200 troops as part of a West African intervention force to combat Islamist militants occupying the north of Mali, and officials fear Nigeria's involvement could further inflame its own insurgency.

President Goodluck Jonathan told Reuters in Geneva on Tuesday that tackling global jihadists is in Nigeria's interest because of the links between its Islamists and those in the desert states to the north, like Mali. An Islamist group known as Ansaru, which has been blamed for abducting and killing Westerners, claimed responsibility for an attack on Nigerian troops heading to Mali on Sunday that killed two officers.

Boko Haram's long-bearded members practice a strict Wahhabist version of Islam that regards anyone who disagrees with it as infidels. They frequently target bars and other forms of entertainment.

Militants have killed several hundred people in the past three years in a campaign to impose sharia, Islamic law, on Nigeria. Their targets include the security forces and churches, although they have killed more Muslims than Christians....

Those who think that Tommy Robinson is being treated this way in prison because of a passport violation probably also believe that Muhammad filmmaker Mark Youssef is in prison because of a parole violation. Clearly, he is being given this harsh treatment because dhimmi British officials want to make an example of him for anyone who might want to resist their dhimmitude and Britain's Islamization.

Update on Tommy's situation from Nemesis (thanks to Ashwin):

He's been put on the block in segregation again, most of his clothes have been taken, he has no socks, he's been told he can only have 3 showers a week and he has been told his family can only visit at 9am in the morning, so that means his wife and kids need to be up and out for around 5.30-6.00 am for the journey. It's basically worse than Wandsworth!

And here is word from Tommy himself (transcriptions thanks to Pamela Geller, who has more here):

I thought I'd write a quick note to compare a normal prisoners weekly routine with my routine.

Normal Prisoner Routine:

10am - Cell door open, play pool, table tennis, use phone and socialise
11.30am - Locked up
12.00pm - Get lunch and remain in cell
2.00pm - Cell doors open, play pool, table tennis, use phone, socialse
4.30pm - Locked up
5.00pm - Get dinner, doors remain open for social games etc
7.30pm - Cells locked for evening

On top of this each prisoner gets access to gym, 45 times a week, they get to play football, they get to work, they get education, they can also get 'enhanced', meaning extra visits from family, extra weekly money to spend etc. They also enjoy a TV, radio, etc.

My Prison Routine:

10.00am - Door opens for shower, put straight back in cell after
12.00am - Door opens, given lunch, door closes
2.00pm - I get let out of cell for 1 phone call, I'm then locked back up
5.00pm - Door opens, I'm given dinner and locked back up.

I have no TV, no gym, no education. I have nothing, no talking to other prisoners. I cannot get 'enhanced' because you can't whilst on 'Seg' [segregation] . When 'enhanced' you can have a pillow, a duvet etc.

I am on 'Seg' [segregation], not through choice, the system has put me there for my own safety. I am held under 'Good', meaning I have not done anything wrong. If I have not done anything wrong why am I being PUNISHED! I am not even allowed to attend Church!

Prisoners cause trouble, ie stabbing screws, setting fire to their cells yet get more privilages than I do. They still get access to the gym. I am being victimised and mentally tortured in a cell with no TV for NO reason other than my political views and my criticism of Islam.

Long term solitary confinement and 'Seg' [segregation] is not good for someones mental health, so why are they doing it? I see that I will be in [?] for many more months to come. I do not see these conditions acceptable for an animal let alone someone on 'Good'! Its the year 2012 almost 2013, I really didn't think they held prisoners like this anymore. There are other prisoners being held on this 'Seg' [segregation] unit under 'Good'. THEY HAVE A TV.

I have not asked once to be held under segregation, infact the opposite. I have asked to be on 'normal' location, time and time again, so I can enjoy the same freedoms other prisoners have!

I had a legal visit earlier, there were 5 rooms with prisoners seeing their briefs, me and 4 bearded mullah's, they looked like they had seen a ghost when they spotted me sitting there. Gave me a bit of a laugh.

If I plead 'guilty' on 7th of January my brief says I'll be out in April, if I plead 'not guilty' it won't even be at trial by June?? Double edged sword! Gonna sit and think about which way to go.

I am 100% sure that I am being treated this way in order to break me, to break my willingness to fight! Its never going to happen, I came into prison fighting and I'll leave prison fighting.

See the letters here.

Last summer, a Pakistani Muslim cleric said that polio vaccinations were un-Islamic. More recently, the Taliban was murdering people who were administering the polio vaccine in Pakistan. And this is the fruit of their quest for Islamic purity.

"Officials: Polio virus found in Egypt linked to Pakistan," from AFP, January 22 (thanks to Patrick Poole):

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani health officials Monday called for infants leaving the country to be issued polio vaccinations at airports after virus samples linked to a southern Pakistani city were discovered in Egypt.

Two sewage samples from Cairo were analyzed and found to resemble a recently discovered strain in the Pakistani city of Sukkur, a joint statement by health officials, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF said.

"To reduce the possibility of spread of the polio virus beyond Pakistan's borders, the government's Monitoring and Coordination Cell is advising to set up permanent vaccination counters at the international departure lounges of all airports," it said.

The statement recommended that "all children under five years leaving the country are vaccinated against the polio virus."

Though Egypt has been polio-free since 2004, authorities there have ordered the immediate vaccination of all children under five years of age in the areas where the samples were found.

Polio cases in Pakistan have risen sharply in recent years, hitting 198 in 2011 — the highest figure for more than a decade and the most of any country in the world, according to the WHO....

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the highly infectious crippling disease remains endemic, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Earlier this month Pakistan provided paramilitary and police support to polio vaccination teams in the northwest after a series of attacks on medical workers.

UN agencies suspended work on a nationwide campaign to inoculate children against the highly infectious disease after nine health workers were murdered in a string of attacks in the northwest and Karachi in December last year.

Rumors about the vaccine being a plot to sterilize Muslims have long dogged efforts to tackle the disease in Pakistan.

Suspicion of vaccination programs intensified after the jailing of a doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden in 2011 using a hepatitis campaign.

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 48
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45 / Part 46 / Part 47

In fact, I believe Gibbon’s position on the Crusades was far more subtle than hitherto acknowledged. Many historians writing one-volume accounts of the Crusades, in their conclusions, tend only to quote Gibbon’s comments from Chapter LXI of his Decline and Fall. But we need to go back to Chapter XIX to have a fuller picture. Here are some of Gibbon’s views from Ch. XIX [1].

Man, according to Gibbon, is naturally violent, and we are ready to grant the slightest provocation as sufficient cause for war. But we cannot be so indulgent when it comes to holy war -- we cannot believe that Jesus would allow fighting unless the motive were pure. We must be sure of the justice of our enterprise. Gibbon does allow that there was some justification for the Crusades, though he believes that the Koran preaches, and the Muslims, in fact, practice, tolerance. And yet, at the same time, Gibbon acknowledges that the Christians were under an “iron yoke”, and the Turks posed a serious threat to Christendom:

“In the age of the crusades, the Christians, both of the East and West, were persuaded of their lawfulness and merit; their arguments are clouded by the perpetual abuse of Scripture and rhetoric; but they seem to insist on the right of natural and religious defence, their peculiar title to the Holy Land, and the impiety of their Pagan and Mahometan foes. The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and that danger must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the malice, and the power, of our enemies. A pernicious tenet has been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors, and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian worship. But it cannot be denied, that the Oriental churches are depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace and war, they asserted a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty. In the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented a real and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued in less than thirty years the kingdoms of Asia, as far as Jerusalem and the Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on the verge of destruction. Besides an honest sympathy for their brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in the support of Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the privilege of defence must reach to prevent, as well as to repel, an impending assault.”

But this just purpose could have been accomplished with less waste, and without sacrificing moral precepts:

“But this salutary purpose might have been accomplished by a moderate succour; and our calmer reason might disclaim the innumerable hosts and remote operations, which overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. Palestine could add nothing to the strength or safety of the Latins; and fanaticism alone could pretend to justify the conquest of that distant and narrow province. The Christians affirmed that their inalienable title to the promised land had been sealed by the blood of their divine Saviour: it was their right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and oppressed the pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the pre-eminence of Jerusalem, and the sanctity of Palestine have been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the Christians is not a local deity, and that the recovery of Bethlem or Calvary, his cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the violation of the moral precepts of the gospel. Such arguments glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition; and the religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold- on the sacred ground of mystery and miracle. But the holy wars which have been waged in every climate of the globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to Hindostan, require the support of some more general and flexible tenet. It has been often supposed, and sometimes affirmed, that a difference of religion is a worthy cause of hostility; that obstinate unbelievers may be slain or subdued by the champions of the cross; and that grace is the sole fountain of dominion as well as of mercy. Above four hundred years before the first crusade, the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire had been acquired about the same time, and in the same manner, by the Barbarians of Germany and Arabia. Time and treaties had legitimated the conquests of the Christian Franks; but in the eyes of their subjects and neighbours, the Mahometan princes were still tyrants and usurpers, who, by the arms of war or rebellion, might be lawfully driven from their unlawful possession.”

Gibbon is well aware of the importance of the absolution of their sins in the motivation of many common crusaders:

“The merit of military service against the Saracens of Africa and Spain, had been allowed by the predecessors of Urban the second. In the council of Clermont, that pope proclaimed a plenary indulgence to those who should enlist under the banner of the cross; the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt for all that might be due of canonical penance. The cold philosophy of modern times is incapable of feeling the impression that was made on a sinful and fanatic world. At the voice of their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the infidels the same deeds which they had exercised against their Christian brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by offenders of every rank and denomination. None were pure ; none were exempt from the guilt and penalty of sin ; and those who were the least amenable to the justice of God and the church, were the best entitled to the temporal and eternal recompence of their pious courage. If they fell, the spirit of the Latin clergy did not hesitate to adorn their tomb with the crown of martyrdom; and should they survive, they could expect without impatience the delay and increase of their heavenly reward. They offered their blood to the Son of God, who had laid down his life for their salvation: they took up the cross, and entered with confidence into the way of the Lord. His providence would watch over their safety; perhaps his visible and miraculous power would smooth the difficulties of their holy enterprise. The cloud and pillar of Jehovah had marched before the Israelites into the promised land. Might not the Christians more reasonably hope that the rivers would open for their passage ; that the walls of the strongest cities would fall at the sound of their trumpets ; and that the sun would be arrested in his mid-career, to allow them time for the destruction of the infidels?”

[1] Gibbon’s views of the Crusades are conveniently gathered together in The Life and Letters of Edward Gibbon With His History of the Crusades. London & New York: Frederick Warne and Company, 1889. All the following quotes are taken from this collection, pp. 368-373.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

What interests? Against whom besides Israel will Egypt use these fighter jets?

"Egypt to Receive F-16s: State Department refuses to delay delivery to Muslim Brotherhood-run Egypt," by Adam Kredo for the Washington Free Beacon, January 22 (thanks to Tom):

The State Department has refused to cancel or delay the delivery of several American-made F-16 fighter jets to Egypt, claiming that the arms deal serves America’s “regional security interests,” according to an official State Department document obtained by the Free Beacon.

The news that the Obama administration would uphold an aid package to Egypt that included the military hardware prompted concern on Capitol Hill from lawmakers who said the deal was not prudent given the political situation in Egypt, where Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi has clashed with democratic protestors.

“Sixteen F-16s and 200 Abrams tanks are to be given to the Egyptian government before the end of the year under a foreign aid deal signed in 2010 with then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak,” Fox News reported Tuesday.

“President Morsi has failed to promote promised democracy in his country and neglected to continue Egypt’s legacy of maintaining peace in the region,” said Senator James Inhofe (R., Okla.). “I am alarmed and disappointed in the Obama Administration’s decision to decline my request to delay delivery of F-16s for further consideration.”

The State Department maintained in a January 8 letter to Inhofe that the arming of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood serves the U.S.’s “regional security interests.”

“Delaying or cancelling deliveries of the F-16 aircraft would undermine our efforts to address our regional security interests through a more capable Egyptian military and send a damaging and lasting signal to Egypt’s civilian and military leadership as we work toward a democratic transition in the key Middle Eastern State,” the State Department said.

“Egypt is a strategic partner with whom we have a long history of close political-military relations that have benefited U.S. interest,” said the letter, which was authored by assistant secretary for legislative affairs David Adams. “For the past 30 years the F-16 aircraft has been a key component of the relationship between the United States military and the Egyptian Armed Forces.”

“Maintaining this relationship and assisting with the professionalization and the building of the Egyptian Armed Forces’ capabilities to secure its borders is one of our key interests in the region,” Adams wrote.

“Egypt continues to play an important role in the regional peace and stability,” according to the letter. “In all of our engagements with President Morsi and his staff, they have reaffirmed Egypt’s commitment to its international agreements, including its peace treaty with Israel.”

“Egypt was instrumental in negotiating the Gaza ceasefire, and continues to work with the parties involved to implement it and secure a more lasting peace,” the letter states.

Morsi was recently criticized for calling Jews the “descendants of apes and pigs.”

Observers on Capitol Hill said that it is dangerous to arm an unstable Islamist regime.

One senior GOP aide familiar with the deal said he is ”incredulous that a country that doesn’t have peace and stability within itself is playing ‘an important role in regional peace and stability’ as this letter claims.”

Indeed.

A new jihad document has appeared on the web: The Global Islamic Civilization -- Power Of A Nation Revived (thanks to Pamela Geller). It contains a closely argued Islamic case for jihad warfare; will the "moderates" in the U.S. who claim to reject this understanding of jihad address and refute it on Islamic grounds? Don't hold your breath.

We are all Ansar Din...

France has set the stage and opened the gates of Hell upon itself.

The United Muslim Nations International organization will indeed make sure France pays well for its disturbance in Mali.

The french will never know peace until we have conquered them.

As we ascend in this new era under the Global Khilafah we smell our victory over the west.

Next is Nigeria, Algeria, Chad, Morocco, Mauritania, Niger and all of North and West Africa right down to the SubSaharan... Africa belongs to Islam.

Defending this Great Nation:

All Praise is due to Allah, who has based the heavens and the earth on justice and given permission to the oppressed to take revenge from his oppressor in due measure. [Satement by one of the Mujahideen who met the Barakah of Martyrdom] Oh fellow Believers, We find the Almighty Allah commands us to Fight those “The Kufaar” who fight against us, and to fight them is Fard (Compulsory) upon all Muslims, and Allah lays down the criteria of justice for Jihad “great struggle” against them in the Holy Quran [Surah Al Baqara 2:190-193], And such True Believers can never be defeated, for Allah is always their Defender and Helper: And be not weak hearted, nor grieve, for you will have the upperhand, if you are True Believers. [Surah 3:139]

Have you not seen the miracle of the believers engaged in Jihad fiSabilillah for the liberation of the holy sanctuaries? from the blessed city of Makka to the blessed city of al Quds the Muminun have endured, have remained steadfast and have not once wavered for a moment, such are true Muslims not so the Munafiqun, the Hypocrites have turned their backs from al Islam throughout the history of the entire existence of mankind. Fellow Believers it is only the Munafiqeen “Hypocrates” who track back from Fighting in the way of Allah; they dislike the call of Allah where He commands us upon Jihad fiSabilillah; this is because they are not Believers and neither are they Muslim but Kufaar “Disbelievers” in the open, and Allah makes it clear that it is they “Munafiqun Hypocrites” who are an avowed enemy unto us. To fight for the cause of Allah is not only a Fard and a Sunnah, it is a Barakah “Blessing” for the True Believers, it is a means to purify the soul and it stands as proof of ones true faith in Allah, it is what divides Imaan “Faith” from Kufr “Disbelief”.

I'll be on The Jamie Glazov Show tonight at 8-9 pm Pacific (11-12 pm EST) to discuss the Freedom Center’s new petition: Stop the Witch Hunt Against Rep. Bachmann. Details in my article here.

To listen to the program, click here.

Or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2013/01/23/the-jamie-glazov-show.

The call-in # is: (347) 857-1380.

Somehow these greasy Islamophobes got the crazy idea that jihad had something to do with taking up arms to establish an Islamic state. No doubt Hamas-linked CAIR's Ahmed Rehab is on his way to Syria as we speak, in order to explain to these Islamic supremacists that jihad is really just all about getting the kids to school.

"Salafists Vow to Fight Until There Is 'Islamic State in Syria,'" by Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor, January 16 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

"Rami Youssef" is his revolutionary alias. This young man — aged 18 with dark features and a full, circular beard and shaved mustache in the tradition of the Prophet — has been in Turkey for less than a week. His elder brother said of Rami, "He wants to go back to Aleppo tomorrow and continue fighting." Speaking to Al-Monitor on Jan. 15 via Skype from his brother's house in Gaziantep, Rami acknowledged that he is from the al-Suddik brigade of the Ahrar al-Sham Battalions.

It is rare for Salafist fighters to speak with reporters. In his conversation with Al-Monitor, Rami Youssef shed light on the origins and objectives of Ahrar al-Sham (Free People of Syria), which was established in late 2011 as a Salafist group, as well as the still-fragmented nature of the Syrian opposition.

"We are an Islamic group, and we want to establish an Islamic country when the [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad era ends," said Rami. Rami claimed to have no knowledge of Mouaz Alkhatib, the former imam of a Damascus mosque and the new, internationally recognized leader of the Syrian opposition.

"Most of the fighters just fight because Assad is evil, but they don't know anything about this guy or the opposition outside. They just believe Assad needs to go." He then stressed, "We will fight until we establish an Islamic state in Syria. Even the 75% of the Free Syrian Army is fighting with this in mind. We don't want it as strict as Saudi Arabia, but we will not let go until we achieve our goal."

Rami told Al-Monitor that three months after Ahrar al-Sham was established, nine trainers arrived from abroad to assist them.

"The leader was of Syrian origin but came from Chechnya. His pseudonym is Abu Maryam," said Rami, when asked what foreign support his group has received. "The others came from Libya, Tunisia and other places. Among other things, they taught us how to promote our organization. People started to join us, and we grew quickly."

The founder of Ahrar al-Sham goes by the name Abu Abdallah, but he remains mysterious. No one knows much about him. Even Rami preferred not to talk about him or his whereabouts except to reveal, “He is also from Aleppo.” Rami claimed that there are some 5,000 to 6,000 Ahrar al-Sham fighters in Aleppo and the surrounding countryside and admitted that they receive foreign funding.

“We get money from the Gulf – mainly from Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as Kuwait and Bahrain,” he said. “We fight in our name as Ahrar al-Sham, so our budget is not the same as the Free Syrian Army's. And we only use this money to buy weaponry for ourselves and the battalion.”

“We usually have machine guns and RPGs,” Rami told Al-Monitor. “We just recently started to get anti-aircraft weaponry. We looted some from the regular army. We buy the rest from Turkey or Chechnya or other places.”

Rami is careful when talking about Turkey. “The Turkish government is helping us because they’re an Islamic government too,” he told Al-Monitor. “But they are also profiting from this war by selling weaponry to us at far higher prices. They are becoming opportunistic.”

Rami did not want to go into detail about his group's Turkish sources for weapons. He did, however, offer, “It’s important that the government allows the weapons to go through the borders.”

With great pride he said that although Ahrar al-Sham fights alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA), his group is not connected to the latter. He is also not shy about admitting that atrocities have been carried out by both sides. “There are many shabiha [supporters of the Syrian regime] who are raping, stealing and robbing in the name of the Free Syrian Army and the Islamic groups. They just want to give us a bad image,” Rami said. “There are many others who also joined the FSA and Islamic groups to get weapons, and do all the bad things, like stealing and robbing.”

“Many people who joined Ahrar al-Sham were not good people. They were unemployed people, bad guys, who drink and waste their time,” Rami told. “Most of the real fighters, the jihadists, were either martyred or injured and came to Turkey and other places for hospitalization. So the people who remain now are actually those who are just there for looting, stealing.”

Rami argues that the fighting in Syria has been sectarian from day one. “What do you think the fighters coming from Russia or Iran are doing? They just want to kill as many Sunnis as they can so that they can assure that Assad continues to stay in power,” he said. “After the Islamic groups started to operate across the country, we also started to do the same. It’s our jihadist duty. Now the Alawites are escaping to the coast, moving toward the Latakia region.”

The composition of Ahrar al-Sham is different from the Free Syrian Army, whose members are mostly retired from or defectors from the regular Syrian army. “About half of us are Syrian. We have members of the Muslim Brotherhood in our group,” said Rami. “But the rest are coming from Libya, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan, Turkey and Azerbaijan. There are even people coming from Belgium.” He claimed that he has seen “plenty” of al-Qaeda members in Syria, but that “their numbers are not as big as the FSA.”...

Apparently they are not satisfied with the "broad autonomy" that the Philippines granted last year for the creation of a Sharia enclave.

"Muslim militants ambush Philippine army patrol on southern island, wounding 7 soldiers," from the Associated Press, January 22 (thanks to Twostellas):

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine military says Muslim militants have ambushed an army patrol on a restive southern island, wounding seven soldiers.

Regional army commander Col. Charlie Galvez blamed al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants for Tuesday’s ambush on Basilan Island. He says the attackers want to sabotage the peace process between the government and the main Muslim rebel group, which last year agreed to lay down arms in exchange for broad autonomy.

Basilan is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, which is notorious for bombings and kidnappings. There is hope that the peace deal between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front would isolate the Abu Sayyaf and help U.S.-backed Philippine troops finish off the militants....

Here is yet more indication of the topsy-turvy moral compass of today's politically correct establishment: the above tweet comes from Nathan Lean, editor-in-chief of the "moderate" spokesman Reza Aslan's Aslan Media. He addressed it to a woman who describes herself in this way: "#TGDN Conservative!!! Cancer Survivor! Graduate of FSU studied education & psy.Have MAC lung disease w/out HIV.Each day a blessed day!Grammie. Married 39 yrs."

This tweet is part of a consistent pattern: Aslan is one of the most prominent, popular and respected Muslim spokesmen on the scene, but he has recently been unmasked as a Board member of a front group for Iran's bloody Islamic regime. Aslan is also a Left-fascist who has called for obstruction of our freedom of speech by means of vandalism of our pro-freedom ads.

Aslan employs Lean, a dull-witted thug who has threatened me repeatedly, repeats what he knows to be falsehoods about my record, and has been arrested for shouting obscenities at a city council meeting. Lean has also called on hackers to destroy this site.

In a sane world, people like Reza Aslan and Nathan Lean would be regarded as the vile dregs of humanity that they are, and all free people would regard them with contempt and disdain. In ours, Lean gets space in the Los Angeles Times and New York Daily News to defame me and my colleagues, and to call for restriction of our freedom of speech. And now he gleefully wishes death on a sick woman because he doesn't like something she said, knowing that in doing so he will get only applause from his fellow Left-fascists.

Imagine the outcry if Islamic schools had been forced to teach Christianity. An update on this story. "Catholic schools in Blitar agree to provide Islamic lessons," by Indra Harsaputra for The Jakarta Post, January 17 (thanks to Twostellas):

Six Catholic schools in Blitar municipality, East Java, have finally given in to a local ordinance and will provide Islamic lessons for their Muslim students.

The city ordinance requires all Muslim students to be able to read and write Koranic verses.

The head of the Religious Affairs Ministry’s office in Blitar, Imam Mukhlis, told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the six schools had finally agreed to provide Islamic teachers for their Muslim students.

“We met today [Tuesday] and everything is just fine and there is no problem. They are willing to carry out the city ordinance,” he said.

A representative of the Yohanes Gabriel Foundation confirmed the decision and said that the Islamic lessons would be delivered by competent teachers and conducted outside the schools.

The Blitar city administration previously threatened to close down Diponogoro High School, the Catholic Vocational High School, Santa Maria Kindergarten, Santa Maria Elementary School, the Catholic Elementary School and Yos Sudarso Junior High School for their refusal to provide Islamic lessons to their Muslim students.

The Blitar Mayoral Decree No. 8/2012 requires all Muslim students be able to read and write Koranic verses.

The decree is based on Government Regulation No. 55/2007 on religious teaching. The government regulation, in turn, is based on Law No. 20/2003 on the national education system.

Article 12 of the education law stipulates that every student in an educational institution is entitled to receive religious education in accordance with his or her religion, imparted by an educator of the same religion.

Article 55, however, allows community-based education to be held in accordance with the specific religious, social and cultural norms for the benefit of the community.

The law’s Article 12 is reiterated by Article 4 (2) of the government regulation while Article 6 regulates the provision of religious teaching at both state and private schools.

Article 6 (3) says that if a privately run school cannot provide religious teachers, the central government or regional administration is obliged to provide religious teachers for the school....

Separately, the Indonesia Ulema Council’s East Java chapter chairman, Abdusomad Buchori, said his institution would urge other regions in the province to issue similar decrees so that all schools, be they state-run or managed by Christian foundations, provide Islamic lessons for their Muslim students.

This means that they were hired at the plant and assumed to be "moderates" who would have no problem working for a Western-affiliated firm. No one even made any attempt to determine whether or not they were "extremists," as imperfect as any such attempt would necessarily have been. To have made such an attempt would have been "Islamophobic."

More on this story. "Islamist raid on gas plant was inside job, 2 Canadians among militants: Algeria," from PTI, January 22 (thanks to Twostellas):

The hostage-taking at a remote Algerian gas plant was carried out by 30 militants from across the northern swath of Africa and two from Canada, authorities said. The militants, who wore military uniforms and knew the layout, included explosives experts who rigged it with bombs and a leader whose final order was to kill all the captives.

The operation also had help with inside knowledge, a former driver at the plant, Algeria’s Prime Minister said yesterday.

In all, 38 workers and 29 militants died, the Algerian Pime [sic] Minister said yesterday, offering the Government’s first detailed account of four days of chaos that ended with a bloody military raid he defended as the only way possible to end the standoff. Five foreigners are still missing.

“You may have heard the last words of the terrorist chief,” Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal told presspersons. “He gave the order for all the foreigners to be killed, so there was a mass execution, many hostages were killed by a bullet to the head.”

Yesterday’s account offered the first Algerian Government narrative of the standoff, from the moment of the attempted bus hijacking on Wednesday to the moment when the attackers prepared Saturday to detonate bombs across the sprawling complex. That’s when Algerian special forces moved in for the second and final time.

All but one of the dead victims, an Algerian security guard, were foreigners. The dead hostages included seven Japanese workers, six Filipinos, three energy workers each from the US and Britain, two from Romania and one worker from France.

The Prime Minister said three attackers were captured but did not specify their nationalities or their conditions or say where they were being held.

He said the Islamists included a former driver at the complex from Niger and that the militants “knew the facility’s layout by heart.” The vast complex is deep in the Sahara, 800 miles south of Algiers, with a network of roads and walkways for the hundreds of workers who keep it running.

The attackers wore military uniforms, according to state television, bolstering similar accounts by former hostages that the attackers didn’t just shoot their way in.

“Our attention was drawn by a car. It was at the gate heading toward the production facility. Four attackers stepped out of a car that had flashing lights on top of it,” one of the former hostages, Liviu Floria, a 45-year-old mechanic from Romania, told The Associated Press.

The militants had said during the standoff that their band included people from Canada, and hostages who had escaped recalled hearing at least one of the militants speaking English with a North American accent.

The Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt sides with the bloody jihadists of Mali.

"French troops recapture key towns in Mali as Egypt sends warnings," from Al Arabiya, January 22 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

French and Malian troops recaptured Tuesday two key towns from al-Qaeda-linked Islamists holding the country’s north, as Egypt warned the Paris-led offensive could spark regional conflict.

The inroads into the central towns of Diabaly and Douentza marked a significant advance in the 11-day offensive led by former colonial power France, whose aim is the “total re-conquest” of Mali’s vast semi-arid north.

But Egypt, a regional powerhouse currently under the grip of Islamists, warmed that breaking the ranks with the global community could turn the vast arid zone of Sub Shara [sic] Africa into a new Afghanistan

“We do not accept at all the military intervention in Mali because that will fuel conflict in the region,” President Mohamed Mursi said Monday.

But in Diabaly, local residents applauded wildly as a convoy of about 30 armored vehicles with some 200 Malian and French troops moved into the town.

French military officials and local residents said the fleeing Islamists had riddled the town with landmines.

“There is a problem with unexploded ammunition,” said Lt. Col. Frederic, in charge of the operations in Diabaly, who identified himself by his first name only in line with French army policy.

Diabaly, which lies 400 kilometers north of the capital Bamako, has been the theater of air strikes and fighting since it was seized by Islamists a week ago.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the town of Douentza, which had been under Islamist control since September, had also been retaken by French and Malian troops.

Douentza is a strategic crossroads town some 100 kilometers east of Konna, whose capture earlier this month by extremists saw the French army swoop to the aid of the crippled and weak Malian army.

“The military operations to liberate the occupied regions of our country are panning out well and the need to install a peaceful social climate throughout the country,” a government statement said....

Mali’s crisis first erupted when the nomadic Tuaregs, who have long felt marginalized by the government, launched a rebellion a year ago and inflicted such humiliation on the Malian army that it triggered a military coup in Bamako in March.

The Tuaregs allied with Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and seized control of huge swathes of territory including the main northern towns of Gao, Kidal and fabled Timbuktu.

The Islamists soon chased out their more secular Tuareg allies and began imposing an extreme form of sharia, or Islamic law, flogging, amputating and sometimes executing violators.

There is no "moderate form of Sharia." Every form of Sharia contains those "extreme" elements. They are just not always implemented.

Their success in seizing a vast stretch of desert territory raised fears they could use northern Mali as a base to launch attacks on the region, Europe and beyond.

No kidding, really?

Kidnapping infidels and releasing them for ransom is big business -- and it's fully sanctioned in Islamic law: "As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities: the first to put them to death by cutting their necks; the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)" — Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah (The Laws of Islamic Governance), trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.

"Islamists willing to pay tens of thousands for westerner kidnappings," by Lyndsey Smith and Michael Sandelson in The Foreigner, January 22 (thanks to Twostellas):

Extremists offered criminals some USD 45,000 bounties for kidnapping western nationals in the area surrounding Mali and Algeria. Ransom demands could have recently included Statoil employees, reports suggest.

A ‘Wikileaked’ document shows that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) were among those offering bounties.

Mokthar Belmokhtar, the man behind the recent attack on Statoil’s In Aménas gas plant, which Algerian authorities now say left 37 foreign personnel from eight countries dead, is reported to have belonged to AQIM up until December 2012.

The same document also reports that Belmokhtar allegedly gave specific instructions these kidnap-for-ransoms should not included [sic] American citizens “for fear of retribution from the [US] government.”

“AQIM had offered a bounty of approximately $45,000 to any traffickers and bandits in northern Mali who kidnapped non-American Westerners,” shows the US State Department security report, which Aftenposten links to.

According to Martin Ewi, Pretoria-based senior Institute for Security Studies researcher, “they [terror groups active in West Africa also] probably had a perception that the Western countries would be more willing to negotiate and pay,” [sic]

Mr Ewi has written several articles on these groups, Aftenposten reports. The Norwegian daily does not specifically mention Statoil, apart from in its headline.

At the same time, Mr Ewi believes the In Aménas kidnappers wanted to take hostages to another place to negotiate with the various nationals’ countries’ authorities.

“They have earmarked certain countries that they expect would pay,” he says.

Another Aftenposten-published classified US official document claims the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combats (GSPC) abductors were able to make USD 6.5 million from “kidnapping 32 foreigners” in collaboration with Belmokhtar.

What's the big deal? So a few imams are exhorting young Muslims to go join gyms in Mali and Syria. Why should anyone be concerned?

"Tunisia: Local Professor Accuses Imams of Promoting Jihad," from Magharebia, January 21 (thanks to Twostellas):

A top Tunisian academic is accusing religious leaders of supporting extremism, Tunisie Numerique reported on Monday (January 21st).

Alaya Alani, a professor of contemporary history at Manouba University, told Radio Tataouine that imams in mosques were encouraging Tunisian youths to participate in jihad in Mali and Syria.

He urged the government to put an end to this "indoctrination".

Good luck with that.

These Islamic supremacist thugs could have tried to refute his assertions, or attempt to best him in debate. But this was easier for them, and more in line with their general inclinations. "Popular Atheist Blogger Stabbed Repeatedly by Suspected Islamist Fundamentalists in Bangladesh," by Stoyan Zaimov for the Christian Post, January 17 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

An atheist blogger in Bangladesh has been stabbed repeatedly by three suspected Islamist fundamentalists and is currently in critical condition in a local hospital.

Asif Mohiuddin, 29, was attacked earlier this week as he was leaving work at night in Dhaka, when a group of unidentified men jumped him and stabbed him repeatedly. Mohiuddin is one of the nation's most well-known atheists, and runs a Bengali blog titled "Almighty only in name, but impotent in reality," which is one of Bangladesh's most visited websites.

"We operated on him for more than three hours. He is improving but still not out of danger. He has six deep cuts including two grave ones in the shoulder," Haridas Saha, a surgeon at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, told AFP News agency.

The news has been met with widespread condemnation especially among secularists, who are demanding that the Muslim-dominated country, where Islam is a state religion, do more to protect the human rights of its citizens. Although the perpetrators have not yet been found, many suspect that Mohiuddin's atheist posts and his commentaries on free speech and human right issues are most likely the reason for the attack.

"The nature of the cuts proved that the attackers wanted to murder him," Saha added, revealing that friends of Mohiuddin who were with him at the time of the attack said that Islamic "fundamentalists" were behind the incident....

The Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) reported that this is not the first time the Bengali blogger has been targeted. In Oct. 2011, Mohiuddin was arrested and reportedly abused by police who accused him of inciting a student protest through his blog. The activist was allegedly blindfolded, starved, and kept awake as a form of torture, while authorities tried to have him sign a statement pledging never to use social media again.

"We condemn this attack on Asif Mohiuddin and call on authorities to fully investigate and ensure the perpetrators brought to justice," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney.

Bangladesh has often faced condemnation for human right abuses and suppression of free speech. In another infamous case, Humayun Azad, a poet, novelist and literature professor who wrote a number of satirical novels against religious fundamentalism, was attacked by Islamic militants in 2004, and later died in Germany.

Gaza billboard: "Thanks and gratitude to Iran"

While maintaining its close relationship with Hamas. "Iran Stengthens [sic] Ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad," by Abeer Ayyoub for Al-Monitor, January 21:

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has been the main supporter of the Palestinian cause, and in particular of its two largest Islamic factions: Hamas and Islamic Jihad. As part of the alliance, Syria was also a major supporter of the two groups and, until recently, played host to the leadership of both groups.

Iran was a strong supporter of the Hamas government in Gaza and its military wing, until Hamas moved its leadership from Syria, split with Bashar al-Assad’s regime and became a vocal critic of the Syrian crackdown.

Hamas had waited more than a year until it made the difficult decision to leave Syria and sacrifice Iranian support. As an offshoot of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — which has been riding high since the Arab Spring — Hamas now has alternatives to Iran, and is moving out of isolation and towards international acceptance.

However, by contrast, Islamic Jihad — constrained by a lack of allies — has opted to stay officially neutral on the Syrian crisis. Despite Ramadan Shallah, the leader of Islamic Jihad, leaving Syria last year, the movement still insists that its ties with Syria have not been negatively affected and that Shallah’s departure was purely for security reasons.

Senior Islamic Jihad official Khader Habeeb told Al-Monitor that his faction’s relations with foreign powers are based on the support those powers can provide to the Palestinian resistance, and not on external matters. “Iran has adopted the Palestinian resistance since its Islamic revolution. It has been a loyal backer. Consequently, Iranian assistance for the Syrian regime has nothing to do with our relations with Iran, even when our views are different,” Habeeb said.

Habeeb considers the crisis in Syria a purely internal issue that has nothing to do with the Palestinians. “Definitely we are sorry for both Palestinians and Syrians being killed every day in Syria, but we are already aware of the fact we are mere guests in Syria and have no right to interfere,” he explained.

With Hamas-Iran relations destabilized over Syria, a door has opened for Islamic Jihad to boost its ties with Iran, although its officials won’t openly admit this.

Adnan Abu Amer, political analyst and lecturer at Al-Ummah University is Gaza, said that Iran's ties to Islamic Jihad have strengthened since Hamas took a step back from Tehran.

“Islamic Jihad is the top backed Palestinian faction by Iran. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Islamic Jihad will stand out from the rest, as there are many other factors that count, such as popularity and national support,” Abu Amer clarified.

Growing Iranian support for Islamic Jihad was made evident in the November mini-war with Israel, with the movement demonstrating its long-range rocket and cyber-warfare capabilities.

Habeeb, however, stressed that Iranian support for Islamic Jihad is only limited to the armed wing, and has nothing to do with strains between Hamas and Iran. “Hamas-Iran relations are still okay and our good relations with Iran do not come at the expense of their ties,” Habeeb said. “Iran was pleased with the victory the Palestinian resistance achieved. This is why it’s likely to increase its support for us, for what we have lost during the war and because we need to rebuild our infrastructure.”

Islamic Jihad also maintains strong links with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, despite Hezbollah’s open support for the Syrian regime. “Hezbollah is a strong, armed faction and we are still coordinating with them concerning resistance against the Israeli occupation. That’s what matters to us. Any external conflict is not our issue,” Habeeb said.

Taher al-Nono, spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza, stressed that the two Islamist factions were not competing over Iranian support. “It’s totally up to Iran to support any of the Palestinian factions with the way it considers,” al-Nono said.

Despite both Hamas and Islamic Jihad sharing a similar opinion of the Syrian crisis, they have each acted according to their own circumstances.

“Hamas has Qatar and Egypt as alternatives, which made its decision easier, while Islamic Jihad has no other geographical alternatives, so it had to stay in Syria and not comment,” Abu Amer told Al-Monitor.

Hamas’ quiet departure from Syria was the most it could do under Iranian pressure, Abu Amer said. He said that Iran preferred that Hamas stay in Syria and take an impartial stance.

Nevertheless, all indicators suggest that Iran is still keen in maintaining relations with Hamas, as a popular resistance movement and a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is now spreading throughout the Arab Spring states....

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 47
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45 / Part 46

The Historiography of the Crusades.

In the first period of the historiography of the Crusades -- that is to say between 1095 and the end of the sixteenth century -- the Crusades were seen as defensive, and a response to the Islamic threats to Christian holy places. The Crusaders were motivated by a fervour to recover Christian lands from the hand of infidels, and to liberate Christians from under the Muslim yoke. But the internal threats of heretics and schismatics were also emphasized. [1]

The second period of crusading historiography was marked by the publication of more scientific histories, with full attention accorded to primary sources. For instance, there appeared in 1611 “the important collection of primary sources on the crusades edited by Jacques Bongars under the title Gesta Dei per Francos sive orientalium expeditionum et regni Francorum Hierosolimitani historia and in 1639 of Thomas Fuller’s Historie of the Holy Warre, which has been called, in spite of its prejudices, the first serious general history of the crusades to treat them as fully in the past and to raise the question of their legitimacy”. [2] While Fuller, a Protestant minister, wrote from an anti-Catholic perspective, Louis Maimbourg wrote his pro-Catholic Histoire des croisades [1685], dedicated to Louis XIV, with “self-confidence, religiosity, and ‘a trace of modern good sense’”, but he veered between enthusiasm and skepticism.

The early eighteenth century judgments can be found in Mosheim. As Rodney Stark put it, “However, the notion that the crusaders were early Western imperialists who used a religious excuse to seek land and loot probably was originated by the German Lutheran church historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1693–1755), who wrote: “The Roman pontiffs and the European princes were engaged at first in these crusades by a principle of superstition only, but when in the process of time they learnt by experience that these holy wars,contributed much to increase their opulence and to extend their authority . . . [then] ambition and avarice seconded and enforced the dictates of fanaticism and superstition.” [3]

As Von Sybel in his very useful survey of “The History and Literature of the Crusades” [4] wrote, “…[T]he spirit of the eighteenth century was decidedly opposed to implicit faith, and restlessly active in remodelling science and art. A series of works were written, in greater or less details, which threw light upon the Crusades, and which, taking different views of the facts, subjected the products of the eleventh century to a searching criticism. Voltaire is the foremost of these writers; the part in his “Essai sur les Moeurs” touching on the Crusades is very weak in point of research, for he does not even name any other authorities than William of Tyre, Anna Comnena and Elmacin [5], and those he scarcely used”. Volatire wrote that the Crusades were, “an epidemic of fury which lasted for two hundred years and which was always marked by every cruelty, every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of which human nature is capable.” The Crusaders left, further argued Voltaire, Europe for Asia only to get rich, and on the way they gave into their vices, which went unpunished; the crimes of the latter and the fanaticism of the others, and the bizarre mixture of religion and chivalry were no longer acceptable in a more enlightened century. For the Encyclopedist, Diderot the Crusades were, “a time of the deepest darkness and of the greatest folly . . . to drag a significant part of the world into an unhappy little country in order to cut the inhabitants’ throats and seize a rocky peak which was not worth one drop of blood.” For David Hume, the Crusades were the “most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation”.

Though he found much to praise in individual Crusaders, Gibbon found the whole enterprise a shameful waste, and an example of clerical led fanaticism, “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine ; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baneful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.” [6]

Furthermore, the crusades were misdirected energy, “Great was the increase, and rapid the progress, during the two hundred years of the crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded the maturity of Europe. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade; and the Latins would have been enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East.” [7]

However, what is often missed, it seems to me, is Gibbon’s compliment to the Crusades tacked onto the end of his famous section, praising the Holy War for, at least, liberating one part of humanity. “The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the— clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord, of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest, gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.” [8]

[1] Giles Constable. The Historiography of the Crusades in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, edited by Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh , 2001 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C., published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Quoted in Rodney Stark. God’s Battalions. The Case for the Crusades. New York: Harper One, 2009, pp.6.
[4] Von Sybel, The History and Literature of the Crusades, translated and edited by Lady Duff Gordon, London: Chapman and Hall, 1861, p.334ff
[5] That is, George Elmacin (or Girgis Al-Makin) (1205–1273), also known as Ibn al-'Amid, a Coptic historian
[6] Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter LXI, London: Penguin Classics, Vol.III, [1788] 1994 , p.727.
[7] Ibid.,p.728
[8] Gibbon, p.728.

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

"There was no evidence that the chain set out to deceive customers." So why the $700,000 payout?

Pamela Geller asks: "So meat producers in the US who are selling unlabeled meat that is halal should be the target of a multi-million dollar lawsuit, no?"

And David Wood observes:"Some Dearborn Muslims may have been given non-halal chicken at McDonalds. It could have been worse, however. They could have been thrown in jail for answering questions, as we were at the 2010 Arab Festival. But apparently what happens to Christians doesn't matter in Dearborn."

"McDonald's settles Mich. suit over Islamic diet," by Jeff Karoub for the Associated Press, January 21 (thanks to all who sent this in):

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — McDonald's and one of its franchise owners agreed to pay $700,000 to members of the Muslim community to settle allegations a Detroit-area restaurant falsely advertised its food as being prepared according to Islamic dietary law.

McDonald's and Finley's Management Co. agreed Friday to the tentative settlement, with that money to be shared by Dearborn Heights resident Ahmed Ahmed, a Detroit health clinic, the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and lawyers.

Ahmed's attorney, Kassem Dakhlallah, told The Associated Press on Monday that he's "thrilled" with the preliminary deal that's expected to be finalized March 1. McDonald's and Finley's Management deny any liability but say the settlement is in their best interests.

The lawsuit alleged that Ahmed bought a chicken sandwich in September 2011 at a Dearborn McDonald's but found it wasn't halal — meaning it didn't meet Islamic requirements for preparing food. Islam forbids consumption of pork, and God's name must be invoked before an animal providing meat for consumption is slaughtered.

Dakhlallah said there are only two McDonald's in the United States that sell halal products and both are in Dearborn, which has one of the nation's largest Arab and Muslim communities. Overall, the Detroit area is home to about 150,000 Muslims of many different ethnicities.

The locations advertise that they exclusively sell halal Chicken McNuggets and McChicken sandwiches and they have to get those products from an approved halal provider, Dakhlallah said. He said there was no evidence of problems on the production side, but he alleges that the Dearborn location on Ford Road sold non-halal products when it ran out of halal.

Dakhlallah said he was approached by Ahmed, and they conducted an investigation. A letter sent to McDonald's Corp. and Finley's Management by Dakhlallah's firm said Ahmed had "confirmed from a source familiar with the inventory" that the restaurant had sold non-halal food "on many occasions."

After they received no response to the letter, Dakhlallah said, they filed a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court in November 2011 as part of a class action.

The AP left messages Monday afternoon for attorneys representing the corporation and the franchise.

In the settlement notice, Finley's Management said it "has a carefully designed system for preparing and serving halal such that halal chicken products are labeled, stored, refrigerated, and cooked in halal-only areas." The company added it trains its employees on preparing halal food and "requires strict adherence to the process."

He said although Ahmed believes McDonald's was negligent, there was no evidence that the chain set out to deceive customers....

Which of those two understandings of jihad is more widespread among Muslims worldwide, and more firmly grounded in the Islamic sources? Hmmm, that's a real head-scratcher!

Top photo from the London pro-jihad demo, here (thanks to Sam); bottom photo from Hamas-linked CAIR's deceptive campaign to whitewash jihad.

Martin Luther King, Jr., was an opponent of the jihad against Israel. While there are some disputed quotations circulating in this connection, here are some key and authenticated MLK quotes. Take them to heart today:

"I cannot stand idly by, even though I happen to live in the United States and even though I happen to be an American Negro and not be concerned about what happens to the Jews in Soviet Russia. For what happens to them happens to me and you, and we must be concerned."

"Israel's right to exist as a state in security is uncontestable."

"Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality."

"I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews -- because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all."

"When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews, you are talking anti-Semitism."

In FrontPage this morning I discuss how the jihad mass murders in Algeria are the fruit of Obama’s foreign policy:

Jeremiah Wright was right after all. The Algeria jihad attack proves it.

Not long after the 9/11 jihad attacks, Barack Obama’s mentor and friend, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, preached a sermon in which he uttered the now-notorious words: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Wright meant, of course, that the U.S. had brought the attack upon itself by its own acts of violence against others: “We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye… and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards.”

In a certain sense Wright was right: the U.S. did bring 9/11 on itself – but not in the way that he thought. The jihadists who destroyed the Twin Towers and damaged the Pentagon had not been brooding about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and no action by the U.S. did or could have justified the mass murder those jihadists perpetrated. If it could be truly said that the U.S. brought 9/11 on itself in any way, it was only by failing to recognize the implications of and to confront the ideology behind the jihad attacks that immediately preceded it.

There was an abundance of indicators of what was coming. In December 1988, an Islamic jihadist murdered 259 people, including 189 Americans, by bringing down Pam Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In February 1993, Islamic jihadists murdered six people and wounded over a thousand in their first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center towers. In June 1996, Islamic jihadists murdered nineteen people and wounded 515, including 240 Americans, in a bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In August 1998, Islamic jihadists bombed the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, murdering 291, including 12 Americans, in Nairobi, and murdering ten more and wounding 77 in Dar es Salaam. In October 2000, Islamic jihadists bombed the USS Cole in port at Aden, Yemen, murdering seventeen sailors and wounding 39.

In response to all this, the U.S. lobbed a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan and took out a chemical weapons factory (or aspirin factory, depending on one’s source) in Sudan, and did little more. No serious attempt was made to come to grips with the full nature and magnitude of the ideology that inspired those jihad attacks, and to work to neutralize its violent potential. And so it would have been more surprising if the 9/11 attacks hadn’t happened than that they did.

So it is today. Barack Obama has overseen the installation of Sharia regimes in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. While paying lip service to the importance of distinguishing jihadists from genuine democratic forces in Syria and elsewhere, the Obama administration has offered no criteria for doing this. And now al-Qaeda jihadists in Algeria have carried out a brazen assault on BP’s natural gas plant in that country, killing at least eighty-one people and demonstrating anew the falsehood of Barack Obama’s recent claim that in Afghanistan “we achieved our central goal … or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.”

There is more.

How very, very strange. An explosion in a house owned by a known Islamic jihadist. Must have been a gas leak or something -- why else would there have been an explosion in a jihadist's house? As Hamas-linked CAIR assures us, jihad is just staying fit despite one's busy schedule. Could something have gone wrong with the wiring of one of these guys' exercise machines?

"At Least 13 Suspected Al-Qaida Men Killed in Yemen," from the Associated Press, January 20 (thanks to Lookmann):

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A Yemen security official says an explosion in the province of Bayda has killed at least 13 suspected al-Qaida militants.

The official in Bayda's capital city of Radda says the explosion went off in a house owned by a known al-Qaida operative, Ahmed Abdullah Deif-Allah Al-Zahab. It appeared to be an accident.

Residents were barred Sunday from approaching the scene of the incident by militants with links to al-Qaida, the official said.

Early last year Al-Qaida's Yemen-based branch briefly seized the town of Radda, an outpost 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of the capital....

They most likely didn't consider themselves Canadians. They no doubt thought of themselves as members of the global, supranational umma.

Canada's newest export: jihad mass murderers. What are Muslim leaders in Canada doing to make sure that no more "Canadian" Muslims misunderstand Islam in the way these two did? Why, nothing. Nothing at all.

"Two Al Qaeda gunmen found dead inside Algeria gas plant were 'Canadians,'" by Peter Allen and Nabila Ramdani in the Daily Mail, January 20 (thanks to Michael Coren):

Two dead Islamist militants found inside the Algerian gas plant were Canadians, an Algerian security source said today.

Algerian special forces discovered the bodies at the In Amenas facility, where the combined death toll of hostages and insurgents rose to 89 today.

The source said documents found on them had identified the two militants as Canadians as forces scoured the plant following Saturday's bloody end to the crisis.

An official Algerian source said previously that the group behind the attack had comprised Arabs, Africans and also people from outside the African continent.

A report in Norway's Aftenposten also said one of the attackers was tall and white with blue or green eyes, spoke English and read the Koran.

Much remains unclear about events after the jihadists staged the attack last Wednesday.

However, an Algerian newspaper said they had arrived in cars painted in the colours of state energy company Sonatrach, but registered in neighbouring Libya, a country awash with arms since Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011.

Meanwhile, the hostage death toll rose from 23 to 57 today after 25 bodies found yesterday were reportedly identified as captives....

Details of the dead militants emerged after it was claimed some of the terrorists involved in the siege in which three Britons have died had been working at the BP plant where the atrocity took place.

They had been given short-term contracts by the oil and gas giant, allowing them to plan their attack with lethal precision.

Six of the Al Qaeda operatives were ‘taken alive’ by the Algerian army today, while some 32 were killed during four days of fierce fighting with special forces.

Now there are claims that some of the Islamist radicals had been hired over the past year at the vast facility in the Sahara desert, close to the town of In Amenas.

This raises the possibility that the 23 gas workers who died, as well as those who were wounded and escaped, might have known their attackers.

Witnesses have already described one of the terrorists speaking with a ‘perfect English accent’, and appearing to have a good knowledge of the compounds around the gas field.

An Algerian security source said: ‘The suspicion is that some of the militants were placed inside the plant as drivers, cooks and even guards.

‘This gave them detailed knowledge of the facility, and indeed its top level security measures.

‘There were many hundreds of workers of all nationalities at the site, and applications for work would have been made to BP. There would have been some kind of background checks, of course.’

BP would not comment on the claims, which have begun to appear in the Algerian media.

But the security source said that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the Algerian terrorist said to have masterminded the operation, is thought to have coordinated the placing of his men inside the plant.

His Mulathameen Brigade today threatened to carry out more attacks unless Western powers ended what it called an assault on Muslims in neighbouring Mali, according to the SITE monitoring service.

In a statement on Monday, the al Qaeda linked group also said the hostage-takers had offered negotiations on freeing the captives seized at a gas plant deep in the Sahara but the Algerian authorities used military force, SITE reported....

His gang, the Signed in Blood Brigade, is a ruthless Islamist group which has been behind numerous crimes around Africa, including bomb attacks and kidnappings.

As with so many Al Qaeda operatives, many of its recruits would have considerable experience of infiltrating western targets....

Other Algerian officials insisted that the army launched its assault after the Islamist militants began killing foreign hostages they described as ‘Christians and infidels’....

This way they would have a chance to gain a place in Paradise, guaranteed to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (Qur'an 9:111).

"Saudi Arabia Sent Death Row Inmates to Fight in Syria in Lieu of Execution," from AINA, January 20:

(AINA) -- A top secret memo sent by the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia reveals the Saudi Kingdom sent death-row inmates, sentenced to execution by decapitation, to Syria to fight Jihad against the Syrian government in exchange for commuting their sentences.

According to the memo, dated April 17, 2012, the Saudi Kingdom negotiated with a total of 1239 inmates, offering them a full pardon and a monthly salary for their families, who were to remain in the Kingdom, in exchange for "...training for the sake of sending to the Jihad in Syria."

The memo was signed by Abdullah bin Ali al-Rmezan, the "Director of follow up in Ministry of Interior."

According to the memo, prisoners were of the following nationalities: Yemenis, Palestinians, Saudis, Sudanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Somalis, Afghanis, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Iraqis, and Kuwaitis.

There were 23 Iraqi prisoners.

A former member of the Iraqi parliament, who spoke to AINA on condition of anonymity, confirmed the authenticity of the document and said most of the Iraqi prisoners Saudi Arabia sent to Syria returned to Iraq and admitted that they had agreed to the deal offered by the Saudi Kingdom, and requested the Iraqi government to petition the Saudi government to release their families, who were being held hostage in Saudi Arabia.

Yemeni nationals who were sent to Syria also returned to Yemen and asked their government to secure the release of their families, according to the former Iraqi MP, who said there are many more documents, like the one shown below, about Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Initially Saudi Arabia denied the existence of this program. But the testimony of the released prisoners forced the Saudi government to admit, in private circles, its existence.

According to the former Iraqi MP, the Russians threatened to bring this issue to the United Nations if the Saudis continued working against President Bashar al-Assad. The Saudis agreed to stop their clandestine activities and work towards finding a political solution on condition that knowledge of this program would not be made public.

Here is the translation of the memo:
This is a document issued by

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Interior
Follow-up LOGO Number: 71466/J/H
Attachments:
Date: 25/5/1433 H. [April /17/2012 AD]

(Top Secret)

His Excellency General Suood Al-Thnayyan
The Classified [Secret] Office at the Ministry of Interior May Allah protect him

Peace be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings

In reference to the Royal Court telegram No. 112, dated on 04/19/1433 H [March 3, 2012], referring to those held in the Kingdom jails accused with crimes to which Islamic Sharia law of execution by sword [decapitation] applies, we inform you that we are in dialogue with the accused criminals who have been convicted with smuggling drugs, murder, rape, from the following nationalities: 110 Yemenis, 21 Palestinians, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghanis, 94 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, and 44 Kuwaitis.

We have reached an agreement with them that they will be granted pardon from the death sentence in return for a monthly salary for their families that are going to be held in Saudi Arabia, versus rehabilitation and training for the sake of sending to the Jihad in Syria.

Please accept my greetings.

[Signed]
Director of follow up in Ministry of Interior
Abdullah bin Ali al-Rmezan

CC:
Authority of enforcement of the common good and prevention of forbidden
Copy for general intelligence

Obama recently declared: "We achieved our central goal ... or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can't attack us again." What about the Taliban?

"Coordinated Kabul suicide attack targets government building," by Hamid Shalizi for Reuters, January 21 (thanks to Lookmann):

(Reuters) - Suicide bombers and gunmen launched an eight-hour assault on the headquarters of the Kabul traffic police on Monday, Afghan officials said, in the second coordinated attack on a government building in less than a week.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the operation In which all five attackers and three traffic police officers were killed, interior ministry officials said....

Last week, six suicide bombers attacked the National Directorate of Security (NDS), killing two guards. That attack followed December's failed assassination attempt on NDS chief Asadullah Khalid....

Monday's attack began when three men detonated suicide bombs outside the main entrance and was followed by the two remaining attackers storming the unfortified area, Deputy Interior Minister General Abdul Rahman said.

The pair, armed with automatic rifles, battled security forces outside the building nestled between two police hubs and close to parliament and a road commonly used by Afghan MPs....

"Honestly speaking, this type of attack, at the start of the year, indicates the coming months are going to be tough," a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The Taliban will want to display their presence and reach with these kinds of attacks in Kabul."

No kidding, really?

In "Bloody jihad: Obama fiddles, Americans burn" in WND today, Pamela Geller blasts Obama for his lack of leadership in what amounted to an act of war: the Algeria jihad mass murders:

The Algerian hostage crisis came to a bloody end Saturday when Special Forces stormed the BP gas complex after the jihadists executed their non-Muslim POWs. At least 81 people have been killed, including two Americans. They were holding more than 600, but they released all the Muslims, saying “they did not want to hurt Muslims. Some locals were forced to recite parts of the Koran to prove they were Muslims.”

The jihadists called their non-Muslim hostages “kuffar,” an ugly word meaning unbelievers. One Muslim hostage said: “Us Algerians were rounded up separately and were treated with kindness. We were told that because we were Muslim we would not be killed, and it was only the Christians they were after. The Algerian hostages were then allowed to leave. … I saw many Brits killed. One Westerner trying to give first aid was blown up by the terrorists.” At least five of the jihadis were employees of the BP plant – which means they were thought to be “moderates.”

Yet despite the American loss of life, the president has not spoken of it or taken any leadership action on this act of war. The American media are following his lead. Every major world leader whose people were kidnapped and/or killed was addressing his parliament, media and the people of their countries: This act of war was a major news story everywhere except in America. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron canceled a trip to address the House of Commons, where he called the jihadist attack on the BP gas field “brutal and savage” (there’s that word again), and said the assault on the complex was “large, well-coordinated and heavily armed.” Coordinated by whom? Al-Qaida jihadists.

Obama said recently: “We achieved our central goal, or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaida, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.” Yet while claiming that al-Qaida is being “de-capacitated,” he is supplying them. The Algerian jihadis had weapons from Libya – that means we supplied them. Obama has consistently supported jihadists in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Burma, et al. Just as this led to the murder of Americans in Libya, so it has now in Algeria. The attackers who stormed our consulate (or whatever that building really was) in Benghazi were part of al-Qaida. While he tells us al-Qaida is vanquished, their attacks become more lethal, widespread and brazen.

The jihadis in Algeria were a multinational group – emphasizing yet again that this is an ideological war, not a geographical one. A hostage said: “Of the terrorists, one was an Egyptian, another was Libyan and one was Syrian. Most of them were Algerian, but some of them had white skin and I think they were Canadian. Two were speaking fluent English.”

The Obama administration was neither advised nor consulted on the raid on the al-Qaida jihadists ahead of time: further proof of our diminished hegemony and the lack of respect Obama has engendered for America across the world.

Al-Qaida in Algeria was demanding a “trade” for the lives of non-Muslims. They wanted the blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and Aafia Siddiqui, Lady al-Qaida. The release of effective jihadists is an objective of the global jihad: Muslim agitation and violence for the blind sheikh is widespread. On Sept. 11, 2012, Muslims stormed our embassy in Cairo and raised the flag of jihad over our embassy for the same reason. (Obama’s response was to apologize for hurting Muslim feelings.)

Read it all.

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 46
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44 / Part 45

CONCLUSIONS: CRUSADES NOT BARBARIC.

Often when criticizing Islam, I am interrupted by the remark that of course Christianity was also once equally culpable of similar crimes. The fact that Christianity certainly was once intolerant does not mean that my criticisms of Islam’s intolerance are any less valid. If a Christian makes a specific criticism X of Islam, and Christianity was once also guilty of X, it does not follow that the criticism X is invalid.

Second, Islamic intolerance is presently a far more immediate danger to all, whereas Christian intolerance is a thing of the past, and is no longer a threat to civilization. Christendom’s crimes have been recorded by Christians themselves, but, in the present climate of political correctness, many are reluctant to voice any criticism of Islam.

Of course, there is a sense in which one could well agree with criticisms of Islam’s intolerance, but go on to insist that Christianity was also once intolerant in order to, perhaps, point out the possibility of Islam evolving in a similar fashion towards tolerance. One could also point out similar shortcomings of Christendom in order to relativize the atrocious behaviour of Islamic civilization, in order not to demonise Islam alone. However, this principle should work both ways; we should equally not demonise Christendom, and be prepared to point to similar shortcomings of Islam. In a recent (December, 2008) television programme, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, presented a rather biased programme on the Crusades, but biased against the Christians, laying the blame of the Crusades entirely on the Christians, who are always depicted as barbarians. He pointed out at that Christians in Spain after the expulsions of the Moors converted a mosque into a church, and called this act “vandalism”. However, he failed to point out that the Crusades were a reaction against over three hundred years of jihad when the Eastern Christians were persecuted, and hundreds of churches destroyed. He also failed to mention the conversion of the magnificent Byzantine Hagia Sophia into a mosque, (though admittedly this took place after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 -- it was a mosque from 29 May 1453 until 1931. But my point is that Islamic Jihad did not end with the defeat of the Crusaders. On the contrary in Islamic doctrine all the later Islamic conquests were seen as a part of the religious duty of carrying out Jihad until the entire the world submits to Islam.)

The Muslim persecution of Christians, or for that matter, all non-Muslims, varied from country to country, ruler to ruler, or century to century. The treatment of non-Muslims, and its scriptural source and justification will be discussed below. Here I can only adumbrate the situation in the Holy Land a hundred years before Pope Urban II’s call in 1095 for a crusade to liberate Palestine. The cruelties of Caliph al-Hakim have been recorded by Christian and Muslim historians. In 1003, al-Hakim began the persecution of Jews and Christians in earnest. Historian Ibn al-Dawadari tells us that the first move in a series of acts was the destruction of the church of St. Mark. Al-Musabbihi, a contemporary, recounts that the Christians built this church without a permit -- the building of new churches was not permitted. The Al-Rashida mosque was built in its place, eventually extending over, and desecrating Jewish and Christian cemeteries; surely an act of vandalism. The height of al-Hakim’s cruelties was the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, possibly the most revered shrine in Christendom, since it is considered by Christians as Golgotha, (the Hill of Calvary), where the New Testament says that Jesus was crucified, and even the place where Jesus was buried, and hence, of course, the site of the Resurrection. He ordered dismantled “the Church of the Resurrection to its very foundations, apart from what could not be destroyed or pulled up, and they also destroyed the Golgotha and the Church of St. Constantine and all that they contained, as well as all the sacred grave-stones. They even tried to dig up the graves and wipe out al traces of their existence. Indeed they broke up and uprooted most of them. They also laid waste to a convent in the neighbourhood….The authorities took all the other property belonging to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and its pious foundations, and all its furnishings and treasures.” According to Muslim sources the destruction began in September, 1007 C.E. “Most of the Muslim sources view the destruction as a reaction to its magnificence and the fact that it was a world centre for Christian pilgrims, among them many Christians from Egypt; to the splendid processions that were held in the streets of Jerusalem, and to the ‘Paschal fire’….”

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

Actually, there is nothing surprising in this. Sharia denies Christians and other non-Muslims basic rights. Only Westerners who have swallowed the smooth lies of Islamic supremacist deceivers such as the Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and Reza Aslan about Islamic law will find this odd.

"New report: Iranian Christians denied basic rights," from The Commentator, January 21:

A new report has claimed that despite the Iranian government’s assertions that it respects the rights of its recognised religious minorities, the Christian community in Iran faces systematic state persecution and discrimination.

The plight of Iranian Protestants, says the report, is of particular concern. The community faces tough restrictions on religious practice and association, arbitrary arrests and detentions for the practice of its faith. State executions and extrajudicial killings have also been noted, in the report by the New York based ‘International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran’.

The 73-page report, The Cost of Faith: Persecution of Christian Protestants and Converts in Iran, documents a pattern of rights violations that extends to all walks of life for Protestant converts in Iran and lists the systematic arbitrary arrest and detention of Christian converts.

Farshid Fathi, a 33-year-old Christian leader from Tehran was detained in December 2010 as part of a Christmas crackdown on Christians and subsequently charged with “acting against national security,” “contact with enemy foreign countries,” and “religious propaganda.” The judiciary sentenced him to six years in prison, which he is currently serving.

It is reported that Christian detainees are often denied due process and basic rights. They are held in prolonged detention without formal charges, trials are held without access to counsel, or, if there is counsel, without access to court files, and ill treatment is common during detention.

The Campaign’s research reveals that interrogators, prosecutors and courts consistently refer to standard Christian practices, such as membership in a house church, evangelical activities, and participation in a Christian conference, as criminal acts, and security officers routinely confiscate standard Christian items such as bibles, religious literature, and crosses during arrests.

The report also found clear and consistent evidence of the threat to life for Christian converts. One leading Christian pastor, Hossein Soodmand, was executed by the state for apostasy in 1990; other church leaders who were sentenced to death for apostasy, including Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, were subsequently acquitted only due to intense international pressure....

No surprise there, either, as Islamic law also mandates death for apostasy. Muhammad said: "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Read it all.

As Elder of Ziyon says: ”This means that terror groups who urge the ethnic cleansing of Jews in the Middle East will be accepted as part of the international community at the UN. (The UN does not distinguish between the PLO and the ‘State of Palestine.’).” This means UN sanctioning of Islamic antisemitism and the genocidal aspirations that Hamas has so often enunciated as the contemporary fulfillment and embodiment of those antisemitic teachings. It also gives the lie to the fiction, so prevalent in Washington, that the PLO and Fatah are the "moderates" who oppose the Hamas and Islamic Jihad "extremists."

"PLO Executive Committee Member Expects Hamas, Islamic Jihad to Join With PLO," by Zach Pontz for Algemeiner, January 20:

A member of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Dr. Ahmed Majdalani, told Al-Quds newspaper that he expects Hamas and Islamic Jihad to join with the PLO after National Council elections later this month, though the government will still headed by President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA is subsidiary to the PLO, whose members are not elected by the people.

Anonymous pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon notes that ”This means that terror groups who urge the ethnic cleansing of Jews in the Middle East will be accepted as part of the international community at the UN. (The UN does not distinguish between the PLO and the ‘State of Palestine.’).”

Majdalani also said that negotiations between Fatah and Hamas in Cairo are resulting in a mechanism for new elections not only in the territories but also for Palestinian Arabs who live abroad.

On Thursday Hamas and Fatah agreed to implement, by the end of this month, previous reconciliation agreements signed between the two parties.

The most recent reconciliation agreement, signed in Doha, Qatar, envisages the establishment of a unity government headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Sharia descends upon Egypt -- and remember, this is the kind of law that Islamic supremacists and their Leftist allies want to force upon America. With a president in the White House who has shown that he is no friend of the freedom of speech (cf. his support for UN Resolution 16/18), they have a shot.

"Prosecutor general investigates 'defamation of Islam' charges against Eissa," from the Egypt Independent, January 19:

Prosecutor General Talat Abdallah will investigate a report accusing Al-Tahrir newspaper Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Eissa of defaming Islam and ridiculing the Quran and Sharia.

The complaint was filed by a lawyer, who also handed over videos of Issa allegedly mocking Islam and its rituals on his satellite show.

Another video allegedly shows Issa sarcastically saying that if someone pickpockets a wallet their hand will be cut according to Sharia, but if they steal LE2 billion from the bank their hand won’t be cut off, while the audience laughs and claps. The complaint claims that his comments ridicule Sharia.

Eissa is one of the most prominent journalists opposing President Mohamed Morsy and the Muslim Brotherhood. He had been sentenced to jail in the era of former President Hosni Mubarak on charges of spreading false news about his health, but Mubarak issued a presidential pardon for him.

More fruits of multiculturalism in London. An update on this story. Thanks to Golem for the video.

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Police foil attack on Turkey church," from AFP, January 18 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Turkish police have arrested 13 suspects accused of plotting an attack against members of a Protestant church and their pastor in a northwestern city, a local official said on Friday.

"The suspects who were arrested by the counter-terrorism units on Tuesday are accused of plotting an attack on the members of the Christian community and their leader" in the city of Izmit, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official declined to comment on the suspects' possible links with any terrorist organizations, saying that an investigation had been launched.

The pastor of the church in Izmit, Emre Karaali, said at least two of the suspects had attended mass there for a year.

"We are shocked and sad," he told AFP.

The spiritual leader said he had been informed by the Turkish authorities that the assailants were planning to attack him and other worshippers during a mass at the church this week.

Karaali also said he had received death threats in the past.

Several attacks in recent years have targeted members of the Christian community in predominantly Muslim but staunchly secular Turkey.

Staunchly?

In 2006, 61-year-old Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was shot dead in the Black Sea port city of Trabzon.

That same year, another Catholic cleric, French national Pierre Brunissen, survived after being stabbed by a man described as mentally disturbed in Samsun, another Black Sea port city.

In 2007, a young man stabbed and injured Father Adriano Franchini, a 65-year-old Italian, after attending Sunday mass at a church in the western city of Izmir.

Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. and Europe will dismiss this -- it's just Anjem Chaudary and his group, who are known "extremists." Yet what are Muslim groups in the U.S. and Europe doing to counter this view of Islam? Why, nothing. What are non-Muslim law enforcement officials doing to counter this view of Islam? Why, nothing.

"British Islamists Protest French Campaign in Mali: Hollande Is a 'Son of Pharoah', Islam Will Dominate France and England," from MEMRI, January 12:

Following are excerpts from a video of London Islamists protesting against the French military campaign in Mali. The demonstration, which was held outside the French Embassy, was posted on the Internet on January 12, 2013.

British Islamist Anjem Chaudary: We are here to expose the French regime and to say: Hands off Muslim land.

Crowd: Hands off Muslim land.

Anjem Chaudary: Hands off Muslim land.

Crowd: Hands off Muslim land.

Anjem Chaudary: Hands off Muslim land.

Crowd: Hands off Muslim land.

Anjem Chaudary: Hands off Muslim land.

Crowd: Hands off Muslim land.

Anjem Chaudary: Shari’a for Mali.

Crowd: Shari’a for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: Shari’a for Mali.

Crowd: Shari’a for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: Shari’a for Mali.

Crowd: Shari’a for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad for Mali.

Crowd: Jihad for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad for Mali.

Crowd: Jihad for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad for Mali.

Crowd: Jihad for Mali.

Anjem Chaudary: What do we want?

Crowd: Jihad.

Anjem Chaudary: When do we want it?

Crowd: Now.

Anjem Chaudary: What do we want?

Crowd: Jihad.

Anjem Chaudary: When do we want it?

Crowd: Now.

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad!

Crowd: Jihad!

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad!

Crowd: Jihad!

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad!

Crowd: Jihad!

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad!

Crowd: Jihad!

Anjem Chaudary: Jihad!

Crowd: Jihad!

Anjem Chaudary: Say: “Allah Akbar.”

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

[...]

Anjem Chaudary: A caliphate for Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq... The Islamic nation is boiling. We got rid of some of our dictators – Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Al-Qadhafi. Now it’s time for the dictators in Mali, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, and all over the Muslim lands to be removed and replaced by the shari’a, by Islam.

[...]

British Islamist: There is no god but Allah.

Crowd: There is no god but Allah.

British Islamist: Jihad for the sake of Allah.

Crowd: Jihad for the sake of Allah.

[...]

British Islamist: The call for the shari’a is a global call. It is a choice that these governments in the West will have to face up to. The shari’a is an inevitability. Therefore, you had better accept the shari’a, otherwise you will find us on your own doorsteps, outside your own embassies.

[...]

British Islamist: You talk about Freedom, you talk about democracy, but there is no freedom for Muslims to practice Islam. That is because their idols of freedom and democracy are false idols. They will burn in Hell, just like you.

[...]

Our leader is the final Messenger Muhammad. He is the Messenger. He gave us glad tidings: that we will conquer, we will lead, we will spread mercy, and we will spread justice, whether you like it or whether you don’t like it. Look to your own doorstep in France – your own French women are abandoning their Christianity and donning the hijab and the burqa.

[...]

The Muslims reached the gates of Vienna, I don’t think [unintelligible], because our eyes are on Paris, our eyes are on Brussels, our eyes are on London. We will not stop, as Muslims, until the whole world is governed by Islam.

[...]

British Islamist: My dear Muslims, for how long will we live under oppression? Isn’t it time that we united? Isn’t it time that we returned back to Allah and His Messenger? Isn’t it time that we showed support to the Muslims? Isn’t it time we support the mujahideen, because it is them who are fighting for the religion of Allah? Because of them we are able to walk with our heads high. Because of them we have honor, because of them we have dignity. Isn’t it about time, my dear Muslims? We gather together under one banner of: “There is no god but Allah,” and we support our Muslims. So French government, let that be a warning, or a piece of advice, to you. Take it the way you want, because you will never stop the army of the Muslims. You will never stop Muslims, because this nation is far too large to be stopped. This nation is like a tidal wave – when it starts, it doesn’t stop. It will conquer the east of the East and the west of the West, because that is the prophecy of our Prophet Muhammad.

Say: Allah Akbar.”

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

British Islamist: Say: Allah Akbar.”

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

Islamist (in French): What is happening today in Mali is an act of terrorism launched by François Hollande against the Muslims. This is an act of terrorism, launched by François Hollande, against the nation of Muhammad. Allah warns us in the Koran that the Jews and the Christians will never be pleased with the Muslims until they embrace their religion. What François Hollande is doing is exporting prostitution to Muslim lands, exporting homosexuality to Mali, exporting the exploitation of women to the Muslim lands. What we are saying to François Hollande is that the Muslims throughout the world will not rest until Islam dominates France, until Islam dominates the entire world. Islam will not dominate only Mali, Afghanistan, and Africa, but also France, Paris, and England. François Hollande, you must understand a few facts of life: You are a son of Pharaoh. The blood of Pharaoh courses through your veins.

[...]

The Islamic movement will become a system of life under your nose. Your wife, French women, the people of France, will live under the Islamic movement, even if you don’t like it. We will collect the jizya poll tax.

[...]

We are telling you to remove your soldiers, the unbelievers, who are in the Muslim world. But you don’t understand, you cannot see the message.

[...]

The nation of Muhammad loves death just as you love your pork. It loves death more than you love your pigs. It loves death more than you love prostitution, more than you love wine.

[...]

Shari’a for France.

Crowd: Shari’a for France.

Islamist: Shari’a for France.

Crowd: Shari’a for Paris.

Islamist: Shari’a for the world in its entirety.

Crowd: Shari’a for Europe in its entirety.

[...]

Islamist: Most of the residents of Paris are Muslims. Allah willing, most of the French system will be according to the shari’a. Most of the residents of France will be Muslims, Allah willing.

Say: “Allah Akbar.”

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

One of the victims was a senior police officer, and al-Shabaab jihadists have offered a bounty for the jihad murder of Kenyan security personnel.

"Kenya: Five Dead in Garissa Restaurant Attack," from CISA News Africa, January 18:

Garissa — At least five people were killed, including a senior police officer, and six seriously wounded when gunmen attacked a restaurant in Garissa on Wednesday (January 16th).

"Four people died on the spot, while six others were rushed to the hospital," Garissa County Commissioner Mohamed Maalim told AFP. "The attackers stormed the restaurant where patrons were having dinner or chatting and opened fire indiscriminately and then ran away."

Garissa deputy prison chief Allan Njagi was among the dead.

Police suspect al-Shabaab sympathizers in Garissa of carrying out this and other recent attacks, although the militant group has not claimed responsibility. The group has, however, offered a large bounty for the killing of Kenyan security officers in an attempt to recruit more Kenyan youth.

No arrests have yet been made in relation to the incident, said newly appointed area police Chief Charlton Mureithi.

Two suspected suicide bombers were also killed Thursday morning in nearby Hagadera camp in Dadaab refugee complex when their explosives went off while being handled, he said.

Mureithi said he suspects the explosives were to be planted on roads to target security forces....

Apparently no one checked to make sure they were "moderates." To have done so would have been "Islamophobic." In any case, they would probably have been able to fool any such investigators easily.

"Algeria hostage crisis: al Qaeda had help from inside claim security sources," by Abdelatif Belkayem and Henry Samuel in the Telegraph, January 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Up to five of the al Qaeda-linked Islamists who carried out the most spectacular and bloody hostage in recent years were employees of the gas plant, security sources have revealed.

One of those involved in the "inside job" was of French nationality, the sources told the Daily Telegraph, in what appears to be a blow to those in charge of safety at the highly strategic In Amenas plant, which accounts for 12 per cent of Algeria's gas production.

The unnamed French accomplice is said to have changed sides once his comrades in arms had broken into the desert site in southeastern Algeria after attacking bus at a false checkpoint. He then took part in the kidnapping operation before being killed during the Algerian army assault on the site.

Some terrorists are reported to have known internal procedures at the plant as well as the room numbers of expatriates.

Gendarmes are understood to have opened an investigation into four other workers who survived the attack on suspicion of helping the kidnappers enter the tightly-guarded facility, the sources said, without providing further details....

Last night, bomb squads were still combing the area for explosive devices, with the army saying the kidnappers had placed mines beneath the sand around the factory to hinder the army's advance, but also inside the plant.

Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, confirmed the entire refinery had been mined.

"They had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," said communications minister Mohamed Said.

The revelation though of the possibility of an 'inside job" follows expressions of surprise by security experts at the apparent ease with which the terrorists loyal to Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed Islamist who formed his own brigade, the "Signatories in Blood", penetrated the plant. It was the first successful terrorist attack against a petrol or gas plant in Algeria.

"These installations are highly protected. The operation must have been prepared over quite some time. Either there was a slip up or it was internal complicity," said Louis Caprioli, adviser at GEOs, the risk management group and a former domestic intelligence agent.

A spokesman for BP refused to be drawn on the possible security beach: "We wouldn't comment on this," he said.

Last night it was confirmed that the apparent leader of the militants, Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, was ready at any time to blow up the hostages. Another of the kidnappers was identified as Abdallahi Ould Hmida....

As Hamas-linked CAIR assures us that jihad means staying fit despite one's busy schedule, the jihad has claimed twenty-five more victims in Algeria. Apparently the exercise was very strenuous. "25 more bodies found at Algerian plant," from the Associated Press, January 20 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

ALGIERS, Algeria — The death toll from the bloody terrorist siege at a natural gas plant in the Sahara climbed to at least 81 on Sunday as Algerian forces searching the complex for explosives found dozens more bodies, many so badly disfigured they could not immediately be identified, a security official said.

Algerian special forces stormed the facility on Saturday to end the four-day siege of the remote desert refinery, and the government said then that 32 militants and 23 hostages were killed, but that the death toll was likely to rise.

The militants came from six countries, were armed to cause maximum destruction and mined the Ain Amenas refinery, which the Algerian state oil company runs along with BP and Norway's Statoil, said Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said. The militants "had decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," he said in a state radio interview....

The Algerian security official said the 25 bodies found by bombs squads on Sunday were so badly disfigured that it was difficult to tell whether they were hostages or attackers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation and said those casualties were not official yet.

The squads were bombing the plant in the Sahara Desert to defuse mines they said were planted throughout the vast site, not far from the Libyan border....

The Masked Brigade, founded by Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar, claimed responsibility for the attack. Belmoktar claimed the attack in the name of al-Qaida, according to the text from a video the Mauritania-based Internet site, Sahara Media, said it had obtained. The site sometimes carries messages of jihadists.

"We at al-Qaida are responsible for this operation that we bless," Sahara Media quoted the video as saying. The video was dated Jan. 17, a day after the attack began. Belmoktar recently created his own group in a schism with associated in al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, but his statement appears to show his link with the terror group's motherhouse and put the stamp of global jihad on the action by a special commando unit, "Those Who Sign in Blood."

What could go wrong? "U. S. nuclear component reaches Pakistan via China," by Narayan Lakshman in The Hindu, January 19 (thanks to Lookmann):

Pakistan is circumventing matters of legality and geopolitical complexities in the procurement process for nuclear components.

This may well be the conclusion reached in the case of Qiang Hu, a Chinese national who has been charged in Massachusetts with “conspiracy for violating U.S. export controls by allegedly selling thousands of pressure transducers to unnamed customers through his position of sales manager at MKS Instruments Shanghai Ltd. in China”.

Among the list of nations that use pressure transducers to measure the gas pressure inside centrifuge cascades in nuclear plants is Pakistan. The list reportedly includes Iran and possibly North Korea, but Pakistan, according to experts at the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, is among those nations that “use a considerable quantity of the equipment in their centrifuge plants and have regularly sought them through surreptitious means as used in this alleged scheme”.

That Islamabad was a likely final customer of Mr. Hu’s deceptions cannot be ruled out. According to a report published by ISIS on this case, “Hu and his co-conspirators allegedly arranged their unlawful export to unauthorised Chinese end-users or to other, unnamed country end-users”.

The report’s authors, David Albright and Andrea Stricker, told The Hindu that while recent case studies or evidence of Pakistani procurements of pressure transducers may not be available, Pakistan is “likely procuring them, assuming they don’t have enough in their centrifuge plants or haven’t made them themselves”....

"There's really no such thing as just Sharia, it's not one monolithic Continuum - Sharia is understood in thousands of different ways over the 1,500 years in which multiple and competing schools of law have tried to construct some kind of civic penal and family law code that would abide by Islamic values and principles, it's understood in many different ways..." -- Reza Aslan

And yet whenever we see Sharia implemented, it looks the same. Now, why is that?

"Under the Mali militants’ reign of terror: refugees tell of life under Islamist rule," by Colin Freeman for the Telegraph, January 19 (thanks to Lookmann):

Having routed the Malian soldiers who were supposed to keep them at bay, the masked fighters toured the neighbourhood, dishing out sweets to children and stern religious sermons to adults.

Lest anyone fail to get the hint, they also laid waste to Diabaly’s church, used by the small Catholic community that has dwelt among the Muslims there for as long as anyone can remember.

“They removed the church’s cement cross and destroyed it,” said Asseye Touré, 26, who fled Diabaly on his motorbike on Friday, driving 20 miles down a track through rice paddies and onion fields to the government-held town of Niono.

“They said they didn’t want to harm us, but that we should all live under Islamic law.”

Mr Touré, a farmer, was among hundreds who hastily left Diabaly on Friday, some by minibus and others crammed 15-a-piece on the back of rice carts towed by motorbikes.

The militants had rolled into the village in a 40-vehicle convoy on Monday, proving they could still capture new ground despite the onset of the French military offensive against their strongholds across northern Mali.

For proof of just how easily they had done so, Mr Touré brandished a picture he had taken on his mobile phone, showing the corpse of a Malian soldier dumped amid the rushes of a nearby river.

“I saw about three dead bodies there,” he said. “The Malian military could not stop them.”

This weekend, the French military appeared to be having rather better luck, with air strikes forcing the militants to flee Diabaly into surrounding forests near the Mauritanian border.

Even so, officials in nearby Niono remained anxious that the militants might suddenly strike there too, and last night (SAT) a column of French armour arrived to secure the town.

“People are still worried, because there are lots of ways into Niono,” said Moriba Coulibaly, the town’s mayor.

Mr Coulibaly’s words echo fears that Mali’s militants may prove rather more resilient than the French initially thought, and that if they cannot compete in a conventional battle, they will respond with insurgent tactics.

This was demonstrated by last week’s mass seizure of hostages across the border in Algeria.

Critics point out that if a police state such as Algeria cannot stop serious terrorism incidents, then Mali’s coup-weakened government will stand even less chance — with or without foreign military support.

France’s president, François Hollande, ordered the intervention amid fears that Mali, one of the poorest nations in Africa, was on the point of hosting a “terrorist state” on its vast northern desert flank.

The action, expected to involve a total of 2,500 French troops, has been backed by British transport planes, raising fears of a prolonged Western entanglement in another predominantly Muslim region....

In Timbuktu last week, the first hint that the militants might be losing control came in the form of yet another gun-enforced edict.

Having already banned most forms of temptation, including music, dancing, drinking and smoking, the city’s “morality police” warned locals not to take any pleasure in the fact that French warplanes had been bombing their bases and supply dumps.

“On Wednesday night, the Islamist people went round telling everyone not to show any happiness or joy because of the French intervention,” Timbuktu’s mayor, Halle Ousmane, told The Sunday Telegraph.

“They warned that if they did, they would come to their houses and attack them.”

By then, though, the militants’ ability to enforce their threats already seemed to be diminishing.

The French bombardments had already forced many to flee into the surrounding Sahara desert, while those still in the city were said to be panicking every time they heard an aircraft in the distance.

“Until last week, everyone was scared, all the women were covered up except for the eyes,” said Mr Ousmane, 60, who was visiting Bamako when the bombing began.

“But when I spoke to my wife on Thursday morning, she said that she had taken her veil off, as had most of the other women in Timbuktu. The French military intervention has finally brought us some hope.”

The takeover of the north followed a coup last March by the Malian army, whose poorly equipped soldiers were suffering heavy losses in a guerrilla war against the lighter-skinned nomads of Mali’s Tuareg separatist movement.

The Tuaregs, who have long been in tension with the black Africans of the south, had returned to northern Mali with heavy weaponry after fighting as mercenaries in 2011 for Col Muammar Gaddafi.

But while the coup easily toppled the regime of President Amadou Toumani Touré, the ensuing chaos left the north open for takeover by the Tuareg separatist militia, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, more commonly referred to by its French abbreviation of MNLA.

And with the separatists came fighters known by a much more sinister acronym — AQIM, or al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb.

Having initially formed an alliance of convenience with the Tuaregs, AQIM quickly staged a coup of its own, sidelining the separatists and turning Timbuktu not into a Tuareg homeland, but into a mini-caliphate.

At the entrance to the city, twinned with Hay-on-Wye in Wales in 2007, a new sign went up saying “welcome to the city of sharia”.

While the city’s governor and prefect left, Mr Ousmane decided to stay, requesting a meeting with Timbuktu’s self-declared new masters.

It brought him face-to-face with a short, taciturn al-Qaeda leader named Abu Zaid, whose unassuming appearance belies a brutal reputation.

In 2009, he is believed to have ordered the murder of Edwin Dyer, the British hostage, kidnapped along with three other European tourists after attending a Tuareg cultural festival near the Mali-Niger border.

“At first they didn’t even let us speak at the meeting, and Abu Zaid, along with others, just recited verses from the Koran,” said Mr Ousmane.

“They said we have to talk about religion, and I told them that we were already Muslim people, so why were they here? They said they wanted sharia not just in Timbuktu, but all over Mali. And they told me, 'You are no longer mayor’.”

A Taliban-style regime then took hold, turning a city recently famed for its world music festivals into one where the only melodies allowed — even on mobile telephone ring tones — were Koranic verses.

Those who broke the rules were hauled before a sharia court in a former tourist hotel, where punishments such as flogging by camelhair whip were dispensed.

Suspected thieves would be strapped to a chair and have a hand amputed — sometimes with a painkiller administered by a doctor first, sometimes not. Mr Ousmane’s daughter was arrested by the Islamic morality police simply for wearing a veil that was not black.

“They told her it looked too pretty, and that they could smell the perfume she was wearing at 100 metres,” he said.

Mr Ousmane decided the safest thing to do was to tell his fellow citizens to co-operate, fearing they would be killed if they were provoked into retaliation, such as when the Islamists began destroying Timbuktu’s mud-built Islamic shrines for being “idolatrous”.

“It was horrifying when they did that, but what they destroyed is only mud, and we are Muslims in our hearts,” he said. “The day they leave, we can rebuild them.”

Also nursing reconstruction plans is Sadou Diallo, 57, the mayor of the northern city of Gao, whose private property empire incurred Islamist wrath for rather different reasons.

Not only did he own two raucous nightclubs, frequented by hip hop DJs and local ladies of the night, he also had a chain of hotels rented out to US special forces teams, who until last year, were training troops in Gao as part of a counter-terrorism strategy.

“All of my properties were burned down and I lost about £500,000,” said Mr Diallo, whose office wall in Bamako bears a “certificate of appreciation” from 1st Bn, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne).

“When the French attacked last week, I felt alive for the first time since last year.”

Quite how long Malians’ new-found love affair with their former imperial masters will last is another matter.

While some see it as a benign intervention that could heal old colonial wounds altogether, others think it will simply reopen them, especially if it attracts even more jihadists to the country.

And while France has pledged to stick with the mission “as long as it takes”, the military side is just one aspect of it.

Equally daunting is the task of holding fresh elections, slated for later this year, that will find a credible replacement for the ousted Mr Touré, whose corrupt, ineffectual regime achieved little more than giving democracy a bad name.

“We used to have a usually very tolerant brand of Islam, but bad governance is pushing people into embracing militant causes,” said one Malian development worker....

That leaves open the question of why people choose Sharia in places not significantly marked by "bad governance." Is Turkey re-Islamizing and discarding Kemalist secularism because of "bad governance"?

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 45
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43 / Part 44

"...This first attempt to rescue the holy sepulchre was followed by others equally wild, misguided, and unfortunate. Some of them [the Crusaders] indeed began their evil deeds as soon as they had left their home.. The last of these bodies fell upon the Jews, who are indeed enemies of the Christian faith, but who have now, at least, nothing to do with the question of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they entered into Germany the Crusaders put them to death with horrible torture. Plunder and rapine indeed appeared to be the object of the crusaders. On this as well as on most other preceding bands, their misdeeds drew down the vengeance of the people. At an early period of their march, and as soon as they reached Hungary, the people fell upon them, and put the greater portion to the sword.”

Father Francis then repeats a common explanation for the lack of success of the Crusades, “Doubtless the great misfortunes which have fallen upon the Christian armies have been a punishment from heaven, because they have not gone to work in the right spirit. It is not enough to take up lance and shield, and to place a red cross upon the shoulder. Those who desire to fight the battle of the Lord must cleanse their hearts, and go forth in the spirit of pilgrims rather than knights. I mean, not that they should trust wholly to spiritual weapons- for in truth the infidel is a foe not to be despised- but I mean, that they should lay aside all thoughts of worldly glory, and rivalry one against another”.

As the crusaders prepare to embark on their long journey, Henty cautions us about their motives: “It must not be supposed that the whole of those present were animated by any strong religious feeling. No doubt there existed a desire, which was carefully fanned by the preaching of the priests and monks, to rescue the holy sepulchre from the hands of the Saracens; but a far stronger feeling was to be found in the warlike nature of the people in those days. Knights, men-at-arms, and indeed men of all ranks, were full of a combative spirit. Life in the castle and hut was alike dull and monotonous, and the excitement of war and adventure was greatly looked for, both as a means of obtaining glory and booty, and for the change they afforded to the dreary monotony of life”.

Richard the Lionheart is described as “haughty of his dignity”, though free from personal pride. “He was impatient of contradiction, eager to carry out whatever he had determined upon; and nothing enraged him so much as hesitation or procrastination.” And Henty is critical of Richard’s execution of Muslim prisoners after the siege of Acre, “[Richard] sullied his reputation by causing all the defenders of Acre to be put to death, their ransom not having arrived at the stipulated time”.

When our young hero is captured and brought before Saladin, Saladin gives him a lecture on the bad manners of the Crusaders: “You are brave warriors, and I hear that before you were taken you slaughtered numbers of my people. They did wrong to capture you and bring you here to be killed. Your cruel king gives no mercy to those who fall into his hands. You must not expect it here, you who without pretence of right invade my country, slaughter my people, and defeat my armies. The murder of the prisoners of Acre has closed my heart to all mercy. There, your king put 10,000 prisoners to death in cold blood, a month after the capture of the place, because the money at which he had placed their ransom had not arrived….” This passage at least is a witness to Henty’s imaginative power to hold the “other’s” or the enemy’s point of view.

Saladin is described as “brave in the extreme, and exposed his life as fearlessly as did his Christian rival, and the two valiant leaders recognized the great qualities of each other.”

Another British imperialist, H.Rider Haggard, also wrote a historical novel of the crusades, The Brethren (1904), in which he denounces the folly of the Crusades, and praises Saladin and the Saracens as noble, courageous, and chivalrous.

In his essay already cited, Robert Irwin argues that Sir Steven Runciman was influenced by American historian Marshall Baldwin’s Raymond III of Tripolis and the Fall of Jerusalem (1140-1187), which first appeared in 1936. Irwin further observes that Runciman used novelistic techniques to tell a story, “It is not difficult to read Runciman’s artfully structured and stylish historical trilogy as a novel.”

In an interview, Runciman confessed that his literary style was influenced by Beatrix Potter, author of Peter Rabbit, etc. While Beatrix Potter cited Sir Walter Scott as her model. Walter Scott? Isn’t that where we came in?

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

Lesson learned. "Hostages Dead in Bloody Climax to Siege in Algeria," by Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 19:

BAMAKO, Mali — The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said....

One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night that the kidnappers said, “We’ve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is.” The haggard-looking man, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages....

Britain's newest export: jihad terrorists. "Terrorist with 'perfect English accent' involved in Algerian hostage crisis," by Henry Samuel in the Telegraph, January 18:

A terrorist with "perfect English" was among those involved in the Algerian hostage crisis in which at least two Britons and perhaps many more are feared dead, it has emerged.

An Algerian hostage who escaped told French newspaper Le Monde that one of the Al-Qaeda-linked militants spoke English perfectly, and was among a multi-national group who seemed well acquainted with the BP gas plant in the southeast of the North African country.

"They searched the living quarters for foreigners and told Muslims that they were in no danger," said the man, adding that the kidnappers emphasised that "Christians and Infidels' were the main targets.

The revelation raised speculation that Islamists radicals with links with the UK or other Western English-speaking countries might have been involved in the crisis.

A number of British Muslims have been convicted in foreign courts or have fought for, or trained with, terrorist or extreme Islamist groups abroad. In December, a British student was arrested on the border of Mauritania and Mali, accused of trying to join an Islamic terrorist group affiliated to the kidnappers.

Ahmed Shaheen, 26, from London, was detained on the border between Mauritania and Mali as he tried to cross the Sahara on foot to reach the desert stronghold of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

On Friday, security sources cited by Algérie-Focus news website said several "foreigners" were among the kidnappers, including one from Canada, but also from Egypt, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Libya....

That was his jihad; what's yours? "Jihad ‘Prince,’ a Kidnapper, Is Tied to Raid," by Steven Erlanger and Adam Nossiter for the New York Times, January 17:

PARIS — His entourage calls him “the Prince,” and after the militant Islamist takeover of a town in northern Mali last year, he liked to go down to the river and watch the sunset, surrounded by armed bodyguards.

Others call him “Laaouar,” or the One-Eyed, after he lost an eye to shrapnel; some call him “Mr. Marlboro” for the cigarette-smuggling monopoly he created across the Sahel region to finance his jihad. And French intelligence officials called him “the Uncatchable” because he escaped after apparently being involved in a series of kidnappings in 2003 that captured 32 European tourists, an undertaking which is thought to have earned him millions of dollars in ransoms.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 40, born in the Algerian desert city of Ghardaïa, 350 miles south of Algiers, is now being called the mastermind of the hostage crisis at an internationally run natural-gas facility in eastern Algeria.

Algerian officials say he mounted the assault and the mass abduction of foreigners; his spokesmen say the raid is in reprisal for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s support for the French war against Islamist militants in the Sahel.

Mr. Belmokhtar has been active in politics, moneymaking and fighting for decades in the Sahel, which includes Mali, Mauritania and Niger and is one of the poorest regions in the world. But through this single action, one of the most brazen kidnappings in years, he has suddenly become one of the best-known figures associated with the Islamist militancy sweeping the region and agitating capitals around the world.

The 1989 killing in Pakistan of Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, a Palestinian considered the “father of global jihad” and a mentor of Osama bin Laden, prompted Mr. Belmokhtar to seek to avenge Mr. Azzam’s death, he has said in interviews. At 19 he traveled to Afghanistan for training with Al Qaeda, and has claimed in interviews to have made contact with other jihadi luminaries like Abu Qatada and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, according to a 2009 Jamestown Foundation study. Bin Laden made contact with him, through emissaries, in the early 2000s, according to Djallil Lounnas, who teaches at Al Akhawayn University in Morocco....

Mr. Belmokhtar was falsely reported to have been killed in 1999. Nearly a decade later, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which he joined, adopted the jihadist ideology of Bin Laden and renamed itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Mr. Belmokhtar is considered to have been a key intermediary with Al Qaeda and a well-known supplier of weapons and matériel in the Sahara.

But he clearly does not share authority easily, and left or was removed from his post as commander of a battalion in Mali last October, reportedly for “straying from the right path,” according to a Malian official, quoting the leader of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel.

The dispute was about Mr. Belmokhtar’s return to smuggling and trafficking. Dominique Thomas, a specialist in radical Islam, told Le Monde that Mr. Belmokhtar’s activities ran counter to the group’s official line, which presents itself as entirely virtuous.

Mr. Belmokhtar then founded his new group, which he allied with the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, another Islamist group that had broken off from Al Qaeda.

Some suggest that his expertise has been more in criminal activities than in holy warfare. Kidnapping and smuggling — of cigarettes, stolen cars, arms and drugs — have been his specialties in the vast and largely lawless border regions. He was said to be central to hostage-takings and subsequent negotiations for their release in 2003, 2008 and 2009....

In an interview with the Mauritanian news agency Alakhbar in Gao in November, Mr. Belmokhtar said he respected “the clearly expressed choice” of the people of northern Mali “to apply Islamic Shariah law.” He warned against foreign interference, saying that any country that did so “would be considered as an oppressor and aggressor who is attacking a Muslim people applying Shariah on its territory.”...

The U.S. Government has long since abandoned any realistic discussion of the Islamic jihad threat, and now is focusing on ordinary Americans who believe in individual rights as terror threats. And so the descent continues, ever more rapidly.

"West Point center cites dangers of ‘far right’ in U.S.," by Rowan Scarborough in The Washington Times, January 17 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A West Point think tank has issued a paper warning America about “far right” groups such as the “anti-federalist” movement, which supports “civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.”

“Civil activism, individual freedoms and self-government.” Horror of horrors. In other words, if you're not a socialist and a statist, West Point and its masters think you're a terrorist.

The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”

The center — part of the institution where men and women are molded into Army officers — posted the report Tuesday. It lumps limited government activists with three movements it identifies as “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.”

The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.

But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”

It says anti-federalists “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.”

The report also draws a link between the mainstream conservative movement and the violent “far right,” and describes liberals as “future oriented” and conservatives as living in the past.

“While liberal worldviews are future- or progressive -oriented, conservative perspectives are more past-oriented, and in general, are interested in preserving the status quo.” the report says. “The far right represents a more extreme version of conservatism, as its political vision is usually justified by the aspiration to restore or preserve values and practices that are part of the idealized historical heritage of the nation or ethnic community.”

Yes, like the freedom of speech and the equality of rights of all people before the law. How antiquated!

The report adds: “While far-right groups’ ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal-democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights and the balance of power.”

How Orwellian. In reality, the Left is increasingly authoritarian and thuggish.

The report says there were 350 “attacks initiated by far-right groups/individuals” in 2011.

Details about what makes an attack a “far right” action are not clear in the report, which was written by Arie Perliger, who directs the center’s terrorism studies and teaches social sciences at West Point.

A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.

“Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?” the staffer said....

Yep.

Saeed Abedini is accused of harming Iranian national security, apparently by converting from Islam to Christianity and founding Christian house churches. This kind of persecution manifests the fundamental fear, insecurity, and brittleness of the Islamic Republic. An update on this story. "'I am told I will hang for my faith in Jesus': American pastor faces death sentence in Iran," by Robert Tait in the Telegraph, January 18 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An American Christian pastor faces a possible death sentence in Iran after prosecutors accused him of harming national security on charges he and his supporters claim amount to religious persecution.

Saeed Abedini, 32, who is Iranian born, is expected to go on trial next week before a revolutionary tribunal in Tehran in a hearing presided over by a judge blacklisted by the European Union for handing down harsh verdicts.

US officials have already voiced concerns over the fate of Mr Abedini, who has been held in custody since July 2011 after being arrested while on a visit to Iran from America.

His wife, Najmeh, says he has suffered beatings during interrogation and has expressed fears for his life in letters to her.

"This is the process in my life today: one day I am told I will be freed and allowed to see my kids on Christmas (which was a lie) and the next day I am told I will hang for my faith in Jesus," Mr Abedini, a father-of-two, wrote in one letter. "One day there are intense pains after beatings in interrogations, the next day they are nice to you and offer you candy."

The origins of the charges against Mr Abdini are not clear. But the American Centre for Law and Justice, a Christian advocacy group founded by the evangelist preacher, Pat Robertson, said it was connected with starting a home church movement.

"His court file indicated that this national security charge was directly related to his work starting a house church movement in Iran," the organisation said in a statement.

Harming national security is a capital crime under Iran's legal statute. Critics say it is vaguely defined and used to suppress opponents of the country's Islamic regime.

Mr Abdini, who converted to Christianity at the age of 20, was building an orphanage near the city of Rasht on the Caspian Sea, fuelled by a belief that the Bible teaches helping widows and orphans, according to his wife.

He was detained in 2009 but later released after agreeing to sign a commitment not to engage in religious activities such as working in underground churches.

Mr Abidini had travelled to Iran nine times since his detention before being arrested again. "He had no worries that he would be arrested, believing that he kept his end of the promise and that the government would keep their end," she told AFP.

He has not had access to a lawyer since being re-arrested, she added.

She also said one of his interrogators had told him that Iran's theocratic rulers feared that "if the country is not following Islam, then we have less control over [its people]".

Mr Abdini is expected to be tried by Abbas Pir-Abassi, a judge subject to EU sanctions for human rights violations after sentencing several activists to death.

While Iran's constitution recognises the rights of religious minorities like Christians and Jews, the authorities have targeted Christian converts. Apostasy is punishable by death under the country's shariah code.

The US state department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, has expressed "serious concerns" about the case.

However, 49 US congressmen have urged the state department to call for Mr Abdini's release, saying the government could do more despite not having diplomatic relations with Iran.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a panel advising American policymakers, has called on Iran to release Mr Abedini "immediately and unconditionally."

Al-Qaeda wanted to send the message that it could strike anywhere in the Sahara. This comes just after Obama said they were essentially already defeated.

"Kidnappers said were after ‘crusaders’ not Algerians: freed hostage," from Al Arabiya, January 19 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

Al-Qaeda-linked militants, who kidnapped hundreds of workers at a gas plant in the Algerian desert, said they were after “crusaders” and not Algerian nationals, one of the released hostages told Al Arabiya in an interview on Saturday.

The freed Algerian hostage also said that Algerians were treated better than foreigners as they were allowed to use their phones and were promised that they will be released shortly.

“We [Algerians] did what we wanted, they did not tell us to switch off our cellphones, or interrogated us. They told us to sit down and that they were not after Algerians but after what they called crusaders,” the former hostage said.

The Qaeda-linked militants, who were angry at French intervention in Mali, wanted to send a clear message: they could strike anywhere in the Sahara including terrorizing hundreds of foreigners from different backgrounds in Algeria.

“We saw the foreigners who were tied… we [Algerians] asked them that we wanted to leave, they [militants] told us to sit down a bit with them, maybe 1.5 hours till we are released.”

Al-Taher bin Shanab was leading the group who kidnapped the hostages.

According to the former captive, the group members called Shanab: “Emir Taha” or “Prince Taha;” a title commonly used by al-Qaeda members to denote to their superiors.

“This Emir Taha told us, we came here to die and to be martyrs, and that they wanted to talk to officials and generals that are ruling the country.”

According to freed captive, the militants were “happy” with their operation, as they held “13 foreigners hailing from different backgrounds such as Norway, U.S. and Britain. They were all tied with one suicide bomber watching them.”

Veteran commander from Niger

Meanwhile, according to Reuters, the field commander of the Islamist group that attacked the gas plant is a veteran fighter from Niger and was called Abdul Rahman al-Nigeri, Mauritanian news agencies reported.

Nigeri is said to be close to the overall commander of the kidnappers, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran of fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Algeria’s civil war of the 1990s who now has links with al Qaeda in the region.

Belmokhtar appears not to have been present during the raid, which led to the deaths of an unspecified number of hostages. More than 20 foreigners were still missing or being held captive in the industrial gas plant on Saturday.

Nigeri was reported to be holed up in the plant near the town of In Amenas and holding seven hostages, according to the Mauritanian reports carried by the SITE monitoring service.

Another of the group’s leaders, Abu al-Bara’a al-Jaza’iri, had been killed at the gas field’s residential complex, which has been retaken by the Algerian army, according to the ANI news agency.

Mauritanian news agencies have maintained contacts with Islamist groups in the region.

Nigeri joined the hardline Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 2005 and participated in several of its “major” missions in Mali, Mauritania and Niger, including a June 2005 attack on a barracks in Mauritania where 17 soldiers were killed, the reports said....

That was their jihad. What's yours? "Algeria: 32 militants killed, with 23 hostages," by Paul Schlemm and Karim Kebir for the Associated Press, January 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) -- In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said.

With few details emerging from the remote site in eastern Algeria, it was unclear whether anyone was rescued in the final operation, but the number of hostages killed on Saturday - seven - was how many the militants had said that morning they still had. The government described the toll as provisional and some foreigners remained unaccounted for.

The siege at Ain Amenas transfixed the world after radical Islamists linked to al-Qaida stormed the complex, which contained hundreds of plant workers from all over the world, then held them hostage surrounded by the Algerian military and its attack helicopters for four tense days that were punctuated with gun battles and dramatic tales of escape.

Algeria's response to the crisis was typical of its history in confronting terrorists, favoring military action over negotiation, which caused an international outcry from countries worried about their citizens. Algerian military forces twice assaulted the two areas where the hostages were being held with minimal apparent mediation - first on Thursday, then on Saturday.

"To avoid a bloody turn of events in response to the extreme danger of the situation, the army's special forces launched an intervention with efficiency and professionalism to neutralize the terrorist groups that were first trying to flee with the hostages and then blow up the gas facilities," Algeria's Interior Ministry said in a statement about the standoff.

Immediately after the assault, French President Francois Hollande gave his backing to Algeria's tough tactics, saying they were "the most adapted response to the crisis."

"There could be no negotiations" with terrorists, the French media quoted him as saying in the central French city of Tulle.

Hollande said the hostages were "shamefully murdered" by their captors, and he linked the event to France's military operation against al-Qaida-backed rebels in neighboring Mali. "If there was any need to justify our action against terrorism, we would have here, again, an additional argument," he said.

President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. stood ready to provide whatever assistance was needed in the wake of the attack.

"This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al-Qaida and other violent extremist groups in North Africa. In the coming days, we will remain in close touch with the Government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place so that we can work together to prevent tragedies like this in the future," the statement said....

In the final assault, the remaining band of militants killed the hostages before 11 of them were in turn cut down by the special forces, Algeria's state news agency said. The military launched its Saturday assault to prevent a fire started by the extremists from engulfing the complex and blowing it up, the report added.

A total of 685 Algerian and 107 foreigner workers were freed over the course of the four-day standoff, the ministry statement said, adding that the group of militants that attacked the remote Saharan natural gas complex consisted of 32 men of various nationalities, including three Algerians and explosives experts.

The military also said it confiscated heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades attached to suicide belts.

Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company running the Ain Amenas site along with BP and Norway's Statoil, said the entire refinery had been mined with explosives, and that the process of clearing it out is now under way.

Algeria has fought its own Islamist rebellion since the 1990s, elements of which later declared allegiance to al-Qaida and then set up new groups in the poorly patrolled wastes of the Sahara along the borders of Niger, Mali, Algeria and Libya, where they flourished.

The standoff has put the spotlight on these al-Qaida-linked groups that roam these remote areas, threatening vital infrastructure and energy interests. The militants initially said their operation was intended to stop a French attack on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali - though they later said it was two months in the planning, long before the French intervention.

The militants, who came from a Mali-based al-Qaida splinter group run by an Algerian, attacked the plant Wednesday morning. Armed with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers in four-wheel drive vehicles, they fell on a pair of buses taking foreign workers to the airport. The buses' military escort drove off the attackers in a blaze of gunfire that sent bullets zinging over the heads of crouching workers. A Briton and an Algerian - probably a security guard - were killed.

The militants then turned to the vast gas complex, divided between the workers' living quarters and the refinery itself, and seized hostages, the Algerian government said. The gas flowing to the site was cut off.

Saturday's government statement said the militants came across the border from "neighboring countries," while the militants said they came from Niger, hundreds of miles (kilometers) to the south.

On Thursday, Algerian helicopters kicked off the military's first assault on the complex by opening fire on a convoy carrying both kidnappers and their hostages to stop them from escaping, resulting in many deaths, according to witnesses.

The accounts of hostages who escaped the standoff showed they faced dangers from both the kidnappers and the military.

Ruben Andrada, 49, a Filipino civil engineer who works as one of the project management staff for the Japanese company JGC Corp., described how he and his colleagues were used as human shields by the kidnappers, which did little to deter the Algerian military....

President Barack Obama said in a statement Saturday that the U.S. stood ready to provide whatever assistance was needed in the wake of the attack.

"This attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al-Qaida and other violent extremist groups in North Africa. In the coming days, we will remain in close touch with the Government of Algeria to gain a fuller understanding of what took place so that we can work together to prevent tragedies like this in the future," the statement said....

The attack by the Masked Brigade, founded by Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar, had been in the works for two months, a member of the brigade told the ANI news outlet. He said militants targeted Algeria because they expected the country to support the international effort to root out extremists in neighboring Mali and it was carried out by a special commando unit, "Those Who Signed in Blood," tasked with attacking nations supporting intervention in Mali.

The kidnappers focused on the foreign workers, largely leaving alone the hundreds of Algerian workers who were briefly held hostage before being released or escaping....

That is, the focused on the non-Muslims, leaving the Muslims alone.

Chabane, an Algerian who worked in food services, said he bolted out the window and was hiding when he heard the militants speaking among themselves with Libyan, Egyptian and Tunisian accents. At one point, he said, they caught a Briton.

"They threatened him until he called out in English to his friends, telling them, `Come out, come out. They're not going to kill you. They're looking for the Americans,'" Chabane said.

"A few minutes later, they blew him away."

That's jihadi honor for you.

How did the Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad Movement in West Africa get the crazy idea that jihad had something to do with making bombs? What are U.S.-based "moderate" Muslim spokesmen doing to disabuse them of their misunderstanding? Why, nothing. Nothing at all.

"MOJWA Media Wing Launches New Jihadi Forum To Offfer Training Courses In Bomb Manufacture, Booby-Trapping," from MEMRI, January 14 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

In a January 8, 2013 statement on its Facebook page, Al-Murabiteen, the media foundation of the Salafi-jihadi organization Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad Movement in West Africa (MOJWA), announced the launch of its online forum and media server. According to the statement, the Al-Murabiteen network, which is hosted on a Yahoo server in Sunnyvale, CA, would join the jihadi media front, which it praised for "angering the enemies of Allah."

How could their staying fit despite their busy schedules anger the enemies of Allah?

The root cause of this is what is taught in the mosques and madrasas, but no one in the mainstream media dares to discuss that. "Pakistan suffers unprecedented winter of attacks as militants seek 'piece of the pie,'" by Waj S. Khan for NBC News, January 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- In Pakistan's complicated and multiple insurgencies, killing is cyclical.

The onset of winter traditionally marks the end of the militants' "fighting season" and heralds a lull in attacks.

But this year is different. Pakistan is facing an extraordinary surge in terrorist activity.

The country is reeling from an intense spate of organized militancy that has crossed international borders and morphed from an anti-Western jihad in Afghanistan to an anti-state and sectarian movement deep inside Pakistan.

An "anti-Western jihad"? Glad to know they're staying fit despite their busy schedules, but why would doing so be "anti-Westerm"?

The increasingly sophisticated and high-profile attacks have killed scores. They include at least 114 people who were slain in a series of attacks on Jan. 10, a day which was later dubbed "Black Thursday."

This uptick in violence in Pakistan comes as Islamabad is trying to improve its relationship with Kabul and Washington. [It is? -- Ed.] It is seen as a message from insurgents: They are not going anywhere....

One human rights group has warned that sectarian violence targeting Pakistan's Shiite Muslims was rising.

Speaking to Reuters in the aftermath of "Black Thursday," Ali Dayan Hasan of Pakistan Human Rights Watch said:

"Last year was the bloodiest year for Shias in living memory. More than 400 were killed and if [the Jan. 10] attack is any indication, its just going to get worse." ...

The roughly 500,000-strong Shia Hazara community in Quetta are routinely hunted by extremist groups because their ethnically distinct features make them an easy target, Dayan said.

"They live in a state of siege. Stepping out of the ghetto means risking death."

The impact of the "Black Thursday" attacks was felt nationally, with relatives of the victims refusing to bury their dead for four days and staging a downtown sit-in, forcing an executive decision by the prime minister and president to sack the province's elected government for ineptness.

Although 14-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai survived a point-blank shooting which provoked international attention and outrage, there has been no shortage of deadly incidents since the Taliban targeted her in October....

On December 15, a sophisticated, multi-stage suicide-bomber and sniper attack on Peshawar airport and an air force base triggered concerns about the ability of the country's nuclear-armed military to protect itself.

Two days later, the Taliban would claim responsibility for the deadliest car bombing of 2012. Women and children were among 21 killed in Jamrud.

On December 18 and 19, drive-by shootings targeting health workers -- who were part of a national immunization drive to treat children with much-needed polio vaccines -- would claim the lives of eight people, most of them young women.

The following weekend, one the Taliban's most vocal critics would be silenced. Veteran politician Bashir Bilour, a senior government minister, was among nine victims of a suicide bombing in Peshawar. The Taliban would claim responsibility, pledging to continue targeting secular politicians like Bilour....

He was involved in a plot by a Pakistani jihad group to "decapitate Danish newspaper employees and toss their heads onto the streets of Copenhagen" because of cartoons of Muhammad. That same jihad group was also behind the Mumbai jihad attack, in which 160 people were murdered and a tiny Chabad house was the primary target: the pious jihadists there brutally and savagely tortured and murdered a rabbi and his family.

We're talking a serious misunderstander of the Religion of Peace and Tolerance. Yet how many programs are there in mosques and Islamic schools in the U.S. and Canada to teach Muslims not to fall for this widespread misunderstanding of Islam? Why, none. None at all.

An update on this story, which is where the quote can be found characterizing his plots that I used in my headline. "Canadian sentenced to 14 years for role in 2008 Mumbai attack," by Stewart Bell for the National Post, January 17 (thanks to Michael):

A Canadian businessman was sentenced to 14 years Thursday for his role in a plot by a Pakistani terrorist group to decapitate Danish newspaper employees and toss their heads onto the streets of Copenhagen.

A U.S. District court judge in Chicago imposed the prison term on Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 52. The conspiracy was retaliation for a cartoon in the Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten showing the Muslim prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

He was also convicted of providing material support to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the Pakistani terrorist group that attacked the Indian city Mumbai in 2008 killing 160 people, two of them Canadians.

A former Pakistani army officer who immigrated to Canada before moving to Illinois, Rana “provided critical support” to terrorists overseas,” said Lisa Monaco, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security....

Walter Scott, The Talisman, the Crusades, Richard I of England and Saladin: Myths, Legends and History
by Ibn Warraq
Part 44
Parts 1-39 / Part 40 / Part 41 / Part 42 / Part 43

Moving onto the nineteenth century, we have Sophie Cottin’s novel Mathilde, published in 1805, in which the eponymous heroine, sister of Richard the Lionheart, falls in love with Saladin’s brother, Malek-Adel [i.e. al-‘Ādil]. Saladin plays a secondary role, it is his brother who is the paragon of the chivalrous knight: noble, courageous, tender, full of fire and melancholy, physically and morally beautiful. Mathilde, torn between her religion and her profane passion, dare not confess she loves a Muslim until Malek-Adel agrees to convert to Christianity. Saladin is reluctant to fight King Guy in single combat, when he does he fares badly, and is only just saved by his brother Malek-Adel.

The novel was a great success, and led to six librettos being written between 1828 and 1863 for the music of Pacini, Bergonzi, Costa, Poniatowski, Ventura-Sanchez, Loewe.

The historical novels of G.A. Henty, written between 1867 and 1902 aimed at young people, were immensely popular right up to to the 1950s, in England, at least. He wrote over 120 works of historical fiction, which were frowned upon from the1960s onwards, for their imperialism, xenophobia, racism, and reactionary views. But these works written during the heyday of British imperialism are making a surprising comeback among conservative homeschoolers, looking for texts that will build character, courage, resourcefulness, and faith, and teach history at the same time. The historian A.J.P. Taylor, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, who lectured in modern history at Oxford from 1938 to 1963, wrote that “true history began with Sir Walter Scott; he felt himself back into time”, and also confessed to a passion for the historical fictions of G.A. Henty. He claimed that it was the reading of Henty that gave him confidence to give tutorials on the Thirty Years War.

A glance at some of the titles of his novels indicate their sweep and range: With Clive in India: The Beginnings of an Empire [1884]; With Wolfe in Canada: The Winning of a Continent [1887]; Through Russian Snows: A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow [1896]; In Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence (1821–1827) [1893], and of course the work that concerns us here, Winning His Spurs: A Tale of the Crusades (aka Boy Knight) [1882]. The influence of Sir Walter Scott on the latter work is evident -- both the influence of Ivanhoe and The Talisman. Henty begins the Crusader novel in England and borrows Scott’s themes of the rivalry between the Saxons and the Normans, developed in Ivanhoe. Young Cuthbert accompanies Sir Walter (a homage to Scott?) and Richard the Lionheart to the Holy Land on the Third Crusade. Though accused of, above all, imperialism, Henty in this work does not take an imperialistic or a jingoistic position but adopts rather a realistic or critical attitude towards the Crusades and Crusaders. Father Francis explains to young Cuthbert what the Crusades were all about: “When the followers of the evil prophet took possession of the land, they laid grievous burdens upon the pilgrims, heavily they fined them, persecuted them in every way, and treated them as if indeed they were but the scum of the earth under their feet….

To be continued.

Ibn Warraq is the author of numerous books, including Why the West Is Best and Why I Am Not A Muslim.

"Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers" -- Qur'an 3:151

Muslims casting terror into the hearts of the unbelievers riding the Lyon metro is acceptable to the intelligentsia. Just don't put up any posters in that metro or any other that calling attention to their doing it. That would be absolutely unacceptable "Islamophobia."

"French city Lyon briefly evacuates metro on bomb alert," from Reuters, January 18 (thanks to Lookmann):

(Reuters) - The southeastern French city of Lyon temporarily shut and evacuated its underground railway system due to a bomb alert, local officials and the city's transport operator said.

The metro was later reopened and traffic returned to normal after security experts carried out checks, the operator said.

France is on high alert and has stepped up army patrols of public buildings and transport networks as Islamist militant groups have threatened revenge attacks for France's military campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels in Mali.

Hamas-linked CAIR is also working to free the "Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan," Aafia Siddiqui. What a coincidence that they'd have the same goal as these murderous jihadists.

"'Battalion of Blood' gunmen had one aim... to 'kill infidels and Christians': American and up to TWELVE Brits among hostages killed in botched raid on Al Qaeda gang at Algerian gas field," by Tim Shipman, David Williams and Beth Stebner for the Daily Mail, January 18 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamist militants are offering to free two American hostages held captive at an Algerian gas field in exchange for the release of two renowned terrorists jailed in the United States.

The attempt to negotiate comes after a US citizen and up to 12 Britons, who were kidnapped with dozens of other foreign oil workers on Wednesday, were killed in a botched rescue mission by Algerian forces.

As many as 60 foreign hostages remain unaccounted, as the bloody siege continues into its third day, though Algeria's news service said some could be hidden throughout the sprawling desert site.

Yesterday's air raid, which was carried out in Algerian helicopters and special forces without the prior knowledge of the US government, was meant to wipe out the al-Qaeda-linked militants and free the 132 foreigners from at least 10 countries who were being held, but instead left scores of people dead, injured or missing.

Militants said seven Americans had been taken hostage and it was reported that two of them escaped unharmed yesterday.

The Associated Press said today that kidnappers wanted to swap two American hostages still in captivity for two prominent terror figures in jail in the US, according to a Mauritanian website.

One of the two terrorists the captors want freed is Omar Abdel Rahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The other is a Pakistani scientist convicted of shooting at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

'The Blind Sheikh', as Abdel Rahman is often known, is currently serving a life sentence at the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina.

The offer, according to a Mauritanian news site that frequently broadcasts dispatches from groups linked to al-Qaida, came from Moktar Belmoktar, an extremist commander based in Mali who apparently masterminded the operation.

Five other Americans who had been at the vast Ain Amenas complex were able to avoid being taken captive when the terrorists first attacked early on Wednesday. Neither the Obama administration nor the British government was aware of the Algerian military's raid ahead of time.

Algeria's news service said special forces had resumed negotiations with militants today as foreign leaders scrambled to find out the fates of their citizens....

Instead of freeing the dozens of hostages, the raid resulted in bloody chaos at the isolated plant 800 miles south of the capital, Algiers, leaving the fate of many of the captives and the fighters uncertain. In launching its assault, Algeria also ignored offers of help from the SAS and American special forces.

'We asked them not to go in with all guns blazing and they just did it anyway,' said one London official. 'They insisted this was their sovereign territory and it was their operation.'

French sources said the decision to go in was taken because the terrorists were executing hostages. Last night, after a fierce day of fighting, Algerian officials said the rescue operation was over. They said Tahar Ben Cheneb, a prominent commander in the region, was among the dead militants.

The 11 bodies of gunmen found on Thursday comprised three Egyptians, two Tunisians, two Libyans, a Malian and a Frenchman and all were assumed to have been hostage-takers, a security source told Reuters. Algeria state news agency APS said the group had planned to take the hostages to Mali.

On Friday, the source said 18 militants had now been found dead.

A source said yesterday that 30 hostages were killed, of whom the nationalities of 15 had been established. Of these, eight were Algerian and seven were foreigners, including two British, two Japanese and a French national. One Briton was killed when the terrorists seized the gas compound on Wednesday. The number of foreigners unaccounted for and feared dead is now at 60....

The Obama administration appeared to be in the dark on Thursday about the hostage situation at the natural gas plant deep in the Sahara Desert. An administrative official told the Associated Press that the U.S. was not aware of the raid to free the hostages in advance....

Ahead of the raid, U.S. officials had been urging the Algerians to be cautious in their actions, but did not know a rescue mission was planned, said the administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Militants earlier said they were holding seven Americans, but the administration confirmed only that Americans were among those taken....

A local worker said from his home on Thursday that the Islamist gunmen of the ‘Battalion of Blood’ told the terrified staff that they would not harm Muslims but would kill 'Christians and infidels.'

Algerian security specialist Anis Rahmani told Reuters about 70 militants were involved from two groups, Belmokhtar's 'Those who sign in blood,' who travelled from Libya, and the lesser known 'Movement of the Islamic Youth in the South.'

Funny how these people who totally misunderstand Islam -- as Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. constantly insist -- always stress their Islamic identity.

'They were carrying heavy weapons including rifles used by the Libyan army during (Muammar) Gadaffi's rule,' he said. 'They also had rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns.'

Last night, as the military operation to rescue those captured continued, a local worker revealed how the militants appeared to have a clear strategy for their prisoners – some of whom even ended up having explosives strapped to their chest.

'The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels,' Abdelkader, 53, told the Mail from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. '"We will kill them," they said.'

The U.S. government sent an unmanned surveillance drone to the BP-operated site, near the border with Libya and 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) from the Algerian capital, but it could do little more than watch Thursday's intervention. Algeria's army-dominated government, hardened by decades of fighting Islamist militants, shrugged aside foreign offers of help and drove ahead alone.

With the hostage drama entering its second day Thursday, Algerian security forces moved in, first with helicopter fire and then special forces, according to diplomats, a website close to the militants, and an Algerian security official. The government said it was forced to intervene because the militants were being stubborn and wanted to flee with the hostages.

The militants — led by a Mali-based al-Qaida offshoot known as the Masked Brigade — suffered losses in Thursday's military assault, but succeeded in garnering a global audience....

The hostage-taking raised questions about security for sites run by multinationals that are dotted across Africa's largest country. It also raised the prospect of similar attacks on other countries allied against the extremist warlords and drug traffickers who rule a vast patch of desert across several countries in northwest Africa. Even the heavy-handed Algerian response may not deter groups looking for martyrdom and attention.

Casualty figures in the Algerian standoff varied widely. The remote location is extremely hard to reach and was surrounded by Algerian security forces — who, like the militants, are inclined to advertise their successes and minimize their failures.

'An important number of hostages were freed and an important number of terrorists were eliminated, and we regret the few dead and wounded,' Algeria's communications minister, Mohand Said Oubelaid, told national media, adding that the 'terrorists are multinational,' coming from several different countries with the goal of 'destabilizing Algeria, embroiling it in the Mali conflict and damaging its natural gas infrastructure.'

The official news agency said four hostages were killed in Thursday's operation, two Britons and two Filipinos. Two others, a Briton and an Algerian, died Wednesday in an ambush on a bus ferrying foreign workers to an airport. Citing hospital officials, the APS news agency said six Algerians and seven foreigners were injured.

APS said some 600 local workers were safely freed in the raid — but many of those were reportedly released the day before by the militants themselves.

The militants, via a Mauritanian news website, claimed that 35 hostages and 15 militants died in the helicopter strafing. A spokesman for the Masked Brigade told the Nouakchott Information Agency in Mauritania that only seven hostages survived....

An unarmed American surveillance drone soared overhead as the Algerian forces closed in, U.S. officials said. The U.S. offered military assistance Wednesday to help rescue the hostages but the Algerian government refused, a U.S. official said in Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the offer....

The militant group believed to be holding the hostages has claimed that it carried out the attack in retaliation for the French military intervention against Al Qaeda-backed rebels in neighbouring Mali.

Jihadis always say they're retaliating for some Infidel provocation. This is partly to shift responsibility for their violence onto their victims, but also because, in the absence of a caliph, only defensive jihad is legitimate according to Islamic law. Thus all jihads have to be justified as defensive.

"Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews..." (Qur'an 5:82)

As a result of the Qur'an's demonization of the Jews, usually it's the other way around: the most hostile of men to the Jews are the Muslims.

"50 Arabs Attack Rachel's Tomb," by Gil Ronen for Israel National News, January 16 (thanks to Voice of the Copts):

About 50 Arabs mounted an assault on Rachel's Tomb, just outside Bethlehem, Wednesday evening. They threw pipe bombs, fire bombs and rocks at the security forces guarding the compound, injuring one soldier lightly.

The soldier, who was hit by a rock, received medical treatment on the spot and did not require hospitalization.

The IDF Spokesman said that the Arabs threw nine pipe bombs and 18 fire bombs. One of the pipe bombs caused some damage to the security wall surrounding the complex.

The IDF Spokesman said that the soldiers are using riot dispersal gear against the attackers.

In past years, any large scale attack with explosives and fire bombs would in all probability have been repelled with live fire. However, the IDF is shackled by a Military Attorney's Office and State Attorney's Office that often prosecute soldiers for opening fire against attackers unless they can prove a clear and present danger to their lives.

On my ABN Jihad Watch show Wednesday night.

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Algeria Gunmen Tell Hostages 'We Only Kill Christians and Infidels,'" from Reuters, January 17 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamist gunmen who seized hundreds of gas plant workers in the Sahara told Algerian staff they would not harm Muslims but would kill Western hostages they called "Christians and infidels", a local man who escaped said on Thursday.

In a rare eyewitness account of Wednesday's dawn raid deep in the desert, a local man employed at the facility told Reuters the militants appeared to have good inside knowledge of the layout of the complex and used the language of radical Islam.

"The terrorists told us at the very start that they would not hurt Muslims but were only interested in the Christians and infidels," Abdelkader, 53, said by telephone from his home in the nearby town of In Amenas. "We will kill them, they said."

His voice choking with emotion - "I'm a lucky man," he said over the sound of children playing and a television relaying the latest news - Abdelkader described how he managed to escape along with many of the hundreds of Algerians initially detained.

He asked that his family name be withheld.

"I am still choked, and stressed," he said, adding that he feared many of his foreign colleagues may have died. "The terrorists seemed to know the base very well," he said, "Moving around, showing that they knew where they were going."

The kidnappers said they were retaliating for last week's French offensive in neighbouring Mali, and demanded that Paris call off the operation and that Algeria withdraw cooperation.

Security experts said, however, that the raid appeared to have been planned well in advance - although the decision to launch it now may have been influenced by events in Mali....

Here is my weekly appearance on Michael Coren's Sun TV show, The Arena, last night.

Will all the Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. who insist that only greasy Islamophobes think democracy and Islam are incompatible explain to Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak how he is getting Islam all wrong? No, they will just whine about how "Islamophobic" I am to report on his words.

"Election is banned in Islam: Saudi scholar," from Emirates 24/7, January 17 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

A well-known Saudi Islamic scholar has issued a new fatwa (edict) saying holding elections for a president or another form of leadership is prohibited in Islam.

Sheikh Abdul Rahman bin Nassir Al Barrak, reputed for his radical views, described western-style elections as an alien phenomenon to Islamic countries.

“Electing a president or another form of leadership or council members is prohibited in Islam as it has been introduced by the enemies of Moslems,” he wrote on his Twitter page, according to Saudi newspapers.

“Selecting an Imam (leader) must be up to the decision-making people not the public…election is a corrupt system which is not based on any legal or logical concept for those who enforce this system by some Moslems…this system has been brought by the anti-Islam parties who have occupied Moslem land.”

Tuesday night on ABN, David Wood, Pastor Joseph and I discussed the ridiculous and deceptive #MyJihad campaign and Pamela Geller's trenchant response.

Over rumors that a Christian man sexually assaulted a six-year-old girl. One wonders if they'd have been as enraged if a Muslim had been accused of the same thing, since, after all, Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha when she was but nine.

"Christian stores burned in southern Egypt after Muslim girl allegedly sexually assaulted," from the Associated Press, January 18 (thanks to Nervana):

LUXOR, Egypt — Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Muslim protesters outside a church in southern Egypt Friday. The demonstrators were demanding an investigation into allegations that a Christian man sexually assaulted a 6-year-old girl.

Residents in the province of Qena said four shops owned by Coptic Christians were torched overnight after villagers accused one of the store owners of molesting the young girl.

The clashes took place in the village of Marashda in Qena province.

Residents said protesters threw stones at the local church after midday Friday Islamic prayers. Police fired tear gas to scatter the crowd, which is in one of Egypt’s poorest areas.

Qena security director Gen. Salah Mazid was quoted in state media saying that police are investigating the accusations against the merchant.

Flare-ups of violence between Egypt’s Christians and Muslims have become more frequent in the past two years in the wake of the country’s uprising that ousted longtime President Hosni Mubarak but also weakened security across the nation.

Egyptian Christians fear that the power vacuum that has followed Mubarak’s overthrow is giving ultraconservatives and extremist Muslims a freer hand to attack churches and Coptic property, especially in poor areas of the nation.

Egypt’s Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country’s 85 million people, have long complained of discrimination by the state. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East.

Clashes between Copts and Muslims are usually sparked by church construction, land disputes or Muslim-Christian love affairs.

A highly misleading paragraph, desperate to obfuscate what is really going on. Islamic law forbids dhimmi Christians to build new churches, and forbids non-Muslim men to marry Muslim women. So in other words, both causes of the "clashes" are Muslim attempts to enforce the Islamic supremacist subjugation of the Christians.

Is Obama preparing to abandon the last elements of any U.S. resistance to jihad in any form? I discuss this in PJMedia today:

When he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Washington last Friday, Barack Obama said this about the war in Afghanistan: “We achieved our central goal … or have come very close to achieving our central goal, which is to de-capacitate al-Qaeda, to dismantle them, to make sure that they can’t attack us again.”

He said this four days after a Muslim imam who was a soldier in the Afghan National Army opened fire on a group of his British “allies,” murdering one of them and wounding six. The Taliban, al-Qaeda’s partner in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, which was yet another in an ever-lengthening string of “insider” attacks by Afghan forces against those who are putting themselves at risk to train and assist them. The BBC reports that “in 2012, more than 60 Nato service personnel, and a quarter of the British troops who died in Helmand, were killed in such attacks.”

The Taliban is not al-Qaeda, although the distinction on the ground in Afghanistan may be exceedingly fine, too fine to be discerned by the average NATO soldier when the Afghan he is trying to teach how to be a military man turns the gun he has just given him on his benefactor. In any case, the appalling fact that “a quarter of the British troops who died in Helmand” perished in such attacks indicates that the enemy in Afghanistan is far from being either “de-capacitated” or dismantled, and still has the ability to attack us.

Nonetheless, Obama officials keep doing the victory dance over an al-Qaeda that they repeatedly imply is on the verge of extinction. Jeh Johnson, general counsel at the Defense Department, recently said that “military pursuit of al-Qaida” should end soon. His reasoning was apparently that al-Qaeda is now so severely damaged that we will soon reach a “tipping point” after which military action against them will no longer be necessary, and local police can handle it.

This astounding manifestation of an overconfidence of Baghdad Bob proportions, or else of a capitulation attempting to disguise itself as a victory, is bitterly ironic coming at a time when al-Qaeda is anything but on the ropes: in fact, it is “carving out its own state” in Mali, with so much success that last Friday the French launched airstrikes in hopes of stopping its advance and its consolidation of power in the vast areas it already controls.

Viewed alongside the Obama administration’s unstinting support for the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt and support for jihadist rebels elsewhere, along with its active work to further the agenda of Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood front groups in the U.S., this raises questions about whether Obama is preparing to abandon the last elements of any U.S. resistance to jihad in any form.

There is more.