3:16 am:

Robert Spencer, don't you ever sleep?

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at October 7, 2005 4:04 AM

In another revelation, Freeh says the former president let down the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody – the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh. Freeh writes in the book, “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.” Says Freeh, “That’s a fact that I am reporting.”

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2cbs.htm

Posted by: leavingtheleft at October 7, 2005 7:43 AM

"U.S. officials say they were struck by the letter's emphasis on the centrality of Iraq to al Qaeda's long-term mission."

But this fact seems to elude those who want to withdraw from Iraq without a stable gov't in place; both the liberal/left who are uninterested in winning the war against Islamism, and those here a JW who have constructed arguments that vacating Iraq will somehow enhance US/Western security.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 7, 2005 7:59 AM

But the letter, described by one senior administration official as a "treatise" from Ayman Zawahiri, also warns Abu Musab Zarqawi against alienating the Islamic world, and virtually reprimands the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda for beheading hostages and then distributing videotapes, officials said....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If it hadn`t been Iraq it would have been Andalusia blah blah.

All the more reason to keep it heated in the MidEast and suck up their resources. Keep them occuppied, `centre` them to the main Islamic fight - which is the true Islam: Shiite or Sunni.
And the UsS can maintain a `strategic` presence n Kurdistan to prevent Turkish adventurism.

The multinational task force can keep them happy.
Only then can the nons follow the true one.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at October 7, 2005 8:17 AM

"The vast majority of people in the Arab world sympathize with al Qaeda only because it champions their issues and speaks their language and it's seemingly effective against their enemies."
-- quoting the egregious Shibley Telhami from the article above

A nice example of deception and even possibly self-deception. It is not because it [Al Qaeda] "champions their issues." It is because Al Qaeda speaks the language of Islam, is deeply rooted in the canonical texts of Islam, and cannot be successfully refuted within Islam because it is true to the letter, and the spirit of Islam -- to the Qur'an and Sunna, to the example of Muhammad, uswa hasana. The origins of Islam to justify and promote the Arab conquest of more advanced, richer, more populous tribes and groups of Christians and Jews, the role of Jihad-conquest in spreading Islam, the long record, over 1350 years, of the subjugation of non-Muslims of every kind, always and everywhere forced to endure (sometimes the rigor modified by the gentleness of an individual ruler, such as syncretistic Akbar in India), if permitted to live and to avoid forcible conversion, the status of dhimmi -- all of this may have been forgotten in the Western world.

As "The Legacy of Jihad" (just out, and I can throw away the galleys I had and now read from the beautifully-bound book) demonstrates, Western scholars in the recent past (1880--1970) without exception understood Islma perfectly. But then something happened. A change of personnel, and a change in funding, and a change in world-views. Those experts on Islam died, or retired. They were not replaced by similar experts. The membership of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA Nostra, or MESA for short) for example, in 1970 consisted almost entirely of non-Muslim Americans (Muslims were about 3% of the membership). In 2005 more than half -- over 60% - of MESA Nostra's membershp consists of MIddle Easterners, Muslim and in most cases, islamochristians. There are few Maronites, few Chaldeans or Assyrians, few Copts, but Muslims and above all, the kind of Christians -- "Palestinians" -- who have chosen to identify with the Jihad against Israel, and with Islam as the embodiment of Arabdom, Uruba. And the effect has been dramatic. It is hardl possible to learn about the main subject that one needs to learn about -- Islam -- if any intelligent understanding of North Africa, or the Middle East, or the world wherever Muslims are now to be found, and aggressively active (which is to say, almost everywhere)in promoting their demands, their Da'wa, their demographic conquest that proceeds, here fast and there slow, of the local Infidels.

A near-monopoly has been established, among academic centers, by the army of apologists for Islam. Many, most of them, are themselves Muslims, with that absence of self-criticism, that quickness to defend, often in the most transparent and absurd ways, the claims of Islam against all who, having familiarized themselves with the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and with the history of Muslim conquest and treatment of non-Muslims, dare to criticize it. Others are Islamochristians, often "Palestinian" in origin, some of whom are smoother than others (after all, they want to be admitted to the corridors of power, to become "experts" who appear on this or that network, to be quoted -- so they learn quickly exactly how far they can go in their defense of Islam, their deflection of attention away from Islam). There are the Iranians, who can be divided in two -- the clownish Hamid Dabashi variety (google "Hamid Dabashi" and "Edward Said" right now -- I never fail to offer this as a surefire way to start your day, and float or row your boat, merrily, merrily, merrily, down the stream of Dabashi's lurid consciousness), who identify with the Arabs and Islam, and the Iranians in exile who may have begun to question Islam itself, that poisoned Arab gift to Sassanian, Zoroastrian, Persia. Then there are the largely, but not entirely wacky, Americans. These range from those who are recipients of Arab money, at various academic centers bought-and-paid for by the Saudis and others, holders of Saudi-funded chairs who are not about to bite the hand that not only feeds them, but also holds a dagger; people who simply want to get on with their work in medieval Islamic law, or the history of Islamic astronomy, but do not wish to cause themselves any unpleasantness as they seek tenure, or summer fellowships, or access to manuscripts, or simply being left mostly alone when the hideous administrative assignments are handed out, or who do not wish to be odd-man-out, among hostile Muslims and their sympathizers, at those horrible faculty meetings that one can hardly imagine such former teachers as Auden, Frost, Randall Jarrell, John Berryman,or for that matter Erdos, von Neumann, Morgenstern, Hans Bethe, and a few hundred others ever attending or managing to endure, and so, you think to yourself as you doodle and pretend to listen to some asinine colleague drone on, why should I? And let's not even speak of the undergraduates who have no way of knowing what nonsense they are being taught about Islam (that they may discover afterwards) but want to regurgitate just the right amount for the desired grade, or the graduate students whose professional advancment depends on being well-pleased pleasers (Joyce, prosti!) of those who rule over them.

I have my own ideas as to where, in this taxonomy, I'd place Shibley Telhami. You?

Posted by: Hugh at October 7, 2005 8:53 AM

"The vast majority of people in the Arab world ... would be repulsed to have someone like Zarqawi, who is beheading people, to head their government,"

-- quoting from Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution and the U. of Maryland

How is it that a representative of Brookings and U. Maryland is allowed to blatantly misrpresent the Sunnah?

Or, have the vast majority of people in the Arab indeed decided to reject what Mohammed did at Qurayza? You remember, when he brought several hundred fathers up to the pit's edge, had them beheaded in front of their wives and children, and their bifurcated bodies dumped into the pit with all the other half-bodies?

And, if Brookings and U. Maryland have discovered that the vast majority of Arabs have shifted to apostasy by rejecting this critical part of Mohammed's Sunnah, could they please divulge their blockbuster polling data to Tim Russert and Bill O'Reilly?

Posted by: Shaughn at October 7, 2005 9:50 AM

In my essay last year titled, "Bush Honeypot Doctrine", I proposed that Baghdad, the one-time capital of the now defunct Islamic Empire, is an effective Clausewitzian "center of gravity" for the jihad-inspired warriors who, if they were not drawn to the Bush Honeypot, would otherwise be occupied with planning and executing attacks on American, European and Israeli civilian targets. This Zawahiri intercept is yet more proof that the Pentagon planners were spot on the money.

I have the utmost respect for Hugh's erudite opinions expressed on this site but this is one point on which we vehemently disagree. Hugh and I can serve as proxies for millions of Americans and Europeans who might share our respective views on this issue and let it be emphatically noted that there is a supreme lesson to be learned from the fact that we are not sawing each other's heads off.

Posted by: DrMack at October 7, 2005 10:46 AM

Egypt and Syria eh?

Might I suggest that the Good 'Ol Boys from Al Qaeda will receive a pretty warm welcome from Mubarak and Assad.

Posted by: Anthony at October 7, 2005 11:03 AM

Okay, I trust someone can educate me here.

What, exactly, is required to reinstate the caliphate? Do long-lost crystals need to be brought together in order to open a doorway through which the caliph will return?

There was an Islamic state in Afghanistan for years -- why didn't they reestablish it when they had the chance?

Posted by: saturnine at October 7, 2005 12:04 PM

saturnine:

Judging by Naseem's post regarding the attack on an Amaddeyan mosque, it depends on the sect. Hers and another sect already each have their own Calipha. The Sunnis and the Shia both say the Calipha has yet to arrive (except for Al-Qaeda, it seems, who now have a "Voice of the Calipha" radio station somewhere). I gather certain conditions have to be present, and these vary, widely, with each sect claiming to be the chosen sect that will host the Calipha.

The only thing that's safe to say is that there isn't likely to be a Calipha universally recognized by Muslims any time soon.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at October 7, 2005 1:03 PM

As is Jihad, the desire to have a Calipha is eternal. If not now, the Jihad to push forward this goal will show its ugly head at a later time.

Posted by: epg at October 7, 2005 2:17 PM

SATURNINE: "What, exactly, is required to reinstate the caliphate? Do long-lost crystals need to be brought together in order to open a doorway through which the caliph will return?

"There was an Islamic state in Afghanistan for years -- why didn't they reestablish it when they had the chance?"

CORNELIUS: Indeed, the 'Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan' was distinguished from the 'Islamic Republic of Iran' by the latter's adaptation of a modern, Western construct as its model for governance (excluding the position of the 'Supreme Leader' who has no constitutional checks on his authority).

In the case of Afghanistan, it was a self-declared 'Emirate' as opposed to a 'Caliphate.' This was probably due to the country's peripheral role in the Islamic world.

The "Caliphate" could occur at any time should a prominent Muslim country (e.g., Egypt) undergo an Islamic revolution. Look for Saudi Arabia to be the ideal soil for such a creation. It is the birthplace of Islam, the "custodian of the Holy Cities." Geography and history confer an inordinate importance on the country.

But could an Islamic revolution occur there? Economic considerations mitigate against it...at least as long as oil is priced at $60 a barrel. Politically, the Al Saud-Wahhabi alliance has been mutually beneficial up to now.

Political scientists have been predicting an Islamic revolution in Saudi Arabia ever since the fall of the Shah of Iran in '79. The conventional wisdom today is against, for reasons already cited. But history is a fickle and unpredictable sonofabitch. Certain future happenings are so predictable a fool could see them coming...others are just as logical to predict, yet they utterly confound the experts, only becoming obvious with the benefit of hindsight.

Posted by: Cornelius at October 8, 2005 12:56 AM