New details on the New Jersey murders

A close friend of Hossam Armanious and relatives of the family murdered in New Jersey have revealed the following:

Shortly after the murders, members of the Egyptian consulate went to visit the family to encourage them to keep quiet. And many family members have obeyed, saying nothing to reporters or anyone else. However, two family members and another Copt viewed the bodies at the funeral home. One of these eyewitnesses said that he clearly saw that the family members had not suffered “stab wounds to the throat,” as the prosecutor’s report states, but rather the following:

A. Both adults, Hossam and Amal, had a horizontal slit across the throat. Below the slit, on the left, right and middle of the throat were three holes, big enough so that one could place a finger in each hole. According to the eyewitness, it was as if the assailant(s) took a knife and turned it repeatedly in a circular fashion, as if to screw holes into the victims’ necks.

B. The two young girls, Sylvia (15) and Monica (8), also had a horizontal slits in their throats, along with two holes bored below the slits, one on the right and one on the left sides of their necks. The holes were similar to those on their parents’ necks.

C. The eyewitness said although the bodies of the victims were all covered, he was able to see the arms of the little girl Monica. Although the tattoo of the cross inside Monica’s wrist was not defaced, he saw that her wrists were cut. He was not able to see the wrists of the other victims to see if the crosses on their wrists were defaced.

D. Though the family wants to reserve judgment until the results of the case are released, they did say that the way the four family members were bound and gagged and the way their throats were slit with holes carved is similar to executions that are shown on al-Jazeera. The American public is not aware of this because the details of the executions are not often described in news accounts.

Amal Garas’s father said that (contrary to many news reports and CAIR’s press release) none of the family’s jewelry was taken, and that Amal owned some quite expensive pieces that were not touched. At the time of her murder, Amal was wearing a ring worth $3,500 that was not taken.

Garas’s father also has been speaking with the detectives and the prosecutor on the case. He was told that the results of the autopsy would not be ready until March 14. However, an inside source in one of New Jersey’s police departments said that the results of autopsy and toxicology reports are known within 48 hours after the bodies are discovered. This source has worked on such cases for many years. He said that the department knows the results, but as in similar cases intends to wait a month or two before they release them to the family. During that time long reports are written to cross the t’s and dot the i’s for the family, but the final results are not much different from what is discovered within the first 48 hours. So all of the press reports about waiting for the prosecutor’s findings on the autopsies are nonsense. Though the investigators are looking at Sylvia’s computer and other evidence, the findings on the autopsy for the most part are already in.

A reporter who is closely following this case said that this delay was because the police and prosecutor want this case to go away. They want things to cool down. That’s why they set the autopsy date as March 14, two months after the murders.

It is still possible that this wasn’t a Muslim hate crime. The problem is that investigators have not taken the necessary steps to ensure a fair review of the evidence. There are too many holes here, too many inconsistencies in the official story. Too many obvious tasks have not been done: an Armanious family friend with whom I spoke, who gave me names and motives of possible perpetrators, is still waiting for a call from investigators.

Investigators seem to be following dead ends more assiduously than live leads. A Muslim has told police in Jersey City that there is an Islamic custom in Egypt: a life for a life. He said that is what may have happened in this case. Some news reports are referring to this when they say they’re looking into the family’s activities in Egypt before they came to the U.S. in 1997. Said prosecutor Edward DeFazio, “It could be that it's a vendetta that might go back to the old country. We’re going to try to look into that.” However, those close to Hossam Armanious maintain that he didn’t have any enemies, and certainly never took anyone’s life in Egypt or here; nor did anyone in his family.

This background information may illuminate why this investigation has been so curiously lacking:

There are a number of clergy in the Coptic community who are in bed with the Egyptian government. Some even act as agents for the Mubarak regime. Coptic clergy who won’t cooperate are often exiled into the Egyptian desert, where they live a very difficult life.

Many Coptic women have been kidnapped by Muslims. Some of these women are being kidnapped with the help of the compromised clergy. The priest hears a girl’s confession and then passes on information he hears there to Muslim kidnappers, who decide which girls they want to take. Many of these women are forced to marry Muslim men and are never seen again.

A number of Muslims have infiltrated the Coptic community, pretending to be Christians in order to gather information. Jersey City has a large number of Copts. Some of this infiltration has taken place there; some of the Coptic clergy there are also compromised. However, most Copts trust their clergy wholeheartedly, making it easy for the moles to operate.

What do those compromised clergymen want? The answer possibly has to do with a fact revealed by a number of other sources, including one within a New Jersey police department: the Egyptian government is pressuring the police and prosecutor to make this case disappear. Where are the mainstream media reporters contacting the Egyptian consulate to find out whether or not this is true?

Muslims at hate website spread personal info, photos of Christians who debate Muslims

One poster at barsomyat.com placed a photo of a Christian target between cartoon characters with mallets. (I have removed the image of the man targeted.)

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross says in his article "Christians on PalTalk Chat Service Tracked by Radical Islamic Web Site":

A radical Islamic Web site systematically tracks Christians on PalTalk.com, an Internet chat service on which a New Jersey man received a death threat two months before he and his family were murdered. The password protected Arabic Web site, at the address www.barsomyat.com, features pictures and information about Christians who have been particularly active in debating Muslims on PalTalk.

Here are some translations of these conversations. It is clear that the personal information is being exchanged in order to facilitate the murders of the people discussed ("After he is finished, the isolation of the Christian lady will be completed.") I have removed their names for obvious reasons.

Bibo 117: Allah bless you brothers!

Here is the surprise you’ve all been waiting for and we haven’t published yet due to a certain reason. The damned Muhammad-cursing dog "[NAME REMOVED]" is the big brother of "[NAME REMOVED]" and their little brother is the one called "[NAME REMOVED]."

"[NAME REMOVED]" the dog is married to the daughter of one of the Muhammad-cursing Christians from paltalk. We have postponed publishing this information because there is a lot more to be revealed when the time is right. These are the pictures of the "devil triangle."

[Photos of the people mentioned were then posted.]

Bibo 117: For you my brothers I now present the second photo collection of the Muhammad-cursing paltalk pigs. Wait a little for the rest of the pictures. The first photo is that of the foul smelling ugly pig "[NAME REMOVED]."

Anti Christians: [Posts Photos:] "The deceitful [NAME REMOVED]" and "The liar [NAME REMOVED]." [In green in the middle:] "Beware!"

Bibo 117: Fellow brothers this is the picture of one of the most Muhammad-cursing Christians. It was taken as he was opening a camera with one of the young Christian ladies from Paltalk.

*After he is finished, the isolation of the Christian lady will be completed.

This idiot’s name on paltalk: [NAME REMOVED]
His real name is: [NAME REMOVED]
He lives in [NAME REMOVED].

Titles of Threads at barsomyat.com:
A Pig Christian Soldier
Pigs of America
Blood Victims of Jesus
Destruction Perpetrated by the Love of Jesus
All this for innocent civilians?
You are digging your graves in your own hands
Because of America, Cancer Spreads in Egypt

Muslims at hate website celebrate murders of the Armanious family

A photo of Hossam Armanious and his wife, Amal Garas, posted at the jihadist website barsomyat.com

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's article "Christians on PalTalk Chat Service Tracked by Radical Islamic Web Site" says this:

One user posted a photograph of Hossam Armanious and wrote, "This is a picture of the filthy dog, curser of Muhammad, and a photo of his filthy wife, curser of Muhammad. They got what they deserved for their actions in America."

Here is a full transcript:

Bibo 117: This is a picture of the filthy dog, curser of Muhammad (Hissam Armanios) and a photo of his filthy wife, curser of Muhammad (Amal Jaras). They got what they deserved for their actions in America. They were slaughtered along with their children as a punishment from the heavens to those who curse the most divine of all who were created.

Exception one: Allah bless you all! I read about this incident on the news websites, but how do you know they were cursers of Muhammad and that they were murdered by Muslims? Why were the children killed as well? I never thought this was the act of Muslims -- maybe there had been another reason for their murder? Oh well, Allah knows! Had they indeed been cursers of Muhammad this was a powerful punishment from Allah. We should ask Allah to let all their dog brothers who curse Muhammad and harm him to join their fate!

Mostafahamed: Beware brothers of the plot attempting to blame Muslims for the incident, or maybe attempting to worsen their situation in America and Europe even more. We don’t need to speculate assumptions that may infer that we Muslims are behind it.

Bibo 117: (is asked to elaborate on his sources) My beloved sister FTAT UAE, I don’t know anything about the subject other than what has been published in the NYPOST. The above excerpt from the paper points out that he (Hissam) was one of the most prominent participants in the Christian chat rooms of the Middle East section of paltalk. As to he killed him and what were his motives that I don’t know till this very day. What I said in the message I posted was that there is a punishment from Allah to all who offend Muhammad!

Muslim hate and murder site banner: sheep getting throat slit

From Daveed Gartenstein-Ross' piece "Christians on PalTalk Chat Service Tracked by Radical Islamic Web Site":

Even barsomyat.com's banner displays its hatred of Christians. The banner displays a crucifix crossed out by a violent red "X," and the main heading reads in Arabic, "Christians: Revealing the Truth Behind Our Belief."

It also depicts a sheep getting its throat slit. The sheep is obviously a symbol of Christianity. It is saying, "Don't I have seven lives?"

Christians on PalTalk Chat Service Tracked by Radical Islamic Web Site

An explosive New York Sun article reprinted at the Counterterrorism blog. As you can see, I was consulted on this story, and I will be posting more about it momentarily:

A radical Islamic Web site systematically tracks Christians on PalTalk.com, an Internet chat service on which a New Jersey man received a death threat two months before he and his family were murdered. The password protected Arabic Web site, at the address www.barsomyat.com, features pictures and information about Christians who have been particularly active in debating Muslims on PalTalk.

One page from barsomyat.com features a group of photographs of a Syrian Christian, "Joseph," who now lives in Canada. Barsomyat.com's users have posted personal information about Joseph, including his brother's parole status, and make clear that they are actively trying to track down his current address.

Subscribers also post explicit warnings to Joseph. One comment states, "Know, oh Christian, that you are not far from us and you are under our watchful eyes!" Another user remarks, "Laugh, oh Chrisitan, and soon you will see a big hit."

Ahmed Paul, an Egyptian Christian and a theology student in America, said he believes Joseph was targeted because he frequently engaged in debates with Muslims on PalTalk. The Internet chat service attracts up to 3 million users a month, and subjects range from movies to music to religion to adult topics -- and some Arabic-speaking users of PalTalk have reported that contentious debates between Christians and Muslims are common in certain chat rooms.

Hossam Armanious, a Coptic Christian from Jersey City, N.J., who was found murdered earlier this month, frequently debated with Muslims on PalTalk. Two months before Armanious's murder, authorities said he received a death threat from a Muslim PalTalk user: "You'd better stop this bull ... or we are going to track you down like a chicken and kill you." On January 14, Armanious and his family -- including two daughters, ages 15 and 8 -- were found killed in their Jersey City home, bound and gagged with their throats slashed.

Authorities have not determined whehter Islamic extremists are to blame for the Armanious family's murder, nor is there any apparent link between the murder and barsomyat.com's tracking of Christians on PalTalk. However, many barsomyat.com users expressed jubilation at the deaths.

One user posted a photograph of Hossam Armanious and wrote, "This is a picture of the filthy dog, curser of Muhammad, and a photo of his filthy wife, curser of Muhammad. They got what they deserved for their actions in America."

In all, about 40 different discussion threads on barsomyat.com berate the Christians of PalTalk, and there are at least seven collections of photographs of PalTalk Christians. The barsomyat.com discussion threads seem to focus on Arabic-speaking Christians rather than those who speak English.

Barsomyat.com features not only photographs of the targeted Christians, but also attempts to track down their addresses. A post about a Christian man whose computer was apparently hacked to obtain his photograph includes the man's PalTalk name, his real name, and the city where he resides in Lebanon.

Another barsomyat.com entry outlines the relations (both blood and marital) between four Christians who are apparently PalTalk users, posts photographs of them, and then states, "We have postponed publishing this information because there is a lot more to be revealed when the time is right."

Even barsomyat.com's banner displays its hatred of Christians. The banner displays a crucifix crossed out by a violent red "X," and the main heading reads in Arabic, "Christians: Revealing the Truth Behind Our Belief."

Judging by the posts, almost all of barsomyat.com's users are Middle Eastern, and they are predominantly Egyptian. Mr. Paul said that's significant because the extremists on barsomyat.com live in societies where people simply do not challenge Islam and would never dream of insulting Prophet Muhammad.

Mr. Paul, who is an Islamic convert to Christianity, said when Islamic radicals from such societies participate in Internet debates with Christians who live in societies that promote free speech, they are often shocked by the Christians' arguments and view their debating opponents as blasphemers. And in the eyes of Islamic extremists, blasphemers are worhty of death.

Author Robert Spencer, who has been following the Armanious case for his Web site Jihad Watch, described barsomyat.com as "extremely important" after it was shown to him.

"I have never seen anything like this before," Mr. Spencer said. "It's chilling to see photographs of people who probably have no idea that they're on the Web site. Hamas's Web site would post self-congratulatory accounts of their attacks on civilians, but barsomyat.com's users are telegraphiing their intended victims in advance."

Mr. Spencer added that barsomyat.com is a "prime example" of how some Islamic extremists can utilize technology to attempt to bring Islamic religious law to the West.

"We saw in the Theo van Gogh murders that some Muslims will take these kinds of matters into their own hands," Mr. Spencer said. "The Internet makes it easier for them to do so by disseminating this kind of information. You could imagine 15 years ago how hard it would be for people to get this much information on people who they believe should be killed."

Barsomyat.com is registered to Viza-Web Inc., a Web hosting company based in Woodbury, Minn.

Fitzgerald: Saudi Arabia must stop this

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald comments on the Saudi hate literature being distributed from American mosques, and the energetic Saudi madrasa-building in Asia:

Saudi Arabia needs to understand that it has to stop this. No more hate tracts in American mosques. No more funding of madrasas world-wide. Otherwise, the royal family may find that all the information that has been collected about its decadent doings will find its way to the Internet, for the delectation of Saudis who, of course, in deploring their rulers, will first identify them as Infidels. And it can't be much fun to be a member of the Al-Saud family once those palaces start being attacked, and even those villas, and country estates, in Western Europe. Even Bandar's Plantagenet hunting lodge in England, or that house in Aspen where he had the mountain removed so as to get a better view -- all of that can be most unpleasant.

And then of course there are the oilfields of Al-Haza, not to mention the recent explorations by -- was it Elf or Total Fina that signed the contracts -- in the Rub al-Khali. The former are right on the Persian Gulf, and unlike Iraq, there are not long distances for the oil to travel or to be sabotaged. And as for the natural gas in the Rub al-Khali -- the natural point of exit is Oman, and for the right cut Sultan Qaboos, who doesn't much are for Saudi Arabia anyway (remember the Dhofar rebellion, aided and abetted by Saudi Arabia?), might strike a deal. Oh, there is a good deal that can be done to Saudi Arabia. And that will be, if it doesn't stop that funding.

What's that, you say? Saudi Arabia has always been a "staunch ally"? How, exactly? Tell us how, tell us what Saudi Arabia has done by way of curbing the threat posed by its very own ideology to the entire Infidel world?

We can't appeal to the wisdom or goodness of Saudis. We can only threaten them, either the ruling family itself -- in other words, instead of protecting them, throwing them to the wolves, and seizing all of their overseas assets for they, in this war, are enemy aliens and their property can be seized (go back and see what happened to German-owned property during World War II). There are so many ways to make Saudi Arabia behave, if only we stopped pretending.

A Jihad Watch reader calling himself “William James” has assured us that "poverty" is one of the reasons for the bad behavior of some Muslims. Really? All the detailed studies, which analyze one by one the actual participants in terrorist activities, rather than rely on airy generalizations -- i.e, that emulate Sir Lewis Namier's prosopographic studies -- show that on the whole they are much better off, and much better educated, than the run of Muslims. It is, precisely, the completely illiterate villagers in remote places in, say, Afghanistan, or Indonesia, who have not yet been exposed to, for example, audiocassettes and videocassettes, who have no access to madrasas, Saudi-funded or otherwise, who do not even possess, perhaps, much in the way of a mosque, who are least susceptible to the siren-song of the Jihad. Last I looked, it was the richest Muslim country of all, Saudi Arabia, that was a mortal threat, given its bankrolling of mosques, madrasas, and all sorts of louche undertakings, including bribing C.I.A. officials, Western diplomats, and journalists, as previously it had employed ARAMCO as its exclusive public relations agent, to present itself as a "staunch ally" of the Western world when it is in fact a permanent enemy -- with or without its completely corrupt ruling family -- not only of the West, but of the entire non-Muslim world.

In taking the name of one of America's most distinguished thinkers, William James, who could never have emerged from a Muslim society, and would not have lasted a minute in such a society (see Jacques Barzun's tribute-cum-study, A Walk with William James, or the beautiful short obituary by John Jay Chapman, in which he described James has having "so unexpectedly and incredibly died”) the blogger then makes a second point. It is the usual Tu-Quoque thing, about how all religions have their problems, and Christianity managed to have its “reformation” and now Islam is having “its reformation.” What reformation? The return to purity of practice, including the purity of the unadulterated application of the Sharia, is called “Wahhabism.” There is no reform of Islam. There are those who speak about “reform.” When Islam was seen, much more clearly, as weak, in the period 1900-1930, many more “Muslim reformers” were in evidence. They got nowhere. How could they? What texts could they have changed? Could they change the facts of Muhammad’s life? Could they change the Hadith deemed “authentic”? Could they have touched one hair on the head of the Qur’an? How, pray tell?

Anyone who speaks blithely of Muslim reformation has got to tell us what he means. What texts, precisely, will be changed, and by whom? And with what authority? If these questions cannot even begin to receive a plausible answer, then that itself is telling.

Finally, the blogger above assures us that we should join “interfaith groups” and reach out, blah blah blah. Nonsense. Those “interfaith groups” are invariably the tool of Muslims, who use them for the purposes of presenting more wool over more Infidel eyes, of engaging in outwardly sympathetic, and inwardly deeply deceptive and hostile, acts toward Infidels, who are being placated only in order to keep everyone from studying too closely what Islam is all about, and to maintain those conditions in which Muslims can establish themselves, or to use the power of inveigled Infidels (including an appeal to a phony “Arab-American” identity, a transparent attempt by Muslim Arabs to exploit the larger numbers, and far greater acceptance in American society, of the descendants of the Christians of the Middle East, especially Maronites and Copts, whose own ancestors came here precisely in order to flee the persecution by Muslims) to their own malevolent ends

No, there is no more need to play the fool. If it is shown that large numbers of Infidels have managed to educate themselves about the nature of Islam, and above all in its immutable attitude grounded in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira toward Infidels, the Muslims themselves will have to change their strategy. And it may be too late for them to do so. An aroused Western or even non-Muslim world will not permit the criminal negligence of the past, and will demand much greater resistance and counter-pressure, not because the West is conducting “a war on Islam” but because Islam has been conducting a war, not on the West but on the entire non-Muslim world, for 1350 years. What has changed is that, after the Cold War when Islam was seen as a “bulwark” against Communism, and after the farce of the decolonization period when fabulously rich Arabs presented themselves as among the world’s “victims” (save for Algeria, there was no colonial presence anywhere in the Arab world that lasted for even a half-century), after the terrorist attacks, we have begun to see what was there to see all along. But which we did not see, until after millions of Muslims had been allowed into our countries and the Saudis had energetically put up mosques all over. That presence has created a situation that makes life for the indigenous Infidels more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than it would have been had such immigration and mosque-building been stopped before it began.

Morocco: Protests back tsunami claim

As I explained in Islam Unveiled, when Muslims suffer disaster, the solution is almost always more Islam. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeremy Langton:

Islamic militants in Morocco defied King Mohammed VI at the weekend by rallying behind claims that the country faced an Asian-style tsunami as punishment for immorality. Thousands of extremists took to the streets in support of the newspaper Attajdid, which called last month's disaster "an act of divine retribution" for South-East Asia's sex-tourism industry.

The paper also outraged moderates by implying that Morocco risked the same fate because of a growth of prostitution and sex tourism in the kingdom, a phenomenon it described as a "calamity".

Demonstrators rushed to the defence of the newspaper, which is believed to be close to the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party, after it was savaged in the pro-government media.

Kashmir: jihadists kill family in midnight grenade attack

Shades of Jersey City. "Suspected militants in Kashmir kill four in midnight grenade attack," from China Post, with thanks to Anthony:

Suspected Islamic militants killed four members of a family and injured two others during a midnight grenade attack in a remote village in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said Monday.

The family was attacked overnight in Nashla village in the Doda district of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said Shakeel Baig, a police officer in the state's winter capital of Jammu.

Details about the family and the reasons for the attack were not immediately available.

Militants often attack people they suspect are police informants.

UK: Iraqis clash at polling station

"Why are these people who are not even from Iraq protesting against these elections?" Because Hizb-ut-Tahrir wants to see Sharia instituted in Iraq -- and everywhere else. Since it see Sharia as the law of Allah, it will never accept democracy in its place.

From the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:

Iraqis have clashed with demonstrators against the election outside a polling station in Manchester.

About 200 demonstrators were chased by another group who burned their flags, while other Iraqis clashed with police....

The demonstrators were from Hizb-ut-Tahrir - an Islamic group which is against the elections in Iraq.

David Kahrmann, from the Iraq Election Team, said the protesters "were not even Iraqis".

"The Iraqi community here were saying, 'Why are these people who are not even from Iraq protesting against these elections?'," he said.

Dr Abdul Wahid, of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, said his demonstrators had begun walking away from the scene after election organisers said they were worried their presence could prove trouble.

Arab News: No Fighting Before Explaining Islam

In Arab News today (thanks to Know Islam), Adil Salahi asserts that the Muslim Prophet Muhammad never fought against unbelievers without first inviting them to accept Islam:

Never during the Prophet’s time did the Muslim community plan to attack any group or to take them unawares. Only when the Prophet received intelligence that a particular tribe or grouping were planning to attack the Muslims did he take countermeasures to ensure that the danger they represented is forestalled. But even when he took such measures, he would not launch an attack without alerting the enemy and calling on them to accept Islam and live in peace with the Muslim state.

Evidence for this is plentiful. However, we will concentrate today on a particular situation involving one of the main army commanders during the Prophet’s lifetime: Ali, his cousin and son-in-law. Let us consider first this report by Anas ibn Malik: “The Prophet sent Ali ibn Abi Talib to fight a certain people. He then dispatched someone after him. He told the man: ‘Do not call out to him (i.e. to Ali) from his rear, and tell him not to fight them before he has called on them (to accept Islam).’” (Related by Al-Tabarani)....

This is then the right approach and the only one that Islam accepts. The issues must be clear before engaging in any fight. The enemy must be made aware of Islam and what it calls for before the Muslims could fight them.

This is in accord with a key hadith that I have cited here many times. The Prophet Muhammad emphasizes that those to be fought must first be "invited" to accept Islam:

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war... When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them....If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)

And from Osama bin Laden's November 2002 letter to America:

What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme....

Indeed. And since America did not accept, the jihad continues.

Jihadists trash Pakistani TV offices after Peres interview

"Islamic extremists trash Pakistani TV offices after Peres interview," from AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

KARACHI (AFP) - Islamic extremists ransacked the offices of a private Pakistani television channel the day after it broadcast an interview with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, police said.

A Geo television official said the incident appeared to be a reaction to an interview in which Peres called on Pakistan to establish diplomatic contacts with Tel Aviv.

"We don't yet know the reasons behind the attack, but we suspect it could be a reaction to Mr Peres' interview," Geo TV chief Imran Aslam told AFP on Saturday.

Police said around 40 men armed with sticks, some of them carrying pistols, barged into the building which also houses the mass circulation daily Jang and the English-language newspaper The News.

During the attack, which occured around 2:20 am local time (2120 GMT), the men smashed window panes, broke the furniture and torched newspapers' files, witnesses said....

Islamist parties in overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan have frequently warned the government against establishing any contacts with the Jewish state.

Dutch court sentences rappers over threat lyrics

They get 150 hours of community service. Hirsi Ali gets a lifetime of hiding and anxiety. From Reuters, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

AMSTERDAM, Jan 27 (Reuters) - A Dutch court sentenced two members of a rap group to 150 hours community service on Thursday for writing a rap song with lyrics threatening a prominent politician critical of Islam.

The two members of rap group DHC were also given a two-month suspended jail sentence by a court in The Hague after they were found guilty of writing a threatening rap song about Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Hirsi Ali, 37, returned to public life last week after she went into hiding following the November murder of film maker Theo van Gogh with whom she made a film about violence against women in Islamic societies which angered many Muslims.

The two rappers were found guilty of making "serious threats" and insulting Hirsi Ali, a prominent member of the VVD liberal party, the court said....

The defence said the rappers were exercising their freedom of expression and had intended to keep the song private and that it had been put on the Internet without their permission by someone else.

If you don't like the evidence, walk out

The defendant gets to walk out in protest? What kind of a trial is this? Abu Bakar Bashir (Baasyir) update, from "Baasyir Walks Out of Terror Trial," from Laksamana.Net, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

Laksamana.Net - Radical Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir walked out of his terrorism trial in Jakarta on Thursday (27/1/05) to protest the reading of witness interrogation records identifying him as the leader of regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiyah.

Baasyir is charged with inciting his followers to carry out the October 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people and the August 2003 blast that killed 12 people at Jakarta’s JW Marriott Hotel.

Prosecutors also say he visited a Jemaah Islamiyah military training camp in the southern Philippines in April 2000 and passed on an edict from Osama bin Laden calling for killings of Americans and their allies. The cleric could face the death penalty if found guilty of terrorism.

Proceedings at Thursday’s trial session started smoothly, but Baasyir’s lawyers immediately protested when the prosecution tried to read out the interrogation records of terror suspects being detained in Singapore and Malaysia.

"In accordance with the prevailing regulations, the witnesses from Singapore cannot leave the country because they are still being detained. We request the permission of the panel of judges to read out the witnesses' interrogation records,” chief prosecutor Salman Maryadi was quoted as saying by detikcom online news portal.

Baasyir’s lawyers vehemently opposed the request, insisting that Indonesian regulations require witnesses to be present when their interrogation records are read out in court.

"If the witness is not put forward before the court and only his police interrogation record is read out, then how can we lawyers conduct a cross examination of the testimony?” asked chief defense lawyer Mohammad Assegaf.

The prosecution and the defense then bickered over the matter for about 10 minutes. Presiding judge Sudarto thereafter ruled that the interrogation records could be read out without the presence of the witnesses, as they could not be brought to the court because they were being detained abroad.

"This obstacle is a valid obstacle that prevents these witnesses from appearing before the court," said the judge.

Assegaf was not impressed by the decision. "We have decided to leave the trial because do not want to share responsibility for the reading of these interrogation records. So we, the team of lawyers, will stage a walkout… With all due respect to this court, we are withdrawing ourselves from this trial," he said.

Not wanting to be left behind, Baasyir requested permission to join his lawyers. “The head of my defense team has left the court and because I must be accompanied by my lawyers during my trial, I therefore request permission to also go out," he said.

"All right, I give my permission,” replied Sudarto. Baasyir and his 10-member defense team then got up and left the courtroom.

The defendant and his lawyers sat in a nearby room while the trial continued.

Jihad in Sydney, Australia

"Anti-terrorist authorities in Sydney," from AAP, with thanks to Danlew:

Counter terrorism authorities have descended on Sydney's west after a shooting linked to the Iraqi election added to tensions heightened by the historic ballot.

Witnesses said two men with guns aimed at a number of cars and shops, and fired five shots during a melee involving 100 people on the main street of Auburn, about 11pm (AEDT) on Sunday.

Police said four men, including one hurt by a ricocheting shotgun pellet, were treated for minor injuries.

They said the shooting followed a clash on Saturday involving protesters from an anti-election group and voters outside a polling booth in Auburn - one of Australia's nine out-of-country polling stations for Iraq's first election in 50 years.

But NSW police Superintendent Allan Harding said he was satisfied it was an isolated act committed by criminally motivated people.

On what basis did he arrive at this satisfaction?

Poller on the Jersey City murders and more

The piercingly insightful Nidra Poller draws some logical conclusions from the Jersey City murders and some recent killings in France in "Quelling Racist Murder in France," from the New York Sun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Jersey City, N.J., January 14: The four members of the Armanious family are discovered in a state that no normal human being would even want to imagine, let alone see - bound and gagged, their throats slit, their faces mutilated, their blood spilled, their torment ineffaceable. The voice-of-reason respectable press, quoting police officials, reports that the most likely motives are robbery or a dispute with a former tenant. Yes, of course, anything is possible. An easily identifiable disgruntled tenant could descend to the sub-lower depths and buy himself a one-way ticket to jail. A disappointed thief might have wreaked bloody murder on an entire family instead of learning how to pick wealthier victims. But it would take a nearly fatal dose of invention to make those characters stand up on their own two feet and go into action.

The Armanious execution has all the hallmarks of ritual murder. Members of the Egyptian Copt community in America know this custom too well to ignore the telltale signs. A small handful of courageous community leaders, specialists, and journalists have come forth to soberly present the case for ritual murder as a serious hypothesis that should not be excluded. Are they motivated by hatred of Islam? What then of the champions of Islam as a religion of peace? Since it is impossible to deny the precept of ritual murder, its history and widespread current practice, the primary concern of a religion of peace would be to explain to the faithful, and especially the faithful living in Western democracies, that ritual murder is forbidden. One does not smite infidels in America. Blasphemers are not punished by throat-slitting in Holland. Jews are not upstart dhimmis, fair game for slaughter in France.

What if some wayward creatures mistakenly believed that shariah should be imposed in Jersey City? Who will set them straight?

The slaughter of the Armanious family has been widely reported in the American press; it has not been mentioned in France. The ritual murder of Theo van Gogh caused a strong backlash in Holland. The beheading of Daniel Pearl was an introduction to the methods of 21st-century jihad.

The murder of Sebastien Selam, one of the most popular DJs in France, has been widely ignored. Sebastien lived with his widowed mother in a modest but comfortable low-rent apartment building in the 10th arrondissement, a half hour from the Place de la Republique. In November 2003, during the month of Ramadan, Sebastien was murdered by a neighbor, Adel Boumedienne. The Selams are Jewish, of Algerian origin; the Boumediennes are Muslims from Morocco. Relations between Jews and Muslims in the neighborhood, which had been normal or even cordial, radically deteriorated in the fall of 2000.There were incidents, anti-Semitic graffiti, ominous signs of violent hostility. And yet Sebastien let Adel get into his car as he was going into the underground garage to park. There, Adel slashed Sebastien's throat almost severing his head, and mutilated his face beyond recognition with a carving fork. The coroner states in his report that he had never seen such severe mutilation in all his decades of practice.

Aside from a brief article filled with factual errors in the tabloid Le Parisien and an equally incompetent article in a Jewish weekly paper, there was hardly any press coverage of the Selam murder. When Israeli photographer Avi Rosen, who was in Paris at the time, heard what happened to the DJ, he immediately recognized the hallmarks of ritual murder. He took photos of the crime scene, interviewed the Selam family, and has stood by them ever since in their almost hopeless efforts to bring the murderer to justice and expose the true nature of the crime not only for the honor of Sebastien, but to warn others of the danger that confronts them.

Adel's mother saw her son take the carving knife and fork from the kitchen; he came back a short time later, covered in blood, and told her, "I've killed my Jew, I can go to paradise." He told the police that he had no remorse, no regrets, because Allah told him to kill Sebastien. They transferred him from the police station to a general hospital and from there to a psychiatric hospital. As of this writing, the Selam family lawyer is playing his last card; he has one last chance to convince the court to open an investigation. If the request is denied, the case will be closed. No investigation, no arrest, no trial. The murderer will some day be released from the mental hospital. The Selam family is sentenced to a life of mourning.

Read it all.

Report Links Brooklyn Mosque to Saudi Hate Material

More on the Saudi hate material noted in the Freedom House report, from the New York Sun, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Just three miles from the site of the World Trade Center, the government of Saudi Arabia is distributing hate materials expounding an extremist Wahhabi ideology, according to a new report by the Center for Religious Freedom....

The literature also promotes Wahhabism, the version of Islam officially embraced by the Saudi kingdom and adhered to by several of the September 11 hijackers, as the only true Islam, and it denounces more moderate Muslims who advocate tolerance as apostates. In Saudi Arabia, Ms. Shea said, apostasy is a capital crime. "If you're a Muslim and you become an infidel," she said, "you're put to death."

According to the report, one of the strongest denunciations of so-called apostasy was issued in Brooklyn's Al-Farooq mosque, on Atlantic Avenue.

"In a book published by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and collected from the Al-Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn, New York, Saudi Arabia's official religious leader, the late Bin Baz, authorizes Muslims to kill converts to Islam who violate sexual mores on adultery and homosexuality," the report said.

According to the report's translation, Al-Farooq worshipers are told: "If a person said: I believe in Allah alone and confirm the truth of everything from Muhammed, except in his forbidding fornication, he becomes a disbeliever. For that, it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money."

This is not the first time Al-Farooq has been cited in conjunction with terrorism and terrorist ideology. Friday marked the beginning of the trial in Brooklyn federal court of a Yemeni sheik, Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad, who stands accused of conspiring to raise millions of dollars for Hamas and Al Qaeda. Some of the fund-raising activity was allegedly undertaken at the Al-Farooq Mosque.

Muslim commander on trial for Bosnia war massacres

From Breakingnews.ie, with thanks to Twostellas:

Bosnian Muslim commander Sefer Halilovic went on trial for murder at the UN war crimes tribunal today for the massacres of dozens of Croat civilians.

Halilovic, 53, is the highest-ranking Muslim army official to be tried for alleged crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He has been accused of senior responsibility for massacres in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol, Bosnia, in 1993.

A total of 62 people were killed and many of their bodies were dumped in the Neretva river.

In opening arguments, prosecutors in The Hague showed horrific amateur video footage of murdered children and elderly people, allegedly massacred by Halilovic’s men.

“The murdered Croat civilians were not combatants, nor were they taking part in military action, nor were they killed as the result of combat” said prosecutor Sureta Chana. “They were either in their beds or were attempting to flee in fear of the fighting.”

Jihadists Claim U.K. Plane Attack

"Terrorists Claim U.K. Plane Attack," from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Britain's government said Monday that 10 of its military personnel were missing and presumed dead following the downing of a military transport plane north of Baghdad on Iraq's election day.

An Iraqi militant group claimed responsibility for shooting down the plane in an Internet statement.

If the deaths are confirmed, it would be the biggest single loss of British lives since the start of the Iraq war. The previous highest number was eight.

In a statement on an Islamic Web site, Ansar al-Islam claimed its fighters tracked the aircraft, "which was flying at a low altitude, and fired an anti-tank missile at it." The plane was flying from Baghdad to the town of Balad, where the U.S. military has an air base.

"Thanks be to God, the plane was downed and a huge fire and black clouds of smoke were seen rising from the location of the crash," said the statement posted Sunday.

UK: Foreign terror suspect to be granted bail

We should not have to sacrifice our principles and the rule of law in order to defend ourselves against the jihad. But cases like this present a difficult dilemma. If it can be definitively established that he made public threats and was involved with associates of Osama, at very least he should lose his refugee status -- and more, depending on how seriously he was involved in jihadist activity. From the Times Online, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The first of 12 foreign terrorist suspects held in British custody for years without charge learned today that he would soon be released on bail, following a ruling that indefinitely detaining the men was unlawful. Mahmoud Abu Rideh, a Palestinian, was granted bail by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the court set up to hear applications from terrorist suspects.

Mr Rideh was arrested soon after the terrorist attacks attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. He was detained without charge or trial under the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2001.

Last month, however, a landmark legal ruling by the Law Lords declared it discriminatory and against human rights law to hold foreign suspects in this way.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, responded last week by announcing a new anti-terror policy, under which both foreign and British suspects could have their movements restricted without charge or trial.

The new measures would be provided for in "control orders", which will replace indefinite detention in jail. The orders will be determined by the Home Secretary and could include house arrest or curfews imposed on suspects.

Mr Rideh came to Britain in 1995 and was granted refugee status. A father-of-five in his early thirties, he was one of the first to be detained under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act before the courts prevented identification of the detainees.

Claims against him included that he made public threats to carry out a bombing and that he was involved with associates of Osama bin Laden in Britain and abroad.

He claims the allegations are "lies" and that, when he was in Afghanistan, he was setting up a charitable school for children rather than meeting terrorists. He also claims to have been tortured in Israel.

"In this day and Age is Jihad Fard [obligatory] on every able bodied Man?"

From Islam Q & A (thanks to Goon) comes this "Ruling on Jihad and kinds of Jihad." It is quite lengthy and revealing, and accords with traditional Islamic theology on jihad. The different stages of revelations to Muhammad about jihad are explained, concluding with this:

After jihad was enjoined upon him, the kaafirs [unbelievers] then fell into three categories: those with whom there was a truce or peace treaty; those with whom he was at war; and those who lived under the rule and protection of the Islamic state.”

The truce is temporary, so there are really only two choices for unbelievers: war, or subjugation. This is the ideology motivating jihadists around the world today.

Fitzgerald: Iraq a "quagmire"?

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on why the media's most commonly-used word for the American presence in Iraq is misapplied:

I would never use the word "quagmire" about the American effort in Iraq. Iraq is not Vietnam; there is no quagmire, and many important things have been achieved. To wit: the disruption of major weapons programs, the destruction of major weaponry, the uncovering of networks of people who received money and oil vouchers from Saddam Hussein (the whole oil-for-food business). The Americans have, heroically, done fantastic things. Thousands of schools repaired (but what will be taught in those schools once the Americans leave?), a hundred hospitals refurbished, oil pipelines and oil fields constantly being repaired, power grids, etc.

That this has received almost no attention in the world press, when it ought to be the constant subject on the nightly news everywhere, says a lot about the distortions in the press. That the Civil Affairs soldiers have to work as hard as they can merely to convince some American journalist to please, please just tell a little about what we are doing, is a scandal. The American press has not distinguished itself, and the soldiers have a right to be resentful (if they are).

A misallocation of resources is quite different from a "quagmire." We can stay, and do all sorts of things. But then we will not be able to do all sorts of other things. And those other things need to be done. The other day a major weapons project -- a plane -- was cancelled for lack of money. If tomorrow the Chinese began to do something with Taiwan, could American forces handle it? Not everything can be done. How does improving lives in Iraq make it more likely that Iraq will be less Muslim in the future, when everything we know about Islam suggests that it is a resilient and permanent and powerful force, and can only be constrained when its own adherents come to see that has, in some ways, failed (the Ataturk example)?

The invasion, the disruption, the deposing of Saddam, were completely justified. The nonsensical business of spending time arguing about or wondering about or second-guessing about whether there was, wasn't, was, wasn't, an "Al Qaeda" connection shows just how silly people can be. What connection, other than that of Islam, need there be? If Egypt were to be acquiring major weaponry (you know, that "WMD"), could that be permitted, knowing the likelihood that Muslims in the government, or Muslims outside the government, might pass that weaponry on to others? Do we need to know anything more, such as whether or not some Iraqi met with Mohammed Atta in Prague? No, we don't.

The "freedom-isn't-free" and "everyone wants democracy" and "democratization should be our after-school and summer project for the next five or ten years" is nonsense. A sentimental substitute for coming to grips with the ideology of Islam. This is something no one in power in the Western world wants to do, not least because there are plenty of people around in think-tanks who, often Muslms themselves, or those who think that they because they were so tough-minded with the Soviets they have, in some sense, "given at the office" and are exempted from any need to show the same hardheadedness about another ideology, or those who get all respectful when they hear the word "religion" -- well, you can see the size of the problem.

Less sentimentalism, more stratagems, less Family-of-Man, more Halford Mackinder.

Morally, we are invincible. Mentally? I am not so sure.

Missouri Charity Investigated for Terrorism Ties

From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Washington (AP) -- A federal judge has ordered the government to turn over classified information about a Missouri charity accused of ties with terrorism....

His order came yesterday after the Islamic American Relief Agency asked that its assets be unfrozen.

The federal government raided the agency's Columbia headquarters in October, claiming the agency was a branch of a Sudanese relief agency tied to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaida.

Detentions 'stopped terror attack'

This seems quite likely. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The controversial policy of detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was a key tool in preventing Britain from being attacked by al-Qa'eda militants, senior security officials believe. The officials say that the emergency measure, introduced after the September 11 attacks on America, deterred scores of terrorists from entering the United Kingdom, and they fear that ending the policy will increase the chances of an attack here.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told the Commons last week that he was bowing to a law lords ruling to end the detention of foreign nationals suspected of threatening national security.

In future terrorist suspects, including those with British nationality, would be subject to a wide range of "executive control" orders, including house arrest and electronic tagging. The officials said they would have to "wait and see" whether the powers would be as effective.

One security official added, however, that the threat from terrorism was as "real today as it was in the immediate aftermath" of the World Trade Center attacks. He said: "The terrorists knew that they could be detained indefinitely and so in many cases they stopped entering the country. It was simple but effective."

Columbia prof: America created violent political Islam inadvertently as part of its Cold War strategy

Mahmood Mamdani is Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Department of Anthropology and School of International Affairs, Columbia University, New York. Here are some salient extracts from his piece called "Inventing political violence" in a publication named Global Agenda, which also boasts Kofi Annan, Karen Armstrong, and Seif al Islam Qaddafi among its authors. (Thanks to RG for the link.)

I was in New York City on 9/11. In the weeks that followed, newspapers reported that the Koran had become one of the biggest-selling books in American bookshops. Astonishingly, Americans seemed to think that reading the Koran might give them a clue to the motivation of those who carried out the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center. Recently, I have wondered whether the people of Falluja have taken to reading the Bible to understand the motivation for American bombings. I doubt it.

Astonishing indeed, that the editors (and presumably the readers) of Global Agenda still think this is a cogent argument. Astonishing that Americans would read the Qur'an to discover the motivation of men who cited the Qur'an repeatedly in their communiques and justifications for their actions. Astonishing that Mahmood Mamdani would think that Fallujans reading the Bible was an appropriate reductio ad absurdum to dispose of this, despite the readily demonstrable fact that for all the dark suspicions about Bush's Christianity, American policy has never proceeded according to Biblical or Christian precepts, either explicitly or implicitly. The contrast with Osama bin Laden's Qur'an-quote-filled messages should be immediately obvious -- except to all who don't wish to see it, or who wish to obscure it.

The post-9/11 public debate in the US has been inspired by two Ivy League intellectuals – Samuel Huntington at Harvard and Bernard Lewis at Princeton. From Huntington’s point of view, the Cold War was a civil war within the west. He says the real war is yet to come. That real war will be a civilizational war, at its core a war with Islam. From this point of view, all Muslims are bad.

No, Mahmood. To point out Islam's political agenda, which jihadist groups are pressing forward with acts of violence worldwide today, is not to say "all Muslims are bad." Here your Cold War reference is actually useful: in 1956, it was not saying "all Russians are bad" to say that Communism was a totalitarian system with an expansionist agenda. However, both must be resisted in order to defend human rights and human dignity.

Their differences aside, Lewis and Huntington share two assumptions. The first is that the world is divided into two – modern and pre-modern. Modern peoples make their own culture; their culture is a creative act and it changes historically. In contrast, they assume that pre-modern peoples have an unchanging, ahistorical culture, one they carry along with them; they wear their culture as a kind of badge, and sometimes suffer from it like a collective twitch. The second assumption is that you can read people’s politics from their culture. I call these two assumptions Culture Talk.

All this is just academic jawing. Mahmood, you're just setting up a straw man. The problem with Islam and jihad is not about being modern and pre-modern. The jihadists, as I have pointed out here many times, have no trouble using modern technology to achieve their ends. The problem is that they are fighting -- by their own account -- to impose Sharia wherever they can, and Sharia denies basic rights to non-Muslims and women. That's why they must be resisted, not because they're "pre-modern."

The aftermath of the Iraq War has turned into a crisis for theory. It is increasingly clear that the designation of some Muslims as good and others as bad has little to do with their orientation to Islam, and everything to do with their orientation to America. Simply put, good Muslim is a label for those who are deemed pro-American and bad Muslims are those reckoned anti-American. Culture Talk is not only wrong, it is also self-serving. How convenient it is to see political violence as something wrong with the culture of one party rather than an indication that something has gone wrong in the relationship between two parties.

Once again, Mahmood, you're in denial (or practicing deception). A "bad Muslim" is not by definition one who is anti-American, although that will likely be the case these days. A "bad Muslim," in the view of anyone who believes that women should not be chattel and non-Muslims should not be relegated to despised second-class status, is one who believes the dictum of the Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi that non-Muslims have "absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God's earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life."

Actually, in light of the Qur'an, Hadith, Islamic law, Islamic theology, and Islamic history, one who believes that Mawdudi (whom Mahmood mentions below) is right would be a "good Muslim." But whatever one wishes to call him, he is the foe of the equality of dignity of all people.

Contemporary, modern political Islam developed as a response to colonialism. Colonialism posed a double challenge, that of foreign domination and of the need for internal reform to address weaknesses exposed by external aggression.

Early political Islam grappled with such questions in an attempt to modernize and reform Islamic societies. Then came Pakistani thinker Abu ala Mawdudi, who placed political violence at the centre of political action, and Egyptian thinker Sayyed Qutb, who argued that it was necessary to distinguish between friends and enemies, for with friends you use reason and persuasion, but with enemies you use force.

The terrorist tendency in political Islam is not a pre-modern carry-over but a very modern development.

Radical political Islam is not a development of the ulama (legal scholars), not even of mullahs or imams (prayer leaders). It is mainly the work of non-religious political intellectuals. Mawdudi was a journalist and Qutb a literary theorist. It has developed through a set of debates, but these cannot be understood as a linear development inside political Islam. Waged inside and outside political Islam, they are both a critique of reformist political Islam and an engagement with competing political ideologies, particularly Marxism-Leninism.

Of course, none of this takes into account the fact that Hassan Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 as a direct response to the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. "The terrorist tendency in political Islam" may not be a "pre-modern carry-over," but political Islam itself is. Of course, that depends on what Mahmood means by "the terrorist tendency." Islam was political from the time of the Hijra. For centuries Muslims pressed forward an agenda of conquest and subjugation, which modern terrorist groups have taken up today. Mahmood breezily dismisses the possibility of any continuity, but offers no evidence of this beyond bare assertions.

Why does this point matter? Because if modern political Islam is really a reaction to colonialism and an engagement with Marxism-Leninism, etc., then presumably it will disappear as soon as the elements that Mamdani no doubt considers neo-colonialist -- Iraq, Israel -- themselves disappear. His entire paper is designed to elicit that conclusion. But the 800-pound gorilla in the living room is the presence of pre-colonial political Islam: its existence, and the repeated invocation by jihadists today of a continuity between it and what they are doing now, indicates that if the so-called neo-colonialism that Mamdani detests really did disappear, the jihad would not.

That said, we are confronted with a singular question: How did Islamist terror, a theoretical tendency that preoccupied a few intellectuals and was of marginal political significance in the 1970s, become part of the political mainstream in only a few decades?

The real answers: Saudi oil money and the success of Khomeini.

But Mamdani instead recites a litany of dubious historical value, recounting "American terror" and its roots in the Reagan Administration.

The Afghan war was the prime example of “rollback”. In the history of terror during the last phase of the Cold War, the Afghan war was important for two reasons. First, the Reagan administration ideologized the war as a religious war against the evil empire, rather than styling it a war of national liberation such as that it claimed the Contras were fighting in Nicaragua. In the process, the CIA marginalized every Islamist group that had a nationalist orientation, fearing that these groups might be tempted to negotiate with the Soviet Union, and brought centre-stage the most extreme Islamists in a partnership that would “bleed the Soviet Union white”.

Second, the Reagan administration privatized war in the course of recruiting, training and organizing a global network of Islamic fighters against the Soviet Union. The recruitment was done through Islamic charities, and the training through militarized madrasahs. Unlike the historical madrasah, which taught a range of subjects, secular and religious, from theology and jurisprudence to history and medicine, the Afghan madrasah taught a narrow curriculum dedicated to a narrow theology (jihadi Islam) and gave a complementary military training.

The narrow theology recast Islam around a single institution, the jihad; it redefined the jihad as exclusively military and claimed the military jihad to be an offensive war entered into by individual born-again devotees as opposed to defence by an Islamic community under threat. The jihadi madrasahs in Pakistan trained both the Afghan refugee children who were later recruited into the Taliban and the Arab-Afghans who were later networked by the organization called al-Qaeda (“the Base”). If national liberation wars created proto-state apparatuses, the international jihad created a private network of specialists in violence.

America did not create right-wing Islam, a tendency that came into being through intellectual debates, both inside political Islam and with competing secular ideologies, such as Marxism-Leninism. America’s responsibility was to turn this ideological tendency into a political organization – by incorporating it into America’s Cold War strategy in the closing phase of the Cold War.

Before the Afghan jihad, right-wing political Islam was an ideological tendency with little organization and muscle on the ground. The Afghan jihad gave it numbers, organization, skills, reach, confidence and a coherent objective. America created an infrastructure of terror but heralded it as an infrastructure of liberation.

This all sounds convincing, but once again it is historical fantasy. "Before the Afghan jihad, right-wing political Islam was an ideological tendency with little organization and muscle on the ground"? Apparently Mamdani has not heard of a fellow named Khomeini. And the Afghan madrassas did not redefine the jihad "as exclusively military"; Al-Banna had argued that jihad was primarily, if not solely, military decades before the Afghan jihad began. He pointed out the fact that the spiritual "greater jihad" was based on a weak hadith, and thus could not take precedence over military action.

Much more than Ronald Reagan or the Afghan jihad, it has been the Saudis who have given mujahedin worldwide "numbers, organization, skills, reach, confidence and a coherent objective." Mamdani also misstates and exaggerates the extent of American support for the Afghan jihadists. But the bottom line is that as long as the "ideological tendency" remains, this threat will recur, for new powers will always find new excuses to encourage it. That is the core of the problem.

News service jihad?

The Obsidian Order (thanks to LGF) has a very intriguing analysis of a series of photos of a bomb exploding a car in Iraq. It strongly suggests that AFP, AP, and Reuters had photographers ready to capture the event, which contains a number of questionable elements. How did the three photographers know the car was going to explode at that particular place and time? What kind of connections do they have to the mujahedin?

Full report: Hate ideology fills American mosques

The full 95-page Freedom House report, "Saudi publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques," is now available here in pdf form.

Read it all. The venom directed toward Christians, Jews, Muslims deemed not Islamic enough, and America is breathtaking. There is also a healthy helping of jihad ideology and material advising the oppression of women. And remember, this material is being spread in mosques all over the United States: in 1999, the Naqshbandi Sufi Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani testified before a State Department open forum that eighty percent of American mosques had extremist leadership. His assertion has never been convincingly refuted.

Fitzgerald: Muslims and citizenship in Western countries

Noting that Muslims who attend Saudi-funded mosques are advised not to become naturalized citizens of the U.S., Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has uncovered another nugget of wisdom from South African Mufti Ebrahim Desai, the Answer Man who advocates offensive jihad against non-Muslim countries:

Wahhabi Muslims may be commanded not to become naturalized citizens, but to study in the Infidel lands only in order to acquire the tools with which to fight Infidels later. There is also another approach, which is to become a “naturalized citizen” of the United States, or of other Infidel countries. Indeed, many Muslims wonder about whether taking an oath of allegiance to an Infidel nation-state is permissible. On Islamic websites various experts offer answers to this question. They do not differ in the slightest from the answer offered here by the Mufti (expert in law) Ebrahim Desai, of Capetown, South Africa.

Here is the question he was asked:

To become a citizen of US one has to take an oath of allegiance. is it ok to take the oath. The oath of allegiance is as follows: I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

They also ask on the citizenship form the following questions: If the law requires it, are you willing to bear arms on behalf of US? If the law requires it, are you willing to perform noncombatant service in the US Armed Forces? If the law requires it, are you willing to perform work of national importance under civilian direction? My question is can we answer yes to these questions? is there anything wrong in doing that. what should the answer be: yes or no? could you please kindly give an urgent answer. jazakallah.

And here is Mufti Ebrahim Desai’s response:

Answer 8471 2003-04-25 As Muslims, we are duty bound to follow our lives strictly according to Shari’ah. Whatever Shari’ah allows us to do, we will abide by that and whatever Shari’ah has restricted us from, we will refrain from it. Hence, we are not allowed to obey anybody if it is resulting in the disobedience of the Creator, Allah. Nabi (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam) said, ‘There is no obedience for the creation by disobeying the Creator.’ (Mirqaat vol.7 pg217; Imdadiyyah).

Hence, keeping this in mind if one is forced to sign the above in order to become a citizen or the only way of attaining citizenship is by acknowledging the above, then one may sign it with the intention that Shari’ah and Deen will always be his yardstick and that he will never sacrifice any of the teachings of Deen.

and Allah Ta'ala Knows Best

Mufti Ebrahim Desai

To sum up: Wahhabis are encouraged to go to the West, and conduct Da'wa where possible among Infidels, and also to exploit whatever they manage to learn later on, the better to fight the Infidels. But they should not become "naturalized citizens."

Non-Wahhabis, on the other hand, may become "naturalized citizens" as long as they keep in mind that "if one is forced to sign the above [oath of allegiance] in order to become a citizen or the only way of attaining citizenship is by acknowledging the above [the oath of allegiance] then one may sign it with the intention [i.e. "mental reservation" or "kitman"] that Shariah and Deen [the religion]will always be his yardstick and that he will never sacrifice any of the teachings of Deen."

And to think I was worried there for a minute.

Australia: Iraqi polling station closed after riot

More jihadist disruption of Iraqi voting. From AP, with thanks to Xliberty:

An Australian polling station for Iraqi exiles voting in their homeland's historic election was closed for an hour on Saturday after a riot broke out and a suspicious bag prompted a bomb scare.

Bernie Hogan, the head of Australia's overseas voting program, said the riot erupted when a group of some 20 protesters started yelling insults at voters leaving the polling center, which is in a Sydney neighborhood dominated by Iraqi Shi'ites.

Hogan said the protesters - who had been granted a permit to stage their action - were holding up the same black flag with white lettering that has appeared as a backdrop in videos released by Iraqi insurgents featuring foreign hostages begging for their lives.

That would be the battle flag of jihad, the black flag of Islam.

Guantanamo Bay four 'had al-Qaida training'

More on the four British Muslims freed from Gitmo. Are their activities being monitored in Britain? After all, there are precedents: other freed Guatanamo prisoners have returned to the jihad. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A DOSSIER gathered by US officials against the four British men freed this week from Guantanamo Bay alleges they all received military training in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, it emerged today.

The US Justice Department documents include claims that at least one of the men was taught how a jihad group works and was given instructions on how to use weapons and destroy vehicles.

Similar allegations have previously been denied by the lawyers and families of the former prisoners, who were held for up to three years at the Cuban naval base as suspected terrorists.

Martin Mubanga, Feroz Abbasi, Richard Belmar and Moazzam Begg say they were tortured while in captivity. The Pentagon describes the four men as a continuing security threat, but they were freed without charge after being questioned on their return to Britain.

Russian officers arrested over Beslan siege

Explosive revelations from a Russian parliamentary commission. But no word in this report as to the nationality or religion of the officers. From ABCNews Online, with thanks to Anthony:

The chair of the commission says two highly-ranked military officials have been arrested after allegations they provided assistance to the gunmen.

He says other officials, who are ranked major and above, may also be charged.

It is speculated that they could have helped the gunmen indirectly by allowing them to pass through police checkpoints.

Bin Laden Sent Iraqi Arrested in Germany - Report

Jihad recruitment in Germany: "Authorities believe the terms refer to the recruitment and placement of volunteers for Jihad." From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

BERLIN (Reuters) - An Iraqi arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting an al Qaeda suicide attack in Iraq said he was sent on his mission by Osama bin Laden himself, a German magazine reported Saturday.

German state prosecutors believe Ibrahim Mohammed K., a 29-year-old Iraqi believed to be a high-ranking al Qaeda figure, recruited Yasser Abu S., a 31-year-old stateless Palestinian from Libya, as a future suicide bomber in Iraq.

The two men were arrested last Sunday in the western city of Mainz, which President Bush is due to visit next month. However, prosecutors said there was no indication the two had planned an attack in Germany.

Der Spiegel magazine said the Iraqi had told the other man he had been sent by bin Laden personally to Germany. It gave no details on the date or location of the meeting.

"Yes, he sent me to work, to sell and buy," the magazine quoted him as saying, citing a conversation from their Mainz apartment that investigating authorities recorded.

Authorities believe the terms refer to the recruitment and placement of volunteers for Jihad, or "holy war," the magazine said in a preview of an article due to appear Monday.

Jihadists Bomb Polling Places in Iraq

The jihad against democracy in Iraq continues. "Insurgents Bomb Polling Places in Iraq," from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body in front of a police station in a Kurdish town near the Iranian border, killing eight people on the eve of Iraq's crucial national election, Iraqi and U.S. officials said. Insurgents blasted polling places in at least eight cities.

Iraqi vote: a study in contrasts

Left: Elvis impersonator and Iraqi Benjamin Nissan votes in Skokie, Illinois. Right: Iraqi expatriate Abbis Kadhen votes in Nashville, Tennessee. (Both photos Reuters)

And people say there's no clash of civilizations. I just hope this vote doesn't lead Iraq to Heartbreak Hotel.

Some American Mosques Carry Extremist Tracts, Study Says

The print edition of the Wall Street Journal today carries on pg. B5 an advance report of a Freedom House study on Saudi mosques in the U.S.

WASHINGTON -- Mosques across the U.S. continue to carry books and pamphlets describing non-Muslims as "infidels" and promoting intolerance against Western society, according to a forthcoming study by Freedom House, a U.S. human-rights group.

Despite vows from American Islamic leaders after Sept. 11, 2001, to proselytize peacefully, New York based Freedom House researchers found 57 documents with incendiary material in more than a dozen mosques and Islamic centers in six states and Washington, D.C., visited over the past year.

The materials "demonstrate the ongoing indoctrination of Muslims in the United States in the hostility and belligerence of Saudi Arabia's hardline Wahhabi sect of Islam," says the report, an advance copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

No one should be surprised by this. The Saudis can't stop teaching such things without compromising their core principles.

And here are findings from the Freedom House press release:

Various Saudi government publications gathered for this study, most of which are in Arabic, assert that it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews and warn against imitating, befriending, or helping them in any way, or taking part in their festivities and celebrations;

· The documents promote contempt for the United States because it is ruled by legislated civil law rather than by totalitarian Wahhabi-style Islamic law. They condemn democracy as un-Islamic;

· The documents stress that when Muslims are in the lands of the unbelievers, they must behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines. Either they are there to acquire new knowledge and make money to be later employed in the jihad against the infidels, or they are there to proselytize the infidels until at least some convert to Islam. Any other reason for lingering among the unbelievers in their lands is illegitimate, and unless a Muslim leaves as quickly as possible, he or she is not a true Muslim and so too must be condemned. For example, a document in the collection for the “Immigrant Muslim” bears the words “Greetings from the Cultural Attache in Washington, D.C.” of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and is published by the government of Saudi Arabia. In an authoritative religious voice, it gives detailed instructions on how to “hate” the Christian and Jew: Never greet them first. Never congratulate the infidel on his holiday. Never imitate the infidel. Do not become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Do not wear a graduation gown because this imitates the infidel;

· One insidious aspect of the Saudi propaganda examined is its aim to replace traditional and moderate interpretations of Islam with extremist Wahhabism, the officially-established religion of Saudi Arabia. In these documents, other Muslims, especially those who advocate tolerance, are condemned as infidels. The opening fatwa in one Saudi embassy-distributed book, published by the Saudi Air Force, responds to a question about a Muslim preacher in a European mosque who taught that it is not right to condemn Jews and Christians as infidels. The Saudi state cleric’s reply rebukes the Muslim cleric: “He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his.” Since, under Saudi law, “apostates” from Islam can be sentenced to death, this is an implied death threat against the tolerant Muslim imam, as well as an incitement to vigilante violence;

· Sufi and Shiite Muslims are viciously condemned;

· For a Muslim who fails to uphold the Saudi Wahhabi sect’s sexual mores (i.e. through homosexual activity or heterosexual activity outside of marriage), the edicts published by the Saudi government’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs, and found in American mosques advise, “it would be lawful for Muslims to spill his blood and to take his money;”

· Regarding those who convert out of Islam, the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs explicitly asserts, they “should be killed;”

· Saudi textbooks and other publications in the collection, propagate a Nazi-like hatred for Jews, treat the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion as historical fact, and avow that the Muslim’s duty is to eliminate the state of Israel;

· Regarding women, the Saudi publications instruct that they should be veiled, segregated from men and barred from certain employment and roles;

The report states: “While the government of Saudi Arabia claims to be ‘updating’ or reforming its textbooks and study materials within the Kingdom, its publications propagating an ideology of hatred remain plentiful in some prominent American mosques and Islamic centers, and continue to be a principal resource available to students of Islam within the United States.”

Iraqi Christians targeted ahead of election

From WND, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

As the Iraqi national election approaches, terrorist insurgents and Kurdish paramilitary groups continue to target the ChaldoAssyrian Christian minority, trying to prevent them from freely participating in the vote, according to a human rights group.

"These Christians have endured suicide bombings at their churches, acid thrown on women for not wearing the hijab, kidnappings for profit and the murder of store owners," says Washington, D.C.-based International Christian Concern.

ICC says that in addition, the Kurdish authority has withheld crucial funding and has been linked to paramilitary groups targeting the ChaldoAssyrian villages in the Assyrian Administrative Region east of Mosul.

Out of $20 billion designated and distributed to rebuild Iraq, the Kurdish administrators have released no money for reconstruction in ChaldoAssyrian areas, the group said.

I also received this most interesting email. I have been unable to verify its assertions, but they are worth noting in light of the above:

You probably don't know this, but the muslims that are running the Iraq elections have offically stole it from us Christians.

First with San Diego, with about 70,000 Chaldeans/Assyrians there, they have forced them to go to LA to vote. Hmmm. Do you think they will drive all the way there twice? (Once for registration, once for voting.)

They tried to take it away from the 100,000 Assyrians living in Chicago. They planned not to have a voting booth there, but after massive protests, they finally gave in.

As for Detroit, well, everyone knowns this is the single largest Iraq
community here living in Sterling Heights. Guess where they made the
single voting booth at? 40 miles away at a city that has nobody ever
heard of called Southgate. Go look up the map at yahoo and see how far it is.

Me here in Detroit, was so excited about these elections and was hoping to give some voice for our people. But now everyone here in our community is so saddened with this issue. They know not more then 10% of Chaldeans in Detroit now will vote. How are we to convince the old men and women to drive 1 hour back and forth twice if they don't know how to use the highways?

January 30 has offically become the saddest day for the Christians of
Iraq. Every one of the Christians from Detroit to Iraq are devastated.

ADDENDUM: Of course, inconvenient polling places are no comparison to what Christians are suffering in Iraq. But the possibility that the same forces trying to keep Christians from voting in Iraq are doing it here is certainly raised by this email, whatever its merits.

Missiles sold to terrorists?

"Nicaraguans seize missile during sting," from the Washington Times, with thanks to Radwick:

Nicaraguan police, with U.S. assistance in a sting operation, thwarted black marketeers trying to sell SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles capable of downing commercial aircraft earlier this month, raising fears that some missiles already have been sold to terrorists, The Washington Times has learned....

"This is a very, very serious threat," said the U.S. official. "This is what makes me stay up at night. Civilian aviation is at stake."

The official said one Soviet-made SA-7 was confiscated at an air conditioning repair shop, the site of the sting in Managua, Nicaragua, where three Nicaraguans tried to sell the missile and offered more to undercover Nicaraguan police.

"This shows that such missiles can be bought on the open market, and it highlights the need for strong international cooperation to get rid of them," a second official said in a government statement issued to The Times.

The sting has sounded alarm bells through the Bush administration for a number of reasons. The arrested men thought they were selling missiles to terrorists in Colombia and were willing to sell to Islamic terrorists, the official said. Also, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in November had won what he believed was a firm agreement from Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos to destroy about 1,000 remaining SA-7s. Some in the Bush administration now suspect the military is double-crossing Mr. Bolanos.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are known to be seeking portable missiles capable of bringing down a commercial airliner. The 20-pound SA-7 has a range up to 15,000 feet. In the wrong hands, a missile could down an airliner on its airport takeoff or approach.

Fitzgerald: The Adventure in Iraq

The Vice President of the Jihad Watch Board, Hugh Fitzgerald, considers the wisdom of a continued American presence in Iraq:

The adventure in Iraq, which in its First Stage (the war to locate and destroy major weaponry and arms stores, and to overthrow one of the most sinister dictators around) was justified, in its Second Stage (bringing "democracy" defined merely as a counting of heads, which in turn will inevitably lead to --- what, exactly?) of the "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project is a colossal misallocation of men, materiel, money, and may do severe and long-lasting damage to morale of both the citizen-army (Reserves and National Guard), the regular army, and the citizens themselves, at the very moment when the utmost resolve is called for, because as there is no end to the Jihad, there can be no end to defenses against the Jihad, in all of its expressions, using all of its varied armory.

The bill for Iraq is now $300 billion. Well, long-suffering American taxpayers, suppose after the initial invasion and overthrow and discovery of weapons-caches that needed to be destroyed, American troops had left. American airpower (planes and missiles) could still be used as "equalizers" in order to protect, for example, the Kurds. Ammunition and weaponry could be selectively supplied. If the Sunni Sunni and Shi'a went at it (the former better trained and armed, the latter more numerous) -- so what? Eventually some kind of modus vivendi would have been established, without Americans taking the casualties. In any case, I will ask again a pointed question:

Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, from the viewpoint of Infidels, or was it not? It was, of course, a very good thing, and should have gone on forever. The Saudis mistreat the Shi'a in al-Hasa (right where the oilfields are located); the Wahhabi doctrine views Shi'a as practically Infidels (Zarqawi, the "Palestinian" Jordanian, is hardly alone in his views); the Shi'a are killed by Sunnis all over Pakistan (many of the large landholders are Shi'a, so resentment is also class resentment, decked out in Islamic garb); the old Sunni elite in Lebanon does not look with favor on the upstart Shi'a. All of this could be brough into play if there is a kind of permanent jostling between Sunni and Shi'a in Iraq.

Suppose we had left a year ago. Internecine fighting. Eventually someone wins. That will happen in any case. Those who think that al-Sistani is a great democrat and the Shi'a are wonderful have another think coming. Al-Sistani supports elections because the Shi'a are 65% of the population. End of story. He is as much a Muslim, with the same views of Infidels (he will not, for example, meet with any for they are "unclean") as the mullahs next door. The fact that he prefers that he, and other religious figures, remain outside the government does not make him a secularist. Islam must still be reflected in everything that is thought or said or done. He is not the Great Hope of Iraq's Christians -- they are more likely to find what solace they can in the old Ba'athists. The failure to understand all this is extraordinary. So much money, so much effort, so much heroism and sacrifice by American soldiers, and all based on a failure to analyze correctly what it is we should worry about (Islam, not the absence of "democracy" in the Middle East), and the necessary husbanding of resources -- material and moral and intellectual -- that will be required if, in the first place, Europe is to be rescued from islamization. This is not a fantasy.

Suppose of the $200 billion saved (and add to that another $100 billion for the next few years), that had all been put into energy projects, designed to take away from the Arab oil states the unmerited wealth that has allowed them to build and sustain mosques and madrassas all over the Western world, to buy up many diplomats, intelligence agents, journalists, and media outlets (or shares in major media companies) all over the world. Isn't that more important than sticking around -- certainly after the election next week -- to do what? To train "Iraqi" forces? Will American soldiers be asked to live cheek-by-jowl with those forces in order to better "train" them -- and how many will be treacherously slain by those whom they are training? What a nightmare for security. Would you like to be one of those American soldiers bedding down for the night in the tent next to all those nice Iraqis you are training? Would you like your husband, brother, son to do it? And which Iraqis? Will Kurds and Arabs fight together, or Sunni and Shi'a? How naive, how crazy, how oblivious not only to reality, but to the much larger question. This war, truly, is too important to be left to the generals, but also too important to be left to any civilians who, out of sheer laziness or complacency with clichés about "what all people want," refuse to see, to plan, to do what should be done.

And the usual crew of phony "experts" at think-tanks, including such apologists as Shireen Hunter (for god's sake, she is billed as the Director of "Islamic Studies" at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which explains a lot, in the same way that the Middle Eastern wing at St. Antony's in Oxford has managed to muddy the thinking of the other, less idiotic, "East European and Russian" wing of the same St. Antony's -- just look at how little Timothy Garton Ash understands Islam, or even thinks he needs to understand) do not help either.

And, to come to my main point, if only 1% of that money -- say, $1 billion a year, were spent on anti-Jihad propaganda, in which Islam and its adherents are put on the defensive, constantly being asked to explain the teachings and tenets of Islam, what would that do to help educate the people in the Western world? But it is not happening.

Okay, deep-pocketed readers. Kindly think clearly the next time you are about to give money to some university, museum, hospital or anything else. Consider carefully what that art museum, hospital, or university will be like if Islam takes over Europe, and if the forces of Islam become more powerful everywhere. Then direct that check you were about to send elsewhere to the right address at Jihadwatch. And mention my name.

Hamas celebrates landslide victory in first ever local elections in Gaza

Gaza votes for jihad terror. From AFP, with thanks to Teri:

GAZA CITY (AFP) - The radical Islamist movement Hamas was celebrating a landslide victory in the first ever local elections in the Gaza Strip, winning 77 out of the 118 seats up for grabs, election commission sources said.

The mainstream Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas won just 26 seats while independents and minor parties won the remaining 15 slots in 10 municipalities across the territory in Thursday's election....

Hamas had campaigned on a strong anti-corruption ticket, amid widespread disillusionment among voters about the incompetence and cronyism which has characterised many councils.

Abbas has vowed a crackdown on corruption and to implement sweeping reforms of the Palestinian institutions but the results in Gaza appear to indicate that voters do not trust the establishment party to put its own house in order.

Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas, said the results were a damning indictment of the levels of institutional corruption.

"This means that the Palestinian people reject corruption and hope for change to protect its interests," he told AFP.

Reject corruption, choose jihad.

Review of Edward Said's The Palestinian Authority

Little Green Footballs has a review from The Claremont Review of Books of The Palestinian Authority by Edward Said. This is the last book by the man who, in Charles' words, "did more to intellectualize and legitimize the Arab world’s hatred of the Western world than any other human being."

From the review by James Panero:

In November 1993, the New York Times Magazine featured a remarkably unprescient essay by Edward Said titled “The Phony Islamic Threat.” He charged the media, government bureaucrats, and Middle East experts with conjuring an Islamic bogeyman to demonize at home and abroad. Coming only a few months after the first attack on the World Trade Center, the piece dismissed all talk of an Islamist threat as a reflection of American prejudice and insecurity. Then, in the 1997 revised edition of his book Covering Islam, Said ridiculed “speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airlines,” as inventions of racist Westerners.

Said never wised up. Read it all.

Pipes and Auster at FrontPage

Lawrence Auster challenges Daniel Pipes' view of Islam at FrontPage today, and Pipes responds. It is in some spots worthwhile reading, although in many ways they're talking past each other.

My own position on all this I have made clear many times, although it has been rather cravenly misrepresented by those with their own agenda. There are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. The prospects for reform in Islam are exceedingly dim. I agree with Auster (as does Pipes, who also quotes this sentence) that "the West must confront Islam as Islam and so reduce its power to the point where Muslims have no opportunity to wage jihad campaigns against us. Under such circumstances a more decent type of Islam may arise." Or at least one that is easier to deal with. I expanded on this in a recent article.

Armanious case on "America's Most Wanted"

Says the AMW website (thanks to Chris):

Hossam Armanious, his wife Amal and their daughters, Sylvia, 15 and Monica, 9 were found murdered in their Jersey City, New Jersey home. They had been tied up, gagged and stabbed to death. Police are trying to determine if this was a hate crime, as the family were devout Coptic Christians.

This is likely to generate more heat than light, but at least it will keep some attention focused on this case, in which there are still many more questions than answers, and a great many troubling elements that seem to be getting short shrift. If you doubt that, just imagine what the press coverage would be like if a Muslim who regularly debated with Christians in a chat room was threatened and then murdered along with his family.

Terrorism trial of sheik to begin

...with the prosecution's hands tied. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge earlier this week refused to let federal prosecutors present some of the most potentially damaging evidence against a Yemeni sheik charged with funneling millions of dollars to terrorists.

Prosecutors will not be able to present documents allegedly linking Sheik Mohammed Ali Hasan al-Moayad to suspected al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan and Croatia, Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. ruled....

If convicted, al-Moayad, 56, could face more than 60 years in prison. Zayed, 31, could face more than 30 years.

The government had hoped to prove al-Moayad's ties to Osama bin Laden with address books containing al-Moayad's name and phone number, which were confiscated from suspected al Qaeda fighters being expelled from the former Yugoslavia. The government also planned to introduce an admission form for an al Qaeda Afghan training camp that used al-Moayad as a reference.

The judge called the Croatian evidence "so remote, I am going to preclude the government from using it."

He went on to exclude the Afghan evidence, apparently agreeing with a defense argument that the presence of al-Moayad's name on the form was not sufficient proof of wrongdoing. "We don't know who put this name in," the judge said.

He also ruled a videotape showing al-Moayad with a high-ranking Hamas official on the day of an Israeli suicide bombing could not be introduced without the testimony of Mohamed Alanssi, an FBI informant who recorded it.

Hugh Fitzgerald Announces the MESA Nostra Contest, and Makes You An Offer You Can’t Refuse

It's contest time at Jihad Watch, with our TaqiyyaFest still open for entries, and now a new offer from the Vice President of our Board, Hugh Fitzgerald:

Readers of JihadWatch are aware that MESA Nostra is the professional organization in which, in order to become a uomo d’onore, or a donna d’onore for that matter, no kneecaps need be broken, no nightclubs broken up, no trucks hijacked, no girls put on the streets, no cocaine contraband prescribed by “los medicos” of Medellin be distributed. No, there are only two requirements to become a Made Man in MESA Nostra. The first is easy: you must view the entire Middle East through ideological blinkers, in which Islam scarcely matters, and in which, whatever happens, Jihad-conquest and dhimmitude will be ignored, so that contemporary expressions of millennium-old doctrines, attitudes, impulses will be interpreted without the slightest reference to those doctrines, attitudes, impulses.

That is content.

There is also form.

What would Shakespeare have been like had he not forced himself to squeeze his dramatic verse into the Elizabethan doublet of iambic pentameter? Or Spenser, without the Spenserian stanza? It is not only writers in Elizabethan England who found such constraints productive. How impressive that 20th century French writer who managed to produce a novel without using the letter “e,” or that other one who composed a series of works based on a single device: the beginning and the final sentences of whatever he wrote were phonetically identical, though semantically wildly different, and he assigned himself the writerly task of beating a plausible path through the overgrown jungle of language, a path that led ineluctably from that first sentence to the same-sounding, but different-meaning, last sentence.

Many of those in MESA Nostra may not realize it, but they are akin to Shakespeare and Spenser, Georges Perec and Raymond Roussel. For them it is not a question of verse-forms, or lipograms, or homophonic puns. Their self-imposed constraint consists in limiting their scholarly lexicon to fewer than fifty nouns, and two-dozen verbs. They harness these exhausted nouns, these over-worked verbs, and put them to work, no matter the subject. No matter the subject.

Thus the prose produced by one member of MESA Nostra will sound remarkably like that of another. Here we mean the enthusiastic, full-throated members of MESA Nostra, those whose interests do not stray very far from “Iraq” and “Palestine” and “colonialism” and “empire,” and the obvious ring-changing variants: “occupied Iraq/Palestine,” “Iraqi/Palestinian people,” “Israeli colonialism,” “American empire.” Many members of MESA Nostra membership have a deep and abiding personal and professional interest in these matters, as they do in little else. They can do no other.

But a few members of MESA Nostra are members-in-name-only, who remain different in mental makeup, and distant from the bureaucratic intrigues, the political tendentiousness, the anti-American,anti-Israel, anti-Western themes and variations. These “non-member” members do not write about the “construction of Palestinian identity” nor the “(de)construction of Israeli identity.” Rather, they write about “The Methods of the Mudaddithin,” or “Ephraim of Edessa,” or “Xavier de Planhol and Agricultural Desolation in the Berber Heartland,” or “Yemeni Jews as Chattel Slaves” or “The Destruction of the Coptic Churches of Upper Egypt,” or “Schacht, Jeffery, Gottheil: Three Masters of Morningside Heights” or “Arabic but not Quran’ic: The Evidence of Numismatics” or “Twelver-Shi’ism in Mevlevistan” or “Ibn Battuta, the Rihla, and the Destruction of Hindustan” or “Why There Was No Arab Copernicus or Vesalius: An Inquiry” or “Aisha and Marriage in the Islamic Republic of Iran” or “Quran’ic Memorization and Comparative I.Q. Levels in Post-Independence India” or “Sir William Jones and the Re-Discovery of India” or “The Role of Hadrami Traders in the Muslim Conquest of the East Indies” or “The Story of Thomas Pellow” or “Indo-Persian Miniatures of Jihad-Conquest in the British Museum Collections: A Catalogue Raisonee” or “Table-Talk of a Mesopotamian Judge: A Critical Edition” or “Book-Binding at the Abbasid Court” or “The Role of Hungarian Converts in Ottoman History” or “The War Within Islam: Universalist Claims, Arab Supremacist Doctrine” or “The Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya and Pacta Sunt Servanda: Muhammad and Grotius on the Law of War and Peace” or …well, you get the idea. But these are not the people whom we have in mind when we discuss MESA Nostra at JihadWatch. We are talking about the other kind.

And it was with that other kind in mind – the card-carrying careerists, the blurb-and-reference swappers, the runners-for-office, the risers-high, the much-interviewed, the solemn dispensers of wisdom to the unwary, the True Believers – that we created the MESA Nostra Contest.

The contest is simple. Below is a single paragraph, itself consisting of a single sentence, transparently written in Mesanostran. Contestants are asked to identify the author.

“In conclusion, I feel that this work of analysis, by focusing on the implications of the phallic hegemony of Wehrmacht-helmeted Israeli troops and their supporters throughout the American empire, both equally unappeasable in their demonstrable need for “the Other,” does what in a quasi-heuristic sense it was intended to do, as it manages to break away from all Eurocentric approaches to discourses of postcolonial subalternity, or even of meta-alterity, and comes so subversively close in its disjunctive interrogation of the counter- or, more exactly, anti-mimesis which is inherently essential to Mesopotamian or indeed to Cairene, Abbasid, Jordanian or Palestinian thought for, as a native of (Amman, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Islamabad, Ramallah, Teheran, etc. – choose one) and hence a non-European, I am of necessity self-assigned to that category of people best placed to perform such a mission of interrogating all postcolonialist as well as narrativised specificity, but of equal necessity, not as one obviously intent on de-undermining or rather meta-determining the poststructuralist or post-postmodern universalism, with its customary relativised discourse analysis which seldom lends itself to anticipatory prolepsis, but on the other hand my critique is quite meta-consciously deeply para-rooted within, as well as up-rooted out of, and obviously from, Western thought with its inalienably alien constructions of meta-identity and hypersexuality, which necessarily give rise to post-essentialism which, in a larger sense, serves merely to violate all the strategic critiques of hegemonic historiographical constructions of essences, whether of the Orient or of scholars who deny the self-referentiality of all postcolonialist essentializing.”

The prize for the first correct entry emailed to director@jihadwatch.org will be a nicely framed copy of Professor Hamid Dabashi’s celebrated Poem in Prose to Edward Said, which you may read now by googling “Hamid Dabashi” and “Edward Said.” For many, that will be prize enough.

Tehran’s Killing Fields

A hard-hitting look inside the bloody mullahocracy in Iran from the superb Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi at FrontPage:

Given Iran’s incessant foreign policy saber-rattling—including its continued development of nuclear weapons, support for Islamist terrorist groups, and facilitation of the terrorism in Iraq—it’s easy to lose sight of the horrifying domestic situation within the Islamic Republic. The mullahs have not only destroyed the lives of countless foreigners through their worldwide export of Islamic terror and extremism; they’ve also plunged the Iranian people into a violent, hellish abyss of torture, repression, hopelessness, drug addiction and despair.

Conservative estimates by Iranian opposition movements and various human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, put the number of women stoned to death in Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in the neighborhood of fifty. One can only imagine the cases that have gone undetected -- as many Islamic "punishments" are carried out in small and remote villages.

Women sentenced to death by stoning are buried in the ground up to their necks. Iranian law regulates the size of the stones used by the executioner crowd; stones cannot be big enough to kill the sentenced woman too quickly, as the purpose of this barbaric ritual is to inflict as much pain as possible before death. On the other hand, stones cannot be too small, as each blow must be dramatically painful.

Such rules and regulations are quite ephemeral in the Islamic Republic. In a particularly gruesome execution carried out in 1993 in the city of Arak, a woman was to be stoned to death in front of her husband and two young children. After the stoning began, the woman was able to free herself from the hole in the ground, escaping death. According to Shariah laws, in such cases the woman must be let go, as her death sentence was revoked by divine intervention. Ten minutes after the failed stoning, however, the poor woman was chased down, apprehended and summarily executed anyway, by a firing squad.

Read it all.

US claims Guantanamo Britons still pose terror threat

Then why were they freed? Because of increasing political pressure on Guantanamo. From the Times Online, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The four Britons sent home from Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday and set free from police custody last night still pose a terrorist threat, the United States said. Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We continue to believe that these individuals pose a significant threat. British authorities have assured us that they will take the necessary steps to address the threat posed by these individuals."

26 hurt in Muslim rebel grenade attack ahead of Indian Kashmir poll

Iraq is not the only place where jihadists are trying to derail elections with violence. Also, note the throat-slitting -- a remarkably common practice (cf. Qur'an 47:4 and 8:12) among Muslims for something that is supposed to be "against Islam." From AFP, with thanks to Twostellas:

SRINAGAR, India (AFP) - Twenty-six people were hurt when suspected Muslim rebels hurled grenades at an election office in a new bid to derail next month's civic polls in Indian Kashmir, police said....

Militants have killed one candidate and two senior ruling party officials and bombed an election rally, killing three and injuring a dozen. They have also launched suicide raids on federal income tax and passport offices and attacked several security patrols....

In the other violence, suspected Muslim rebels killed an elderly Muslim man and his son overnight by slitting their throats in central Budgam district, police said.

"They were suspected of being police informers," a police spokesman said.

Malaysian Prime Minister urges Muslims to shun extremism

It is interesting that Badawi too departs from the tiny-minority-of-extremists propaganda and acknowledges that jihad as warfare is the "only meaning commonly understood by the general public." However, in light of the fact that theorists as eminent among jihadists as Al-Banna (founder of the Muslim Brotherhood) and Azzam (founder of Al-Qaeda) argue that the idea that jihad is anything but fighting is founded on a weak hadith, it will be interesting to see exactly how he expects his views to gain currency among Muslims. From WebIndia123.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Asking the Muslim world to seriously address the issue of jihad, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi today told a gathering of scholars and academics from 16 Islamic countries to combat extremism and catch up with the advanced world.

"It is most unfortunate that some have narrowed down the concept of jihad to qatal, which concerns physical fighting," he said inaugurating a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) Commission of Eminent Persons here.

The Chairman of the 57-member OIC said it was even more unfortunate that this was the only meaning commonly understood by the general public.

"If Muslims themselves can make this mistake, what more can we expect from others," he asked and added that Muslims therefore were as much to blame for this distortion of the meaning of jihad.

Dutch murder suspect described as fanatic

From the No-Kidding Department. But note that he and his fellows dreamed of establishing a Sharia state in Holland: if anyone suggests that any Muslim dreams of doing that here, the "Islamophobia" charges fly thick and fast. From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

Amsterdam -- The man accused of murdering filmmaker Theo van Gogh on Nov. 2 dreamed of replacing the Dutch government with an Islamic theocracy, and was supported by a network of like-minded fanatics, prosecutors said yesterday at his first public hearing.

The suspect, Amsterdam native Mohammed Bouyeri, 26, did not appear at the pretrial hearing, but his lawyer said Mr. Bouyeri wants to "be held accountable for his actions" and sees them as part of a religious war.

Terrorist's clothing discovered in Texas?

A strange story. Would they really have a patch in English? Is this just someone's idea of a joke? Or is there more to it? From WND, with thanks to Ruth King:

The discovery in Texas of a jacket featuring an Arabic military badge and an airplane headed toward a tower with the words "Midnight Mission" is fueling fears of a possible connection to terrorism.

According to a Department of Homeland Security morning brief marked "For official use only," a report from Customs and Border Protection noted that on Dec. 23, Border Patrol agents stationed in Hebbronville, Texas, found a jacket with an Arabic patch in a lay-up area on Highway 285.

The jacket is said to have a total of three patches, two sewn on the back, and one on the inside.

The two patches on the back were an Arabic military badge and one with the letters "Daiwa," while the patch on the inside read "Midnight Mission."

This "Midnight Mission" patch features a logo depicting "an airplane flying over a building and headed towards a tower," according to the brief.

The military patch with the Arabic writing shows the image of a lion's head, with wings and a parachute emanating from the animal.

The report notes, "DHS translators concluded that the patch read, 'Defense Center,' 'Ministry of Defense,' or 'Defense Headquarters.' The bottom of the patch read 'Martyr,' 'Way to Eternal Life' or 'Way to Immortality.'"

The brief also states, "The 'Daiwa' patch stands for a corporate company which sells sport fishing products with corporate offices in eight countries including Japan, the U.S., Australia, France, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, and the UK."

Islam Gains Toehold in Mexico's Zapatista Country

They are already agitating for some aspects of Islamic law. What will keep them from the rest? How can the reporter be so sure that they have little interest in holy war -- or even if they don't now, how can be be sure what they will think in 10 years? From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico (Reuters) - Islam has joined a battle for the hearts and minds of Mexico's volatile Tzotzil Indians in Chiapas state, home of Zapatista rebels and a hotbed of sectarian strife between Christians.

In an unlikely meeting of two worlds, an idealistic Muslim sect has converted some 300 Tzotzils, a Maya Indian group known for drink-fueled fiestas and religious fervor.

"It was difficult to learn the prayers in Arabic at first but now I have them in my heart," said Muhammad Emin Lopez, 46, a Tzotzil fruit merchant who boasts that his conversion to Islam in 1995 was the state's first.

He prays five times a day as required in Islam, has gone on the obligatory "haj" pilgrimage to Mecca and attends a small mosque in a cornfield on the outskirts of the hill town of San Cristobal de las Casas.

Beside the mosque, a Tzotzil woman dressed in colorful Indian garb and known by the Muslim name Karima washes clothes in a stream near ramshackle wooden houses.

The growth of Islam in such a restive area has raised the eyebrows of Mexico's intelligence agency, wary of possible terrorist activity aimed at the neighboring United States.

But the Tzotzil Muslims have little interest in holy war, having seen religious and political conflict close up....

They are highly critical of the charging of interest rates as un-Islamic and advocate scrapping currencies, taxes and the nation state, to be replaced with Islamic emirates trading in gold coins.

"Our model is not ideological or utopian but is based on the life of our Prophet Mohammad," reads a statement on the group's Mexican web site, http://www.islammexico.org.mx.

American Coptic Union: Jersey City’s Massacre Is A Message for All Americans

A press release from the American Coptic Union:

The American Coptic Union, and Egyptian Coptic Christians are shocked and disturbed by the latest Jersey City Police, and Hudson County Prosecutor Office report, “No Proof of Religious Hatred in JC Family Slay “ that was the report title by 1010 WINS.

The report denied the religion factor of the massacre, despite the fact that the Cross-Tattoo was cut, and slashed, on the late martyr Sylvia’s hand. In addition, Mr. Edward DeFazio, Hudson County Prosecutor’s report, never mentioned the facts that Egyptian Christians are facing a vicious terror campaign from the Arab-Islamic government of Egypt, and terrorists. In this case the massacre would be a perfect terror message to intimidate the Coptic Christian Community in Jersey City, and USA. To keep their mouth shut is a good prime motivation.

According to our information, Money, and Gold, were not robbed, so robbery was not the ultimate goal of the perpetrators, and may be happened to cover up the real motivation, which would be a terror message. We have all reasons to believe that religion hatred is behind the carnage, because the way the family slain is the same as the Middle East style, oftenly, watched, in “Aljazeera Channel”. We should look at it from this angle as well.

The American Coptic Union on behalf of the Coptic Community would like addressing the following issues:

• We call upon Hudson County Prosecutor Office not to rushing, and exclude religion hatred, or terrorism. This time the massacre is rehearsal targeted a Christian family, member of a small community, next time would be against any other community.
• This massacre should be seen as a wake up call for all American. Terror is knocking the door, thus we seek the support of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic organizations, as well as Human Rights organizations requesting Hudson County Prosecutor Office an independent investigation.
• We request the Newspapers, TV stations, and all news media, keep asking questions, and follow up with the investigations.
• We request more involvement from the Federal Government in the case.

"Jihadists" living in Oregon, FBI says

Sneer quotes in the original AP headline. (Thanks to Kemaste for the link.) Anyway, so much for the idea that there are no more secret cells in the U.S. (Of course, it may be that the spokesman in that story was using "Al-Qaeda" in a restricted sense, contrary to the common tendency to use it in a very broad way.)

PORTLAND — The FBI knows of "jihadists" who have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and are now living in Oregon, the agency's Oregon chief said in an interview with The Associated Press yesterday.

"We don't have an imminent threat that we're aware of. But I will say this: We have people here in Oregon that have trained in jihadist camps in bad areas. In the bad neighborhoods of the world," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jordan.

Asked what he meant by "bad neighborhoods," he said Afghanistan, as well as several other countries he would not specify....

Jordan refused to say how many "jihadists" live in Oregon.

He said the FBI knows "they've trained overseas, taken oaths to kill Americans and engage in jihad," but the challenge is "to prove those things."

Jordan contrasted the known "jihadists" living in Oregon with the so-called "Portland Seven," a group of seven Portland-area people accused of plotting to wage war against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. One of them was killed in combat; the six others returned to Oregon, where they eventually pleaded guilty to all the charges against them.

North Carolina: Pakistani videotaper gets 6 months

Busy tourist update. Of course, here is another innocent Muslim engaging in innocent activities and wrongfully arrested. I would find such assertions more credible if law enforcement officials had ever arrested and tried a Muslim that Islamic advocacy groups acknowledged was guilty. From the Charlotte Observer, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Kamran Akhtar, suspected of having ties to terrorism after a police officer spotted him videotaping Charlotte's skyscrapers in July, was sentenced Monday to six months in prison.

Chief Judge Graham Mullen of the U.S. District Court in Charlotte gave the 36-year-old Pakistan native credit for the time he's already served in jail. That means Akhtar will now be turned over to immigration officials for deportation.

Akhtar has not been charged with any terrorism-related offenses, but he pleaded guilty in October to failing to leave the United States, possessing false identification documents and making false statements to investigators....

When Akhtar was detained in July, authorities announced that they had found a videotape in Akhtar's camera that showed the 60-story Bank of America tower and the former Wachovia Center, which houses the FBI's offices in Charlotte.

Authorities said Akhtar also had tapes showing buildings in the downtown areas of Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, Houston and Austin, Texas.

Akhtar's brother, Irfan Akhtar, told the Observer that Kamran Akhtar has been wrongfully accused and portrayed in the media as a terrorist. He said his brother is not a terrorist.

Irfan Akhtar, 33, said his older brother likes to take pictures of tourists spots and buildings and had been traveling the country after losing his job at a New York photo store....

The indictment accused Akhtar of making false statements to investigators that he was in the United States legally, had a green card and had never been ordered deported. He also was charged with possession of false documents -- a New York driver's license and a Social Security card.

Federal prosecutors have said the investigation into Akhtar's activities is continuing.

New York Post: Egypt grudge eyed in killings

What kind of grudge? What kind of vendetta? No word here. From the New York Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

January 25, 2005 -- Investigators probing the slaughter of a family of devout Egyptian Christians believe they may have been victims of a bloody vendetta that predates their immigration to the United States 10 years ago, The Post has learned.

"We're trying to develop their history right now," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said yesterday of the brutal quadruple slaying.

Arab Columnists: Terrorists are Motivated by Cultural and Religious Factors, Not Poverty

We have noted similar findings here many times. From MEMRI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Saudi Columnist: 'The Only Way to End Violence and Terrorism Is to Fight a Cultural and Ideological Battle'

In an article published in the Saudi Gazette, columnist Muhammad Mahfouz, who is also editor of the cultural magazine Al-Kalima, published in Lebanon, wrote: [1]

"It is an undeniable fact that social problems and phenomena [that] are ignored without determining their root causes will proliferate and surface repeatedly. But … their re-emergence will be associated with more complications and grow to the extent that they become incurable…

"This brings me to the phenomenon of terrorism, which is oneof the most dangerous problems encountered [in] recent times, for it undermines the stability and security of all human societies. This shows that [an] external and superficial probing of the problem will not be effective until [we] delve deeply into its cultural and ideological roots…

"Of course the security efforts [are] one of the tools to fight terrorism … [but] the security efforts always need to be associated and supported with national, cultural, political, and socioeconomic efforts…

"The relationship between the phenomenon of terrorism in our society and culture is like the relationship betweenthe cause and consequence. A thorough study of this phenomenon shows that the … real reason behind the mobilization of a handful of young men by this deviant group is purely cultural. This means that these youths were brought up in a special cultural atmosphere which finds its roots in a stereotyped understanding of religion. This understanding serves as a basic incubator to this group. This may explain the reason why some youths belonging to rich families and others who are well positioned in the state's civil service hierarchy are implicated in terrorist crimes.

"This [means] that financial and economic factors can not be associated with this group. Therefore, it is a cultural and religious factor that motivated them [to kill] innocent people and destroy the country's infrastructure.

"Thus, the only way to put an end to the wave of violence and terrorism is to fight a cultural and ideological battle against terrorism as well as [against] its direct and indirect causes. Without fighting this fateful battle, we will never succeed in eliminating this menace, and thus our country will suffer from this phenomenon from time to time.

"In my opinion, [any] delay in fighting this ideological cultural battle against terrorism will drag our country to abyss of instability. We need more than ever to … expose the phenomenon of terrorism and dismantle the cultural and ideological incubators which feed this phenomenon and mold it socially and culturally.

"This brings me again to the point that the elimination of terrorism and violence are associated with uprooting the culture of violence which promotes killing, justifies terrorism, and provides it with a legitimate cover.

"[On the other hand,] the security battle will not help much in putting an end to this phenomenon. On the contrary, it may give it a justification [to continue].

"Thus, I find it necessary to elaborate on these points: The phenomenon of terrorism and violence we are facing can be classified as religious violence carried out by a group of brain-washed youth influenced by glamorous slogans. Thisrequires us to re-formulate the prevailing religious concepts and implant in their minds other religious values, such as the values of dialogue and religious tolerance, as well as recognizing pluralism. Thus … we need to formulate a new religious vision isolating and freeing it of all the facets of extremism and fundamentalism.

Read it all.

Terror recruitment on the rise in Europe

Here and here are two confirmations of this story, one of which is mentioned in its first line.

From MSNBC, with thanks to all who sent this in:

In France, Tuesday, security agents detained seven people suspected of helping funnel Islamic militants into Iraq. In Mainz, Germany, this weekend, police arrested an alleged al-Qaida operative who is also accused of recruiting for Iraq. He is alleged to be a key al-Qaida recruiter who was living in an apartment building on a quiet street. Also arrested: a Palestinian allegedly headed to fight in Iraq.

U.S. officials tell NBC News that the recruiter, Ibrahim Mohammed Khalil, is an al-Qaida facilitator who trained in camps in Afghanistan, fought there after 9/11 and was sent back to Germany. There, both U.S. and German intelligence monitored him.

"He also had contact to the leadership of al-Qaida, including Osama bin Laden," says Kay Nehm, the German federal prosecutor working the case.

Experts say the arrest underscores al-Qaida's interest in the war in Iraq.

"It demonstrates that Europe is the central recruitment ground for al-Qaida when it comes to finding jihadists to fight in Iraq," says NBC terror analyst Roger Cressey.

Israel: Dane under arrest is Hizbullah spy

More evidence of how Muslims in Europe are aiding the global jihad. From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The Danish citizen of Lebanese origin currently the focus of a joint Police-Shin Bet investigation was identified Wednesday as a Hizbullah recruited agent by the name of Iyad al Ashwah, 39, after a gag order on the investigation was lifted.

Al Ashwah, originally born in Lebanon moved to Denmark in 1986 and received Danish citizenship six years later.

Al Ashwah was arrested on January 6 while he was on a train from Nahariya to Haifa after he raised a security officer's suspicions by videotaping the passing scenery through the train window.

He was arrested by police and confessed that in July 2004 he had been recruited into Hizbullah by relatives living in Lebanon. In his interrogation, al Ashwah told police that he was ordered to travel to Israel disguised as a tourist to collect security information and most importantly to recruit Israeli-Arabs into the terror organization.

"War is deceit."

Jihadists held in Bangladesh

Get written up in the New York Times, and the next thing you know, the authorities have to notice you're there. It seems that "security forces" "clashed" with "Islamic militants," although Bangladesh's "Director General of the External Publicity Wing" (now there's a sinecure) termed the NYT report "unfortunate and politically motivated." So are the jihadists, of course. From "'Militants' held in Bangladesh," in the BBC, with thanks to Nicolei:

Trouble broke out in the western district of Rajshahi after three members of a banned Muslim group were lynched by villagers on Saturday.

Supporters of the Jagrata Muslim Janata tried to hold protests. The group is blamed for several vigilante killings.

Its leader, Siddiqul Islam, known also as Bangla Bai, is wanted by the authorities.

Philippines: Alert out on JI terrorists posing as fishers

"War is deceit," said the Prophet Muhammad (see, for example, Bukhari, vol. 4, book 52, no. 267). Of course, no one in government or law enforcement in the U.S. seems to have any idea that any Muslim here could be taking that statement seriously. But in the Philippines, they're starting to get the idea. From the Manila Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

GENERAL SANTOS CITY: Indonesian and Malaysian mem­bers of the militant Je­maah Islamiah are posing as fishermen to enter into the Philippines, Malaysian intelligence said.

In a report sent to the military, the Malaysian intelligence service said the militants were arrested aboard Philippine-registered fishing boats off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.

The boat carried registration documents issued by the maritime office in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

“At least two had figured in the Bali incident and bomb attacks in Indonesia last year,” a ranking military official told The Manila Times Tuesday.

Paris mosque a recruiting center for the Iraqi jihad

Didn't the local imam tell them Islam was a religion of peace?

(Yes, for all you unblinking literalists out there, that was sarcasm.)

From "France detains 7 terror suspects," an AFP story, with thanks to M. Gozlan:

FRANCE'S domestic counter-espionage service (DST) detained seven people, including two women, who were allegedly seeking to go to Iraq to fight United States-led forces there, sources close to the case said today....

The article also contains some information about French Muslims already killed in Iraq:

The first French citizen reported to have been killed was Redouane El-Hakim, 19, who went to Iraq via Syria and was caught in a US air bombardment of Fallujah last July.

Hakim and his brothers were known to frequent a radical Islamic prayer centre in the Paris suburb of Levallois Perret, which was investigated and closed early last year....

The Paris raids focused on the Adda'Wa mosque in the city's 19th arrondisement, which was described as a recruitment centre for the Iraq campaign.

Fitzgerald: Why the Copts are so upset

The Vice President of the Jihad Watch Board of Directors, Hugh Fitzgerald, observes that the reaction of the Coptic community in America to the murders of the Armanious family is extremely telling in itself:

Surely what is of note in this case is that the Copts in Jersey City seem to have little doubt as to who carried out, or was behind, the murder. Consider the fury expressed against Muslims and against Islam at the funeral, a fury heightened by what the Copts in attendance took to be a transparent attempt by one Muslim cleric to make an appearance not out of any real sympathy, but only, the Copts believed, to shore up the Muslim position with the American media.

That suspicion, that fury, tells us a good deal about what the Copts must have suffered at the hands of Muslims, in Egypt and even here. And that remains true, no matter who committed the murder, though we are entitled to speculate reasonably. If the Louvre were bombed tomorrow, it would -- given what we know about the Islamic attitude toward almost all art, reasonably believe that Muslims were behind it, even if in the end it turned out to be someone else.

Furthermore, the statements quoted in the press by Muslims in Jersey City are entirely full of self-pity ("Why does everyone blame us?" "We are 'sick of this crap' about Islam") and noticeably devoid of any expressed pity for the murdered family of Copts.

Finally, one can find expressions of satisfaction about the murder at Muslim websites about the murder. Those remarks should not be forgotten.

All of these -- the suspicions of the Copts, based on their felt history of persecution, and their belief that Muslims are quite capable of such actions (now, where would they get such ideas, if not from their entire life experience?), and the behavior of Muslim neighbors devoid of sympathy, and of other Muslims crowing at the event -- remain true no matter who committed the murders.

But the point remains: the father and the older daughter were too proud, too unapologetic, too enthusiastic, about their Christian beliefs, and this infuriated Muslims who believe that once a dhimmi, always a dhimmi (one wonders about the Chaldean Christians out in Dearborn, as they worry over their relatives subject to Muslim attack in Iraq). It is hardly unreasonable to conclude, at this point, that it was for that they were killed. And if it should prove otherwise, there is still this matter of how the Copts have reacted, and how the Muslims have also. Both reactions tell us a good deal.

If The New York Times and the rest of the media would give greater attention to this story, and at least try to make people understand why the Copts in Jersey City have no doubts about who committed the crime, by finding out what it is in the experience of those Copts that makes them come to that conclusion, instead of vague allusions to "communal strife" and so on -- if, in other words, the persecution of the Copts in the land of which they are the descendants of the original inhabitants, and not those who call themselves Muslim Arabs (most of whom, no doubt, are themselves the descendants of Copts as well, if they only realized it, their ancestors over the centuries having concluded that it was easier to convert ("revert") to Islam.

More seriousness please, less frivolity by the media. Less about the Armani fashion empire, more about the Armanious family murder, is called for.

Any attempt to "insabbiare" (sand over) the results of the investigation will not work for this case. Nor would it something to be forgotten or overlooked. It would be likely, in fact, to get more and more attention, and to become a "teaching moment" on the inculcated murderous hostility that can be found in many passages in Qur'an and Hadith. If the police in Jersey City are unaware of those passages, they -- and the police everywhere in the West, as well as the other security services -- need to learn about what Islam teaches. Repetition of pious phrases, pretense that it is only a "handful of crazies," (akin to those Muslims who think that by constantly repeating that no Muslims cheered on the afternoon of September 11, we will simply forget the reports from Cairo, from Baghdad, from Riyadh and Jeddah, from Ramallah and Nablus and Gaza, from Amman, even from Hamza Street in Beirut -- not to mention the reports from Pakistan, Indonesia, indeed everywhere except, of course, Tehran, where many are now heartily sick of the mullahs, and the Islamic Republic for which they stand), is accompanied by continued seeming unawareness of why it would be perfectly plausible that, for the sins of having promoted Christianity, the Armanious family would be killed.

Still more disturbing is the reliance, in the American armed services as well as in some of its police forces, on Muslims to come in and teach about "what Islam teaches." The naivete here is the stuff of schoolgirls, and beyond belief.

Farah: Jihad in Jersey City

Joseph Farah at WND asks the right questions about the investigation of the murders of the Coptic family in Jersey City:

I want you to try to imagine how the major media might cover the following story.

A Muslim family of four, known for boldly proselytizing the Islamic faith in the shadow of where the World Trade Center stood before Sept. 11, 2001, is bound, gagged and murdered execution-style, throats slit, jewelry left behind.

I don't know about you, but I can almost envision the Page 1 New York Times coverage of this apparent "hate crime." I can almost hear the hand-wringing pundits fretting about this undeserved, unwarranted backlash against innocent Muslims. I am almost certain a week after such an attack there would be calls for new sensitivity in the way Muslims are portrayed in newscasts and entertainment programming. You can be certain the self-appointed Muslim-American and Arab-American spokesmen would be getting maximum face time brining international attention to America's intolerance toward Islam.

Tragically, an attack like this actually took place last week in Jersey City, N.J. – though it wasn't a Muslim family, it was a family of Egyptian Coptic Christians who fled persecution in their homeland for the safety and security and freedom of the USA.

Yet, the media's focus hasn't been the horror of this kind of centuries-old anti-Christian persecution apparently coming to America. Instead, there has been a concerted effort, it seems, to downplay this gruesome slaughter as some kind of anomaly, to search desperately for motives other than religious hatred – in effect, to ignore the kind of oppression that Christians and Jews in the Middle East have been experiencing since Islam became dominant in that part of the world more than 1,300 years ago....

Rush to judgment? No.

But good detective work requires that we don't allow political correctness to lead an investigation. And so should good media work.

More information on the Jersey City murders

An informed source close to the investigation of the murders of the Coptic family in New Jersey has given me some more information:

The police and prosecutor are "very scared" of this case. The Muslim community in Jersey City is putting enormous pressure on City Hall to softpedal the case. Says my source: "They [police and prosecutor] want this case to go away quickly because of that."

Both press and prosecutor are hampered by general ignorance of Islamic teaching on proselytizing and conversion, and of how jihadists operate.

Of course, my problem with the police and prosecutor's reaction is that if this really was a Sharia-inspired killing, they are opening the door to more of the same if they do not handle this case carefully and thoroughly.

My source went to the Armanious house after the murders. The house does not appear to be of a wealthy family, and does not stand out in the poor neighborhood where it is located; this makes it more difficult to sustain the notion that the primary motive was robbery. My source saw that there was no sign of forced entry.

There are indications that Sylvia, the 15-year-old, innocently let one of the perpetrators know where she lived.

Britain Arrests Freed Gitmo Detainees

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON - After enduring up to three years of imprisonment and interrogation at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, four Britons returned to England on Tuesday and were immediately arrested by antiterrorist police.

Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar were arrested under a provision of the Terrorism Act dealing with "involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," London's Metropolitan Police said.

"What sort of homecoming is this? They are innocent people," said Massoud Shadjareh, one of a group of protesters who assembled outside the high-security Paddington Green police station where the men were held.

Maybe they are innocent people, but in light of the return of some released Gitmo prisoners to the jihad, there is every reason for caution.

Armanious case update

Late last night I posted some new information on the case of the Coptic family murdered in New Jersey. In case you missed it, it is here.

Fitzgerald: MESA Nostra

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald introduces you to the Middle East Studies Association:

"Mesa" or "MESA" is the acronym of the Middle East Studies Association, the professional group of those who at American universities and colleges are charged with the responsibility of teaching the American young, those trusting, innocent, infinitely malleable young, with learning about the Middle East -- which is to say, about Islam.

As an organization, MESA has over the past two decades slowly but surely been taken over by apologists for Islam. Many of these are Muslims, and many are non-Muslims. The latter includes quite a few people who are married to Muslims, or who, to get along with their colleagues (and remember, the most political place in the entire universe is a university faculty, and that institution which, alas, Randall Jarrell failed to immortalize (if memory serves), the Departmental Meeting. Junior faculty owe everything to, and therefore must curry favor with, senior faculty. If that means signing an anti-divestment petition that has the mighty empire of Israel, fons et origo of everything that has ever gone wrong with the Muslim and Arab states and peoples, then so be it. Funny thing about being a trimmer, however, is that the mere act of signing something you really don't believe helps to convince you that you really do believe it, otherwise you would have to come to terms with your own cravenness, your own pusillanimity. And no one wants to do that.

The method of apologetics is simple: concentrate on Israel, or the more tendentious reification of an alternative state, "Israel/Palestine," keep clear of such topics as land ownership under the Ottoman Empire, the actual demographics of the Ottoman vilayets and sanjak that made up what became Mandatory Palestine, don't even whisper that more than half of the Jews in Israel had never left the Middle East but lived as dhimmis in the Yemen (virtual chattel slaves), in Iraq, in North Africa, in Syria and Egypt -- because officially, all Israeli Jews are "European colonialists"; finally, do not under any conditions mention that a goodly number of the ancient "Palestinian people" (invented post-1967) are the descendants of Arabs and Berbers who were veterans of Abd el-Kader's campaign, Egyptians who came with Mehmet Ali, Muslims from the Balkans and Bulgaria and other Ottoman territories in Europe who were transferred, en masse, by the Turkish government as the high tide of Islam receded -- for that area (a/k/a in the West as "Palestine") was by far the most desolate and under-populated in the Ottoman Empire, always excepting the Empty Quarter of Arabia).

The apologetics consists in hardly ever discussing Jihad, dhimmitude, or indeed even introducing the students to Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. Sometimes an expurgated version -- the Michael Sells horror -- is assigned to students The Hadith and Sira are never mentioned. Books on the level of Armstrong and Esposito are assigned, and feelgood nonsense like Maria Rosa Menocal's The Ornament of the World.

But not everyone who is a member of MESA is completely awful. There are a few reasonable people, some of the Ottomanists and suchlike. MESA is a little like the Soviet Union of Writers, which had thousands of members and hardly a real writer. When one considers Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, Bernard Lewis, and a few others, on one scale, and the assorted Khalidis and Dabashis and Massads and Bahranis in the other, you can guess which side kicks the beam. No member of MESA has done as much to make available to a wide public important new work on Muhammad, on the origins of the Qur'an, and on the history of early Islam, as that lone wolf, Ibn Warraq. No one has done such work on the institution of the dhimmi as that lone louve, Bat Ye'or. It is an astounding situation, where much of the most important work is not being done in universities, because many university centers have been seized by a kind of Islamintern International. Willy Munzenberg could have learned a lot from Edward Said, who was only begetter, with his Orientalism for a good deal of this "post-colonial hegemonic discourse" stuff that permanently stunts the mental growth.

Recent presidents of MESA have included Lisa Anderson, the well-versed and compleat academic (and beyond, what with the Councils on this and the Committees on that, all very impressive if you are impressed with that sort of thing) operator, Dean of the School of International Blah, and Joel Beinin and Laurie Brand, about whom you may google, and Rashid Khalidi, and -- has Juan Cole served his term, or is that coming up? Well, you get the dreary picture

In any case, even MESA has its constraints. For example a few years ago it had to award, it could not avoid awarding, a prize for the best book of the year to Michael Cook for his 720-page Commanding Right and Prohibiting Wrong in Islam, even though Cook is suspiciously learned and has written a book, perhaps too warily not permitted to be reprinted, with Patricia Crone (who herself is very good, but also, at times, as in her treatment of Christoph Luxenberg, not quite as brave as she should be).

Why do I refer to MESA as "Mesa Nostra"? Because it is a kind of "Our Thing" conspiracy, but not nearly as appealing, as folkloric, as the Mafia, or the 'ndrangheta, or the camorra, for in Italy the malavita has three main components. Everyone knows everyone else; the maneuvering, the politicking, the fear that the hot breath of Campus Watch, and perhaps even Congress, will take away all that government money that the Khalidis and the Dabashis et al. wanted to use to spread their anti-Israel anti-American and "why-do-they-hate-us?" and "it is only a handful-of-extremists" message, and how can that mean old U.S. government not want to fund that, huh?

"Mesa Nostra" is my little invention. It communicates the doubtfulness, and more, of the enterprise. It has nothing to do with real scholarship. Ask yourself this: could Joseph Schacht, the great authority on Mohammedan law, or Arthur Jeffery, an authority on Islam, on Muhammad, even on aspects of the lexicon of the early Qur'an, both of them once stars in Columbia's middle-eastern firmament, have been hired today -- at Columbia, or indeed, anywhere that the plotters of Mesa Nostra rule the roost?

The Arabs have poured money into various Georgetown Centers for this and that (because that's where the power is, that's where the foreign service officers are trained, that's where Peter Bechtold, who gave a cheerleading address to the last meeting of Mesa, heads the "Foreign Policy Institute" and was so instrumental in drawing up that farcical list for General Vines). They have also bought up chairs: the nice "Guardian of the Two Holy Places" professorship of law that Frank Vogel holds, and a King Abdul Aziz Thisorthat, and so on. Oh, they get their money's worth. They do, indeed they do.

So that's why I call it "Mesa Nostra." Everybody should.

Tunisian Progressive: 'Islamism is The Mother of All Big Lies'

And a wildly successful one indeed. No tiny minority of extremists here: the Islamic reformer Saad Eddin Ibrahim complains that 150,000 mosques in Egypt are against him. In the words of the Tunisian human rights activist Abu Khawla (Muhammad Bechri) in MEMRI, with thanks to Romy:

"The mosque (especially the Friday prayer sermon) is particularly used by Islamists to spread their message. [Egyptian progressive] Saadeddine Ibrahim recently lamented how he would face a propaganda machine that uses a network of 150,000 mosques in Egypt. In many countries, Fatwas issued by the Mullahs could be binding on social and political matters, and the religious authorities are granted wide powers for censorship of whatever they consider to be blasphemous...."

Militant Imams Under Scrutiny Across Europe

About time. From the New York Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

LONDON, Jan. 24 - In nightly sermons broadcast on the Internet, Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a 46-year-old Syrian-born cleric, has urged young Muslim men all over the world to support the Iraq insurgency on the front line of "the global jihad," investigators say.

In an amazing display of brazen deception, one Islamic apologist claimed that I had fabricated this when I posted it here a couple of weeks ago. I suppose the Times picked it up from me, eh?

He struck a similarly defiant tone this month at a rally attended by 500 people at a central London meeting hall, where a giant screen behind him showed images of the World Trade Center falling. "Allah akbar!" - "God is great" - some audience members shouted at the images.

After eavesdropping for months on his nightly praise of the Sept. 11 hijackers and of suicide bombings, Scotland Yard said last week that it was investigating Sheik Omar, the leader of Al Muhajiroun, Britain's largest Muslim group, and officials are exploring whether they can deport him. "We're fed up with him," said a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He needs to be stopped, or he needs to go."

Britain's largest Muslim group? But, but, isn't it a tiny minority of extremists??

Read it all.

"If they preach that there ought to be absolutely no jihad (holy war), they would lose credibility and support among their followers"

Can Islam reform? Despite my respect for some of those making the attempt, I have expressed my doubts many times. This story illustrates one reason why: the jihad ideology that fuels violence by Muslims against non-Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere is not only not the province of a tiny minority of extremists, but is so deeply embedded in the Islamic consciousness that when reformers try to move away from its violent manifestations, they're accused of disloyalty. Of course, this tendency is even stronger in Saudi Arabia, where these clerics are reaping what they have sown for decades.

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

LONDON—Fundamentalist Islamic leaders in Saudi Arabia are telling militants intent on fighting "infidels" to join the insurgency in Iraq instead of taking up Osama bin Laden's call to oust the Saudi royal family at home, say Saudi dissidents who monitor theological edicts coming out of the kingdom.

Iraq as a battleground offers the solution to a quandary facing Saudi clerics who have to both placate the kingdom's rulers and keep their radical base happy.

"If they preach that there ought to be absolutely no jihad (holy war), they would lose credibility and support among their followers. So what they do is preach jihad — not in Saudi Arabia, but in Iraq," said Abdul-Aziz Khamis, a Saudi rights activist in London. "To them, Iraq is the answer to their dilemma."

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 gave the Saudi government the opportunity to send men there to wage holy war against communism.

It also opened the field for the Saudi regime to spread a rigid form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. The royal Al Saud family adheres to it, as do Saudi-born bin Laden and his Al Qaeda followers.

This is nonsense. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the Afghan jihad, which the Saudis of course supported, but it is not at all true that they weren't spreading Wahhabism before that.

Sharansky: PA promotes genocide

Natan Sharansky says that nothing has changed with the coming of Abbas. All this is a manifestation of the jihad ideology that teaches that, in the words of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, "the Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say: 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'" (Sahih Bukhari, IV:52:177).

From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Enzo:

The "Kill a Jew – Go to Heaven" presentation, compiled by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israel-based organization that monitors incitement in Palestinian society, and distributed under Sharansky's auspices, accuses the Palestinian media of dehumanizing Jews similar to ways the Nazis did.

A fundamental message broadcast in sermons, academic discourse and even children's shows, according to report co-author Itamar Marcus, is that "the Jews are an evil force, and it's inherent to the Jews, and therefore they have to be killed."...

It is important to document this phenomenon, he said, because many people view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as centered on political issues, when the Palestinians have tied redemption to killing Jews. "It's not connected to borders, it's not connected to compromise, and no compromise will be reached [once] it's a battle of God against the Jews."...

"The whole world has to be aware of anti-Semitism, because it isn't just the problem of the Jews. It's the problem of any democratic society," a Sharansky aide said. "The world has to understand what we are dealing with. It's not only whether there was a bombing yesterday or not. If you don't change the atmosphere in books or on TV, it won't be enough."

A note on the Armanious case

At Jihad Watch we have received a large number of inquiries, both sober and frenzied, about the Coptic family found murdered in Jersey City last week.

As is well known, the Copts in Jersey City and elsewhere have many suspicions about this crime. But when they have voiced these suspicions, they have been frequently denounced as “Islamophobes” – an all-purpose term of abuse used to silence criticism of Islam and of Muslims. And Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio is dismissive of the idea that the killings were religiously motivated: “Is it possible? Yes. Do we have anything that gives us reason to believe this is what it was, factually? No. Nothing indicates that was the prime motivation for this. That we can clearly say.”

Nothing? Law enforcement officials have received information from at least one Copt — a close friend of the Armanious family — indicating that the crime was indeed religiously motivated. This family friend has said that an imam in Jersey City declared this Christian family’s blood “halal,” (i.e., licit to shed), because of their proselytizing activities among Muslims. He has named — by name — a suspect in this crime, whose motive was religious and who has fled the country.

Perhaps there is nothing to this. Perhaps the man who has fled is innocent. But even if he is, the Copts have had perfectly cogent reasons for their suspicions. The Armanious family was outspoken in trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. Hossam Armanious vigorously spread his faith at PalTalk, and his 15-year-old daughter Sylvia displayed similar zeal at Dickinson High School. There is credible evidence that for this activity the family received a death threat. In light of all that, it may be that what needs to be justified is the idea that their deaths were in fact unrelated to that proselytizing activity. Islamic law, the Sharia, has traditionally made it a capital offense both for a Muslim to leave Islam, and for a non-Muslim to attempt to convert a Muslim. Many Muslims take such laws very seriously. The Theo van Gogh murder in the Netherlands indicates that at least some will not hesitate to enforce Sharia penalties even in the lands of the infidels.

But if the killer is never caught, which is a distinct possibility since he could be half a world away by now, Muslim spokesmen will attribute the suspicions of the Copts to a “climate of hysteria” against Muslims, and portray themselves — as they do so often — as victims.

Still, a larger question remains. If the Armanious family did in fact receive a death threat related to their proselytizing on Pal Talk, what are the implications for our free society? If the murders were indeed, as many Copts suspect, a warning to them not to proselytize among Muslims, what does that mean for the free exchange of ideas that has always been one of the central values – perhaps the central value – of the American polity?

The mainstream media has done a poor job of covering this case. It has not bothered to explain that the difficulties Copts experience in Egypt are not “old” or even “centuries-old” (as the New York Times put it) — they are as old as when the Muslim invaders first conquered Coptic Christian Egypt. They don’t come from anything Copts have said or done to Muslims, but from the supremacist nature of Islamic beliefs. But in the media in general there has been no understanding of this and no discussion of the Sharia — or of how apostates in Islam are to be treated, or of what punishment is to be meted out to those who dare (as the Armanious family dared) not to act as the despised and cowed minority they were in Egypt, but as free and equal and proud citizens of this country.

No statement has come from the Hudson County Prosecutors Office that shows any sign that that Office has considered these questions, or fully investigated the Copts’ suspicions and allegations. This may not have been a Sharia-inspired killing on American soil, but nothing that has yet come from Edward DeFazio or anyone else seems to deal adequately with the indications that it was. White House Wilsonians seem intent on bringing “democracy” to Iraq, as if that will somehow solve the problem of Islam, and of the jihad that they persist in identifying solely by one of its tools, terrorism. Meanwhile, an unknown number of Muslims in the United States — possibly including the killer of the Armanious family — are working to solve the problems of Islam by laboring, in one way or another, to bring Sharia to this country.

But few are paying attention to that.

Saudi Suicide Bomber Claims Zarqawi was Captured, Then Released

Could this possibly be true? Unfortunately, given the shifting and shadowy nature of loyalties among Iraqi officials, it most certainly could. From VOANews, with thanks to Rebecca Bynum:

A suicide bomber from Saudi Arabia, who survived a failed attempt to blow up the Jordanian mission Baghdad in December, alleges that Iraqi police may have captured, and then released, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, two months ago. Both U.S. and Iraqi officials could not confirm the claims made by the suicide bomber.

On a video disk provided by Iraq's interior ministry, the badly-burned man, identified as Ahmed Abdullah al-Shaiyah, tells Iraqi interrogators about his journey from Saudi Arabia to Baghdad between late October and December to volunteer for suicide missions....

"Do you know what has happened to Zarqawi and where he is?" an Iraqi investigator asked Mr. Shaiyah.

He answered, "I don't know, but I heard from some of my mujahadeen brothers that Iraqi police had captured Zarqawi in Fallujah." Mr. Shaiyah says he then heard that the police let the terrorist go because they had failed to recognize him.

A U.S. military official in Baghdad said he had no evidence to corroborate the allegations from the suicide bomber.

And, during a press conference Saturday, Iraq's interior minister, Falah al-Naqib declined to answer a reporter's question about the allegation and rumors that Zarqawi had been arrested.

REPORTER: "Can you just clarify a bit what you were just saying or not saying about Zarqawi?"

NAQIB: "I wouldn't like to comment for the time being. Let us see."

REPORTER: "Does that mean you have him in custody?"

NAQIB: "Pardon?"

REPORTER: "Does that mean he is in custody?"

NAQIB: "No comments."

Religious Surge Alarms Secular Syrians

This article shows the self-contradiction of the position that still prevails in the mainstream media: if the jihadists are really a tiny minority of extremists whose understanding of Islam is rejected by the great majority, then why should anyone be concerned about an Islamic revival in Syria? But this article is closer to the truth: the resurgence of Islam itself makes for a revival of jihadist sentiment, and that's why secular Syrians are worried.

From the Washington Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

NASIRIYAH, Syria -- A religious revival is sweeping Syria, challenging the secular, ruling Baath Party to allow more Muslim influence in government and frightening many Syrians schooled for decades to fear political Islam.

Growing religious feeling can be seen across the landscape, from the proliferation of head scarves worn by young women in Damascus to an enormous privately funded mosque nearing completion in downtown Aleppo, Syria's second city. Muslim clerics, meanwhile, are growing increasingly bold in asking for democratic political reforms that could give them a larger role in government.

Alarmed by the trend, some within Syria's secular intelligentsia and middle class have begun writing and organizing against it. From his airy home in Nasiriyah, a town 35 miles northeast of Damascus, Nabil Fayyad, a secular writer, accused the government in print last September of softening its stand against the increasingly popular Islamic movement, its chief rival for power, amid pressure from the United States to reform.

Fitzgerald: On the commanded and prohibited in Islam

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald considers the implications of the possibility that the charges are true that the Armanious family murders were religiously motivated:

To understand better what is not only past in Islam, but also passing and, most importantly, to come, members of the security services in the Western world should learn what Islam teaches its adherents, whether they ignore most of those teachings and in fact dissent (and do not do so merely for the sake of infidel good will), from them (the so-called “moderates”) or whether they choose to follow those teachings in a more observant fashion (what we may call the “rigorist” or “immoderate” Muslims, of whom there are a great many).

Islam is based on divisions, or perhaps one should say polarities. And these polarities explain the widespread bipolar disorder of Muslim peoples, swinging from gloom (as in June, 1967) to elation (as on the afternoon of September 11, 2001). For Infidels, the main polarity to be aware of in Islam is the absolute divide between the Believer and the Unbeliever. Fellow Believers must be supported, must never have war made upon them in the service of Unbelievers (or Infidels). Unbelievers, on the other hand, must not be taken as friends (“Christians and Jews are friends with each other”), not be treated as equals but subject to all sorts of disabilities, and while they may be exploited in every possible way, that exploitation should not lead to any felt gratitude toward the Infidels. The Iraqi who told an NPR interviewer (Deborah Amos) on Jan. 22 that the Americans “must leave” but only after they “stop terrorism” and “fix everything,” was perfectly willing to have American soldiers fight and die to end terrorism by some Muslims, for the sake of other Muslims who apparently disagree with the President’s notion that “freedom isn’t free” (they are quite content, at least, to pay for that “freedom” not out of their own pockets, but to pick the pockets of the obliging, trusting, ever-generous and hopeful Americans). If the Shi’a are now “supporting the elections, it is only because they know they will win those elections, and not because they have, all of a sudden, become staunch democrats and great readers of The Federalist and John Stuart Mill. They will bide their time, take power, and continue to regard all Infidels as “najis” or unclean. Despite the opinions expressed by some, including the convert to Sufi Islam Stephen Schwartz, or Reuel Gerecht, who assured a CNN audience that the Islamic Republic of Iran had “run its course” more than a decade ago, and therefore presumably, we can stop worrying about it – unfortunately someone forgot to tell the Teheran regime that it had “run its course” and its time was up, and that it really should stop constructing those nuclear weapons. Shi’a as compared to Sunni may in Iraq, as in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, be slightly more sinned against than sinning, but this does not make them the friends of Infidels. Americans should expect no gratitude for having rescued them from the monstrous regime of Saddam Hussein, which had lasted for 35 years, and was prepared to last for another 35.

The division between Believer and Infidel in the world is mirrored in how the world itself is divided, between Dar al-Islam, the lands were Islam rules and Muslims dominate (though they need not be a majority of the population), and dar al-harb, the House of War, where Infidels, for now, have not yet been conquered, by whatever means, and subjugated to Islam.

The divisions of the great world are mirrored in the divisions that rule all of life. Everything one does is either halal (permited, licit) or haram (prohibited, illicit). It is all laid down, or if not laid down in some book, then a fatwa or opinion may serve as the final guide of how a Muslim should act. Muslims living in the Lands of the Infidels face new questions. May they, for example, obey Infidel laws? (Answer: Only to the extent that those laws do not contravene Islam.) Now a good guide to what is halal and what is haram is Al-Halal wal Haram fil Islam by the well-known Qaradawi, who now lives in Qatar (also the home of Al-Jazeera). Hairdos in the shape of a camel’s hump? Haram. Statues that have not been vandalized or defaced? Haram. A nice glass of fruit juice? Halal. A leg of lamb, from a lamb that has been killed in the Halal manner (oops, this is a trick question). Halal.

A few years ago Michael Cook wrote his Commanding Right and Prohibiting Wrong in Islam. In Christianity, one is expected to promote what is “right”, and to discourage people from doing “wrong.” The Christian version of Cook’s book would be Commending Right and Discouraging Wrong. What a difference a vowel makes. Islam is all about power; Islam commands, Islam forbids, Islam demands of Believers absolute slavish submissiveness to the Rules of Islam. And Unbelievers, too, must obey the rules of the game, for if they are allowed to live, they owe their very lives to Muslims who have generously permitted that – in return for behaving as dhimmis, and for not putting up resistance to the spread of Islam.

The Armanious family had overstepped those rules. The father, who defended the Copts and attacked the treatment they had historically received from Muslims, expressed these views on Muslim websites. Sylvia the 15-year-old daughter, was proud to defend, even to promote among others, her own faith. Either the father, or Sylvia, or perhaps both of them, had violated what is demanded of dhimmis.

By all the laws of civilization and of the United States of America, the butchery that followed was strictly wrong, forbidden, prohibited, haram. According, however, to the fanatical views of the “immoderate” Muslims (as opposed the other kind about which he hear so much, but from whom we hear so little), this family of Copts, the descendants of the original inhabitants of Egypt and ever since the arrival of Islam, a group persecuted in their own country, had come from Egypt, and knew the Muslim rules. Yet here in America, members of this family made the mistake of thinking they were free to act as free Americans, and had dared to violate those rules. According, however, to the fanatical views of the “immoderate” Muslims (as opposed the other kind, about which we hear so much, and from whom we hear so little), the whole Armanious family deserved what they got (as part of “an intense Islamic revolution all across America that holds the right and bring down [sic] the falsehood that they’ve created” as someone says at an Islamic website), for in the eyes of their killers and those killers’ open or secret supporters, they should have behaved in America just as Copts are made to behave in Egypt. To many Muslims, the Christians of the Middle East are supposed to carry their dhimmitude with them, and these Copts violated their pact. They owed everything, the celebrated kindness of Islam, which allowed them to live as long as they strictly adhered to the rules of dhimmitude. This they failed to do. They may have been butchered, but it was strictly according to the rules. They violated their agreement, and lost the right to live. Whoever killed them acted, it would seem, in defense of Islam and against these Copts who had forgotten their place. Que voulez-vous, monsieur? Don’t worry. It was all strictly halal.

"He has said that he acquired this nom de guerre while waging jihad in Afghanistan and that he was now going to bring about the Talibanization of his part of Bangladesh"

In Onward Muslim Soldiers I discuss the phenomenon of jihad fighters traveling from one country to another to fight in the latest jihad. It appears from this New York Times story, "The Next Islamist Revolution?" (thanks to Nicolei), that the latest stop is Bangladesh.

Last spring, Bangla Bhai, whose followers probably number around 10,000, decided to try an Islamist revolution in several provinces of Bangladesh that border on India. His name means ''Bangladeshi brother.'' (At one point he said his real name was Azizur Rahman and more recently claimed it was Siddiqul Islam.) He has said that he acquired this nom de guerre while waging jihad in Afghanistan and that he was now going to bring about the Talibanization of his part of Bangladesh. Men were to grow beards, women to wear burkas. This was all rather new to the area, which was religiously diverse. But Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, as Bangla Bhai's group is called (the name means Awakened Muslim Masses of Bangladesh), was determined and violent and seemed to have enough lightly armed adherents to make its rule stick.

US to back crackdown on Muslim separatists in Philippines

The schizophrenia in American foreign policy continues, but this is a positive step. From AFP, with thanks to Twostellas:

MANILA - The United States will back President Gloria Arroyo in the fight against breakaway Muslim militant groups threatening fragile peace talks in the southern Philippines, its envoy to Manila said on Monday.

US ambassador Francis Ricciardone said negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government were being made difficult by many groups claiming to be legitimate separatist rebels.

While the ongoing peace negotiations brokered by Malaysia to end the MILF’s 28-year insurgency were welcome, Ricciardone said Washington would provide military support against those continuing to carry out attacks.

He said 70 US military personnel were training troops in the southern Philippines in intelligence gathering, leading to the arrest or killing of “25 identified, known, no-doubt-about it terrorist leaders” last year.

Development assistance would also continue in the mostly poverty-stricken southern Mindanao island and in Muslim areas, he said.

“Our concern is not merely to get a piece of paper ... a peace accord. What we want to see is a peace (agreement) that will be durable and that will permit development to go ahead,” Ricciardone told foreign correspondents.

But if certain elements of the MILF were “going to hide bombers from Bali, or train bombers or hide kidnappers, or get involved in the drug trade, the law enforcement and security forces of the Philippines are going to go after them and we are going to help them,” Ricciardone said.

Jihad Watch Contest: Spot the Taqiyya!

Details of the Contest at Dhimmi Watch.

Details of taqiyya here.

UK 'dirty bomb' suspects for trial

An inadequate article, in that it doesn't say anything about with what groups they were affiliated. Still, it vividly demonstrates that the threat to Western societies has not dissipated. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

LONDON, England (AP) -- Three terror suspects have pleaded innocent to charges that they conspired to possess a radioactive substance and entered into funding arrangements linked to terrorism.

Roque Flaviano Fernandes, 43, Dominic Agnello Martins, 44, and Abdurahman Kanyare all denied that they conspired to possess a "radioactive mercury-based substance" for terrorist purposes between July 1 and September 25, 2004.

The three men appeared at the Old Bailey criminal court by video-link from Belmarsh high-security prison in the southeast of the capital.

They all denied another two charges each of "conspiracy to enter into a funding arrangement for purposes of terrorism" between July 1 and Sept. 25.

Iran Attempts to Pull Plug on Web Dissidents

Could the Internet bring down the mullahocracy? The mullahs are trying to make sure there's plenty of harm in trying. And note well: these guys were the "children of the revolution." From the LA Times, with thanks to Anthony:

After toiling for years to silence dissent within the Iranian republic, the mullahs have turned their war against free press to the last reserve of open political debate: the Internet. Since the summer, Iran's Web loggers, or bloggers, and online journalists have been demonized as CIA collaborators, their work whitewashed from many Iranian computers with filters....

"They suddenly felt that we were using the Internet as an alternative to the papers they'd shut down," said Hossein Derakhshan, a 28-year-old Iranian pioneer who took the groundbreaking step of publishing online instructions in Persian to teach Iranians how to post Web logs. He moved to Toronto five years ago with his wife, a Canadian citizen. "Blogs are the only uncontrolled and totally free medium, so they have the potential to attract many people, even people who are apathetic."

The arrest of online journalists and bloggers began last fall. The writers say they were tortured and forced to publicly denounce their work. Even technicians who worked on Web pages have been imprisoned. President Khatami has ordered an investigation into the reports of torture.

"They think that now that they've closed the papers they should concentrate on the Web logs," said Ali Mazroui, Hanif's father and a former reformist lawmaker. "They think if they close this new source of information, they'll have control."...

Another Internet writer, who agreed to an interview shortly after his release on the condition that neither his name nor any revealing details be given, said he'd been interrogated mercilessly, beaten and held in solitary confinement until he became suicidal.

Remembering it, his features twisted together, and his eyes brimmed with tears that soon spilled over....

"We were the children of the revolution," he said. "We weren't asking for radical change. We wanted to work within the system."

Spencer: Taking jihad seriously

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer writes in the Washington Times about a curious omission during the Rice hearings:

During her Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice was grilled about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and how long the troops would be there. But no one asked her anything about the most important question of all: when, and how, American foreign policy will be adjusted to bring it into line with the goals of the war on terror.

Three years after September 11, this has not been done. It should have been the first task of the new conflict. Other nations take this as axiomatic — including those on the other side of the current alignments. Article 3 of the Iranian Constitution stipulates that Iran must base its foreign policy on "Islamic criteria, fraternal commitment to all Muslims, and unsparing support to the freedom fighters of the world."

It is reasonable for any state to base its foreign policy on its overall goals and interests. In fact, I recommend that the United States do the same thing. In regard to the global jihad, this would involve a serious re-evaluation of the American posture around the globe.

A few modest proposals to this end: In the first place, it is scandalous that so many years after President Bush announced that you're either with the terrorists or with us, the United States still counts as friends and allies — or at least recipients of its largesse — so many states where jihadist activity is widespread.

A State Department that really had America's interests at heart would immediately terminate all aid to Egypt, Indonesia, the Palestinians, Jordan, Somalia, Algeria,Sudan,Pakistan, Kosovo, Albania — and even Iraq and Afghanistan, and any other state — until each demonstrably ends all support — material, educational, religious — for jihad warfare, and grants full equality of rights to any non-Muslim citizens.

It should also reconfigure our global alliances on the same basis. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the rest should be put on notice that continued friendly relations with the United States absolutely depend on an immediate and comprehensive renunciation of the jihad, including a reformation of their schools to end the teaching of jihad warfare. It cannot be enough for a state to denounce and renounce terror; each must renounce Islamic jihad as a means of undermining the integrity of other states.

To be a friend of the United States, each must renounce entirely any intention to make good on the Islamic goals and responsibilities enunciated by the Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Maududi, who declared that non-Muslims have "absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God's earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines." If they do, "the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life."

His comments were in full accord with Islamic theology and history, as well as with the Koran as it has been read and understood by Muslims for centuries. This is the goal of the jihadists today; it should be the fundamental defining point of U.S. alliances with Muslim states.

The United States should also immediately initiate a full-scale Manhattan Project to find new energy sources, so that the needed reconfiguration of our alliances can be more than just words.

But does anyone in the State Department have the will to advocate these and other measures? Or is it only regimes like the bloody mullahocracy in Tehran that are allowed to speak openly about their principles and goals, and take all the necessary measures for their own defense?

Miss Rice needs to ask and answer these questions. The State Department's bureaucracy has been playing realpolitik for so long that it reflexively thinks it can play ball with the Islamic jihadists — as if dropping care packages into Indonesia will somehow blunt the force of the Maududi dictum that "non-Muslims have absolutely no right to seize the reins of power."

The State Department needs to come to grips with the fact that it is facing a totalitarian, supremacist, expansionist ideology, and plan accordingly. Not only has it not been done, but it is so far off the table that it never even occurred to the most rabidly partisan Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, to use it as another stick with which to batter Miss Rice's competence and veracity.

Now it is up to Miss Rice herself to demonstrate whether she has the vision to do what needs to be done.

Saudi Arabia: Bin Laden is an enemy agent

The idea that Osama bin Laden is an agent of some sinister power is no longer confined to the lunatic fringe; it has been taken up by the Saudi Interior Minister. From the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- The Saudi interior minister has said the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, is an agent of an enemy of the oil-rich kingdom. Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said, "Bin Laden is the agent of a certain party, no doubt."

Nayef did not identify the suspected party, the daily newspaper Okaz reported Monday.

Hmmm. Whom do you think he might mean?

And Nayef has the nerve to say this despite the fact that as late as November 2003, you could find this sort of thing on the website of the Saudi Embassy in Washington:

The Muslims are Required to Raise the Banner of Jihad in Order to Make the Word of Allah Supreme in this World. . . . The Muslims are required to raise the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this world, to remove all forms of injustice and oppression, and to defend the Muslims. If Muslims do not take up the sword, the evil tyrants of this earth will be able to continue oppressing the weak and [the] helpless…

Osama bin Laden, webmaster?

"The heads of the family has been separated from their bodies (they have been beheaded) at their home at Jersey"

The message below has appeared in Arabic on a Muslim bulletin board. (Thanks to Kemaste for the link, and Ali Sina for arranging for the translation.)

In The Name Of Allah the Most Gracious The Most Merciful

The Honourable Brothers/ Peace upon You

Under the title “Muslim-Christian boil over N.J”

The Associated Press wrote about the incidents that happened in the New Jersey of America after the Muslims killed a Christian American family from an Egyptian origin after an article wrote by the deceased on the internet that demonized Islam.

The heads of the family have been separated from their bodies (they have been beheaded) at their home at Jersey.

The father Hosam Armanosy 47
The mother Amal Qaras 37
Their daughters Silvia 15 and Monica 8

During the funeral yesterday the Christians carried banners that condemn the operation and demonize Islam which led to clashes between Christians and Muslims, estimated at 35 people by the police and the police separated between the two parties for fear of injuries.

Under the banner “Welcome Bin Laden” carried by a Christian, it praised Christians of more bloodshed at the hands of Bin Laden Supporters of Muslim Americans.

The good planting has started to yield thank Allah and soon, Allah willing, an intense Islamic revolution all across America that holds the right and bring down the falsehood that they’ve created.

“Bushie Bushie” you have no exit, you’re surrounded with the hatred that you’ve planted.

Allah, please, bring victory to Muslims on earth east and west oh your almighty and wisdom…amen.”

Plus a summary of reply messages:

The remaining messages support the slaughter, except for one that asked if the daughters deserved the same and was answered by the writer of the main message by saying that she was one of the worst on Pal Talk.

Another reply said that they should wait for the head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo to say his word about the daughters (ironically after the massacre took place.

All this supports the idea, for which evidence is mounting (in complete contrast to published reports), that this was a religiously motivated crime.

Another look: Balancing The Books

In late 2003, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, of which I am an Adjunct Fellow, offered an alternative book list on Islam to the package CAIR was offering to libraries. Of course, FCF didn't have the funding CAIR did, so these books didn't make it into many libraries. Nevertheless, I thought that in light of General Vines' reading list, it would be useful to supply a corrective.

This is not by any means meant as a comprehensive list, but it is a start. And you can order the books here.

The recent attacks in Baghdad in which suicide car bombings killed at least 34 people no doubt will strike many Americans as disruptive of a major Islamic holiday, coming as they did during the start of Ramadan, the holiest holiday for Muslims. Fasting is required of adult Muslims to instill piety.

Right now, American officials believe that the planning of such attacks takes place after the mosque prayers held on Friday.

No doubt many Americans, viewing Islam through the prism of the mores that comprise our Judeo-Christian civilization, view such attacks as if they had been launched by Christians or Jews during Christmas or Passover, undermining the very nature of the religious holiday and the religion itself.

This is a misleading view of what truly constitutes the Islamic religion, a misconception that can not only be attributed to the naïveté of Americans but also the efforts of well-funded Islamic groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

CAIR and its allies like to gloss over the fact that the Qur'an's Sura 9:29 implores devout Muslims to "Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given [i.e., Jews and Christians] as believe neither in Allah nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what Allah and His Apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued." Yet Muslims worldwide are taking such verses as marching orders right now.

CAIR also prefers to ignore urgings such as that presented by Sura 48:29 which declares, "Muhammad is Allah's Apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another." Yet in Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and elsewhere today, Muslims are being "ruthless to the unbelievers."

Muslims accept the Qur'an as the direct words of Allah. Many passages preach violence against non-believers. As long as the Qur'an is held to be words dictated by God Himself, some Muslims will be motivated to carry out the urgings of Allah to commit violence against unbelievers, including Christians and Jews.

Right now CAIR is engaged in a campaign to stock the shelves of public libraries with books and videos maintaining that at heart Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Undoubtedly, this is reassuring to the portion of the American public that accepts multiculturalism, and which refuses to accept the reality that there are many people in this world who do not share the post-modern, secular worldview that has come to define Western civilization.

The books that CAIR is placing on library shelves include The Islamic
Threat: Myth or Reality by John L. Esposito. An online review on Amazon.com tellingly describes Esposito as a "nice guy" whose overwhelming desire for peace between the Islamic and Judeo-Christian worlds has turned him into "an apologist for the worst excesses of political Islam." Indeed, Esposito contends that jihad is a misunderstood concept and does not mean "holy war." True, the word "jihad" doesn't translate as "holy war," but to say that it hasn't meant holy war from time to time throughout history is simply fantasy.

Another book that is part of the CAIR packages is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Islam, which also makes the misleading assertion that Islam is at heart peaceful and misunderstood.

No doubt the message presented by the books and videos that comprise the CAIR packages will be comforting to many Americans who are very eager not to accept the truth about Islam. But it is not the whole story by any means. America's libraries have a responsibility to the public to ensure that their shelves contain a balanced view of Islam. They should make an effort to explain the context of the debate fairly, accurately, and in full context.

To balance the CAIR library package, at the Free Congress Foundation we've decided to offer libraries suggestions of our own, having compiled a list of twelve books.

Three of those books that deserve prominent places on the shelves of your public library - because they offer a frank discussion of Islam and how its radical believers view the West: Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West by Robert Spencer, Adjunct Fellow at the Free Congress Foundation; American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson; and Sword of the Prophet by Serge Trifkovic.

Spencer's Onward Muslim Soldiers (Regnery Publishing) contains numerous quotes from terrorists and Muslim radicals (including many in the United States) citing Islamic theology to justify violence. This is information that all Americans should know, given the current geopolitical climate. Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has proclaimed: "Jihad and killing is the head of Islam. If you take it out, you cut off the head of Islam." What makes Spencer's book also valuable is his willingness to explore how the West's commendable quality of tolerance has been taken so far by some that it has blinded them to the true threat that we confront. It is too easy to write off 9/11 as the work of a marginal gang of terrorists, not a global movement of determined extremists who harbor a deep-seated hatred for our society. Extreme as the viewpoints of Muslim terrorists are, Americans also need to understand that the violent actions and words of members of al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah are welcomed by many Muslims. Spencer's book shows why that is so.

Steven Emerson's American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (Free Press) details the effort of Islamic terrorists to bring our country to its knees, and exposes their extensive networks. The mainstream news media still has not paid enough attention to the network that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has been able to build in the United States. Emerson's book compensates for the lack of coverage we see in newspapers and on television.

Serge Trifkovic's The Sword of the Prophet: History, Theology, Impact on the World (BHB International) examines, among many illuminating topics, the powerful anti-Semitism that is constantly promoted in the Islamic press. Like Americans willing to overlook the imagery promoted by the Nazi propagandists, today's establishment media largely gives the Islamist media a pass. Trifkovic is no more a saber rattler than are Emerson or Spencer. He endorses ideas such as more careful immigration policies as vital steps to help defend us from the radical Islamists.

These three books take a tough-minded look at the ideology driving the Islamic extremists and our unwillingness to confront the reality of the situation. It has been two years since the 9/11 attack and the lack of any major terrorists incidents on American soil since then has allowed many Americans to view the world as if 9/11 was an isolated incident.

I would like to think so. But our involvement in the Middle East and the continuing effort to "globalize" American cultural and economic relationships with Islamic countries makes it unwise for us to expect that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are willing to let bygones be bygones. They are willing to be patient, waiting to strike when we least expect it.

The first step to defending ourselves is to know our enemy. Indeed, for many Americans, that means recognizing that we do indeed confront an enemy in radical Islamists who hate our country and the West and the very freedom that defines our societies. In America, CAIR is free to try to place their books on the shelves of libraries. (Something that Christians or Jews would not be permitted to do in many Islamic societies.) But the library owes it to their patrons to inform them of the source of the donation and to ensure that other books with a different point of view are available too. The books by Spencer, Emerson, and Trifkovic represent a needed balance to the CAIR packages. They are more than deserving of space on the shelves of public libraries. Americans need to read these books and think hard about their unflinching portrayal of a religion whose central tenets are unlikely to let America and the West live in peace.

The Free Congress Foundation Islamic Books for Libraries Kit: we may not endorse everything in these books, but they provide a needed corrective to CAIR's list, and stand as monuments of courage in the face of jihad terrorism. Besides the three above, here are more suggested books to counterbalance the CAIR list:

Why I Am Not A Muslim by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus Books)

What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus Books)

Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out by Ibn Warraq (Prometheus Books)

Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide by Bat Ye'or (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press)

The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad To Dhimmitude by Bat Ye'or (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press)

Jihad In The West: Muslim Conquests From The 7th To The 21st Century by Paul Fregosi (Prometheus Books)

Escape From Slavery: The True Story Of My Ten Years In Captivity And My Journey To Freedom by Francis Bok (St. Martin's Press)

The Early Development of Mohammedanism by David S. Margoliouth (Simon Publications)

Mohammed and the Rise of Islam by David Margoliouth (reprint publisher: AMS Press)

Alleged Zarqawi tape vows to fight Iraq vote: Web

This has been eminently predictable for several years now. From Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

DUBAI - Al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi declared a “bitter war” on Iraq’s parliamentary elections next Sunday, in an audiotape purporting to come from the Jordanian militant and posted on the Internet.The speaker urged Sunni Muslims to fight against the vote, which he said was a plot against them by Washington and its ”infidel” Shia Muslim allies.

“We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it,” the speaker, who was identified as Zarqawi, said in the tape posted on Sunday.

“Candidates in elections are seeking to become demi-gods while those who vote for them are infidels. And with God as my witness, I have informed them (of our intentions).”

"The man remarked that it was because of people like her that God punished the world with the tsunami"

I wrote in a recent column that the tsunami was likely to make Muslims in the afflicted areas think that it had come because they weren't Islamic enough, and thus lead to greater fervor and in due course to more jihad. Here is confirmation of this from Malaysia. "Seeing red over JAWI raid...," from the Malay Mail Online, with thanks to Nicolei:

POUNCED upon, abused and rounded up like juvenile delinquents, several Muslim youths have filed a complaint against officers of Pusat Agama Islam for the high-handed manner in which they were treated following a raid at a club in Kuala Lumpur recently....

"Most of the time they just ogled us," said the female celebrity who, together with another friend, was wearing a tank top and jeans. "My friend shielded her chest with her handbag but was asked to lower it so that the ‘jury' could have a good look. She felt so humiliated as one of the officers commented on her nipples, suggesting that perhaps she might be feeling cold." Those deemed to be wearing sexy clothes had their pictures taken. A 22-year-old student who had metal piercings on her chin and belly button was asked by a JAWI officer if she also pierced her private parts. "The man remarked that it was because of people like her that God punished the world with the tsunami," the celebrity said. The women were only allowed out after some parents turned up and gave written guarantees that those charged would attend a court hearing at the Federal Territory Syariah Court in April.

"Jihad, Whos up for it?"

All Muslims in Western countries peacefully accept pluralism and have no attachment to Sharia or violent jihad -- or so American Muslim advocacy groups would have us believe, on pain of being called "racist" or "Islamophobic." But alas, reality is different. A Muslim in Toronto recently posted this at the Islamic Forum bulletin boards (thanks to Jeff Lastname for the link):

Are you planning to participate in Jihad to do service to Allah's Religion?

Tell us how you will go about doing this.

For me personally, I wanna get a basic job and save up money (About $35 grand CDN)...and go to Iran to get military training at the same time educating myself in deen and memorizing Quran. Because it's taqwa and niyyah that would get me accepted by Allah and assist me in Jihad. Then after completing the training in Iran I will go to Chechnya to assist the Mujahideen there.

Subsequent posters admonish this fellow not to speak so openly about his plans on the Internet. One tells him:

The Post-9/11 world is different. The different Western intelligence agencies are putting pressure on their respective muslim populations. They are out to stop people trying to go to jihad so you dont watn them to make your plans anymore difficult

The original poster, "MedinaMuniwara," makes his intentions quite clear:

Bro there is a need. The need to fight the oppressors. There are so many able muslims that can go for Jihad, if we just didnt intend and DID ......those Russians woulda been slaughtered by now.

A poster identifying himself as "Greek Cypriot" says to him:

Anyway, I don't have any problem with what you want to do - So long as you abide by the rules of Jihad (Don't kill innocents e.t.c.) and don't attack any Greeks. :)

MedinaMuniwara responds:

Greek: If there are any Greek-Russians in the occupation of Chechnya....I will have to kill them. lmao

He is contemptuous of the idea that unbelievers might see this discussion and disapprove:

Are u scared to fight? I hope not. You scared of being harrassed at skool cuz of ur deen [religion]? Was Bilal (ra) scared of being harrassed by Mushrikeen Makkah? He took boulders on his stomach ....this is #### compared to them. They just said "One God" and lost their lives.

I cant believe why would anyone say "OHh look what the kuffar think of us..they think we are savages ...lets stop fighting.....they think we oppress women...lets get rid of the hijabs...n khimars....." thats total B-S!

What would a kuffar think if you told them Rasool (SAW) [that's the Muslim prophet Muhammad] had 12 wives? You know exactly what they would think. Would u stop saying it? No.

The discussion goes on for pages and contains much of interest. Greek Cypriot comes back later to tell the would-be mujahid:

THIS FORUM MUST BE MONITORED BY THE FBI OR SOME OTHER GROUP! Don't you realise how dangerous it is to post things like that? Don't you realise they will probably start reading all your mail, bugging your phones e.t.c?!!!

Or at least posting what you say on Jihad Watch.

Don't miss a revealing debate that is posted late in the thread. It is between a Sheikh Al-Albani (probably Imam Muhammad Naasir ud-Din Al-Albani (1914-1999), who taught for a time at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia) and a jihadi. They are discussing whether a caliph is needed to declare jihad fard ayn -- that is, obligatory on all Muslims, as opposed to fard kifaya, which is an obligation from which one is released if another takes it up. The fact that this is debated at all is one indicates why jihadists worldwide are so anxious to reestablish the caliphate. If there were a caliph, these questions would not need to be raised.

Fitzgerald: The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD

Lt. Gen. John H. Vines, who is set to take command of American ground forces in Iraq, has assigned a series of books on Islam to his staff members. Here are comments on Vines' choices from Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald:

The Reading List of General Vines deserves further detailed study. There are two books by Esposito. There is one by Karen Armstrong, whom, one would have thought, is by now regarded as a complete buffoon. There is something about Islam for Dummies. There is a book by the jejune Sandra Mackey on Iraq, when either the Letters of Gertrude Bell (those from Baghdad up to 1927, when she killed herself), or Philip Ireland's book published in 1939 would have helped -- and best of all would have been the essay on Iraq by the native of Baghdad, Elie Kedourie, published in Islam in the Modern World.

Nothing by Lewis. Nothing by Kedourie. Nothing by J. B. Kelly, not even that essay "Of Valuable Oil and Worthless Policies" which, while it dates in the section on the Soviet threat, does not date as a description of the misperception of Saudi Arabia. The spirit of ARAMCO propagandists still lives.

What is good about the Reading List is that it is so bad, so truly bad, that eyebrows should be raised all over Washington. Who compiled this list? Who carefully allowed in, as the single sop, the Naipaul, but left out the Lewis, the Kedourie, the Kelly? Who left out any serious essays on the nature of Islam, on Jihad? How are the Infidel soldiers supposed to comprehend the hostility that is felt towards them, even though they are only there to "rebuild" Iraq? For if they cannot understand that hostility -- which is in every textbook, every mosque, every madrassa, every Arab satellite channel, every Qur'an and volume of the Hadith and every life of Muhammad, they will be eternally confused. And confusion and incomprehension, or miscomprehension, leads to demoralization.

Here is an example of a little colloquy reported by NPR Correspondent Deborah Amos this morning. She was reporting from Basra. She interviewed a man, asking him as follows:

Amos: "Do you want foreign troops to leave?"
Iraqi: "Would you want your country to be occupied?" (Iraqis, she said, and soldiers know, tend to reply to questions cannily, warily, with questions of their own, and almost never give a straight answer to anything).

When Amos then presses him if he wants the Americans to leave, he answers:

"Yes, I do. But not before they fix everything, and stop terrorism."

How nice. I hate you, and I want you to leave. But first you have to "stop terrorism" and, oh by the way, "fix everything."

That kind of attitude will not be understood by reading Karen Armstrong, who describes Muhammad as the man who "brought peace" to the Arabian Peninsula. It will not be understood by reading John Esposito, author of The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (we know which he chose), a man who in previous editions of his books does not give more than a single mention of the word "Jihad" and has never treated of the dhimmi.

How can American officers figure out why the Christians are being terrorized, if they know nothing about the 1350 year history of Jihad-conquest and of the imposition of dhimmitude? How?

How can American officers understand what is going on if the inculcated hostility toward them is not understood?

The greatest Intelligence Failure of the Iraq War was not about WMD. It was about Islam, its tenets, its nature, the attitudes and atmospherics it engenders. It was an intelligence failure that continues as long as we prate about how everyone wants freedom (nonsense), that "democracy" will lessen the threat in the Middle East (double-nonsense), that the best way to limit a threat based entirely on the classic ideology of Islam is to say nothing, to learn nothing, to hint at nothing, about Islam itself.

Supposedly, the "faculty at Yale" and people at the "Foreign Service Institute" were responsible for this list. Let's find out something more about precisely who was involved in the selection of the final group of eight books. What are their names? What are their own interests?

Note to Hollywood: it is time for movies and television stories, not about Muslim terrorists, but about those who are apologists for Islam, and who are determined to keep certain truths from getting out, in very high places indeed. One need not be of a conspiratorial frame of mind to see that with such a Reading List, something is very amiss -- and very high up.

This has to be thoroughly investigated.

Algerian jihadists kill women in cemetery

More from the Nothing Is Sacred Except Jihad Warfare Department: "Algerian rebels kill women in cemetery," from Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

ALGIERS (Reuters) - A bomb placed by Islamic rebels exploded at a cemetery south of the Algerian capital, killing three women and injuring five others visiting loved ones during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, newspapers say.

The home-made bomb blew up at the entrance of a mausoleum in Ain Romana some 50 km (30 miles) south of Algiers on Friday, the second day of the Muslim feast, newspaper El Khabar said.

The area has traditionally been a hotbed for rebel activity, particularly by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which authorities said last week was dismantled after years of deadly attacks.

US cleric stabbed in Algeria

Maybe this has nothing to do with the jihad. But the hostility of Muslims to Christian missionaries is well-established -- look at the threats in Indonesia.

From Reuters, with thanks to Jeff Lastname:

An American Christian pastor has been stabbed in the Algerian capital, prompting security services to investigate any possible link to Islamist rebels.

According to diplomatic sources, Hugh Johnson of the Protestant Church of Algeria was stabbed by an unknown assailant in downtown Algiers and later underwent surgery.

His condition was not life-threatening, diplomats said.

Police said the investigation to determine any link with terrorism was under way.

Saudis to build 4,500 madrasas in South Asia

This is a somewhat older story, but it is enormously significant: these are likely to be 4,500 centers to spread the jihad ideology and the idea that Muslims must wage war in order to impose Sharia everywhere they can. The implications for the future of South Asia are obvious.

From "Saudis for 4,500 madrasas in South Asia" in the Public Affairs magazine, with thanks to Tushar:

The Saudi royal family has cleared plans to construct 4,500 madrasas in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka at a cost of $ 35 million to promote “modern and liberal education with Islamic values”, and the Saudi embassy in New Delhi is pushing this somewhat tentatively with the Union HRD ministry and Minorities Commission....

Saudi Arabia but particularly the ruling family has come for severe attack in the West, with a class-action suit filed against for 9/ 11, while the Nobel laureate, V.S.Naipaul, has called for the destruction of the kingdom for promoting jihad.

Spencer on KSFO right now (5PM EST)

Sorry for the late notice. I am just about to go on KSFO Talk Radio 560 out of San Francisco, the David Gold Show. You can listen online at the KSFO site. We're scheduled to be talking about the murder of the Coptic family in New Jersey.

Fitzgerald: "We Muslims living in America are getting sick of this crap"

Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald reflects on recent Muslim complaints that they are unfairly suspected and discriminated against: "We Muslims living in America are getting sick of this crap."

There is no Muslim contribution to the American polity, not to the entire edifice of the American political system. The Shari'a flatly contradicts, in every way, the American Constitution. The economic views encouraged by Islam -- a combination of relying on booty from the conquered Unbelievers (attacked purely for that booty, beginning with the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis), and on jizyah (or disguised "jizyah" as in the Bumiputra system in Malaysia, or the way in which non-oil Muslim states such as Egypt have managed to extract from the endlessly naive Western world tens of billions of dollars in Infidel aid, repaid not with gratitude but with ratcheting up the level of hate), and with a heavy dose of inshallah-fatalism, is completely the opposite of American notions of self-reliance, individual effort and achievement.

In social matters, Islam is as absurdly reactionary -- "honor" killings, the oppression of women, the Total Reliance on the Authority of Books Concocted between the 7th and 9th centuries (Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira) possibly in Arabia, possibly to its north, in present-day Iraq, Syria, or Jordan. which, as an ideal to be encouraged, even if it is hardly the whole story -- as it is possible to be. That some people who claim to be Muslims still function in the modern world is a tribute only to their ability to ignore much of Islam.

In intellectual matters, no sculpture, no painting of living creatures save for Mughal miniatures, that were despite, not because, of Islam, no music (hence the attacks in Algeria on those singers of Rai), no real science (weapons technology -- ah, that's a different thing).

And yet this primitive system, simply by dint of the utter foolishness, sentimentality, mental laziness, and above all ingratitude of the inhabitants of the Western world for what they have inherited as a civilizational legacy, could by force of numbers -- sheer overbreeding -- and Da’wa appeals to the psychically and economically marginal (always ready to try on anything that may Explain The Universe and Get Back at The System) -– conceivably prevail.

Look at how, in the last two days, all sorts of newspapers have fallen all over themselves with pictures of Muslims sweetly celebrated the Eid al-Adha -- in North Dakota, for god's sake, not to mention elsewhere. The word seems to have gone out to the American press: Make Islam Look Good.

And since what is Bad about Islam are the actual tenets, and those, assimilated into the brain, cannot be shown in pictures -- though the murderous results of Islamic beliefs, and the results, too, of Islamic practices over 1400 years, can be seen in the reduction of ancient Mesopotamia, and its once-entirely non-Muslim population to what is now an almost entirely Muslim population -- like what you see? would you like America or Europe to turn into that, over time? it won't take 1400 years, but less than a century to throw out all of Western civilization because "we all want the same thing" and "we all share the faith of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar" and...oh good god, fill in the rest of the nonsense yourself, culled from the paper, or some idiotic NPR news program, or something on the Lord Haw Haw broadcasts from the BBC, where the likes of Judy Swallow or Robin Lustig, marionetted from above by the sinister John Simpson (#3 at Bush House), have created a special BBC house blend of anti-Americanism, antisemitism, and therefore, of course, islamophilia, that has by degrees helped to mentally disarm tens of millions of listeners.

No, it is we Infidels who are getting "sick of this crap."

Scholar: opium trade permitted by Islamic law

The Taliban justified the opium trade by noting that Muslims didn't use the stuff, only unbelievers; I discuss that in Islam Unveiled. Other scholars have said that such trade is prohibited in Islam. Mufti Munir Shakir, in contrast, seems to be saying that it has beneficial uses.

That, of course, plays into the hands of the Taliban and others who continue to attempt to victimize, and profit from, unbelievers in this way. It's no wonder, seeing the money that comes from drugs, that jihadists look upon the West with contempt. From the Daily Times of Pakistan, with thanks to EPG:

BARA: Mufti Munir Shakir, a renowned religious scholar, has declared the trade of opium “halal,” legitimate, in the light of Islamic teachings during his routine sermon on an unlicensed FM radio station operating in Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency the other day....

Munir Shakir declared the cultivation and trade of opium legitimate on the grounds that it was mostly used in about 98 percent medication. He said the use of anything that had the potential of having a positive impact and benifit on human beings could not be declared illegitimate and prohibited in Islam.

Film of beheadings shown on Net

Two collaborators with the "American enemy" beheaded on video. Note below: The "Al-Qaeda Group of Jihad." "Allahu akbar." "The implementation of God's ruling." Yet American Muslims, with increasing irritation ("We Muslims living in America are getting sick of this crap"), continue to insist that all this has nothing to do with Islam. If they devoted even half of the energy that they expend on enforcing political correctness in America to making it impossible for people like Zarqawi to act within the Islamic community worldwide, their protestations might be worth taking seriously. But since they don't do this, their complaints are essentially just a smokescreen. (And of course, they no doubt know that people like Zarqawi have the texts of Islam on their side.) From AFP, with thanks to JE:

After making their "confessions" in front of a banner carrying the name of Zarqawi's al-Qaeda Group of Jihad in the Land of Two Rivers, the video showed each man having his head cut off.

The severed heads were held aloft by the men's slaughterers and put on their backs to shouts of Allahu Akbar, or God is greatest....

Zarqawi is Iraq's most-wanted man and his group has repeatedly posted such videos showing what it calls "the implementation of God's ruling" against Iraqi "apostates" or foreign hostages.

Blasts hit mosque, wedding in Baghdad

A wedding. A booby-trapped ambulance. This is not the act of a group interested in protecting the "innocent." This is the act of a group that doesn't believe that anyone involved is innocent, and has allowed its ideology to blind it to the most basic canons of human decency. A report from the infamous Al-Jazeera, which apparently doesn't see any need to cover up any of the details of this one. Will no one in the Islamic world be disturbed? (Thanks to Nicolei for the link.)

"A booby-trapped ambulance driven by a human bomber blew up in a place where a wedding party was taking place," the police said....

The blast struck while Shia worshippers were celebrating one of Islam's most important holidays, the Eid al- Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice....

Senior Shia political leader Abdel Aziz Hakim - whose list is expected to dominate the elections - said the attack was the latest salvo by extremists trying to stoke civil war between Shia and Sunnis.

"It is quite obvious why there is such an attack. They are trying to create sectarian strife," Hakim told AFP.

An audiotape released Thursday and purportedly recorded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's supremo in Iraq, took aim at the Shia community, accusing it of participating in the deadly November assault on Fallujah.

"The battle of Falluja removed the ugly mask of the damned
'Rafidha' (a derogatory term for Shia), whose hatred (for Sunnis) was manifested in this battle," the audiotape said.

"They participated in the military campaign for the battle against Fallujah with the blessing of the imam of infidelity and apostasy, Sistani," it added.

Spencer on the Roth Show tonight

I have appeared on the great Laurie Roth's show many times, and even guest hosted it once. I'll be back on with Laurie tonight at 10:15PM EST.

I hope some of you folks will call in and say hello (and, of course, ask pointed questions). The number is 1-800-837-9680. Check the Roth Show site to see if the show is carried in your area.

Diana West: "Not learning about it, not talking about it doesn't make the threat of violent Islam go away"

Diana West takes on the prevailing willful blindness about the threat we face, and the war that dare not speak its name. "Military on the Mall," from the Washington Times:

There's no war on "terror" any more than there's a war on car bombs. Neither term describes what animates the terrorists — drivers of car bombs, wearers of explosive vests, or wielders of butcher-blades. Invariably, it is Islam and the murderous, expansionist ideology of jihad that drives that extreme fringe you read about to the point of unspeakable violence. And by the way, that's some fringe; according to Daniel Pipes' famous estimate, it includes 10 percent of the Muslim world — 100 million-plus people.

Which takes me back to the original idea of what there is to achieve by writing about those central, retrograde aspects of Islam that clash with Western society — namely, the precepts of jihad and dhimmitude, and the dictates of sharia law. Clarity is the goal. We are unlikely to witness a security-lite inauguration four years — or eight or 12 years — hence if we remain confused about the ideology that animates our foes. And we are unlikely to ward off the spread of jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law the world over — including the U.S.A. — if we know nothing about it, or, worse, know only apologetics about it. Infinitely more pleasant, they are also misleading.

But apologetics are what we get. Take the reading list that Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, our new commander in Iraq, has given senior staff. It whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito. No Bat Ye'or; no Ibn Warraq; no Robert Spencer; no Daniel Pipes; no Paul Fregosi; no Oriana Fallaci; not even any Bernard Lewis. Ignorance before September 11 was bad enough; perpetuating that ignorance is inexcusable.

Because not learning about it, not talking about it doesn't make the threat of violent Islam go away. I found it wickedly ironic that around the time the Website Islam Online claimed Fox television decided "to remove some stereotypical aspects about American Muslims" from its terrorism series "24" — whose hero, after defusing the terrorist threat from Bosnia, South America, Germany, and corporate America, now battles honest-to-goodness Muslim terrorists — real-life news broke about the vicious murders of a Coptic Christian family whose bound and gagged bodies, slit throats and stab wounds on a Coptic cross tattoo immediately raised fears that the crime may have been Islamic in nature, a slaying of "infidels" — in Jersey City. Around the time the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) was charging Fox with perpetuating terrorist stereotypes, stereotypical terrorism may well have been taking place.

Fox spokesman Scott Grogan, meanwhile, has told me there have been no changes made to the series "to date." He revealed nothing of the network's meeting with CAIR, three of whose officials, Robert Spencer reminds on frontpagemag.com, have been arrested on terror-related charges. Mr. Spencer learned from an "informed source" that "24" will "feature an American Muslim character that CAIR would find more to their liking." Cause for celebration? Michael Meunier, president of the U.S. Copts Association, told me a disconcerting tale of being invited, vetted (three pre-interviews), and scheduled to appear with Fox's Greta van Susteren to discuss the Copt slayings — before being canceled immediately after his lengthy radio interview with Michael Reagan. Did Mr. Meunier say the "wrong" thing? Is America now the land of the "wrong" thing to say? If we grow too accustomed to missiles on the Mall, the answer may be truly terrifying.

Many Pilgrims Stone 'Devil' Bush in Haj Ritual

Fat lot of good that Qur'an reference in his Inaugural Address did him. From Reuters, with thanks to David:

MENA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Haj pilgrims pelted stones at symbols of the devil on Friday, with many saying they were targeting President Bush and other world leaders seen as oppressing Muslims.

Last year, 250 people were crushed to death at Mena's Jamarat Bridge, but so far new measures by the Saudi authorities have averted any stampedes. This year, more than 2.5 million Muslims streamed into the area for the stoning, meant as an act of purification and rejection of temptation.

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah, in a joint speech, urged Muslims to shun terrorism which they said meant "warring against God and his Prophet," to follow Islam's teachings of moderation and forgiveness and to unite.

Many pilgrims said they were thinking of Bush and his allies while they were hurling pebbles at the site where the devil is said to have appeared to the biblical patriarch Abraham.

"Yes, the devil is Bush and that other one from Israel -- (Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon. And there's (British Prime Minister) Blair too," said Egyptian Tia'amah Mohammed.

"We throw the stones so we can vent our anger at them."

Many Muslims revile Bush for his perceived bias toward Israel and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Anger at Sharon also runs deep over Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and Jerusalem, the site of one of Islam's holiest shrines.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley, who converted to Islam following her capture by the Taliban in 2001 in the buildup to the Afghan war, said: "During the stoning I couldn't help thinking of Bush, Blair and Sharon."

Syrian Ibrahim Hussein added: "I was throwing stones at the devil because through that we cleanse ourselves of sin. When throwing the stones you shouldn't be thinking of political issues, or Bush and Sharon -- that's for our prayers (against them)."

Fitzgerald: Islam for Infidels, Part Two

Here at last is Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald's much-anticipated second part of "Islam for Infidels," "A Lesson From Humpty-Dumpty." You can read the first part here.

Hugh promises Part 3 will be posted next week, "delivered with alacrity by the same people who, some years ago, brought fresh installments of Nicholas Nickleby to eager crowds of print-hungry Americans, jostling one another on the wharves of Baltimore, as they waited for the ship from England, with its cargo of freshly-minted print, to arrive."

II. A Lesson From Humpty-Dumpty

Taqiyya and Tu-Quoque are handy defenses should Infidels show some interest in a critical scrutiny of Islam. But, strangely, the major press, radio, and television, have not shown such an interest in the more than 3 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001. There have not been any programs on what is taught in madrasas, or spoken in the khutbas (sermons) at Friday Prayers. There are allusions to "fundamentalist Muslims" and, of course, to "moderate Muslims," but no discussions of what these terms mean. Commentators have stayed well away from any discussion of what is actually contained in the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira, the latter two of which, together, constitute the "Sunnah" or the customs and ways of 7th century Arabia that are held, by most Muslims, to be models for behavior today.

The Jihad that promoted and justified the conquest of vast territories in early Islam and subsequently led to the subjugation, by the Muslim Arab conquerors, of far more numerous, settled, and advanced populations of non-Muslims. In turn, this that led to the institution now known as “dhimmitude,” under which those non-Muslims, those who were not killed or forcibly converted, were treated as “dhimmis” (from “ahl al-dhimma” or “people of the Pact”). Their condition did not vary much either in time (over 1350 years), or in space (from Spain to East Asia). Yet when historians of the Middle East, manage to spare only a sentence or two, even in large books, for the dhimmis by reference just to the “jizya” or head-tax, or at most, by adding the phrase “and other disabilities,” one has reason to question the value of the entire work. The dhimmi is one of the most misunderstood and superficially treated of subjects, not just by Muslims themselves, but also by a certain kind of Western sentimentalist who refers to the wonders of the Abbasid court of Haroun al-Raschid, or to Cordoba as the “ornament of the world” where, as in the rest of Islamic Spain, a supposed “convivencia” among Christians, Jews, and Muslims is said to have flourished, or to the supposedly benign “pluralism” of the Ottoman Empire. What needs to be studied is the treatment of those once-vast non-Muslim populations that, over time, were largely converted as their own cultures and civilizations were subject to slow asphyxiation. Given the possible islamization of Western Europe, if forceful and systematic measures are not put in place, this matter has direct relevance today.

Islam is based on immutable texts. Muslims regard the Qur’an as the Word of God. The Hadith, those stories which purport to record the sayings, and deeds, and even silences, of Muhammad, are of great significance. For many Muslims, they serve as a kind of gloss on, and supplement to, the Qur’an, with almost equal significance. The Hadith number in the tens of thousands. To winnow the “strong” or most authentic Hadith, from the “weak” Hadith regarded as of less authoritative, or even doubtful authenticity, occupied many muhaddithin, or Hadith-scholars, in early Islam. They worked by studying the narration-chain, or isnad, by which these stories were related: A told to B told to C told to D. If A was one of the Prophet’s companions, and B and C and D were all known to be trustworthy, then the Hadith in question would be regarded as “strong.” If there were some problem along the way, the Hadith would be regarded as “weak,” and the size of the problem would determine the amount of the “weakness.” The collections of several of the mudaddithin, especially Bukhari and Muslim (a proper name), are believed to observe the greatest fidelity to the truth. The number, and “authenticity” of the Hadith, cannot now be tampered with.

And the Sira, or life of Muhammad, the man regarded by Muslims as the perfect model, al-insan al-kamil, simply cannot be rewritten to omit those unpleasant parts, in which he, as a successful military leader leading his troops against non-Muslims, behaved in a manner that would cause modern Infidels concern. Muhammad participated in 78 battles, he approved of the beheading of the prisoners taken among the Bani Qurayza, he ordered an attack on inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis in order to seize booty, he ordered the assassination of those who offended him, including a woman (Asma bint Marwan), and a 90-year-old man, he married Aisha, a 6-year-old girl, and consummated that marriage when she became 9. His behavior inspired the Ayatollah Khomeini to reduce the marriageable age of girls to nine.

When such contemporary would-be “reformers within Islam” as Irshad Manji (a flamboyant Canadian who, though born into Islam, does not by birthright possess a thorough grasp of Islamic tenets, or the history of previous attempts at reform), are given attention, and the admiring interviewer does not bother to raise the awkward question – just how does one “reform” a religion when all of its canonical texts, Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, are immutable – then the listener is left in the dark, or misled as to the likelihood, or even possibility, of “reform” within Islam. In the modern history of Islam, the heyday of supposed “reformers” was the period 1900-1930. This corresponded to the revelation, to the most advanced people in the Muslim world, of the weakness of Islamic countries and societies, and the understanding, not always expressed, that this weakness, these political and economic and intellectual and social failures, were attributable to the tenets of Islam itself, and the attitudes, the atmospherics, they engendered. But there is no such recognition today. Islam is cushioned from its failures by the accident of geology that provides the oil wealth to some, by the solicitousness with which Infidel countries hasten to supply foreign aid, including military aid, to others, and by the attitude of extreme deference toward Muslim sensibilities that, if continued, will have catastrophic consequences, for the Infidels themselves, and for those who, within Islam, would like to create the conditions where Muslims themselves, no longer able to avert their eyes from such failures, will have to do something about Islam, whether to interpret away its literalism, or to constrain its practice in the manner of Atatürk.

If there is no grounding in Islam itself, all discussion, argufying, opinion-making, about Islam and everything related to it (such as the Arab-Israeli matter, or the question of the future islamization of Europe, or the wisdom of the “Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations” Project that some in the American government have presented as a plausible, worthwhile, eminently doable undertaking in Iraq) becomes pointless. It is a waste of time, these words first uttered or written by an ignorant pundit for a trusting audience. If commentators, news broadcasters, columnists persist in presenting their views on Islam, full of clichés and slogans, and cannot be bothered to study either the tenets, or the history, of Islam, then the public, and the government as well, will persist in its ignorance, its naiveté, its negligent attitude about the most serious of matters – those upon which the fate of peoples, countries, and civilizations may well rest.

The media have a duty to discuss the attitudes toward Infidels that Islam encourages, by offering the real contents of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, not sanitized or expurgated versions (such as Michael Sells's Approaching the Qur'an) or carefully-crafted handouts of Qur'anic verses where, for example, Sura 9 is omitted entirely. Its audience should not be kept in the dark about the doctrine of “abrogation” (naskh), which will enable them to understand that Muslims do not receive all Qur'anic verses as equal. To do less or, as now, to do nothing, is intolerable. For neither the Iraq War, nor the likelihood of success for the Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project planned for Iraq (which for Infidels would result in their enhanced security), can be properly evaluated without understanding Islam.

The Arab-Israeli dispute, a topic obsessively discussed on every conceivable news program and guaranteed to receive sinisterly hypertrophied coverage around the world, is raised on every occasion by every Arab or Muslim spokesman whatever the ostensible matter at hand, and always discussed as if it had nothing to do with the promptings, or teachings, of Islam. But surely, in the Middle East, among Arabs who are almost entirely Muslims, the main subject to be analyzed is Islam. What does it teach? What are Muslims taught to think? Would it not be useful for listeners and readers, to come to understand that in Islam, no Infidel state, whatever its dimensions, can be permitted, for that would violate the essence of Islam. Islam, said Muhammad, is “to dominate and not to be dominated.” No land once part of dar al-Islam can ever fall under Infidel control again. The whole world belongs to Allah, and to his people, the Believers, but pride of place must go to the territories once conquered by the forces of Islam. The land on which Israel now sits, and other lands, including the Balkans, much of south-central Europe, much of Russia, most of India, and of course Spain, were once all part of dar al-Islam, and must be returned to it. But Israel, an Infidel sovereign state run by the despised Jews, and sitting smack in the middle of dar al-Islam, is particularly disturbing. If it remains a sovereign state, not only is land once Muslim not yet regained (as the whole world will eventually be either regained, or gained, for Islam), but the non-Muslims in it will not be living as dhimmis, subject to Muslim rule, and owing whatever rights they have to Muslims. And this is impossible under Islam. Infidels can be permitted to exist only as dhimmis, and in such a non-Muslim state as Israel they would no longer be dhimmis.

If the Islamic basis for Arab opposition to Israel were understood, then much that is otherwise undiscussed because it cannot be understood, and confuses and unsettles commentators with prefabricated and fixed narratives, would become clear. The hostility to Jews by the Arabs existed long before the state of Israel was declared. The Jews of Mandatory Palestine did not follow the script the Arabs both expected and demanded, and failed to recite their traditional lines as “dhimmis,” submissive to, and dependent on, Muslims in a world run by Muslims.

It was bad enough that the Christians of Lebanon in the post-Ottoman period did not always behave as dhimmis, for they were at least kept constantly on edge, especially when their traditional protector, France, showed it had thrown in its lot with the forces of Islam to curry petro-dollar favor. But the Jews declaring the state of Israel represented an even worse affront – for by inheriting the Ottoman state-owned domains, Israel possessed land that was supposed to remain Muslim land. Between dar al-Islam and dar al-harb a state of war exists until the final spread of Islam across the globe. In Israel’s case, it is irrelevant what its borders are; if it exists, it remains an affront, an outrage, a catastrophe, the greatest injustice in the history of the world (as Arab spokesmen routinely say). The very phrase a “final peace settlement” rings hollow to anyone familiar with the tenets of Islam. For there can be no “final peace settlement” between Muslims and non-Muslims, anywhere. The model for treaties between them is the agreement made between Muhammad and the Meccans in 628 A.D., the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya. It was supposed to be a “truce” treaty that would last 10 years. It lasted scarcely 18 months, when Muhammad, feeling that his forces had grown sufficiently, breached the agreement on a pretext, and attacked the Meccans. As Majid Khadduri notes in War and Peace in the Law of Islam, this Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya became the model, and basis, for all future “treaties” with Infidel peoples and polities.

Public discussions about Arab-Israeli negotiations and assorted peace-processes, never devote attention to the long and grim history of agreements and treaties between Israel and the Arab states. The Arabs were not interested in any agreements with that Infidel state for, despite the Israeli victory in 1949, they thought they could, within a reasonable period, go in for the kill, this time with success. And so there were no "peace treaties" but, at Arab insistence, only agreements that did not recognize any final borders, just armistice lines. Despite the fact that those agreements included a cessation of hostile acts, more than 19,000 separate acts of terrorism against Israel took place between 1949 and 1956, from Egyptian-held territory alone. The Sinai Campaign was launched to end that terrorism; Israel won the entire Sinai. In the mid-1950s, the heyday of John Foster Dulles, Islam was seen not as a threat to the West, but only a much-touted “bulwark” against Communism. At the same time, it was believed that certain Arab Muslim states had to be bribed to keep from falling into the Communist camp. Both beliefs, though contradictory, led to American pressure on Israel to withdraw, for some flimsy guarantees, from the Sinai. It would have been perfectly appropriate for Israel not to have done so, for the aggression over 6 years certainly would have entitled any state to seize, and to keep, territory from which such aggression was launched.

Despite Egyptian propaganda, the Sinai was not historically part of Egypt. Even in the 19th century, the titles that Europeans gave to their books testify to the clear distinction between Egypt and the Sinai. The celebrated photographer Francis Frith produced a famous work of early photographs. It appeared, in 1862, significantly titled Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine. (Modern reprints of his book, just as significantly, bear the inaccurate title Egypt and Palestine – with the Sinai, apparently, swallowed up by Egypt). An Anglican cleric, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, published in 1881 his famous Sinai and Palestine. The conjunction in both cases is telling. In the time of the Ottoman Empire (as for thousands of years before) the Sinai had always been regarded as a corpus separatum, as desolate deserts so often were, and not as part of Egypt. When, after World War I, the British managed to arrange for the Sinai to be assigned to Egypt, at least one well-schooled British officer on Allenby's staff, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, argued that, given its tenuous connections to Egypt, a good deal of the Sinai should have been assigned to Mandatory Palestine.

Nasser’s “good will” needed to be earned if he was to be kept out of the Soviet camp, and the Israelis were pressured by Washington when it should have urged the Israelis to keep the Sinai as a permanent buffer – for if it had, subsequent Arab-Israeli wars would have been far less likely. And had Islam been understood in 1956, the Sinai might even have been a place where permanent American bases might have been established, rather than where they have been positioned in the Muslim world. There was another chance in 1978-79, during the Sadat-Begin negotiations. Had Carter and Brzezinski any geopolitical sense, the United States might have pressured Israel to turn the Sinai over, not to Egypt, but to the United States for its permanent use, and billing it as a generous gesture of “peacekeeping.” The Egyptians might have protested, but only weakly, because they were desperate for American aid. American control of Israeli-built airbases in the Sinai, far from any population centers, smack in the middle of things, would have given the United States a permanent base for operations in the Middle East, North Africa, and even East Africa. Similarly, if the American government had understood Islam, it might have seized, during the past 21 years of genocide, the southern Sudan, set up a referendum on independence, and no doubt have been rewarded, by a newly-independent state in the south, with permanent bases. That could still be done.

When he was President of Egypt, Nasser broke every commitment he made to President Eisenhower about freedom of shipping in the Straits of Tiran, about allowing Israeli ships to pass through the Suez Canal, about terrorist attacks launched from Egypt. But this was not because Nasser was particularly untrustworthy or odious. No one who had bothered to study the rules set out for agreements with Infidels in Islamic jurisprudence should have been surprised. It should not have come as a surprise that Egypt broke its commitments under the Camp David Accords to end all hostile acts and hostile
propaganda (while quietly pocketing the entire Sinai, along with oilfields that the Israelis had discovered and developed, and airbases, and other infrastructure). That the Israelis continue to be surprised that the agreements they make with Muslim Arabs are eventually breached by the Arab side, testifies to their own remarkable insouciance, in failing to investigate what the law of War and Peace in the Law of Islam expresses in such crystalline fashion. It should not have been a surprise that the Palestinian Authority, under Arafat, would fail to keep any of its promises in various agreements with Israel.

And today Israel prepares to make "peace" based on some “road map, ” in order, it is hoped, to arrive at something called a “two-state solution.” This time there is a more plausible, milder-mannered "Palestinian" leader than the late Arafat. Yet the doctrines of Islam remain, for they came 1350 years before Ahmed Shukairy or Yassir Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas arrived on the scene, and those doctrines will continue to exist, and to fashion the deepest impulses and beliefs of Muslims, and will, whatever “leader” of the “Palestinians” (i.e., the local Arabs) on whom so much breathless attention is lavished, determine the real durability of any “treaties” with any non-Muslim polities or peoples. Whatever Arafat or Abbas or anyone else claims or feigns, and whatever any war-weary Israeli hopes, or whatever any useful Western tools or fools Muslims may exploit or manipulate against the interests of other non-Muslims in order to buy time, or a temporary peace, no real and durable peace can be made with any Infidel sovereign state. It is the duty of Muslims, mandated by Islam and the example of Muhammad, to renew conflict, whatever agreement has been signed, as soon as the Muslim side is stronger. This means that deterrence, and only deterrence, can keep the peace. The doctrine of necessity, or “darura” – i.e., the fact of an Infidel enemy possessing, or seeming to possess, overwhelming power, is the only thing that Arab leaders, or at least those reluctant to make war, can use as an excuse not to do so. This is why, if one were genuinely interested in preserving peace between Israel and the Arabs, one would be looking at every possible way to preserve, and strengthen, the perception of Israel as impregnable – and to do nothing which, to Muslims looking at a map, might make them gain a different impression.

The attitude of Muslims toward non-Muslims, which derives from the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, has been studied in detail by many scholars, with its fullest expression the book-length compendium by the Lebanese scholar Antoine Fattal. The history of dhimmitude is laid out by Bat Ye'or in a succession of studies, a history which, in turn, has relied on a great many other students of the subject whose work lay, unrecognized, uncollected, and underused, until she came along, made memorable use of it and, with her comprehensive grasp of detail, and of the psychology both of dhimmitude and of dhimmis, created her own memorable body of scholarship.

After World War II, it became harder to subject Islam to critical scrutiny. The Cold War demanded that the Western world find allies among certain Muslim countries; they were even praised for their Islamic beliefs, for those beliefs were seen as stoutly anti-Communist. And so they were. But unstated, because not understood, was that Islam is just as strongly anti-Western, opposed to the idea of the individual citizen and liberal democracy that depends for its legitimacy on the support of those citizens. Islam was against Communism not because it was Communism, but because it was not Islam. The enmity and rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union led to a bidding war for the affections of many, including Muslim states and peoples. If there ever was a connection between the policy objectives of Western countries, and the study of Islam by Western scholars, it was not, as Edward Said charged, during the period of Western colonialism. It was, rather, during the Cold War, when candid analysis of Islam became impossible, for reasons of unrealistic realpolitik.

A second reason for the silencing of critical study of Islam, has been the “anti-colonial” movement – as opposed to anticolonialism itself, that allowed certain Arab states to pose as victims of the same colonialism that so much of sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia, had endured. It was not noted that, except for North Africa (and there, mainly in Algeria), the Arabs had suffered hardly at all from classic colonialism. In the Arabian Peninsula, save for the entrepôt of Aden, the small British garrisons along the coast were established for three reasons: to suppress the Arab slave trade with Africa; to prevent inter-tribal warfare (hence the "Trucial" states); and to guard the sea-route to India. There was no European colonialism in the entire Arabian peninsula; it was the British who freed the Arabs from the domination of the Ottoman Turks, in Arabia, in Mesopotamia, and throughout the Middle East. With the exception of the intrepid Captain Shakespear crossing the Rub al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, hardly an Englishman even set foot in the interior of Arabia before the 1930s.

Only in Algeria was there European colonialism, in the classic sense, for more than a few decades, with a settling of colonists from the mainland, and the exploitation of the land. But there was no wholesale removal of gold and diamonds as in parts of sub-Saharan Africa; rather, this “colonialism” consisted in the revival of agriculture by the French on land that the local Arabs and Berbers had allowed to go to ruin. Nonetheless, beginning with the Bandung Conference in 1955 (when it was still the “Underdeveloped World” and had not yet become “The Third World”), and at every Third World get-together since, various plutocrats of Arabia show up, pretending, despite their fabulous unearned riches, to be fellow "Third Worlders." The farce is permitted to go on, because no one wants to spoil the game of those who are so free with bribes. When one could be rewarded so handsomely for keeping silent, why bother to speak the truth?

As a result of both the Cold War, and decolonization, the Arab and Muslim world entered a period when, as it happens, the Western world's scholars of Islam, one by one, were retiring or dying, and were not replaced. Who replaced C. Snouck Hurgronje, or Leone Caetani, or Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq, or the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, or Professor Arthur Jeffery or Joseph Schacht? The answer
is: those who, less well-schooled in relevant languages, and lacking the kind of self-assurance that broad cultivation would bring, were more willing to dance to the tune of Western governments that wanted studies of the "Cold War and Islam" that ignored every aspect of Islam except that it was stoutly anti-Communist. And even that assertion proved, in the case of the less fervent Muslims, such as Nasser, insufficient to keep quite a few Arabs from playing off East against West.

The hatred of Infidels, especially of the Infidel West throughout the Muslim world, is not a new phenomenon. If the Arabs supported one Infidel power, Nazi Germany, it was mainly because that power was the sworn enemy of the countries seen as the traditional leaders of Western Christendom in modern times, England and France (and besides, Nazi antisemitism in Arab eyes was an additional attractive feature). And if they supported the Soviet Union, it was because that country was seen as the chief enemy of the new head of Western Infidels, the United States. Hatred of Unbelievers, or Infidels, is not tangential but central to Islam, mentioned throughout the Qur’an, the Hadith, and acted upon, by Muhammad, in the Sira. Such Islam-inspired hatred is inculcated with special fervor among the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. What has changed is that the propagandists of ARAMCO (the Arabian -American Oil Company, which enjoyed the Saudi oil concession for many years), who once hid from view the reality of Saudi Arabia, are no longer around to provide those rose-tinted sunglasses for Infidel viewing of the burning fanaticism of the Wahhabi sun.

Furthermore, the events of the past few years have led to a brand-new awareness of what was always there, but that Westerners, and especially Cold Warriors, willfully refused to see.. Some of those Cold Warriors, prematurely congratulating themselves on that victory, seem incapable of grasping that another equally dangerous enemy to Western civilization, including its art, its science, its emphasis on the rights of the individual. Communism, like Islam, emphasizes the collective – the proletariat instead of the umma al-islamiyya, the Community of Believers, and was not about mental freedom but rather, about questions of economics and power. Though crude Marxist interpretations of art and science, as epiphenomena of underlying economic realities, was officially encouraged, the Soviet Union nonetheless managed at least to preserve the high art of the pre-Communist past; Islam has no use for most art (sculpture, painting, music) and all real science, and whatever could be associated with pre-Islamic or non-Islamic civilizations – the lands, and times, of Ignorance (“Jahiliyya”). Only one Western achievement seems to interest the Muslim world, and that is weapons technology. Though Communism was a mortal threat to the Western world, it was still possible to engage in certain cultural activities, certain modes of expression, even to preserve the artifacts produced under what the Communists saw as a wicked ancien régime. Under Islam, there is, and has been, only Islam. When Arab Muslim intellectuals produced a report two years ago for the U.N., deploring the state of culture in Arab countries, they noted the tiny number of translations into Arabic. What they did not add was an explanation of why this should be so, what possible connection such lack of curiosity had with Islam itself. That is a subject that Muslims are understandably reticent about, but it is no reason why Infidels should ignore the Muslim contempt for all things non-Muslim, except when they can be of direct benefit in the contest with the Infidel world. Mahathir Mohamed, the former head of Malaysia, speaking a year ago to Muslim heads-of-state at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Countries, offered a view of Muslim “progress” that consisted almost entirely in calling for changes that would permit the acquisition of weapons of war sufficient to meet, and surpass, the armories of Infidel enemies.

When it comes to free and skeptical inquiry, Islam does a much better job than Communism did in suppressing it – there are no Muslim dissidents equivalent to those in Soviet Russia. A Muslim Sakharov cannot exist, for he would, by definition, be someone who rejected Islam altogether, and he would be executed for apostasy, or forced to flee the Muslim world. And even then he might not be safe. There is no mechanism, for real dissidents to remain unharmed within Islam, if they go so far as to criticize, as Sakharov and Russian dissidents did with Communism, the basic tenets of the belief. And there is one more difference. Communism collapsed because too many of those who lived under it, including party members (some influenced by their liberal offspring), could not avoid seeing that it had failed, and in the very areas where it had promised to succeed. But it is almost impossible to force Muslims to see the political, economic, intellectual, and moral failures of Islam, for the system is one of thorough brainwashing that causes Muslims to dismiss almost everything that preceded the coming of Islam, or to fail to appreciate anything in the non-Muslim world beyond the goods it produces and that, with oil money, are so readily available. Even for those who did not attend a madrasa, and who never or seldom attend a mosque, Islam pervades the society, fashions the attitudes, and the atmospherics, in which they live. The cushion of unmerited oil wealth is so plump, that Muslims will be protected from recognizing the failures of their system until the Infidel world ceases to prop it up.

Geopolitics makes strange bedfellows. During the Cold War, the world’s leading liberal democracy found itself exchanging pillow talk with the primitive and fanatical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. They were not seen as either primitive or fanatical, but as fast friends, and stalwart anti-Communists, and what they did in mosque and madrasa was their own business. In the same way, the United States found itself offering all sorts of largesse to bribe Muslim states to permit the stationing of American troops at American bases. It happened everywhere, and everywhere it came to naught.

There was Morocco, whose king, a relatively enlightened despot, allowed the Americans to bribe him so that they might place an airbase or two. Rumor has it that the first nuclear weapons positioned abroad were at an American base in that country. The Moroccans not only received aid, but as happened so frequently, that American aid could be used to inveigle France into topping or at least matching the American offer. During the Six-Day War, when American bases all over the Muslim world were likely targets of attack (because Nasser concocted a story about American pilots being responsible for his losses rather than admit the Israelis had done it all by themselves), the King of Morocco announced with great sincerity to his own people that there were “no American bases” in his country, only “American instructors” training Moroccans at their own facilities. In the end, the American military were asked to leave.

In 1954, a year after Libya signed an agreement offering bases to Great Britain, it offered a similar deal to the Americans in return, of course, for economic aid. Wheelus Air Base just outside Tripoli became the most important American installation in Africa. But it was not to last. King Idris in 1968, on a trip to Europe for medical treatment, was deposed by Muammar Khaddafy, and the American bases were closed.

On the model of NATO, in 1955 a military alliance of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and initially Great Britain (the United States came later) was formed. It was funded, and supplied by Great Britain and, with still deeper pockets, the United States. This Baghdad Pact did not last long. It came to an end in July 1958, when the government of Iraq was overturned in a coup, led by Major General Abdul Karim Kassem. The young king, Faisal II, was killed, and so was the Crown Prince (his body hung outside the Defence Ministry), and so was the famous “strong man” of Iraq, Nuri es-Said. A practiced plotter, Nuri es-Said ceased to be that “strong man” when he tried to escape from Baghdad in women’s clothes, was caught, killed, and his mutilated body dragged through the city streets for the delight and edification of the populace. In Iraq the old order passed. One man managed to have served both the ancient regime and the new one, and indeed to serve in every subsequent Iraqi regime -- that Baghdadian Vicar of Bray, the clever and unscrupulous Adnan Pachachi, who is still in evidence, making sly trouble and looking, as always, after himself. [At the beginning of the 1970s, Pachachi found himself in exile, working for Sheik Zayed in Abu Dhabi town, assigned to help the British scholar J. B. Kelly, the great expert on the Frontier Question in Arabia, prepare Abu Dhabi’s case against the land-grabbing local bully, Saudi Arabia. Once Iraq withdrew from the Baghdad Pact, following the coup, that Pact looked very foolish indeed. It was quickly renamed the Central Asian Treaty Organization. Now its Muslim members were Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan.

In Iran, the Americans never understood the permanence and significance of Islam. How could they? They judged a country by the elite westernized members of the ruling class whom they met, and believed the assurances they received. Jimmy Carter toasted the Shah as “a pillar of stability” in January 1979, the very year the Shah fell, to be replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini. And he, and Brzezinski, composed a letter to the Ayatollah, “from one man of faith to another.” For all his delusions of grandeur, and his role in OPEC’s quadrupling of prices, the Shah was the best Iran could manage, and certainly his attitude toward Infidels was benign. But he fell; Iran reverted to Muslim type, and the monstrous Islamic Republic of Iran was born. When that famous “pillar of stability” disappeared, other illusions went up in the smoke rising from the American Embassy, as secret files were being burned, in order to keep them out of the hands of the “students” who were in the process of their celebrated 444-day androlepsy at that same embassy in Teheran.

For decades Pakistan was the favored child of the Americans. The supercilious Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, rumored to have been influenced, as a student in England, by all the wrong people (Beatrice and Sydney Webb, Bertrand Russell), and his intermittent anti-American foreign minister, Krishna Menon, left Americans cold. How much more likable were those straight-backed, straight-talking Pakistani generals, some of whom had even gone to Sandhurst, and who could be counted on to stand with America against Communism because, as everyone knew, Islam was incompatible with Communism. (Islam was incompatible with anything that was not Islam).

For a long time, in American eyes, Pakistan could do no wrong. It repeatedly abused American trust. In 1971, for example, it employed American military equipment to suppress the revolt in East Pakistan against the rule of West Pakistan. Pakistan has long supported terrorism, largely unreported in the West, against India. It did nothing to prevent the continued persecution of Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians throughout the country; Hindus fled and the Hindu population sank steadily from its 1949 level. The Pakistanis helped create the Taliban, and through the Taliban, gave aid and comfort to Al-Qaeda, two groups that brought death and so much woe to Afghanistan. Though everyone from Musharraf on down now rolls his eyes in mock-innocence, Pakistani generals knew about, and fully supported the amazing adventures of A. Q. Khan.

And after September 11, 2001, instead of reading Pakistan the riot act for its support of the Taliban and therefore, of Al-Qaeda, and threatening to cut off aid, stop Pakistani imports, and arranging for the total collapse of Pakistan’s economy, the American government chose to bribe Pakistan further. There was debt relief in the billions, more aid (also in the billions), more military supplies, in exchange for Pakistan’s promise to do what it should have done anyway, hunt down members of Al-Qaeda. Even that seems not to have resulted mainly to a lot of ostentatious rounding-up of just a few more than the usual suspects, while the Pakistani press and television continue to rant about Infidels, and Infidel Americans. Muslim Pakistan can never be relied on. And in the end, we are not their friend, no matter how much of our largesse they are happy to pocket, and ask for more.

This leaves one last member of Cento: Turkey. Turkey was stable. Turkey was reliable. Turkey was permanently secular. Turkey could be counted on. The Turks had fought bravely in the Korean War (and even had time left over to conduct Da’wa among the Koreans). Turkish officers were fine fellows, and got along swimmingly with their American counterparts. Kemalism was here to stay. True, in 1955 there were attacks all over Istanbul on the Greek Orthodox, but that was an aberration. True, the Turks have never admitted to the Armenian genocide – but perhaps they were just embarrassed, and needed time to come up with the right phrasing. Turkey offered airbases and listening posts right on the border with the Soviet Union.

But the Cold War is over, and Turkey is not quite so indispensable as it may still think. Kemalism, we are learning, is not quite so much a given as we were once led to believe. It requires eternal vigilance, for otherwise it is temporary; Islam is forever. Though like all Muslim governments that of Erdogan is happy to extract what it can from its American connection, it takes a much more malevolent view of Infidels, and its threatening behavior with the E.U., as its candidacy for admission faced its first hurdle, was telling. Telling, too, was the important member of the Turkish political establishment who described American treatment of Iraqis as “worse than Hitler.”

When the invasion of Iraq was being planned, those doing the planning confidently asked Turkey for permission to use bases in Turkey from which to launch certain attacks. They were surprised to be turned down flat. They should not have been surprised. Turkey will not cooperate with the United States when the object of that cooperation is to be another Muslim state – not unless that Muslim state is a sworn enemy of Turkey. Turkey wants to enter Europe, and has already shown how bullying it can be to obtain that goal. The American government continues to see Turkey not as it is now, but as it was, or as it was imagined, fifty years ago, when Kemalism was unchallenged. Islam keeps coming back, and the “reforms” demanded by the E.U. only help Erdogan weaken the power of the Turkish army, and hence weaken the power of those who are prepared to defend Kemalism with force. If the United States is engaged only in a “war on terror” then of course it has no grounds for opposing Turkey’s entry into Europe. Nor does it have any grounds for opposing the future islamization of Europe, through Da’wa (the Call to Islam) and demography, as long as terrorism is not employed.

Now, yet again, the United States has been seeking bases in the Muslim countries. In the Middle East, it has had success with the small sheikdoms – Kuwait, Qatar – because those countries, given their size, want some protection from potential neighborhood bullies, including Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. But they are not exactly cutting down on anti-Infidel attitudes. Qatar, for example, is the home of Al-Jazeera, a propaganda outlet for Arab Muslims that has been responsible, through its nonsense and lies, for the deaths of many American servicemen. But Qatar has not been told that it must shut down, Al-Jazeera, even though without the United States, Qatar could itself be the object of aggression from larger Muslim states.

Islam continues to be misunderstood by many in the American government. Even American generals with immediate experience of the Middle East, whom one would think might have looked beneath the surface of the apologetics offered by local interlocutors, were fooled. One in Iraq identifies the problem as “Salafist Jihadists,” which is hardly the whole truth. Islam itself, and not the beliefs of “Salafist Jihadists,” the otherwise inexplicable hostility of most Iraqis to Infidel Americans who rescued them from a monstrous regime, and now ask only that they be allowed to shower goods and services on Iraqis. When another general assigns books on Islam to his officers, books by the most misleading and blatant of apologists, such as Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, one is alarmed. Apparently the American government has not yet decided to allow critical scrutiny of what Islam teaches, and what its adherents believe.

Now, however, the policy of winning the “hearts and minds” of the “moderate” Muslims is the problem. By failing to recognize that Islam itself and not merely some subset of it, is the problem, false hopes are raised, and resources misallocated. Money is poured into Muslim countries (including Iraq). The United States feels it must constantly demonstrate to Muslims that it is not “anti-Muslim” and that this really is just a war on a particular means, terrorism, of conducting Jihad, a word which the American government is loath to use. But terrorism is neither the main, nor the most effective, instrument of Jihad. Conventional warfare, economic warfare, propaganda, Da’wa, and demography are all much more useful. In addition to the gigantic transfer of wealth to the mainly Muslim nations of OPEC, the Muslim states that do not have such oil wealth (and even some that do—such as Iraq), manage to extract a kind of foreign-aid “jizya,” whether it is the states of the Maghreb being bribed by France (and latterly, Spain), to keep their populations at home, or American aid to Egypt and Jordan and Pakistan. The recent huge sums sent by the United States to Indonesia after the tsunami, for example, were often described as a “chance to show the Muslims we are not against them.” But this is exactly the wrong rhetoric. It gives the Muslims precisely the wrong idea – that they can play on, appeal to, take constant advantage of, our misreading of the situation. The United States does not have any need to demonstrate its good will to Muslims. To express such a felt need is simply to signal our innocence and willingness to be further exploited. The American government has helped and rescued Muslims time and again.

And it is nonsense to depict American policy as “one-sidedly pro-Israel” (though, if the history of the area, and the nature of Islam, were sufficiently understood, it should be). In 1948 the Americans put a total arms embargo on all sides; the armies of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, well-equipped, and even resupplied by the British, were the most effective against the Israelis, who had a handful of guns, and eventually acquired five well-worn Messerschmitts from the Czechs. In 1956 John Foster Dulles put pressure on Israel to relinquish the Sinai for some flimsy promises by Nasser. In May, 1967, just like Britain and France, the United States could not “locate” the documents by which it had “guaranteed” to keep the Straits of Tiran open. In 1973, Henry Kissinger prevented Ariel Sharon from destroying Egypt’s Third Army, which he had surrounded. In 1979, Carter and Brzezinski, the former whining that he was “sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust,” pressed Begin mercilessly to make concession after concession to the pre-lionized Sadat. The American government subsequently did nothing when Egypt, having pocketed the entire Sinai, failed to honor any of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords. The farce with Oslo, including Carter’s frequent meetings with Arafat, whose measure ought to have been taken long before, continued – and continues still, in the proposed “two-state solution.” Yet, by dint of constant repetition that “America is unfair,” the Arabs have managed to put some American policymakers in a position where they think they must do even more to “win Arab approval.”

Furthermore, the American rescue of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo – and the general American indifference to Serbian fears of Izetbegovic, whose stated intention to bring back Muslim rule, and impose the Shari’a, was completely ignored in the American press and television, the vast amounts of aid America has given to Muslim countries, including more than $65 billion to Egypt, a country where 98% percent of the population claims to dislike or hate America, has amounted to a “jizya” – the Muslim tax imposed on Infidels – that we seem incapable of cutting off, so great is the fear of antagonizing people who, because of Islam, remain permanently hostile to us. Indeed, there is much evidence that when treated not kindly, but roughly, by Infidels, Muslims have responded by becoming, if only temporarily, a bit gentler themselves. The British phrase that was said to describe the Muslim Arabs was brutal -- “They are either at your feet, or at your throat.” But it was not inaccurate.

Many of the American government experts on the Middle East, until recent years, were selected, as Robert Kaplan’s The Arabists reveals, from among American missionary families. It was enough to know some Arabic and to have lived in Beirut. But what these Arabists did not possess, or did not think they needed to possess, was a knowledge of Islam – of Qur’an, Hadith, Sira. They did not know what actually was said in the khutbas, and read in Muslim textbooks, and memorized in the madrasas. The dense web of Islamic allusion that thickens every conversation, every editorial, every satellite channel discussion, every turn of phrase and of thought, in Muslim countries was beyond them. They met important Arabs. They were told certain things, even “confided in” by those Arabs. The Americans were, and many remain, naïve beyond belief about the Arab capacity for taqiyya, for religiously-sanctioned dissimulation. “War is deception,” said Muhammad. Deception, in Arab Muslim lands, is a way of life. . When Madeline Albright told a television interviewer that the “Arab leaders” were “just as surprised as we were” about what had been going on in Iraq under Saddam Hussein – all that mass-murdering, for example – one had to rub one’s eyes in disbelief. Here was the former Secretary of State, confidently asserting that the Arab leaders, too, had been completely in the dark about Iraq. But of course they never had been. Millions of Iraqi exiles all over the Arab countries conveyed perfectly the nature of the regime of Saddam Hussein. Everyone knew what he did, including his massacre of the Kurds. Nobody cared. He was a strong man, an Arab hero, the man most likely to avenge the Arabs against Israel and the West. The rest did not matter. But Madeline Albright’s innocence is not hers alone. It reflects an atmosphere of misunderstanding the nature of the regimes, and peoples, and above all, of how Infidels, including Americas, are regarded. Albright herself was a butt of the cruel and contemptuous jokes throughout the Arab world.

The perceived need for alliances with Muslim states thus limited, and continues to limit, the ability of the American government to see Islam clearly – or to produce a cadre of people who, in the army, the security services and the foreign service, who have studied Islam, without the “help” of John Esposito and Karen Armstrong, and are capable of understanding, then, that the continued islamization of Europe, even in the absence of “terror” as a tactic to promote it, is a mortal threat to the West, and hence to the United States.

One can see the consequences of such alliances even in the case of Turkey, the only Muslim state that, for a time, appeared to be genuinely, and permanently, on the road to secularism that might further reduce the political and social influence of Islam, though what has happened is the reverse. For the last fifty years, the Western world has participated in a whitewashing of Ottoman history. The treatment of non-Muslims – particularly Greeks and Armenians, but also of Jews – under the Ottomans has, in the West, not been examined with sufficient disregard for the possibly ruffled feelings of pleasant, charming, thoroughly congenial Turkish Ottomanists. The studies of Rumanian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Greek scholars, not surprisingly, were less friendly in tone, and made use of sources, in the relevant languages of the Ottoman Empire’s European domains, to demonstrate the treatment meted out to Christian subjects, and to give the devshirme, and Balkan dhimmitude, its full due. Celebrated historians of the Ottomans sometimes had personal and professional ties to Turkey, and that may help explain their minimizing what dhimmis endured under Ottoman rule. When one such historian described the devshirme – the forced levy by the Ottomans on Christian (and sometimes Jewish) children, taken from their parents at a young age to serve as soldiers for the Sultan – as a “recruitment” and emphasized that, because these young victims were subsequently enrolled in the service of the Ottoman state the devshirme could be viewed as a “means of social advancement” that Muslim parents “envied.” Muslim parents might “envy” the position of those in the Sultan’s army, because if their children were taken it would not have required forcibly converting them to an alien creed. That fact, and the horror felt by the Christians at the prospect of losing their children, is recorded by a number of Balkan historians. The victim’s view of the devshirme seems to have escaped the notice entirely of at least one prominent historian known for his studies of Turkish history, both Ottoman and modern, and for the range of his studies in the field of Islamic history.

During the Cold War period, a number of historical hells were passed over. The full story of large-scale German involvement – including regular units of the Wehrmacht – in the Nazi mass-murders were inconvenient, at a time when West Germany was an important ally, and even those who had served the Nazis as intelligence officers, for example, were relied on, vainly, by the Americans. In the same way, the Armenian genocide was downplayed, for it would have been impolitic during the very years that Turkey was being courted as an ally against the Soviet Union. Only recently have Western scholars rediscovered that genocide, and the American government still prefers to remain silent and not to press Turkey to recognize what was done, not by “Turks,” but by Muslim Turks and Kurds, within Anatolia, against Christian Armenians for being “giavours” or Infidels. The Turks were Muslim, but our sort, just as King Saud was our sort – he would never tolerate Communism, and told Washington so, and no one thought there might be another matter to worry about, which was that he would never tolerate any Infidels whatsoever. Besides, the oil bonanza was not yet in full flood, and even Saudi Arabia did not have money, in those days, to spend on mosques and madrasas all over the Western world. No one could have imagined the OPEC bonanza, nor what uses that OPEC money would be put to.

In the same way, the Shah of Iran was America’s friend, a “pillar of stability,” as Jimmy Carter called it, toasting him at the beginning of January, 1979, the very year Khomeini would come to power. Oh, they were all splendid fellows. There was that nice Moroccan king, and good King Idris who took such care of Wheelus Air Base in Libya, and good King Saud, holding down Saudi Arabia, who had always been there for us, always stood foursquare with America, and didn’t we have a photograph of him with President Roosevelt on that destroyer to prove it?

After the 1958 coup, Iraq withdrew from the Baghdad Pact. After the Shah fell, in 1979, Iran withdrew from the Central Treaty Organization (formerly the Baghdad Pact). Pakistan was later revealed to be, not an ally, but a supporter of the Taliban and hence of Al-Qaeda. The organization fell apart. It had never been anything like the NATO it was expected to emulate; it had always been farcical and useless. But by 1979 things were different. Now it was seen to be farcical and nearly useless.

The Cold War has been over for nearly 15 years. More than forty years have passed since the French left Algeria, the only place, among all the Arab countries, where so-called “colonialism” lasted more than a few decades. (Everywhere else in the Arab Muslim countries, any “colonialism” that did exist cost the “colonial” power far more than it received in revenues from the colony.) But the study of Islam still has not revived from either the pro-Islamic atmosphere created by those anti-Communist illusions about Islam, nor from the glow of “anti-colonialism” that the Arabs managed to appropriate from the real victims of colonialism in Asia and in black Africa.

What happened was OPEC. Economic failures, as failures in everything else, suddenly became seen as success stories, not because there had been any burst of entrepreneurial activity and of hard work, the result of a deep work ethic, as happened in Japan, and South Korea, and Taiwan, and Thailand. What happened to the Arab and Muslim countries was that, through an accident of geology, they became the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth in human history – some 5-6 trillion dollars, since 1973 alone – and before 1973, there had also been plenty of oil revenues. Not one of these states managed to create a modern economy. The GDP of the Arab states collectively is less than that of Finland. But the oil money was there, and it prevented the full scale of the failure of Islamic states from being recognized.

Still worse, that Arab oil money managed to stave off, for a few more decades, real scholarship on, and critical scrutiny of, Islam. For Arab oil money since 1973 has been carefully deployed to establish new “Centers” of Islamic or Middle Eastern studies, or to buy up pre-existing ones. This began at Bradford, Durham, and Exeter in England; it was extended to Georgetown, an obvious place to concentrate on, given its location and its role in training foreign service officers. Where centers were not established, well-upholstered chairs – the King Abdul Aziz II Chair of Islamic History, The Guardian of the Two Holy Places Professor of Islamic Law, and other academic thrones, with ornate arabesques, have also been positioned for maximum effect, hither and yon.

Overlapping with that careful deployment of Arab oil money was another phenomenon, this one coming not from the plutocrats of Arabia, but from the supposed anti-imperialist and therefore, of course, anti-Western school. It originated with Edward Said, who was neither a student of Islam, nor even a Muslim. But as an Arab, he felt that his “Arabness” gave him special insight into Islam, and he, unlike Maronites and Copts, but like many “Palestinian” Arabs, was quick to identify with, and to promote, Islam and the Islamic worldview. For this worldview fit – indeed, explained – the Arab opposition to the Infidel state of Israel, though for the non-Muslim Western world, quite different justifications were plausibly offered. Said’s Orientalism was, as Ibn Warraq has described it, an act of “intellectual thuggery.” Said deployed personal invective, and an entirely specious use of evidence, to call into question the meticulous scholarship of generations of Western Orientalists. What prompted his charges was, no doubt, that the targets of his fury had understood the tenets and history of Islam too well, and had written their scholarly works too lucidly, as they elaborated upon the main features of Islamic Jihad-conquest and treatment of non-Muslims. Said realized that this scholarship was dangerous, both for his own “Palestinian” cause, and for Arabs and Muslims generally. He was determined to stop it. He could not offer any scholarship of his own. He never was a student of Islam. He never demonstrated for readers in what way, for example, Ignaz Goldziher or Snouck Hurgronje or Leone Caetani or Arthur Jeffery or Joseph Schacht have been inaccurate, or prejudiced. Not a word, not a sentence, not a paragraph. He alluded, he attitudinized, he fulminated, but he never produced evidence that Western Orientalists were practically working for their respective colonial offices. Said further claimed that these scholars, most of them the most learned, and dry, of authors, depicted the Arabs as “fanatical” and “sensual” and as exhibiting every conceivable vice. In so doing, he often dismissed such important works as Edward Lane’s An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Modern Egyptians. Said was also highly selective; more than 95% of the most important Western Orientalists were not merely never discussed in his Orientalism, but never even received a passing mention.

In fact, while he insisted that the Western world had depicted the Arabs and Muslims most unfairly, it could be argued that the statement is true, but in a way opposite from that Said intended. In the last two centuries, where the Arab Muslims have been wrongly portrayed, it has been overwhelmingly to their benefit. One need think only of the alluring exoticism of the paintings of North Africa, and the orientalizing verse of the Romantic period, from Leigh Hunt’s “Abou Ben Adhem” (the humble Arab whose name, on God’s list, “led all the rest”), and Tom Moore’s passionate Persians in “Lalla Rookh,” and in the twentieth century, the glowering Sheik of Araby, Rudolph Valentino, and a host of popular songs and comic turns that treated the Muslim East not as fearsome, but as funny. The list of subject-matter for the Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard, a useful guide to what tickled the fancy of American upper classes, in the 1920s and 1930s WAS full of Arabian subjects, with camels, and date-palms, and amusing Arabs who are depicted often as comic, but never as hate-filled, hysterical, or homicidal, as Said would have one believe.

All through this period, from about 1940 to the late 1970s, ARAMCO, as the chief Saudi hireling as well as the chief beneficiary of the oil concessions, kept Americans nicely misinformed about the nature of Saudi Arabia’s regime and its people. All those recent excited discoveries about what horrible things are written in Saudi textbooks, memorized in Saudi madrasas, made the subject of sermons in Saudi mosques, could have been made ten years ago, or thirty, or fifty. That they were not, and that many Americans worked in Saudi Arabia for decades without learning the truth about the country, or if they did stumble upon it, never shared that truth with a wider public, says something. It says something about the incuriosity of American journalists, the role of the government in promoting certain views of foreign countries that may bear no relation to reality but that support a predetermined policy or belief -- in this case, the belief that since Islam was a “bulwark” against Communism, the Saudis must be wonderful allies of America indeed.

Said did not refute the quite varied and unusual men whom he lumped together, for the purposes of jejune denunciation, as Orientalists, because he couldn’t. What he could do was repeat his thesis: that the entire history of Western study of the Muslim East was always merely a handmaiden to imperialism. Bernard Lewis has pointed out that the study of the languages and history of the Muslim East began, in the West, centuries before Western “imperialism,” and that many of the greatest Orientalists were from countries that had no connection to Western “imperialist” ventures in North Africa and the Middle East, Lewis also noted a few of Said’s representative howlers, both historical and philological. In the historical vein, there was Said’s bizarre assertion that Byzantium succumbed to Islam before Spain, when Byzantium was islamized seven centuries later. In the philological vein, there was Said’s rage that, in Lewis’s sober disquisition on the Arabic noun “thawra,” a word which since the nineteenth century has been used in Arabic to mean “revolution,” Lewis had begun “with a brief look at the basic meanings of the Arabic root from which it was derived” and included the following: “The root th-w-r in classical Arabic meant to rise up (e.g. of a camel), to be stirred or excited, and hence, especially in Maghribi usage, to rebel.” Said found this mention of a camel to be, as Lewis notes, an “elaborate, hostile, and wholly absurd interpretation” which was being wantonly thrust –sexual overtones aplenty -- “into a lexical definition of an Arabic root” quoted “from the classical Arab dictionaries.” The full reply to Said’s hysterical vituperation offers a memorable example of Lewis at his suaviter-in-modo best, and one particularly admires Footnote 6 in his “The Question of ‘Orientalism.’”

Serious historians of the East and of Islam must have agreed with the distinguished British historian of India, Clive Dewey, when a few years ago he described the quiddity of Orientalism:

When Edward Said's Orientalism first appeared in 1978, historian after historian must have put it down without finishing it — without imagining, for a moment, the influence it would exert. It was, technically, so bad; in every respect, in its use of sources, in its deductions, it lacked rigour and balance. The outcome was a caricature of Western knowledge of the Orient, driven by an overtly political agenda. Yet it clearly touched a deep vein of vulgar prejudice running through American academe.

That “vein of vulgar prejudice” is now the main artery of Western academic life, pumping not blood but the poison of ressentiment, made permanent by that word-without-end of “postcolonialism” (but time, even “post-colonial” time, must have a stop) into unwary students who are brainwashed early. Some never manage to learn to consider the evidence, never manage to think for themselves.

Said also offered a Jobs Program, for the implication of what he said meant that one could trust only those who were themselves the “victims” of (Choose One): colonialism, post-colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, the American Empire. A Muslim Arab native of Baghdad would, for example, by dint of that fact, possess an insight and understanding into the 3000-year old artifacts of ancient Mesopotamia that, of course, had been denied such Western non-native scholars as Sabatino Moscati, Leo Oppenheim, and Henri Frankfort, though neither Italy, nor Germany, nor France had been colonial powers in Iraq. That Baghdadi native’s scholarship on Mesopotamian civilization of 3000 B.C. was entitled, in the crazed but fashionable logic of the age, to be given greater weight than that of these three, because it lacked the Original Sin of being tied to “colonialism, post-colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, the American Empire.” (Again, choose one).

Book after book is churned out by members of the Middle Eastern Studies Association of North America, but when it comes to the politics of Arab Islam, very few are not quickly obsolete. How many books, on the “creation of Palestinian identity’ or “Agriculture in Tunisia, 1870-1913” or “Portable Seclusion: the Veil and New Muslim Feminism” now sit on groaning shelves, books that neither their own authors, nor anyone else, would wish to read. Meanwhile, the Islamic studies of Schacht and Margoliouth and Jeffery and Goldziher and Lammens are not dated but, written beautifully and lucidly, about significant subjects in the history of Islam, retain their value and transcend their time. Bookshelves groan with decades of “studies,” now quaint and utterly démodé, on “The Development of Arab Nationalism" in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, etc., all of them studies which never connect “Arab nationalism” to Islam, never interpret the former as simply a more modest subset of the latter, emphasizing the Arab supremacist idea both within Arab-ruled domains (where the non-Arabs, as the Copts and the Maronites and the Chaldeans, steadily lose population, influence, and significance). Several decades of books have been churned out that manage to overlook entirely, or to obscure, the permanent and overwhelming role of Islam in the lives and mental outlook of Arab Muslims, and even among some Arab “islamochristians” whose sense of Arabness is indelibly linked to Islam.

But now “Arab Nationalism” can be seen as both transient, and as a subset of, rather than opposition to, the traditional promptings of pan-Islamism. For “pan-Arabism” was the earlier, pre-OPEC version, of that “pan-Islamism” about which few Muslim Arabs, except of the most fervent Muslim Brotherhood school, dared, in the 1940s and 1950s and even 1960s, to dream. Now that those studies on “Arab nationalism” have run their course, the latest variant on ways to avoid talking about Islam have been modish "cultural studies," with film festivals, and young faculty living with the Bedouin in Egypt or on the Libyan desert, or with tribesmen in Yemen. This tends to produce works which are a cross between the purely anthropological, such as Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, and the appreciation of an “outsider” who tries to sink below the surface of things as did Lawrence Wylie in Village in the Vaucluse, but à l’arabe, with an updated version of Laurentian adoration of the leathered, weathered faces, and the ceremony of the zarf-and-kinjan coffee-drinking ritual, the comfort of a Cairene café’s proffered nargilah, or hubble-bubble pipe, and of course the Arabian desert, and the Arab steeds, and the camel’s milk, and the eternal verities evoked by the night sky of Araby. But those picturesque illiterate Bedouin do not give one an understanding of what those in Fallujah, or Baghdad, or Riyadh, or Cairo, or Algiers, or Gaza, take in, read, talk about, when they read and talk about Islam. And unless one can exercise one’s imaginative faculties or even sympathies, one is likely to miss the most important subject of all – Islam, and the view of Infidels that it promotes.

Unlike the European "customs-and-manners" histories of yore, with such exemplars as Edward Lane, with An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Modern Egyptians, where Islam was always in view, for Lane realized just how important Islam was even to the “Modern Egyptians” of the early 1800s, academics today who write about the Middle East go out of their way, it seems, to avoid discussing, analyzing, understanding, reporting on, Islam There is everything else under the sun: the “Construction of Palestinian Identity” (good), and “the Construction of Israeli Identity” (bad), and Iranian cinema, and the Arab political novel, and Israeli “archeology as a colonial project” and “why non-Muslims cannot possibly understand Mesopotamian civilization of 3000 years ago” and “the construction of Arab-American Identity.” But it is possible, and indeed almost certain, that undergraduates and graduates who have taken courses in the Middle East will not have a thorough grasp of what is contained in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira.

Islam itself - the subject without which nothing else in the Muslim world makes sense, is omitted, or willfully ignored, or de-emphasized, in what so often passes for scholarship on the Middle East. It may reflect the fact many current students and teachers of Middle Eastern matters in the Western world are now either Muslims themselves, or connected, by close professional and personal ties (including, in some cases, marriage), to Muslims, and naturally are keen not to offend Muslim colleagues who can help, or hinder, their professional advancement in a hundred sundry ways.

Those few scholars of Islam who, over decades, have come to understand the innate defensiveness with which Muslims, even those whose own faith is tepid, present Islam to non-Muslims, would do well to realize that the luxury they have permitted themselves, a luxury of reticence, of taciturnity, of oblique hints, does not meet the present case, where Europe itself has been threatened with possibly unstoppable islamization.

Many in the Western world have adopted an adversarial stance toward their own, messy, silly, and obviously imperfect civilization. There is much to deplore in the Western world, and in the United States. But, Islam is now the preferred vehicle of protest against that civilization, and hence, while Islam tends to be defended by Muslims out of belief or out of filial piety or out of a sense, on the part of Arab “islamochristians” (Christians who minimize the malevolence of Islam), that Arab ethnic identity, and Islam, are one, non-Muslims may defend it not out of real sympathy, but only because Islam is seen as the best current vehicle for fighting “the System, Amerika, Capitalism, the West” -- you name it.”

It has been a difficult task, to depict Islam as a benign force for greater human freedom, but many have proven equal to the task. They must ignore Islam itself, a system in which the rights of women are severely restricted, where homosexuals can be murdered and sexual freedom does not exist, where all non-Muslims can be offered only three possibilities – death, conversion to Islam, or a life of permanent humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity as dhimmis under Muslim rule. Islam emphasizes the collective and discourages, even punishes, individual freedom of conscience and other aspects of mental freedom, including artistic expression (sculpture, most painting, and music are prohibited in orthodox Islam), and free and skeptical inquiry is something to be prevented and punished. Muslims are not fighters for “social justice” or paladins of progress on the march to earthly progress. They are fighters against all Infidels, and their instruments are various, depending on what proves most effective. They are far less concerned with justice here below (and “justice” means, in any case, the triumph of Islam), than were Marxists. Only Paradise it seems, and the 72 houris, were Paradise enow. It is quite something, the spectacle of disappointed Marxists, as a sort of consolation prize, rushing to the barricades to defend Islam – that smacks so much of traditional Fascism – from its liberal democratic detractors.

But the study of Islam in the West, where unfettered intellectual freedom can be found, is again looking up. There are signs here and there, first with John Wansbrough, then with Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, and now with Christoph Luxenberg and others engaged in philological analysis of the early Qur’an and contemporaneous works, that important work on early Islam is being done. Such work, of course, can take place only if the Qur’an and Hadith and Sira are regarded as objects of study, and not just of veneration or adoration. New work on the condition of “dhimmitude,” based for the first time on testimony from the dhimmis, and from non-Muslim travelers, visitors, and diplomats, has changed much about the understanding of how vast lands, formerly peopled entirely by non-Muslims, were conquered by Muslims and then, over time, turned into lands that are now peopled almost entirely by Muslims. It was a complicated and lengthy process; one can see it happening in Iraq today, and in Egypt, as in Lebanon, Christians have fled.

Little of this important new work is ever mentioned in the American mass media, though Luxenberg did receive a single paragraph last year in Newsweek; the appearance of that paragraph caused the magazine to be banned in Pakistan and in other Muslim countries. The same scrupulous media that would never permit a doctor in the pay of Merck or Pfizer to shamelessly tout that drug company's latest pill, without identifying who pays him, apparently thinks it has no duty to report on Middle East "experts” in the same way. But most of this media, unlike many academic departments, has not been infiltrated by Muslims or apologists who carefully keep out all those who would wish to study Islam without inhibitions or a desire to please. Its failure may simply reflect laziness, a belief that reporting - mere reporting – is sufficient, and that there is no need for any further study by members of its staff, for Islam is a "religion" and "all religions want the same thing" – AND, mimicking the assurance of President Bush -- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Consider with what alacrity the phrase "Dialogue of Civilizations" has been taken up by the mainstream media. A way for Muslims to encourage continued Infidel inattention to the tenets of Islam to the history of Islamic conquest, and to treatment of non-Muslims, these "Dialogues" are for everyone. At the Grand Panjandrum Level, Jimmy Carter gets to trade views with his old friend and sometime host Prince Bandar, and Chris Patten of the E.U. gets to exchange a few bon-mots with Amr al-Moussa of the Arab League, and French deux-rivistes can meet with North African counterparts from that other rive, or bank, of the Mediterranean. Everyone solemnly concludes that Islam has been a much misunderstood, much undervalued, indeed practically indispensable contributor to Western Civilization.

At a slightly less luxurious level, high-powered bureaucrats in Christian and Jewish organizations are invited to participate in their own lesser "dialogues," often involving an all-expenses-paid week at a luxurious hotel in Marrakech or Cairo. Here the promised discussion quickly metamorphoses into a presentation, by Muslim hosts, about the House of Wisdom in Abbasid Baghdad, or the Tolerance of Islamic Spain[it is de rigueur to mention Maimonides in Islamic Spain, but the fact that he fled Cordoba, and religious persecution in Spain as a teenager, will not] and, finally, the latest entry in the Muslim-Tolerance-and-Pluralism son-et-lumière, the Ottoman Empire, where the habit of the sultans, the padishahin, of employing Jewish doctors, will be mentioned to calculated effect. But the devshirme, or forced levy of Christian children in the Ottoman lands in Europe to supply the Sultan's army, will not.

As Morocco is a favored site for the "Dialogues," perhaps the palace of Mulay Ismail will be shown to those taking part. But the Infidel visitors will not learn what they might have picked up from a recent short review of White Gold, by Giles Milton in The Times Literary Supplement: "Between 1609 and 1616, 466 English trading ships were seized and their crews forced into slavery. The corsairs of Barbary also launched hit and run raids around the coast of England. By the end of 1625, the mayor of Plymouth believed that at least a thousand of his townspeople had been kidnapped. The men were most often put to work from dawn to dusk, toiling away under the blistering heat on the Moroccan sultan Mulay Ismail's new palace - the largest construction project in history."

At the lowest level, at local Mosque Outreach Programs, Christian and Jewish participants arrive, take off their shoes, and settle down for an evening of "Interfaith Dialogue" during which a handful of plausible and smiling Muslim spokesmen (with the few congregants who deigned to come; most stayed away, rather than endure the spectacle of Infidels defiling the mosque with their presence, even if it was all for a good, taqiyya-and-tu-quoque cause) explain everything, and then take a handful of questions that seldom present any real difficulty, and afterwards, the Infidels get to enjoy chicken, pita, and even baklava. And yes, of course, Mrs. Levine, take some home for your husband; sorry he could not be with us tonight.

Nothing could be more fitting for this alice-in-wonderland period than what Humpty Dumpty said to Alice in Through the Looking-Glass: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” Recently, on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” a Muslim spokesman suggested that the word “jihad” is being used incorrectly, and gives Infidels the wrong idea. If, she suggested, it is simply impossible to convince Infidels that the word, in its primary meaning, is entirely devoid of any menace and threat, then she thought that it should be taken out of circulation altogether. This kind of linguistic defensiveness is supported by many non-Muslim commentators, news-hosts, and columnists. They are quick to hew to the mantra, “war on terrorism” but never come close to the subject of Islam. As another NPR news-show host insists, with self-assured illogic, negative comments about Islam or Muslims amount to “racism.”

That guest speaker on “All Things Considered” showed that she, and Islam’s large supporting cast, have not only learned something from Humpty Dumpty, but they have gone him one better in suggesting that his phrase be islamically expanded: “When I use a word, it means what I want you to think it means, neither more nor less.”

Copt murder story: Spirit of Duranty still rules at the New York Times

Today's New York Times contains a story entitled "A Bloody Crime in New Jersey Divides Egyptians," by Andrea Elliott. (Thanks to Anthony for the link.)

To the outsider, the extent of vitriol and near-paranoia provoked by the slayings seems hard to fathom: the police have yet to make an arrest and believe that robbery was a motive. Still, in the days after the four victims were found bound, gagged and stabbed to death, the scant known facts of the case have been supplanted by a swirl of rumor and innuendo that the victims were the targets of Muslims, leading to scenes of chaos at the funeral, with mourners shoving each other and threatening to beat a sheik who attended.

Did Andrea Elliott somehow know that the death threat Armanious received and other evidence that points to a religious motivation in the case could be reliably downplayed? Or is she deliberately softpedaling this part of the story, a la the Times' great Duranty?

Murdered Coptic Family Had Their Throats Slit

This story gives a few additional details and conflicts with other stories in saying that the jewelry was still in the house, thus making robbery less likely as a motive. So does, for that matter, "ritualistic cutting of the throats."

From the Assyrian International News Agency, with thanks to Anthony:

The father, Hossam Armanious, 47, was found dead in his bedroom. His wife, Amal Garas, 37, was found dead in an adjoining room. Their daughter Sylvia, 15, was found in her bedroom. Little Monica, 8, lay dead in the bathroom.

All the victims were bound before being killed by knife wounds, including apparent ritualistic cutting of the throats.

While police have not identified any suspects, many believe the Coptic Christian family were slaughtered by Muslim extremists over comments Hossam Armanious made in an Internet chatroom.

Authorities confirmed that a large amount of jewelry was found in the house , and that there was no evidence of a break-in. This would seem to reinforce the theory that motivation for the grusome slaughter was personal and not robbery.

"We continue to review several theories," First Assistant Hudson County Prosecutor Guy Gregory said. "Our goal is to identify the killers. We believe that when the killers are identified, the motive for this wanton and vile crime will be revealed."

AP: "Jersey City Slaying Spurs New Wave Of Anti-Islam Bias"

Any mention of the death threat the Armanious family received from a Muslim? Any mention of reports that Christian tattoos were sliced off the bodies? Any mention of other indications that this crime was religiously motivated?

No. Just the knee-jerk assumption that this is just another excuse to victimize Muslims. This unwillingness to deal fairly with the evidence is what arouses the very suspicions the people quoted here resent.

From AP, with thanks to Anthony:

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- The dirty looks and shouted slurs started in 1993 after Muslims living here helped plan the bombing of the World Trade Center. They intensified on Sept. 11, 2001, when Muslim hijackers brought down the twin towers just across the Hudson River.

Now a third wave of anti-Muslim sentiment is washing over New Jersey's second-largest city, sparked this time by reports that the murders of an Egyptian Christian man, his wife and two young daughters might have been carried out by Muslims angered over postings the man made in an Internet chat room.

The strife is particularly distressing in light of efforts the area's Muslim community made to reach out to other faiths and strengthen ties after the 9/11 attacks. Imams visited churches and synagogues. Joint prayer breakfasts and open houses were held. Muslim merchants visited the homes of their Christian and Jewish counterparts, and strongly denounced the terror attacks.

"We've been working for three years on getting Christians together with Muslims," said Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union. "Now much of that progress is gone. It is definitely going to be set back.

"I'm just sorry we weren't able to do more before this happened," he said. "If we had a stronger relationship, something like this would never have happened because then you'd have a window to talk to the other side."

The bodies of Hossam Armanious, a 47-year-old Coptic Christian, his 37-year-old wife, Amal Garas, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were discovered last week in the family's home. They had been bound and gagged, and each was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and head.

Although prosecutors have stressed that robbery remains a possible motive in the case, many in this city's sizable Egyptian population believe the killings were religiously motivated.

For people like Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, the feeling is all too familiar.

"We Muslims living in America are getting sick of this crap," he said. "Why should we have to apologize for or make a defense of something we had nothing to do with? There is no proof at all that Muslims had anything to do with this, yet we are taking the blame again. Is Islam on trial, or is a killer on trial?"

No arrests have been made in the case.

After the killings, Muslims tried anew to mend fences, but the results were mixed, at best. Several attended the family's funeral, but a New York cleric had to be escorted from the church hall for his own protection after a heckler started shouting at him. Mourners engaged in several scuffles before and after the funeral, including one in which about 35 people pushed, shoved and traded punches in the street as others yelled anti-Islam slogans.

A few days later, Muslim leaders called a press conference designed as an interfaith rally to try to calm religious tensions, but Christian groups who were invited did not attend, citing a religious holiday of their own. A similar interfaith event planned for this Sunday, which had been in the works for months, had to be postponed due to expected bad weather.

The killings have spread fear among Coptic Christians far beyond Jersey City. Relatives of the Armanious family in Egypt blamed the killings on violence in American society and weak interpersonal relationships in this country. On Long Island, N.Y., members of the St. Abraam's Coptic Orthodox Church in Woodbury said the killings appeared to be "a religiously motivated hate crime against Coptic Christians."

"A lot of families are feeling the fear and terror that comes along with something like this," said Maged Riad, a church member. "They got them in their home in the middle of the night. People want to know they can be safe in their own homes."...

Suzanne Loutfy, a Muslim leader of the Egyptian-American Group, asked people not to blame Islam if the killers are found to be Muslim.

"People are so willing to condemn an entire religion," she said. "That's what the big problem is. People commit crimes; religions don't. I hope we can be intelligent enough to separate those two."

People commit crimes that are motivated by religion. That has to be faced.

CORRECTION: There is a great deal of confusion surrounding this case, with contradictory reports. The Hudson County Prosecutors Office has stated that the tattoos were in fact not defaced. I have also just received confirmation of that from an informed source.

Prince of Jaish Ansar Al-Sunnah Insurgency Group in Iraq Addresses a Message to all Muslims

The Emir of Jaish Ansar Al-Sunnah has issued a new statement. Is he reading the same Qur'an Bush is reading? From the SITE Institute, with thanks to Ana:

Quoting verses from the Qur’an and the Hadeeth, he promises them a place in Heaven, and claims that Hell will be the eternal resting-place of the non-Muslims, calling the Crusader Americans “cowboys, drowning in sin, corruption and pornography”.

On the occasion of Eid al-Adha, Bin Mahmoud asks the Muslims, to be generous with their brothers the Mujahideen, and with the families that the martyrs have left in their custody; for “he who assists a Mujahid for the sake of Allâh, or a conqueror in difficulty or those who are depending on him, Allâh shall take him in His shade, the day when he has no other shade but his own.”

He asks them to “not forget what the worshippers of the Cross have done to your brothers and sisters, for they have shed virtuous blood, and desecrated pure honors. Such is their custom at all times”.

Bangladesh now has 31 Islamic militant groups

Tiny minority of extremists update. Note this: "A section of Islamic seminaries known as qaumi madrasas have become the breeding ground of Islamic terrorism." How could this happen? Aren't they reading George Bush's Qur'an? From India News, with thanks to Ana:

India News]: Kolkata, Jan 20 : A Bangladeshi human rights group today claimed that 31 Islamic militant outfits were operating in the country now, targetting non-Muslims and seeking to establish a "greater Islamic nation" including parts of some adjacent Indian states.

"As per our findings, 31 Islamic militant groups are now operating in Bangladesh. They are mainly targetting non-Muslim people. They also want to set up a greater Islamic nation with parts of some adjacent states of India," Rosalyn Costa, who heads the rights group 'Hotline Bangladesh', said here....

Describing Bangladesh as a 'cocoon of terrorism and violence,' she said that over the past three years, a large number of ammunition, including grenades, had been smuggled into the country and 'freely' used against minorities.

"A section of Islamic seminaries known as qaumi madrasas have become the breeding ground of Islamic terrorism. They are intolerant of democratic and progressive views," Costa said, adding that the murder of liberal Bangladeshi litterateur Humayun Azad and the attack on writer-film maker Shahriyar Kabir were cases to be noted.

Inside information on the New Jersey murders

UPDATE 12/12/05: A new article by Daniel Pipes leads me to make this clarification: I do not know the quality of the information I was given by these sources. This has all been an extremely puzzling experience. I was approached with this evidence; I did not seek it out. It was confirmed by several parties. I presented it in good faith without ever saying (as some have charged) that it was necessarily accurate or true. But the circulation of this story -- before and after I got it -- explains why the Copts were so angry with Muslims in New Jersey at the time. As far as I know, the police examined this evidence and found it wanting. I do not know what the motives were of the friends of the Armanious family who told it to me and insisted on it, and continued to do so after the two thugs were arrested who were charged with this crime. I still have many unanswered questions. But I have nothing to go on.

A close friend of Hossam Armanious, the Coptic Christian who was brutally murdered in New Jersey along with his family, is the source of this information which comes to you exclusively from Jihad Watch:

The Armanious family had inspired several Muslims to convert to Christianity — or thought they had. These converts were actually practicing taqiyya, or religious deception, pretending to be friends of these Christians in order to strengthen themselves against them, as in Qur'an 3:28: "Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful -- he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah -- except in self-defense."

Of course, the family, not suspecting the deception, was happy to see the "converted" men and willingly let them in to their home. That's why there was no sign of forced entry. Then the "converted" Muslims did their grisly work.

Many Copts are regarding the murders as a warning to the Coptic community as a whole, related to the increasing strife between Copts and Muslims in Egypt and the Copts' energetic efforts in America to get the truth out about the differences between Middle Eastern Christians and Muslims -- differences that the Islamic lobby, with its disingenuous talk of "Arab Americans," routinely glosses over and hopes you don't notice. The Copts, to their immense credit, have been particularly outspoken among Middle Eastern Christians about Muslim oppression. And yes, many are active on Pal Talk debating Muslims.

The nature of the warning? The murders send a signal from the Muslims to the Copts: we are going to behave here the same way we behaved in Egypt, and the First Amendment and American law enforcement will not protect you. Don't expect America to keep you safe from us. The oppression and harassment you thought you had left behind in Egypt has now come to you.

This means, if Armanious's friend is correct, that this is indeed America's Theo van Gogh murder: indication that all Muslims in the nation do not, as we are supposed to believe, unanimously accept the parameters of American pluralism. That at least some are willing to enforce Sharia penalties right here, right now.

But there are so many nominees for the Walter Duranty prize this time that most Americans have no clue of what's going on. Duranty, of course, was the New York Times reporter who knowingly covered up information about the genocidal famine Stalin caused and fueled in Ukraine, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts. The Pinch Sulzberger Times of these dark days should dedicate the whole paper to Duranty's honor, and put his picture on the front page right next to "All the News That's Fit to Print."

Bush's Judeo-Christian-Islamic values

During his Inaugural Address earlier this afternoon, President Bush said this:

In America's ideal of freedom, the public interest depends on private character - on integrity, and tolerance toward others, and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before - ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Yes they are, Mr. President, but are you really sure, aside from political calculations, that those ideals are as fully present in the Qur'an as they are in the Ten Commandments handed down on Mt. Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount?

Since he mentioned these texts, some parallel quotes are in order. I will limit myself to one set only, because it makes my point:

"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." Matthew 5:44

"Muhammad is Allah's Apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to the unbelievers but merciful to one another." Qur'an, Sura 48:29.

Mr. President, do those texts teach the same ideals of justice?

Out of context, you say? All right. Here is an open invitation to anyone who may be reading this: don't just quote me Qur'an verses about Allah's compassion and mercy. I know they're there. What I ask you to do is establish definitively that they apply to unbelievers, and have been understood as such in mainstream Islamic thought throughout the ages.

Any takers?

Copts: "The apparent reluctance to consider this a hate crime despite Jersey City's long history of Muslim extremism is concerning"

Buried deep in a story about how, in the wake of the Armanious murders, Copts and others pulled out of a religious unity conference with Muslims in Jersey City, is this interesting information. From "Muslims Only at Religious Unity Conference" from AP, with thanks to Anthony:

The St. Abraam's Coptic Orthodox Church in Woodbury, N.Y., issued a statement Wednesday cautioning against jumping to conclusions. But the statement also said "some signs point to this incident being a religiously motivated hate crime against Coptic Christians," and suggested that "political correctness" could keep it from being classified as such.

"The apparent reluctance to consider this a hate crime despite Jersey City's long history of Muslim extremism is concerning," the statement read.

A Jersey City neighborhood housed Muslims convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, including blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.

UK: Bakri Denies Urging Muslims to Take Up Jihad

From the Bridge For Sale Department: "Cleric Denies Urging Muslims to Take Up Arms." From The Scotsman, with thanks to Anthony, an update on Omar Bakri's jihad speech:

Asked if he was urging people to join Osama bin Laden’s terror network, he told GMTV: “That’s not true. Definitely I have very strong beliefs and maybe some controversial views.”

He said he was giving examples of groups “not necessarily a call inciting people to take any actions”....

Police are examining his webcast remarks, in which he told listeners they were “obliged” to join the Mujahidin and allegedly pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Referring to his use of the word al-jihad or “holy war”, he said: “The word jihad always for you it means fighting and military fighting. Jihad is.. also to look for a good job, to look for a better wife , to study, even to fight.

“And the word weapon...ask any Muslims...it doesn’t mean always fighting.”...

Last year he sparked outrage by suggesting that an attack on a British school, as happened in Beslan, Russia, would be justified as long as women and children were not deliberately killed and only died in crossfire.

He once praised the 9/11 hijackers as the “magnificent 19“.

Search for Omar Bakri in the Jihad Watch archives and tell me how much you believe his denial.

"What kind of jihad is this? Is it jihad against women and babies?"

"26 die in wave of explosions in Iraq," from the Myrtle Beach Sun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents set off at least four bombs Wednesday in Baghdad, killing at least 26 people and wounding more than 20 in a continuing campaign to disrupt national parliamentary elections scheduled to take place Jan. 30.

An organization linked to Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most-wanted man in Iraq, took credit for three of the blasts....

Some Iraqis said they viewed Wednesday's attacks as a preview of the sustained violence expected until the elections.

"These attacks will increase until election day. Those people don't want us to live in peace," Hussam Abdul Khaliq, 23, said Wednesday morning outside a Baghdad hospital where he was looking for a neighbor wounded in one of the blasts.

The Baghdad attacks came the day before Eid, a Muslim holiday commemorating the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son.

The first explosion came near the Australian Embassy at about 7 a.m. It sheared off pieces of the building and destroyed windows for blocks, including at the hotel that houses reporters for NBC News and Knight Ridder. In addition to two Iraqi deaths, two Australian soldiers were wounded.

The deadliest blast came about half an hour later near a police station and hospital, killing 18 and wounding 15. The hospital was hit particularly hard.

"There were only small pieces left of the car. Five other cars near it were totally destroyed. Every window in the hospital was shattered; every door was blown off its hinges," said Ali Abdul Rahman, a doctor at Al Wasiti hospital.

He said blood covered the hospital floor as the dead and wounded were brought in.

"Is this the right place to do an attack against the police or army? There are two hospitals here!" said Leila Hassan, 38, who works in one of them.

Shaking and pale, she said: "What kind of crazy people do attacks in the middle of two hospitals, one of them with women and new babies? What kind of jihad is this? Is it jihad against women and babies?"

Thailand: jihadists fire on school bus

"Two wounded as suspected Islamic militants fire on school bus," from TNA, with thanks to Nicolei:

BANGKOK, Jan. 19 (TNA) - Two children have been shot and seriously wounded in an attack on a school bus in Thailand's southern town of Pattani yesterday, causing widespread concern among the local population.

A senior education official, Areerat Wattanasin, said the indiscriminate attack on a bus carrying more than 20 students had frightened both teachers and students.

Reuters: "Muslim Pilgrims Urged to Shun 'Islamic' Terror"

Reuters, or Al-Reuters as Charles of LGF calls it, knows (or thinks it knows) that there isn't any such thing as Islamic terror -- hence the sneer quotes around "Islamic" in the headline.

But Reuters can't get the "moderate" (yes, I can use sneer quotes too) Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudeis to denounce the killing of non-Muslims who do not "live among us." The Sheikh, you'll note, only denounces the killing of "Muslims or non-Muslims who live among us" -- i.e., dhimmis.

From Al-Reuters, with thanks to Nicolei:

MECCA (Reuters) - A leading Saudi cleric warned Muslims on Thursday against heeding militant calls to wage terror attacks in the name of Islam.

Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudeis, the state-appointed preacher at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, told pilgrims in a sermon to mark the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha that scholars must preach moderation to confront this "putrid" phenomenon.

Militants were using "misguided and void" interpretations to justify violence, he said, in comments that came amid a surge in militant attacks in Muslim countries and beyond.

"Because Muslims have strayed from moderation, we are now suffering from this dangerous phenomenon of branding people infidels and inciting Muslims to rise against their leaders to cause instability," Sudeis said.

"The reason for this is a delinquent and void interpretation of Islam based on ignorance ... faith does not mean killing Muslims or non-Muslims who live among us, it does not mean shedding blood, terrorising or sending body parts flying."

Iranian leader slams 'Western, Zionist capitalists,' reaffirms Rushdie death fatwa

"Ayatollah revives the death fatwa on Salman Rushdie," from AFP, with thanks to Andy Bannister:

A FATWA against the author Salman Rushdie was reaffirmed by Iran’s spiritual leader last night in a message to Muslim pilgrims.

British officials anxiously played down comments after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Muslims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Rushdie was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, according to the Iranian media.

His words came during a lengthy tirade against “Western and Zionist capitalists” and the US-led War on Terror.

However, senior British officials swiftly made plain last night that the Iranian Government, which had disassociated itself from the fatwa in 1998, had not changed its position.They pointed out that because the fatwa was issued in February 1989 by Iran’s revolutionary founder and Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, who had since died, it would always remain in existence.

Why is the British government cleaning up messes made by Khamenei?

They insisted that the move did not presage a further deterioration in the already tense relations with Iran over its nuclear programme. “This should not be taken as a new development,” one said.

The Foreign Office said: “The key thing from our point of view is that the Iranian Government formally withdrew their support for the fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1998 which is when Britain and Iran formally upgraded their relationship to the level of ambassador.” A senior official said: “The original fatwa was issued by Ayatollah Khomeini shortly before he died. It can only be rescinded by the man who issued it or a higher authority so in practice it will hold indefinitely.

“Almost every time that the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, gives a sermon he mentions Salman Rushdie in these terms and denounces him as a man who has insulted the name of the Prophet and who can therefore be killed. It’s just the standard rhetoric.

Rest easy, Salman. It's just standard rhetoric.

“The crucial thing is that the fatwa is no longer endorsed by the Iranian Government because before 1998 what we had was effectively a state-sponsored death sentence.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said in his message: “They talk about respect towards all religions, but they support such a mahdour al-damm mortad as Salman Rushdie.” In Sharia, or Islamic law, mortad is a reference to someone who has committed apostasy by leaving Islam while mahdour al-damm is a term applying to someone whose blood may be shed with impunity.

Iran's Political and Military Leadership Call for Martyrdom

And has some bellicose words for the U.S. From MEMRI, with thanks to Kemaste:

In a message to the 8th Congress on Martyred Students, Iran's Leader Ali Khamenei said:

"The enemies of Iran tried to humiliate and diminish the value of martyrdom [shahada] and the culture of Jihad in the eyes of the youth, particularly students… Shahada means the giving of one's greatest material asset for an ideal, the revival and fertilization of which are for the good of humanity. This is one of the most beautiful human values, and when this ideal is pleasing to Allah as well – and is the aspiration of all Allah's messengers – this value is the supreme human virtue, and cannot be measured by any material criterion. Acceptance of this [ideal] is the same wondrous element that gives those fighting Jihad for the path of truth the strength to overcome any scheme of the front of hostility."

Khamenei urged students to continue to promote the culture of Jihad and martyrdom among themselves as "a source of national strength and a characteristic of pure worship… When we encounter the name of a student who committed martyrdom we are confident that the acceptance of martyrdom and of the Jihad that led to this martyrdom stemmed from [the martyr's] self-awareness and clear desire, and this intensifies the value of the act. Sanctify and praise your exalted martyrs and place your trust in the help and support of Allah." [1]

Iranian Revolutionary Guards General: We Must Train Forces Ready to Commit Martyrdom; Iran Is the Third Largest Power in the Region in Ballistic Missile Production

The official Iranian news agency MEHR quoted a senior Revolutionary Guards officer, General Shabani, in charge of Iran's Security Forces Staff and Command College, who spoke at a memorial service for the martyrs from the University of Qom.

"General Shabani said: 'Iran is the third [largest] power in the region in the field of ballistic missile production, following China and Russia.'

"In celebration of the eighth anniversary in memory of the martyrs from the University of Qom, General Shabani praised the exalted status of the Islamic revolution's martyrs, saying: 'As the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said, 'The martyrs are the quintessence of our strength.' Therefore, we must educate and train forces ready to commit martyrdom attacks in order to counter the enemy.

"'In the event of a war with the U.S. we must fight them asymmetrically. As of now, we have manufactured weapons systems and we have attained nuclear capabilities. What has caused the U.S. great concern is the fact that the Iranian young [generation] attained this technology by themselves.'

Italy: Illegal immigration, possible Al Qaeda link to 29 arrested

From Agencia Gionalistica Italica, with thanks to Anthony:

(AGI) - Catanzaro, 20 Jan - A series of arrest warrants have been issued by magistrates in Catanzaro for 29 people who are believed to belong to a criminal organisation bringing immigrants into Italy illegally.....

The suspects are of North African origin, and are all accused of criminal association, human trafficking and aiding and abetting the entry of illegal immigrants into Italy and kidnapping with request for ransom. The inquiries, in collaboration with the secret services, have revealed roles, means and strategies of a criminal group with operating bases in Egypt and Libya and ramifications in Italy, active predominantly in Calabria and Lombardy. The gang concentrated migrants in Egypt before transferring them to Libya where they embarked in the direction of the Italian coast, in particular the Island of Lampedusa. Details of the operation will be revealed at a press conference this morning. There is also a theory that those arrested have links to al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism.

Hizbollah threatens UK suicide attacks

From the Herald, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

HIZBOLLAH, the hardline religious group, yesterday threatened to carry out suicide attacks in London in an attempt to kill a UK-based Iranian exile television presenter said to have made insulting comments about Islam.

Manouchehr Fouladvand, on the US-based Farsi language MA-TV, has been accused of mocking Mohammed and the Koran. There have been demands in Iran for the broadcaster's death.

Mojtaba Bigdeli, spokesman for Iran's Hizbollah group, warned the British government must ban the satellite channel, run by Iranian exiles, within 30 days or face the consequences. "After one month, our commandos will carry out suicide attacks in London against the shameless presenter of the channel. He has crossed our red lines by insulting our prophet and Islamic values."

Mr Bigdeli said Hizbollah had the approval of leading clerics to kill him.

"The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything"

I'm not sure that terrorism would vanish without foreign support, or that the Arab/Jewish situation is analogous to that of France and Germany. Neither France and Germany had the jihad ideology continually enflaming matters, and that ideology will continue to exist once foreign support is removed -- weakened, to be sure, but still present.

In any case, there is some value in what Finnish analyst Antero Leitzinger says here. From "EXPERT INTERVIEW: Finnish Researcher Antero Leitzinger On Global Issues" in Global Politician, with thanks to Anthony:

RM: What do you believe are the obstacles to Middle East peace and why?

AL: The Arabs have been indoctrinated into a political mythology that denies all realistic self-criticism and provides convenient scapegoats for everything. In South Lebanon, I saw once a large Hezbollah poster blaming the USA for "all our problems". This reminded me of the standard explanation by Soviet travel guides, who used to explain all their poverty by the sacrifices during the war, some 40 years earlier, although meanwhile, Germany and Japan had already recovered from the war. This type of reasoning is politically left-wing, a product of the Arab Socialism that dominated Middle Eastern societies far too long. The Arab world needs now a healthy right-wing reaction, strength to cope with the harsh realities of life, and rational assessment of what can be achieved at what costs. Maybe it was unjust, that the state of Israel was founded on Arab soil, but so are many things in the world, not least in history, and we still have to go on living. Many Arab governments have learned to live with the realities, and should be supported, while the common people still need to be educated for responsibility. It is in their own best interest. There should be no obstacles unless some people still want to carry unfounded hopes of easier solutions, like by further internationalizing of the disputes through UN resolutions, or terrorism.

RM: What needs to be done then to make a peaceful Middle East? What forces are stopping the peace movement, and what should be done about them?

AL: Peace between Israel and Syria would provide the former with safe borders. Syria should also stop all its support for Palestinian terrorists. All the suicide bombers and masked gunmen in Che Guevara T-shirts, who keep appearing on Palestinian TV and funerals, should be eliminated forever. Terrorists do not grow on trees, and if their foreign support is drained out, they will vanish. The Palestinians would then feel free to lean toward their brethren inside the 1948 borders, the so-called Israeli Arabs, who have a long experience of peaceful coexistence. Together, they should form a strong moderate majority and marginalize the extremists. There is no reason, why Jews and Arabs would need to fight each other. Germans used to live much longer in antagonism toward the French and Poles, but now they are on friendly relations. In a few decades, we could look back to the Middle East conflict as a short crisis in a basically positive, long history.

Afghanistan: Warlord survives assassination

Apparently the sanctity of the mosque can only be violated by Americans, not by Muslim attackers. Also, what was that again about suicide bombing being a last resort of the desperately poor? From the Herald Sun, with thanks to Anthony:

AFGHAN strongman Abdul Rashid Dostam has survived an assassination attempt in which a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mosque where Dostam was saying Eid prayers.

"Today in the morning when General Dostam finished prayers in Ghocha Park mosque in Shibirghan and as he started greeting people, there was an explosion," Mohammed Yusuf Rawanyar, head of Aina television in Shibirghan, said.

"A terrorist who had strapped explosives to his body blew himself up in the mosque, injuring two of General Dostam's bodyguards and some civilians."

Spain: Islamic jihadist linked to 9/11 arrested

"Islamic 'terrorist' linked to 9/11 arrested in Bilbao," from Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BILBAO — Spanish police have arrested an alleged Islamic terrorist with links to al-Qaeda.

Algerian Tahar Izerouali was wanted by police as a supposed member of terrorist organisation Ansar al Islam, which has been linked to al-Qaeda.

The terrorist cell allegedly supplies false documents and cash to other Islamic extremists across Europe.

Before his arrest, Tahar Izerouali, 35, was leading a normal life in Bilbao, despite being named in an international arrest warrant.

He lived in Santutxu, in Bilbao, and worked as a painter.

Why, he was just an ordinary guy, neighbors said. Wouldn't hurt a fly. Great painter, too. This must be some kind of witchhunt.

FBI monitors Islamic group for terror ties

I know that law enforcement officials have been looking closely at Tablighi Jamaat for several years, but very little has come out about them. Here is an MSNBC story, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm. Of course, the analysis is essentially ignorant, since a "peaceful Islamic movement" that preaches a return to "fundamental Islamic values" will not find itself remaining peaceful for long, given the deep roots of the jihad ideology within Islam. Still, the article contains some important information:

The FBI and the Pentagon are keeping a close eye on an Islamic missionary group with thousands of U.S. members. In a secret intelligence document obtained by NBC News, terrorism analysts say members of the evangelical movement are ideal recruits for terrorist organizations inside the United States.

On Dec. 13, in Queens, New York, members of a conservative Islamic missionary group known as Tablighi Jamaat brought sleeping bags to their mosque to spend the night discussing religion.

Now, NBC News has obtained a secret government memo which says U.S. anti-terror officials believe radical extremists have been infiltrating this otherwise peaceful Islamic movement and are using Tablighi's U.S. organization "as cover... to network with other extremists in the U.S."

"If al-Qaida needed a fresh set of bodies in order to pull an operation, one of the places that they would go to for that fresh set of bodies would be Tablighi Jamaat, whether it's in the United States or not," says former FBI agent Steve Denny, who has investigated members of Tablighi.

Tablighi preaches a return to fundamental Islamic values and has major mosques in at least 10 states, with as many as 50,000 U.S. members.

Recent pilgrimages in Bangladesh and Pakistan attracted millions. Experts say they were fertile ground for al-Qaida recruiters.

The memo, written in April by the Defense Intelligence Agency, claims some Tablighi members in the U.S. "have the capability to conduct a terrorist attack in the U.S.," though there's no evidence of planning.

The document also says seven Tablighi leaders in the U.S. are under investigation and claims a Tablighi official at a major Midwestern mosque "has associations with several al-Qaida supporters" and may be recruiting "converts for nefarious purposes."

The imam in Queens says the FBI questioned him. He insists that radicals who espouse violence aren't even allowed at his mosque.

"We stop them," says Imam Zia Hafez Paracha. "We don't even let them come."...

Tablighi does not endorse terrorism, but investigators allege some known militants have Tablighi ties:

So-called American Taliban John Walker Lindh was radicalized at a Tablighi-affiliated mosque in California.

Iyman Faris, who plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, posed as a Tablighi missionary to get into the U.S.

Boston terror threat probed

From the Boston Herald, with thanks to Maintour:

Federal and state authorities are investigating a nuclear terrorist threat against Boston after a man calling from Mexico told California police that he smuggled two Iraqis and four Chinese over the border, the Boston Herald has learned.

``They got a call from across the border in Mexico to the California Highway Patrol and he said he brought two Iraqis and four Chinese (individuals) across the border and according to him, they stated soon to follow behind them would be some sort of material,'' said a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.

``He refers to some sort of nuclear material that will follow them through New York up into Boston.''

According to the source, the caller has not identified himself and did not show up for a meeting with federal investigators in California but he did leave pictures of four Chinese men and some names at a ``drop'' site at the Mexico-California border.

``They were dropped by the source at a location. He literally threw them over a fence from Mexico to the U.S. side,'' said the source. ``There are pictures of the four Chinese and some names but just how accurate they are remains a question''

Massachusetts law enforcement officials were notified of the threat at 5:30 a.m. today through the FBI and Boston Police Joint Terrorist Task Force.

The threat was serious enough that Mayor Menino ordered the Fire Commissioner and the state's Homeland Security Chief into his office at City Hall, where they met with officials from the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a high-ranking city official told the Herald.

``They are desperately trying to piece it together,'' said the offial, who added that if the threat is real it is ``very scary.''

A company that trains explosive-sniffing dogs said it was alerted that the canines would be searching for a ``dirty bomb,'' a New York City law enforcement official said yesterday.

UPDATE: This one was a hoax.

Terror cop: Qaeda 'heavily damaged'

Watch for jihadist panhandlers: Brother, can you spare a dime for a mujahid down on his luck? Care to stake a fellow enemy of the Great Satan to a meal? From the New York Daily News, with thanks to Miss Moneypenney:

WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda is "heavily damaged," constantly on the run and so financially strapped that it is having trouble making payments to the families of its dead fighters, the Daily News has learned.

The terror group remains determined, however, to attack the U.S.

"What we see, and I'm including information we've seen as recently as this month, is that the remnants of the organization are not diverted from their goals of attacking us," a senior counterterrorism official told The News.

"Al Qaeda Central is heavily damaged," said the official, who requested anonymity. "But they're still plotting. These guys don't do anything else."

Washington on alert as al-Qaida document threatens limo bombs

From the Irish Examiner, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

A NEW security threat has emerged as Washington gears up for an extravaganza to swear in President George Bush for a second term - limousines containing bombs.

US intelligence sources admit the fears were partially prompted by a 39-page document seized from al-Qaida. The paper details a mechanism for using limousines to deliver bombs equipped with cylinders of a flammable gas, according to Time magazine.

Bombs can be concealed in limos because the vehicles “blend in” and “do not require special driving skills”, it says.

The paper, titled Rough Presentation for Gas Limo Protection, is thought to have been written by Issa al-Hindi, an al-Qaida operative captured in Britain last year. It details how limos can access underground parking structures and “have tinted windows that can hide an improvised explosive device”.

Egypt's most-wanted jihadist to face trial

"Egypt's most-wanted Islamist to face trial," from Middle East Times, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

CAIRO -- The alleged mastermind of an assassination plot against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is in Egyptian custody and will be put on trial, a cabinet minister said in remarks published on Sunday. "Mustafa Hamza is here in Egypt and will be referred to the judicial authorities to be re-tried," interior minister Habib Al Adly told the Al Ahram government newspaper. Hamza, one of Egypt's most-wanted men, heads the outlawed Al Gamaa Al Islamiya Islamic militant group and is suspected of planning a bid to assassinate Mubarak during a visit to Addis Ababa in 1995. He has been separately sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt and, according to Egyptian law, will now be re-tried. Al Gamaa Al Islamiya was also responsible for the murder of 58 German tourists and four Egyptians in an attack in the ancient Nile resort of Luxor in November 1997. The group observed a de facto truce following the massacre and announced in March 1999 that it was renouncing violence.

Well! That makes it all better!

Reconciliation effort with Taliban picks up pace in Afghanistan

But have they given up the jihad? Of course not. From AFP, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

KABUL (AFP) - The release of some 80 prisoners from US custody in Afghanistan heralds an intensified effort to bring former fighters from the Taliban militia back into mainstream society, officials said.

The move could propel a wider amnesty offer aimed at Taliban foot soldiers, some of whom have waged an insurgency from the hills and caves of Afghanistan since the Islamic regime was ousted by a US-led operation in late 2001.

Chief justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari said negotiations with militants from the fundamentalist movement were continuing and some more moderate Taliban were eyeing the olive branch.

"One category of Taliban want to come back and they have contacted us and the government... and the government is providing them the opportunity to come back," Shinwari said after the detainees were freed by the US military from Bagram air base near Kabul on Sunday before the Muslim festival of Eid.

A remaining hard core of fighters, estimated by government officials to number around 100 and "whose hands are stained with blood, are not eligible for the talks and the government will not reconcile with them," Shinwari said.

Speaking to reporters at the Supreme Court on Sunday, he said the release of prisoners has been instrumental in ongoing talks.

"One prisoner whose name is Mullah Qalamuddin, who was a commander of Taliban from Logar province, was released and then he went to Taliban and came back to us with the idea of reconciliation. There are contacts with the government," Shinwari said, adding that the government was negotiating for the release of more prisoners.

However, a purported Taliban spokesman disagreed. "There hasn't been any contact between the Taliban and the government," Abdul Latif Hakimi told AFP by telephone from an unknown location.

Russia: jihad fun for the whole family

"Russian Muslim Develops Computer Game to 'Liberate Chechnya,'" from MosNews, with thanks to Anthony:

An unemployed Russian who converted to Islam has developed a computer game about the liberation of the self-proclaimed republic of Ichkeria — the name given to Chechnya by separatist rebels.

Vladimir Matveyev, a Moscow resident, developed “Ichkeria, Operation Flash-Point” as a game about the Chechen jihad, Ekho Moskvy radio reported, citing an interview with Matveyev.

Matveyev — who prefers to be called Shamil — described the game during the broadcast.

“This is a computer game about the Chechen jihad. The player has several challenges, including liberating Ichkeria and destroying aggressive Russian enemies.”

The game features 11 Russian military bases, and even a concentration camp set up by the FSB. The game is not complete, and Matveyev said he would like Chechens to join his effort. Matveyev does not intend to market his game, however, saying it is not for profit.

What is it for?

8 Chinese kidnapped in Iraq, rebel group admits abductions

From INQ7.net, with thanks to Anthony:

BEIJING, China -- (UPDATE) A group identifying itself as the Movement of the Islamic Resistance Nuamaan Brigade claimed responsibility for kidnapping eight Chinese nationals in Iraq, Chinese state media reported Wednesday.

The group released footage Tuesday of eight hostages holding Chinese passports standing against a mud brick wall along with two masked gunmen.

In the video aired by the Al-Jazeera broadcaster and in an accompanying statement, the group identified itself as the Islamic Resistance Nuamaan Brigade, the China Daily reported.

They had threatened to execute the men unless Beijing "clarifies its role" in Iraq within 48 hours.

Protesting an Anti-Terror Rally? Only in Berkeley

Children repeating anti-Semitic blood libels

From Cinnamon Stillwell and Lee Kaplan in FrontPage:

Held on Sunday, January 16, at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Park, the Rally Against Global Terrorism almost never took place. The city of Berkeley constantly stalled on a permit until the organizers were interviewed on KNEW conservative talk radio host Jeff Katz’s talk show. What followed was enough public outrage that a flurry of emails to City Hall got the permit granted the very next day. Katz became one of the keynote speakers that day giving a rousing call to define terrorism for what it really is: a crime against humanity and not something to be regarded as justified in any way.

As centerpiece for the rally and to bring the reality of terrorism closer to home, the wreckage of Jerusalem Bus #19, destroyed last year in a suicide bombing that killed 11 and wounded 45 passengers, was on display to show the horrors of terrorism up close. The back of the bus was completely blown away along with parts of the front roof. The interior of the bus was all burned and made any sensitive viewer understand the agony of those inside the bus that fateful day the attack occurred.

“Most of those passengers were simply people going to or from work,” Katz told the sympathetic crowd. A large portable mural displayed photos of many of those killed in over 50 suicide bombing attacks on buses in Israel.

700 people attended the rally to protest terrorism worldwide and listen to a diverse group of speakers representing different religious, ethnic, and political points of view. This was an event for Muslims, Jews, Arabs, Hindus, Christians and others who all joined that day to oppose terrorism worldwide. Even some of Berkeley’s homeless joined in. A large portable mural displayed photos of many of those killed in terrorist attacks.

Unfortunately, the day was marred by the bellicose presence of protesters against the bus’s presence in Berkeley because it shows the world the damage that can be done by a suicide bomber. Word got out quickly and even before the rally officially began at noon, a crowd of 300 pro-Palestinian and radical communist and anarchist groups such as International Answer and the International Socialist Organization showed up determined to disrupt the event. They gathered across the street to express their outrage that Jews, Christians, and other supporters of Israel and America had dared to gather and speak out against terrorism.

Groups such as the Justice in Palestine Coalition, Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), East Bay Peace Action, United for Peace and Justice, and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) were present. Paul La Rudee, the leader of Norcal ISM who once wrote about his experiences sleeping in the bed of a suicide bomber , was also present as a leader. As evidence of just where the sympathies of Berkeley’s political establishment lay, Berkeley City Councilman Max Anderson was also part of the crowd.

Around 40 pro-Palestinian college students, the women wearing hijabs and the men sporting Arafat-style black and white checkered keffiyehs (in some cases covering their whole faces, terrorist-style), waved Palestinian flags and used bullhorns to chant “Down with Israel!” and “ Down with the U.S.A!.” They yelled “Free Palestine!” in an attempt to drown out the anti-terrorism speakers on the platform.

Members of San Francisco State University’s General Union of Palestinian Students and UC Berkeley’s Muslim Student Association also joined their ranks and became the most vocal and rowdy of the bunch. They unraveled a large banner reading “United States and Israel: Terrorists Against Humanity.”

One has to wonder at the logic of people who would protest a protest against world terrorism in the name of “humanity.” The demonstrators even brought small children who stood alongside them, shouting slogans and imitating their behavior....

Once on the other side of the street, the remaining police officers parted ways and allowed the unruly mob to disrupt the anti-terror rally. Screaming “Allahu Akbar!” and pushing their way through the crowd, the pro-Palestinian protesters appeared as menacing as a similar crowd in the Middle East. But still the police did nothing to stop them. Some members of the anti-terror rally shouted at the police officers, “Why aren’t you doing anything?” or “Why don’t you stop them?” The police officers ignored them as some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted their desire to be “martyrs.”

Read it all.

Indonesia: Islamic Group Offers Aid, Courts Support

George Bush and Colin Powell hope to win Muslim hearts and minds with tsunami aid, and so do these folks. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- An Islamic group with suspected links to al-Qaida is on a dual mission across this devastated corner of Indonesia: collecting the dead and seeking new followers among the survivors.

The two-tier outreach of the Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia, or Indonesia Holy Warrior Assembly, is an example of how the relief response to the tsunami tragedy can serve as an opportunity to widen support in a country under international pressure to closely watch radical Islamic activities.

As the region slowly claws back from epic destruction, the Mujahidin has also started to blur the lines between offering assistance and polishing its image. Collecting bodies is a pressing service here, as thousands of corpses rot in the tropical heat.

"It would be a lie to say that we are not trying to win over people's hearts to our side," said Jamal Aldin, a volunteer from Jakarta who led one of the body-collection brigades Tuesday. "The survivors will see the work we are doing and maybe they will follow us."

The group -- whose leaders wear black vests with "Mujahidin" written on the back -- has distributed Qurans and information about its views on correct Islamic principles, such as head scarves and avoidance of Western culture. It also keeps a detailed log of local volunteers to call on later.

Another radical group, the Islamic Defenders Front, has set up a camp for survivors in a cemetery in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital. But its agenda is mostly confined to opposing perceived un-Islamic activities such as bars and nightclubs. The Mujahidin's background is considered more worrisome.

The group takes its cues from Abu Bakar Bashir, the cleric now on trial as the alleged leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, the al-Qaida-linked terror cell accused in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people and the 2003 attack on the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that claimed 12 lives.

Mujahidin members also took part in Christian-Muslim fighting in eastern Indonesia in recent years that claimed thousands of lives. Many of the anti-Christian fighters were members of violent Majelis Mujahidin subgroups, including Laskar Mujahidin, which has also set up a tsunami relief operation in Aceh.

"There's certainly been some overlap between Jemaah Islamiyah and the (Mujahidin)," said Sydney Jones, an expert on Indonesia's Islamic radical organizations for the International Crisis Group.

The Islamic Reformation?

There are some who deny the existence of moderate Muslims — that is, people who identify themselves as Muslims but genuinely have no desire to wage jihad against unbelievers in order to force Sharia upon them, and who accept as a model for society Western principles of pluralism and mutual coexistence, rather than Islamic principles of the conversion or subjugation of non-Muslims.

There is a certain surreal element in these denials. When talking with people who say that there are no moderate Muslims, I am tempted to respond with Mark Twain's rejoinder to someone who asked him if he believed in infant baptism. "Of course I believe in it!" he replied. "I've seen it with my own eyes." But of course, in this case it is not quite that simple. Those who deny the existence of such people maintain that they must either be lying or ignorant, and point out that they are violating numerous precepts of the Qur'an and Hadith, and therefore are not true Muslims. There is something of the spectacle in this, in non-Muslims setting themselves up as ayatollahs and muftis and deciding who is Muslim and who isn't. But there is also some truth to it, given the fact that some self-proclaimed moderates are indeed lying or ignorant, and even more importantly, given the fact (unmistakeable to any unbiased researcher) that the Qur'an and Hadith do contain numerous clear exhortations to warfare against unbelievers, as well as numerous warnings against truncating or altering the message of Islam in any way -- which would rule all reformers out of court forever. These exhortations are only amplified by Islamic jurisprudence, Sunni and Shi'ite. As the great ex-Muslim writer (and new Jihad Watch Board member) Ibn Warraq has pointed out, there are moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. Some analysts have maintained that to note the existence of moderate Muslims is to assume the existence also of moderate Islam, but there is no reason why this must be the case, and the analysis itself betrays an awareness of the contents of the texts without a concomitant awareness of the realities of Islamic history and culture. Islam exists as a religious and civic culture in many areas where there is no emphasis on the texts of jihad, and has not been with the span of anyone's memory (at least up until quite recently). Consequently, there are in the world millions of people who identify themselves as Muslims without knowing or caring what Islam teaches about jihad, and without being called to account for it by their local religious leaders.

This doesn't mean that the texts don't exist, or aren't important -- indeed, quite the contrary, since literal-minded jihad terrorists are making inroads and recruits in such places today by calling the Muslims there back to full observance of the Qur'an and Sunnah. But are there Muslims who are sincerely trying to reevaluate such texts in order to make it possible for Muslims to live in peace with the rest of the world? There certainly are -- and Thomas Haidon, author of this FrontPage piece, is one of them.

Haidon speaks realistically here about the possibilities for Islamic reform, with a candor and honesty that have been unfortunately rare from Muslim spokesmen. He accurately characterizes my own position when he notes that I have:

legitimately questioned the ability of reformists to implement comprehensive initiatives due to the impediments that the classical sources and methodology of Islam and Muslim tradition present to us. Spencer has rightly argued that until a reformist movement tables coherent and irrefutable evidence that the version of Islam envisioned by reformists is the "correct Islam", then the movement will never have mass appeal in the Ummah.

I stand by these views. It must be noted that they make a reform in Islam virtually inconceivable. Others, realizing this, have called instead for an outright ban on Islam. I would ask them: how would you propose to enforce such a ban? What penalties would you levy for the continued practice of Islam? Would you prosecute people for evidence that they were ready to commit violence in the name of Islam, or simply for owning a Qur'an and praying Muslim prayers?

The non-Muslim West is in a fight for its very life, although few are willing to admit it. The most important theater of this conflict is not Iraq or Afghanistan, but the domestic ideological conflict in all its permutations. This conflict calls upon us to defend the principles which have made Western civilization great, and unique: equality of dignity and rights for all, due process, etc. If we compromise or discard these principles to fight the jihad, we might as well elect Osama bin Laden President of the United States. Accordingly, I reject solutions to this problem that contravene those principles. But there are no good choices in this conflict: "banning Islam" is a quixotic call with genocidal overtones, trampling upon the freedom of conscience that we should defend (although freedom of conscience must end where violent jihad begins); calling for Islamic reform, however, is essentially just as quixotic, given the dim prospects of such a reform.

What we can do at this point is continue to try to raise awareness of the true nature of this conflict, which is the purpose to which Jihad Watch is dedicated, and advocate in the public sphere measures which take realistic account of the nature of Islam, the implications of virtually unrestricted immigration from Muslim countries, the likelihood of jihadist activity in American mosques, and so on. At the same time, we need to call upon the Muslim world to heed voices like Thomas Haidon's, before the conflict escalates to a point that will make that impossible.

Here is a key excerpt from his piece:

Reform movements and organizations are not only facing a barrage of opposition from Islamist Muslims, but also from "middle of the road," traditional and conservative Muslims. The latter groups, while purporting to agree with some reforms, have argued that organizations such as FMCAT need to develop a more pluralistic and conciliatory approach towards Muslims who do not necessarily support Islamist ideology, but whom are traditional and conservative and less prone to change. These individuals often argue that a softer approach is required. Also, they say we should soften our stances on specific issues in order to include more Muslims. They raise a point in some respects. Perhaps our organization should develop a more pluralistic approach- one that would result in larger membership. I think this can legitimately be achieved through more strategic initiatives. The reformist agenda must not deliberately alienate "middle of the road" Muslims, as they are key to the battle of ideologies. If we lose this contingency, we lose the war.

However, where do we draw the line? Is it possible to be committed to a reformist agenda, while compromising that agenda at the same time? Allowing for even seemingly smaller compromises could lead to a slippery slope where bigger compromises are made. Reformist movements will fade away into insignificance and obscurity. Simply saying that Islam needs reform without taking adequate steps to do so, out of fear from angering those in the Muslim community, will render any movement utterly spineless.

Groups like FMCAT has made some inroads to promote the reformist discourse. The organization has grown to ten active domestic chapters, along with three international chapters in Canada, Egypt and New Zealand. While membership numbers are relatively modest, Muslims have been aligning themselves to the organization at a fairly significant rate as we reach out to local Muslim communities. And to what end is FMCAT contributing intellectually to the reformist movement? The answer is not as much as it can. So far FMCAT and other reformist organizations have failed to develop an effective theological base for reform. This aspect is now in the infant stages of development as our organization has acquired several Islamic scholars (who are the bedrock of real reform) to help create a plan. While we are building a series of grassroots initiatives designed at presenting aspects of the reformist agenda, the development of the theological reasoning behind our mission will be essential to our survival. We are rising to this challenge. We are beginning to accomplish what so many have told us is impossible.

So where do we go from here? Unless reformist organizations develop effective, grass roots strategies to achieve goals that are firmly rooted in theological principles -- i.e. the Qur’an -- the reformist discourse will prove to be nothing but rhetoric. But at the same time, strategies and policies must be developed in such a way that they do not compromise the essence of "reform,” which is the cultivation of a modern and moderate Islam, in order to appease Islamist elements of the Muslim community. Moderate reformist scholars, who have laid the groundwork for this discourse, must also play an active role in the popular, as well as the intellectual, discourse on reform.

UK: Police investigate cleric's 'terror call'

About time. From ITV.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Police are examining an internet sermon given by a radical cleric which reportedly called for young British Muslims to join al-Qaeda.

Syrian-born Omar Bakri Mohammed, 46, reportedly used a webcast to address his followers, claiming that Britain had become a "land of war" for the Muslim community.

Detectives are "assessing" his latest remarks, in which he also allegedly pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and told listeners they were "obliged" to join the Mujahidin.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said: "We are assessing purported comments made by an individual to determine whether a criminal offence has been committed."

Bakri, a father-of-seven, moved to the UK in 1985 after being deported from Saudi Arabia because of his membership of a banned group.

The Home Office has since given him leave to remain in the UK for five years but is reviewing his status.

Last year he sparked outrage by suggesting that an attack on a British school, as happened in Beslan, Russia, would be justified as long as women and children were not deliberately killed and only died in crossfire.

He also once praised the September 11 hijackers as the "magnificent 19".

And at the Quaker meeting house, Bakri calls for Brits to join the jihad. From the TimesOnline, "Extremist cleric staged al-Qaeda recruiting rally":

THE radical Islamist cleric whose internet sermons are being investigated by police has held a secret conference at which British Muslims were urged to join al-Qaeda.

About 600 people, including women and children, punched the air and chanted Allahu akbar (God is greatest) as they were shown videos of hijacked airliners crashing into the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11, 2001. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the radical Syrian-born cleric, said that if the British Government did not relax its tough anti- terrorism laws, the response from Muslims would be “horrendous”. He added: “I declare we should ourselves join the global Islamic camp against the global crusade camp.”

The event was held this month at The Friends Meeting House in Central London, the British headquarters of the Quaker movement. Mr Bakri Mohammed’s followers booked the hall for a health conference entitled Women’s Dawah UK and the Quakers were unaware that it was a political gathering.

Two reporters from United Press International, a United States-based news agency, attended and reported a series of inflammatory speeches by Mr Bakri Mohammed and his cohorts. One speaker said that Western governments would face “a 9/11 day after day after day”.

As the crowd chanted, the man shouted: “Whether they be stones, whether they be sticks, whether they be knives, whether they be bombs, whatever they may be, prepare as much as you can.”

Man gets 40 months in Jewish school firebombing

From CP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MONTREAL (CP) -- A 19-year-old man was sentenced to 40 months in prison on Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to arson in the firebombing of a Jewish elementary school last year.

Sleiman El-Merhebi's sentencing came nine months after the fire at the United Talmud Torahs school, a firebombing that provoked widespread outrage, including Prime Minister Paul Martin's description of the act as "cowardly and racist.''

Although Quebec court Judge Jean Sirois sentenced El-Merhebi to 40 months, he gave him credit for the eight months he has already spent in detention, which counts as double time.

"The sentence beginning today is two years in prison,'' Sirois said.

Sirois said that while El-Merhebi's youth and lack of a criminal record were mitigating factors, the severity of the crime and the fact it targeted a religious group and an elementary school merited a stiff sentence.

"The accused left at the scene a message that demonstrated clearly his intentions to seek revenge on the Jewish community for acts commited overseas, to spread terror by hitting harder next time,'' Sirois said in citing his reasons for the sentence.

"This tract sought the effect of further intimidating the Jewish community.''

The Crown had sought a two-year sentence for what it called an act of "terrorism.''

Spencer: Fox Kowtows to CAIR

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage on the CAIR/24 imbroglio:

Fox’s 24 is a drama about terrorism. Episodes have featured Bosnian terrorists, German terrorists, South American terrorists, and terrorists from a Halliburton-like conglomerate. And, most famously, 24 has featured Muslim terrorists — or at least terrorists with a vaguely Middle Eastern aspect. But while no Bosnians, Germans, South Americans or Halliburton execs contacted the network to complain about the way they were portrayed on the show, when Fox ventured into Islamic terror territory, the network immediately aroused the ire of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).

Sabiha Khan of CAIR’s Anaheim chapter worried that 24’s Muslim terrorists would “contribute to an atmosphere that it’s OK to harm and discriminate against Muslims. This could actually hurt real-life people.” CAIR scheduled a meeting with Fox executives in Los Angeles to air their concerns.

Meanwhile, IslamOnline, a popular Muslim news portal run from Qatar, had its own ideas of who was behind 24’s introduction of Muslim terrorists: Fox Entertainment Group, it said, was “part of Jewish billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.” It asserted that 24’s new plot direction was “hailed by Jewish groups and lobbyists as a bid to reveal Muslims’ ‘true nature,’” and noted that “Jewish writer Daniel Pipes wrote in the Israeli Jerusalem Post and the American New York Post hoping Fox would not bow to Muslim objections on the series.”

IslamOnline dropped “Jewish” from in front of “billionaire Rupert Murdoch” when informed that Murdoch is not, in fact, Jewish, but the implication of the article is still clear: 24’s introduction of Muslim terrorist characters was yet another in a long line of Jewish conspiracies.

It is frequently a bit of knee-jerk paranoia on the part of the defenders of Islamic jihad: that anyone who opposes them must be Jewish. This paranoia about the Jews is nourished by the Qur’an’s portrayal of them as crafty, untrustworthy — and accursed. And of course today jihadists would have us believe that the trouble between Muslims and non-Muslims is all because of Israel.

Although I am not in fact Jewish, I have been frequently labeled as such by Muslim spokesmen who evidently can’t conceive of a non-Jewish opponent of jihad ideology. So have Victor Davis Hanson and Paul Marshall: both have told me that they too have been labeled Jewish by Muslims after writing about Islamic jihad. One day perhaps such Muslim writers will awaken to the fact that the jihad ideology and the depredations of dhimmitude have won them a considerably larger spectrum of opponents than they care to imagine.

But the shadowy “Jewish groups and lobbyists” evidently dropped Fox’s puppet strings, because even before network execs met with CAIR, the producers of 24 removed from the show some material that they were afraid might stereotype Muslims. Fox would not let me see the deleted material or describe it to me. Nor would anyone there speak on the record to me about their meetings with CAIR and the changes to 24; however, I was able to locate an informed source who told me that later in the season, 24 is planning to feature an American Muslim character that CAIR would find more to their liking. Fox also agreed to distribute CAIR’s Public Service Announcement about American Muslims to their affiliates, although the affiliates are not bound to run it during the broadcast of 24 or at any other time.

But why was Fox playing ball with CAIR in the first place? Were the execs who met with CAIR representatives aware that three of its officials have been arrested for various terrorist-related activities? Yes, said the source, that is a matter of public record. Are they aware that CAIR founder Nihad Awad helped establish CAIR after working at the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), where he was public relations director — and that former FBI counterterrorism official Oliver Revell has called the IAP “a front organization for Hamas that engages in propaganda for Islamic militants”? Did they know that Awad himself has declared: “I am in support of the Hamas movement”? Well, yes, said the source, they were aware of allegations that CAIR had some links, however tenuous, with Hamas, but they judged the organization’s complaints on their merits. That’s what Fox always does, he said: it considers not the source of a complaint, but the worthiness of the complaint itself.

So if the Ku Klux Klan called with a complaint, that complaint would be judged on its merits, not its source? That’s a question that only Fox’s cowed executives can answer, and they aren’t talking.

Using Dr. King

Debbie Schlussel recounts the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's efforts to co-opt the image of Dr. Martin Luther King, who is on record opposing the kinds of things they do. From "Radical Islam Wishes You A Happy MLK Day":

While the rest of the nation celebrates King Day and King’s contributions to civil rights, a group of Islamists—who praise HAMAS homicide bombers and Hezbollah terrorists who murdered over 300 Americans—held a Martin Luther King, Jr. essay contest.

The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) of Michigan, headed by “former” Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist, Imad Hamad, held the contest. ADC enlisted two prominent Detroit Black personalities to host the contest’s award ceremony, but their roles are merely servile. The essay contest is only open to Arabs.

So much for King’s dream of the day his children, and the rest of us, to be “judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.”

If Imad Hamad and his ADC were judged by the content of their character, it would be a tough sell.

ADC is one of the most anti-Israel, anti-Semitic organizations in America, today. And one of the most anti-American. While we are fighting terrorists within and abroad, the Saudi-funded ADC is the modern-day equivalent of the German-American Bund. It defends terrorists and fights for their rights in the courts and legislature. For years, ADC defended or ignored Sudan’s Arab Muslim gang-rape, torture, and genocidal murder of millions of Black Christians and Animists. What would Dr. King say about that?

King was adamantly opposed to the views of Hamad and ADC. At a 1968 Harvard appearance, King rebuked a student who attacked Israel. "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism," King said.

(Although an oft-cited “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend,” purportedly by King, may be fabricated, his Harvard quotes are well-documented, in Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Socialism of Fools-The Left, the Jews and Israel," Encounter, (December 1969), p. 24.)

ADC’s leaders have praised Hezbollah, the group that murdered over 300 Americans, while they were sleeping—and protecting Muslim Arabs. “We are all proud of the heroic resistance of its [Hezbollah’s] people and their steadfastness,” said one. “They [Hezbollah] are very respectable,” said another.

Then there’s ADC’s praise for HAMAS, the Islamic Resistance Movement. “I know many people in HAMAS. They are very respectable,” an ADC President told the Rocky Mountain News. “They don’t accept violence.” Yeah, right.

ADC’s publication, ADC Times, ran ads for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which President Bush shut down for funding HAMAS with millions, and which was recently held liable for the HAMAS murder of American teenager David Boim.

ADC constantly accuses America of “genocide”.

Imad Hamad is the same tune, different key. In 2003, after I wrote about Hamad in the New York Post, the FBI revoked a national award that FBI Director Robert Mueller was to give him. FBI sources said Hamad is the subject of over a dozen open terrorism-related investigations, including a Detroit “charity” which openly gave money to HAMAS and raised money for “uprisings” against U.S. troops in Iraq.

The federal government fought for over two decades to deport Hamad, because videos showed he is a member of the PFLP terrorist group. Unfortunately, the Clinton Administration and Janet Reno gave up, and he’s now a U.S. citizen. Now, this “former” terrorist—who praised as “patriotic” Palestinian Authority TV “Children’s Club” broadcasts teaching young children to become terrorists—has formed an ADC “Children’s Club” to “teach” young Arab American children.

Hamad protested Saddam Hussein’s capture, and threatened a school board member with “serious . . . unhealthy consequences unless Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr became a school holiday. A year ago, Hamad called Hezbollah terrorists “heroes,” holding a celebration for them. He and ADC are busy boycotting and threatening five major Michigan banks for doing business with Israel - an illegal secondary boycott under the federal Anti-Boycott laws.

Would Dr. King support that? Not likely. Remember, King said Hamad and ADC are anti-Semites. And he was right.

Why is Detroit’s Fox News anchor, Fanchon Stinger, hosting this event, scheduled for January 27th (in disrespect, ADC was open for business on King Day)? Ask her boss, Dana McDaniel (direct dial: 248-552-5138), news director of FOX’s owned and operated WJBK-Detroit, about this breach of journalistic ethics.

The location of the event is equally malignant. Dearborn’s Bint Jebail Cultural Center is a club for Detroiters from Bint Jebail, the Hezbollah-controlled village on the tip of southern Lebanon, from which Muslim terrorists made attacks on Northern Israel. Members of the club are Hezbollah-supporting Muslims. It’s the scene of a number of pro-terrorist rallies and celebrations.

Hamad’s ADC-Michigan predecessor, Terry Ahwal told the Detroit Free Press, "Arabs believe blacks as people will steal from them or even kill them." Hamad’s respect for Blacks is not an improvement. After a series of profiling incidents, in which Detroit Arab gas station owners kidnapped, attacked, and even murdered Black customers, Hamad attacked Black protesters, threatening that they would "escalate tensions."

Martin Luther King, Jr. is turning over in his grave.

Pipes: CAIR's Double Standard

Daniel Pipes in FrontPage on CAIR's Muslim supremacism:

The mentality of radical Islam includes several main components, of which one is Muslim supremacism – a belief that believers alone should rule and otherwise enjoy an exalted status over non-Muslims. This outlook dominates the Islamist worldview as much in the elegant streets of Paris as in the rude caves of Afghanistan.

Two recent American criminal cases highlight this attribute. Both involve the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Saudi-funded group whose leadership sometimes announces its goal to Islamize the United States (“Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant”).

The first criminal case concerns Dale T. Ehrgott, a non-Muslim insurance broker living in Reno, Nevada. Appalled by CAIR’s record of apologizing for terrorism, plus the then-recent arrest on terrorism-related charges of its former employee Ismail Royer, Ehrgott dashed off four angry e-mails to CAIR in mid-2003.

One read: “We accept you [sic.] holy war. Looking forward to it very much. We can deal with you easily especially since you are on our soil. You have taught us much about terrorism so get ready to be the receiver.” In another message, some weeks later, he wrote: “You are making a lot of people angry and you idiots are sitting ducks.”

“It wasn’t a threat, just a nasty e-mail,” Ehrgott told The Associated Press. He described CAIR as “an anti-American organization” and points out that at no time did he physically intimidate it. CAIR saw matters differently and forwarded the notes to law enforcement, which came down heavily on Ehrgott, perhaps because the Department of Justice decided to make an example of him.

Describing these e-mails as containing “a threat to injure members” of CAIR, the U.S. attorney for Nevada, Daniel Bogden, convinced a federal grand jury in March 2004 to indict Ehrgott. Bogden then threw the book at Ehrgott, who, if convicted, faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

But after his September 2004 trial ended in a hung jury, the feds abruptly lost their taste for prosecuting Ehrgott. They settled with him on Jan. 13, letting him off with a trivial sentence – one year’s probation and fifty hours of community service, implicitly acknowledging that he had acted rashly but not dangerously.

The second case concerns Taiser Hosien Okashah, a Muslim food broker (and an illegal immigrant from Syria) living in Miami Beach. On June 3, 2004, Okashah threatened to destroy Best Buy store in Plantation, Florida, because, according to the store clerk’s sworn testimony, he was displeased with a rebate offer on a laptop computer. “I am going to come back and blow up this place if I do not get my money this time,” the clerk quotes him saying. On June 29, the authorities arrested Okashah, charged him with threatening to detonate an explosive, and briefly jailed him without bond.

Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR’s Florida office, leapt to Okashah’s defense. Muslims, he said, are “very concerned that a very humble member of the community, for asking a question about a rebate, can be put in jail.” Ali attributed Okashah’s travails to a miscommunication exacerbated by the negative stereotyping of Muslims. A CAIR press release further specified that the arrest stemmed from “language barriers and over-reactions by store employees and law enforcement officials.”

Ali also sought to have the judge in the case removed because he had ordered Okashah to undergo a psychological evaluation. Nonetheless, Okashah is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 14, for the second-degree felony charge of “threatening to detonate an explosive device.”

In CAIR’s eyes, then, when a non-Muslim broker responds too emotionally to terrorism, he deserves years in jail and financial ruin. But when a Muslim broker threatens a store, he’s the innocent victim of “negative stereotyping” who deserves release without any punishment at all.

"Or maybe you are an arm of the establishment that creates fictional characters like osama bin laden etc."

It seems as if the capacity for self-delusion on the part of some supporters of the global jihad is boundless, as evidenced by these two hate emails that just came in:

Hi guys,

why is their so much hatred in your website? chill-out please.

Its ignorant people like u that the gloabalists use to fuel their
agenda.

Or maybe you are an arm of the establishment that creates fictional
characters like osama bin laden etc.

Religion has been used for CENTURIES by evil people for their own
puposes. Osama Bin Laden is a bad person proably a by product of our
intelligence agencies. Im sure he's still working for them. Please
dont contribute to all the garbage out there.

That one is another example of the recurring tendency to ascribe "hate" to those who report on the words and deeds of people like Osama, rather than admit -- to themselves, as well as to others -- that the hate comes from the jihadists, and that they are not creations of the CIA, but are themselves responsible for the evil they have done.

And another:

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are BRUTAL OPPRESSIVE DICTATORSHIPS! Indonesia and Malaysia are PROGRESSIVE MODERATE DEMOCRATIC MUSLIM NATIONS! STOP SLANDERING THEM! STATES LIKE Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan WILL LEAD TO MORE TERROR NOT LESS! ROBERT SPENCER YOU ARE AN IMBECILE! INDONESIA AND MALAYSIA ARE PROGRESSIVE ASIAN MUSLIM DEMOCRACIES!!! GET THAT IN YOUR THICK SKULL!!!

That one came in with this return email address: "Robertspencerisobsessedwithsladeringdemocraticindonesia@jew.com."

I must confess that I have been able to drop off to sleep on the odd night without thinking about Indonesia, but in a certain sense it's true: I have no respect for a regime that tolerates the jihad murder of as many as 10,000 Christians.

And as for "jew.com," it becomes tiresome to repeat it, as it is so frequently a bit of knee-jerk paranoia on the part of the defenders of Islamic jihad: that anyone who opposes them must be Jewish. This paranoia about the Jews is nourished by the Qur'an's portrayal of them as crafty, untrustworthy -- and accursed. And of course today jihadists would have us believe that the trouble between Muslims and non-Muslims is all because of Israel.

I am not in fact Jewish. Nor are Victor Davis Hanson or Paul Marshall, who have told me that they too have been labeled Jewish by Muslims after writing about Islamic jihad. One day perhaps such Muslim writers will wake up to the fact that the jihad ideology and the depredations of dhimmitude have won them a considerably larger spectrum of opponents than they care to imagine.

A Note on Trolls from Hugh Fitzgerald, Doing His Famous Impersonation of the Oldest of the Three Billy-Goats-Gruff

Jihad Watch has lately been visited by another in a long series of provocateurs whose mission seems to be to tie up commenters in irrelevancies and red herrings. Jihad Watch Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has a few remarks on this subject:

Many people come to Jihadwatch to read items garnered from the world’s press, television, satellite channels, about that most misreported, and underreported, of matters: those aspects of the ideology of Islam which make it a menace and a threat to all non-Muslims. Pieties about the “three abrahamic faiths” and the supposed benign links between the “three great monotheisms” obscure the fact that Islam is, in large part, a geopolitical program. The word “religion” tends to automatically confer a degree of respect, and sympathy, and to foster a continued, and dangerous, unwariness, in the minds of adherents of other religions.

It is this website that, along with others, brings together articles from disparate sources, that show how the impulse toward Jihad is demonstrated throughout the world, in both the dar al-Islam (the lands where Islam rules, and Muslims predominate) and in dar al-harb, the lands where Infidels remain, as yet unsubjugated). It further offers examples of what may be called “dhimmitude,” that is an attitude of abasement and appeasement, that in Muslim states was the lot of all non-Muslims (those that remained alive), but which can be observed, fascinatingly, in countries still under Infidel control, but where some Infidels, out of ignorance, sentimentality, or more sinister impulses, including hostility toward their own societies and countries, manage to display, even when not forced to, that same attitude of supine compliance with Muslim demands, and Muslim views, that are such an unattractive feature, for example, of the upper reaches of the E.U. bureaucracy. What began as a venal attempt to curry favor, so as to be able to “recycle petrodollars,” has become a habit of mind. Western media, used to doing the Arab bidding in their presentation of the Arab Jihad against Israel, have extended that behavior in their coverage – or non-coverage – of Islamic behavior directed at targets other than Israel.

This site bring informations about both Jihad and Dhimmitude. Simply by presenting varied items of news, and laying bare, in the occasional accompanying commentary, the ways in which dhimmitude can be expressed, and furthermore, the ways in which Jihad remains the central, most persistent and significant aspect of Islam, one which has to be thoroughly understood and that understanding assimilated – given the failure of so many to undertake the most elementary study of Islam and of Muslim history themselves, content rather to mouth platitudes, if no longer about “peace” and “tolerance,” then new platitudes about the need for a “dialogue of civilizations” that is simply the old nonsense and apologetics in new garb.

In addition, those who blog at each thread often supplement, with their own analyses or other links, or pasted-in quotations, some of them quite apposite in what they find in obscure places, often eke out, in amazing ways, the raw news items.

Manners maketh man. Polite posters, what might be called coquettishly, or etiquettishly, Emily-Post-ers, try to keep to the matter at hand, as best they can. They derive profit and pleasure from the observations of others, and try in turn to offer profit and pleasure. One hopes that those who do not visit will, in the future, by googling, wander through the cyber-archives which do not date and ought to be consulted – paper-writing students, please note -- along with the day’s fresh offerings. It is a good way to learn about Qur’an and Hadith and Sira, to find out what Taqiyya is and to be shown examples of such Taqiyya in practice. It is a good way to learn about Muhammad’s own behavior (the execution of the Bani Qurayza, the attack on the Khaybar Oasis, etc.), and about his significance, therefore, as the “perfect man” and permanent model to be emulated, through time and space.

One discovers here repeated mention of scholars of dhimmitude, such as the pioneering Bat Ye’or, about such articulate ex-Muslims as Ibn Warraq, about such websites as www.secularislam.org, and www.faithfreedom.org, and www.dhimmitude.org and www.nojihad.com. The United States, one is constantly reminded, is not the only Infidel target, but merely the most powerful and resolute among those targets. One is reminded that Christians and Jews are not the only non-Muslims who must be defeated and subjugated; worse fates are to be meted out, at least theoretically, to Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Confucians, and of course all atheists and agnostics.

One learns of the emphasis in Islam on the collective, and the severe limits placed on individual autonomy, and especially on freedom of conscience and belief. One learns that for a good Muslim, loyalty can never be offered the Infidel nation-state; that is a logical impossibility; it can only be offered to fellow Muslims, to the umma al-islamiyya. Some Muslims may choose to ignore this requirement; they are being, from the Muslim point of view, bad Muslims. From the Infidel point of view, they are less troubling.

Visitors to this site know that Jihad-conquest exists independently of any particular foreign policy or behavior. It exists independently of where Muslims live, or how much money they have, or how much education they have, or the degree of their exposure to the Western world. It exists independently of the degree of despotism they experience in the Muslim countries, or the degree of material and other success they find in the Infidel lands. For it is a matter of ideology – of what is contained in Qur’an, Hadith, and Sira, which is to say, the entire belief-system of Islam.

It is here, at this website, that one learns about the many crushing burdens – economic, political, social – which, under the Sharia, are to be imposed on all dhimmis, a word which refers to those Infidels (chiefly Christians and Jews) who, though may be permitted to live, and not forced to immediately convert, are made subject to a regime of such enforced and permanent humiliation, degradation, and insecurity that vast areas of the Middle East and North Africa, once entirely populated by non-Muslims, have now become almost entirely Muslim. The same is true for large areas of black Africa, and in Asia – the numbers of Muslims rises, and the non-Muslims slowly, under oppression soft or hard, if not killed or exiled, decrease inexorably in numbers.

Why is it so important to understand dhimmitude? It is potentially the future for much of the Western world, beginning with Europe. One has to awaken first oneself, and then others, from this deep sleep of unreason. The canonical texts of Islam are fixed forever. They do not change. They are not subject to interpretation, for the “gates of ijtihad” (interpretation) closed a thousand years ago. The publicized efforts of some Bright Young Muslim Things who tell us that they can take care of all that, they’ll do all the necessary re-interpreting, merely prolong the complacence, and delay the right reckoning.

A great deal of information can be derived from the daily mental bread, the panem quotidianum, that is offered up, every morning, by some early-rising bakers at Jihadwatch. One hopes that more and more visitors will come, to discover that the apologetics in which so many indulge in the so-called major media, need not be parroted, nor accepted, and can be made subject to withering cross examination by Robert Spencer, and by others who, self-deputized to help the marshal with the gang that just rode into town, decided -- even now, while many terrified townsfolk still hide behind their doors – to awkwardly put on their badges, and lend a hand.

This whole matter is neither elementary particle physics, nor classical Greek prosody. It requires only that texts be understood, that trustworthy scholars be discovered and read, that the rhetorical tricks of apologists for Islam be analyzed and understood. It requires that bowdlerized versions of the Qur’an be mocked, that the inconsistencies within the Qur’an be recognized, and the way that Muslims themselves resolve those inconsistencies be clearly understood.

No one who comes repeatedly to Jihadwatch will suffer any of that confusion and mental désarroi that so many suffer from, and which derive from the failure of the press, of our leaders, of all those whose duty it is to instruct us, to forthrightly discuss Islam.

That is what Jihadwatch is for. That is what it attempts to do. That is its value.

It is not meant for people to be inveigled into trading insults with what are called “Trolls” – that is, those who appear at various threads only in order to distract, to waste precious time (and space on the thread), to bring out the silliest in everyone. Why collaborate with those who do not wish this site well? Whether hater of America, or anti-Semite, or fanatical Jihadist, the troll dangles the tempting bait of his, or her, own unhinged personality before would-be posters. It would be better not to take that bait.

But this distracts attention from other, more serious, matters. There is no real way to answer such people. Were you to pass on the street someone ranting similar stuff, the spittle streaming from the sides of his mouth and his eyes gleaming, would you not quicken your step, and simply leave him to his rant? Why should cyberspace be any different? It is flatly untrue that everyone possesses some core of logic, some ability to reason things out, to consider evidence presented by others. Evidence, logic, and so on have no meaning for such people. Either they are captives of a Total Explanation of the Universe, or they have, in order to make sense of the universe, mentally enslaved themselves to some Total Explanation that is their own creation. In their fantasy world, they keep rounding up the usual scapegoats as suspects, and there is no need for them to conduct a trial in the courthouse of their own minds: those scapegoats are always guilty as charged – America, the West, “the Jews,” etc.. It is silly to believe that all mankind shares a certain good sense, a shared residue of common humanity. All God’s chillum, the Family of Man, that sort of sentimental thing. It doesn’t and we don’t.

Those who are unhinged, and who enjoy playing trolls -- these trolling players, or strolling players, strutting their very poor stuff upon their own miserable stage -- need not occupy any of us at this website, whether we are groundlings or sitting with the gods. These are outpatients from the Laughing Academy. It is impolite for sane people to stare; they should walk briskly by, and quicken their step.

Ibn Warraq joins the Jihad Watch Board

I am very pleased to announce that the renowned Islamic expert Ibn Warraq has joined the Board of Directors of Jihad Watch.

Ibn Warraq, of course, has for years been one of the most significant and outspoken opponents of jihad terrorism. His books on Islam are essential reading for anyone who wants to know the whole truth about the challenge the non-Muslim world is facing today from the warriors of jihad. He is the author of Why I Am Not A Muslim; and editor of Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out; The Quest for the Historical Muhammad; The Origins of the Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book; and What the Koran Really Says: Language, Text, and Commentary.

He also wrote the Preface to my own forthcoming essay collection, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims, which should be available very soon. I can tell you now that it is one of the highlights of the entire collection, and is characterized by Ibn Warraq's trademark erudition and wit. This book also features his landmark deflating of the Orientalist balloon, "Edward Said and the Saidists: Or Third World Intellectual Terrorism." That alone is worth the price of admission.

We are honored that Ibn Warraq has agreed to join the Board, and look forward to a long and fruitful association in defense of universal human rights and the equality of dignity of all people, against the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude.

ADDENDUM: You may be interested in this knockdown, dragout FrontPage Symposium on various aspects of Islam. On one side, Ibn Warraq and me. On the other: Hussam Ayloush of CAIR and As`ad AbuKhalil, a professor in California.

Christians and Muslims brawl in New Jersey

"Christians & Muslims Brawl," from the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

January 18, 2005 -- An emotional holy war broke out yesterday on the streets of Jersey City, where Muslims and Christians clashed and lobbed insults at the funeral for a devout family of Egyptian immigrants who may have been slain for their religious beliefs.

While mourners inside the St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church prayed for peace in the wake of a murder that escalated religious tensions at home and abroad, fights erupted amid the crowd that spilled outside the church, where angry Coptic Christians pointed accusing fingers at their Muslim counterparts.

Hossam Armanious, 37, his wife, Amal Garas, 37, and their two daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were found dead in their Oakland Avenue home early Friday after relatives told police nobody had heard from them in days.

Investigators said each victim was bound, gagged and stabbed in the neck, and the early focus was on anti-Muslim remarks Armanious made in a popular religious chat room after a relative said Armanious was threatened online for expressing his Christian beliefs.

Officials said the religious persecution theory is still under investigation, but said some evidence points to robbery as a motive.

Members of the city's Coptic community — many of whom left Egypt like Armanious to escape religious threats — believe there is a connection between their faith and the murders.

That sentiment was expressed loudly by one parishioner inside who began yelling at Muslims, including a sheik, who attended the service.

"Muslim is the killer," he said over and over before he was dragged from the church by five police officers who hustled him into an unmarked police car and quickly drove away.

Tensions were high even before the first copper-colored casket arrived, when, during a procession to the church from Journal Square, family members asked mourners to put away anti-Muslim protest signs.

But emotions really boiled over in the moments after the wistful service when a skirmish broke out as the four black hearses adorned with the victims' pictures were being loaded.

Punches were thrown, people were shoved and police rushed in to break up the brawl that had moved up Bergen Avenue to a nearby parking garage.

For a while, cops kept the crowd separated with a metal garage gate until they could restore order.

"I think people here have fueled it," family friend Henry Simon, 35, said of the tension.

"The sheik came at the wrong time. It's like spitting on their graves."

Those too sad to be angry had kind words for the deeply religious family, especially young Sylvia, who died a day before her Sweet 16 party.

If robbery were the motive — and reports have been conflicting about whether the family was robbed at all — it would be strange that the victims were all stabbed in the neck, as opposed to any other place. But then there is the possibility that they were struck in the necks for being unbelievers, in accord with Qur'an 47:4. The idea that if it were a robbery, it couldn't be a religiously-motivated killing, is silly. After all, historically Muslim warriors always plundered the victims of jihad.

Note also this interesting detail buried at the end of the story:

Investigators learned that a relative of the victims had helped prosecutors in their case against Lynne Stewart, the lawyer charged with passing messages to followers of her client, blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a convicted terrorist ringleader.

But sources close to the case said there is no connection between the relative and the murders.

Holland: Tight security, media hype as threatened MP returns

One of the foremost heroes of modern Europe, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, returns. From Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

AMSTERDAM — Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is returning to Parliament on Tuesday, ending an absence of several months following death threats levelled against her after the November murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh.

Soon after the brutal killing it was discovered that Islamic extremists were planning to murder Hirsi Ali. She was then flown by the Dutch military from the airbase Valkenburg on 10 November to the US base Brunswick in the state of Maine.

The two terrorist suspects arrested after a 14-hour stand-off in The Hague on 10 November are accused of planning the Somali-born MP's murder. It has since been revealed that the murder was planned for New Year's Eve, when fireworks would disguise the sound of shooting.

Hirsi Ali is known for her strong criticism of the Islamic faith, having previously called the prophet Mohammed a pervert by modern standards for taking a child bride. She also co-wrote with Van Gogh the film Submission, which took a critical look at domestic violence in Islam.

Her return to parliament — which coincides with the return of MPs from the Christmas recess — is expected to attract a lot of media attention. A press conference at 4pm will be broadcast live on Dutch public radio and television, while journalists from France, Germany and Britain will also attend.

Moreover, Hirsi Ali is also is expected to meet with Lower House chairman Frans Weisglas and be officially reunited with her Liberal VVD colleagues.

Kidnapped archbishop freed in Iraq

No ransom was paid. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MOSUL, Iraq (CNN) -- A Catholic archbishop has been released one day after he was kidnapped in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the Vatican confirmed Tuesday.

No ransom was paid for the release of Basil George Casmoussa, a spokesman for the Vatican in Rome said. There were reports that the kidnappers used his cell phone to demand a $200,000 ransom for the 66-year-old archbishop.

Monsignor Tomas Hadid, a spokesman for the Vatican embassy in Baghdad, said he had spoken to Casmoussa after he was released and said he's "grateful to God" for the archbishop's release.

Casmoussa was outside a private residence on a main road in al-Muhendisin, in Mosul, when he was abducted Monday, said Kahsro Goran, deputy governor of Nineveh province.

Catholic Archbishop Abducted in Iraq

From AP, with thanks to Belisarius:

VATICAN CITY — A Roman Catholic archbishop in Mosul, Iraq, has been kidnapped, the Vatican said Monday.

It identified the kidnapped man as Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, 66, of the Syrian Catholic Church, one of the branches of the Roman Catholic Church.

"The Holy See deplores in the firmest way such a terrorist act," a Vatican statement said, demanding that he be freed immediately.

A priest in Iraq said on condition of anonymity that the archbishop was walking in front of the Al-Bishara church in Mosul's eastern neighborhood of Muhandeseen when gunmen forced him into a car and drove away.

There are some nomenclature problems here (the Syrian Catholic Church is not a "branch" of the Roman Catholic Church, but a Church in its own right, in communion with Rome, and this Archbishop is not a "Roman" Catholic, but, obviously, a Syrian Catholic), but they aren't important. What is important is the question of whether this will lead the Vatican to speak more forthrightly about the threat of Islamic jihad, or to retreat more into dhimmitude.

Family, Friends Mourn Slain N.J. Family

This AP story (thanks to BHall) contains more information about the New Jersey murders.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — A funeral procession for two parents and their two daughters found brutally slain in their home last week drew hundreds of mourners Monday and some in the crowd blamed the deaths on simmering religious tensions in the family's native Egypt.

Services for 47-year-old Hossam Armanious, his 37-year-old wife, Amal Garas, and their two daughters were being held at the St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church, a Christian congregation where the family was active.

As the procession of about 300 people made its way on foot through city streets to the church, Iman Garas, sister of the slain mother, ran up and pounded on each of the four caskets, screaming, "Oh my God. Oh my God. They've left me all alone."

The family immigrated to the United States in 1997 from Egypt, where Coptic Christians generally live in peace with Muslims. But tensions between the religions there have flared and become violent in recent years.

After revelations over the weekend that Hossam Armanious was active on an Internet chat site devoted to Coptic Christianity, Monir Dowoud, president of the American Coptic Association, told 200 people outside the family's church on Sunday that "Muslim terrorists" were responsible.

Local authorities downplayed the religious link and the regional head of the Coptic church cautioned against a rush to judgment. But friends of the slain family said Hossam Armanious received death threats two months ago after writing what were perceived as insults to Islam.

During the processional Monday, mourners held placards and pushed and shoved. Some shouted anti-Muslim slogans. One man ran alongside the procession screaming, "Islam is not a religion. Islam is not a religion."...

Police have said that there were no signs of forced entry at the home, where the four bodies were found bound and gagged early Friday. Authorities said robbery remained a possible motive because no cash or jewelry were found in the home. Guy Gregory, first assistant Hudson County prosecutor, said the wallet of Hossam Armanious was found empty.

Officials and relatives have said that the family reported a burglary last year during which jewelry was stolen.

Autopsies showed the victims bled to death from puncture wounds to their heads, necks and bodies.

National Intelligence Council: "Radical Islam will have a significant global impact… rallying disparate ethnic and national groups and perhaps even creating an authority that transcends national boundaries"

From a new NIC report, "Mapping the Global Future," with thanks to Anthony:

Central Asian countries—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—face the stiff challenge of keeping the social peace in a context of high population growth, a relatively young population, limited economic prospects, and growing radical Islamic influence.

These are the countries that some Muslim moderates point to as the hope of moderate Islam, because they have evolved Islamic cultures that pay scant attention to jihad and have generally harmonious relations with non-Muslims. However, as I have pointed out many times, these cultures are vulnerable to inroads from jihadists who quote chapter and verse and call young Muslims there back to "pure Islam."

The report also says this about the future of the Islamic jihad movement worldwide:

Radical Islam. Most of the regions that will experience gains in religious “activists” also have youth bulges, which experts have correlated with high numbers of radical adherents, including Muslim extremists. [11]

Youth bulges are expected to be especially acute in most Middle Eastern and West African countries until at least 2005-2010, and the effects will linger long after.

In the Middle East, radical Islam’s increasing hold reflects the political and economic alienation of many young Muslims from their unresponsive and unrepresentative governments and related failure of many predominantly Muslim states to reap significant economic gains from globalization.

The spread of radical Islam will have a significant global impact leading to 2020, rallying disparate ethnic and national groups and perhaps even creating an authority that transcends national boundaries. Part of the appeal of radical Islam involves its call for a return by Muslims to earlier roots when Islamic civilization was at the forefront of global change. The collective feelings of alienation and estrangement which radical Islam draws upon are unlikely to dissipate until the Muslim world again appears to be more fully integrated into the world economy.

“Radical Islam will have a significant global impact… rallying disparate ethnic and national groups and perhaps even creating an authority that transcends national boundaries.”

Radical Islam will continue to appeal to many Muslim migrants who are attracted to the more prosperous West for employment opportunities but do not feel at home in what they perceive as an alien culture.

Here, courtesy Robert Adams, is a link to a pdf of the entire report. (Note: it's a 123-page, 6.7 MB download)

Denmark warns of terror attack on Aceh aid workers

Gratitude watch. From Reuters, with thanks to Anthony:

COPENHAGEN, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Denmark said it had received information about terror attacks on Monday against international rescue workers in Indonesia's Aceh province, devastated by the Dec. 26 tsunami.

"We have received information from sources abroad that somebody would be planning an attack today," Danish foreign ministry official Niels Erik Andersen told national public service broadcaster DR.

Earlier, the ministry said in a statement it had "received information that imminent terror attacks are being planned against foreign rescue workers" in Aceh. It did not elaborate on the nature of the threat or the origin of the information.

A Danish aid worker in Aceh's capital Banda Aceh said he and his colleagues had been briefed about a threat to a relief group active in an area of Sumatra some 180 km (110 miles) from Banda Aceh.

An Indonesian government spokesman said the militant Free Aceh Movement (GAM) could be behind the threat.

Separately, religious fundamentalists in staunchly Muslim Aceh, who want independence for their gas-rich province, have expressed anger over what they say is proselytising by Christian aid groups involved in post-tsunami relief efforts.

Deadly blast shakes Thai south

Jihad against restaurant patrons. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- A bomb believed planted by Muslim insurgents exploded at a noodle shop in southern Thailand Sunday, killing one person and injuring 59 others, officials said.

The blast occurred in the central district of Yala, provincial capital of Yala province.

Thailand's three southernmost provinces have been plagued for the past year by violence the authorities blame on a revived Muslim separatist movement.

The bomb was left in the shop and triggered remotely by a mobile phone at noon while the shop was crowded, police said.

Witnesses said the bomb may have been planted by a woman who left her purse on a chair and walked out shortly before the explosion, provincial police chief Col. Parinya Kwangyeun said.

The restaurant's owner was confirmed dead, and 59 other people were hospitalized with injuries, including 10 who were in critical condition, Parinya said.

Philippines: JI weakens but jihad vs gov’t continues--military

From INQ7.net, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ALTHOUGH the strength of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) weakened in 2004 compared to 2003, this would not affect its operations in the country, the military said Monday. “The decrease was attributed to the arrest of JI members in Indonesia and Malaysia,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Buenaventura Pascual said in a statement.

But Pascual added: “The JI members in the country are expected to continue waging jihad against the Philippine government in pursuit of unifying Southern Philippines with other Southeast Asian states.”

Palestinian producer: False film funded by PA

"Jenin, Jenin" was Propaganda, Propaganda. From WND, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

A Palestinian filmmaker who produced a documentary alleging Israeli troops committed war crimes in a refugee camp admitted in a deposition last week to falsifying scenes, using inaccurate information and obtaining financing for the project from the Palestinian Authority, WorldNetDaily has learned.

Muhammad Bakri, producer of "Jenin, Jenin," a documentary that claims Israel committed genocide in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, admitted in a deposition to inaccuracies throughout his film. The filmmaker is being sued by five Israeli soldiers visible in still footage in the film, which alleges IDF troops killed a "large number" of civilians, mutilated Palestinian bodies, randomly executed and bombed women, children and the mentally and physically impaired, and leveled the entire refugee camp, including a wing of the local hospital.

The documentary doesn't show footage of the alleged atrocities, but in some scenes, faces of the soldiers now suing Bakri were superimposed over "eyewitness testimony," and it was indicated they had committed "war crimes."

But Bakri, in a deposition obtained by WND, admitted he "believed" selected witnesses but didn't check the information they provided.

"I believed the things that I've been told. What I did not believe was not included in the film," said Bakri.

When asked about a scene in which it is implied Israeli troops ran over civilians, Bakri admitted to constructing the footage himself as an "artistic choice." He also answered "no" when asked if he believed "that during the operation in Jenin, the Israeli soldiers killed people indiscriminately."

In perhaps the most explosive element of the deposition, Bakri admitted his documentary, which was screened in theaters around the world, was financed in part by the Palestinian Authority. He said Yasser Abed Rabu, Palestinian minister of culture and information and a member of former PLO leader Yasser Arafat's executive committee, "covered a part of the film expenses."

Ali Sina: 4 Slain and the Media is Silent

The indefatigable Ali Sina of Faith Freedom on the New Jersey murders:

Last year a big part of the news in America was about a basketball player and his escapade with a woman who first solicited to have sex with him and then accused him of rape. The news was all over the media. Why such silly incident should be newsworthy is not clear. But the whole accusation and trial was televised and broadcasted by every single media outlet in America ad nauseam. The same circus was played in the case of the pop singer Michael Jackson and his child molestation charges. His trial received as much coverage as the presidential election.

But last Friday a whole family of four was slain in their own home. Their throats were slit. They were stabbed and brutally murdered. Yet no one said a word. An Egyptian American man 47, his wife 37 and his two daughters 16 and 8 were all found dead, soaked in their own blood at their New Jersey home today. The jewelry was not missing. Burglary has been ruled out. The police suspect only one motive: “religious hate”.

The father, Hossam Armanious, spent some of his spare time in Internet chat rooms debating about religion and speaking out against the Islamic persecution of the Coptic Christians in his native country, Egypt.

About two months ago, when he made a comment in a Paltalk chat room, he was threatened.

"Some Muslim guys said if you don't stop this, we're going to come out and kill you," said a family friend. To which he responded: “Here is America , I am free to say whatever I want”.

Armanious could not be more wrong. When he found out that even in America he was not free to speak his mind, it was already too late. He was stabbed to death, his throat was slashed and his entire family was butchered.

But amazingly, the media did not find this horrendous crime newsworthy. Except a few, none of them had any word about it. Not a squeak was heard from CNN; no mention of this on ABC, CBS or any other big media outlet!

Is it that the big American media already know what Armanious did not know? Are they afraid to report this carnage? Have they already convinced themselves that even in America you are not free to speak your mind and the first amendment is baloney? Or perhaps they have sold their soul to the devil of political correctness?

The NBC news reported “authorities were investigating whether a former tenant, who had had a dispute with the family, was involved.” There is no mention of the death threat in their report.

A dispute with a former tenant!? Do people kill an entire family over a past tenancy dispute? What kind of person can slash the throat of an eight year old child for a dispute over a few hundred dollars? Are the reporters in NBC stupid or do they think their viewers are stupid?

The abclocal.go.com reported: “With no signs of forced entry or robbery, detectives suspect the victims may have known their killer. But at this moment, still no motive or suspect in this heartbreaking case.”

But this is a lie. The authorities HAVE some clue about the motives.

The nj.com reported the full story: “An uncle of Armanious' wife, Amal Garas, said yesterday that detectives told him they were pursuing the chat room argument as a possible motive for the slayings. The uncle, Milad Garas, was one of many family members interviewed by police Friday. "One detective said this was his theory," the uncle said.

The local northjersey.com reported “Islamic extremists may have murdered four members of a Coptic Orthodox family.”

And the newyorkpost.com titled its article “Islamic Hate Eyed in Slays.”

The rest of the media did not even report the carnage. These media moguls who kill to report about the sex scandals of celebrities were shamefully silent over this horrendous crime. Those few who reported it did not dare to say a word about the possible suspects.

Has America already become a dhimmi nation? Are the big American media afraid of the Islamists? Do the reporters fear for their own lives? What is the explanation of this silence? How many more deaths do you need before you wake up and realize our freedom in America is hijacked? How many more innocent people should bathe in their own blood before you realize we are no more free in our own homes and the first amendment does not exist anymore? If today, Muslims with less than 2% of the population, can intimidate you to the extent that you are afraid to report their crimes, what will befall on you (and us) if their number is allowed to grow to 10%

What happened to American justice? What about the slogan "Don't tread on me"? Well America, you have been treaded on big time. What are you going to do about it? When are you going to stand up and say enough is enough?

Please write to the media, call them on the phone and demand them to cover this story truthfully. We do not want them to judge and condemn the Muslims for this crime. But Muslims are the only suspects. Why not report this? If they can report about a dispute with an ex tenant, which is ludicrous, why can't they report the death threat? What is the significance of this cowardly silence?

Women's magazine offers tips to terrorists

Readers of Jihad Watch will know that this magazine has been around since at least last summer. From the Washington Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

ROME — Al Qaeda has introduced an online women's magazine with articles including dietary advice for suicide bombers and tips on how to "dominate the passions" before blowing yourself up, according to Italy's SISDE secret service.

SISDE analysts disclosed the existence of Al Khansa, the unusual monthly Internet publication for female militants that is hosted by several Islamist Web sites, in the Italian spy service's quarterly review Gnosis.

Khansa is a popular name for Arab women, recalling a 7th century female poet, Tumadir bint Amr, who was known by the sobriquet of Al Khansa — meaning "gazelle" or "snub-nosed" — because of her beauty and exquisite, petite nose.

She became "the historic symbol of the woman warrior, and, at the same time, of all the mothers of the martyrs," according to SISDE, which is responsible for preventing terrorist reprisals against Italy's deployment of troops in Iraq....

"Among the Web pages of this newly born female review in Arabic, you won't find the usual fashion features that fill the pages of ladies' magazines the world over, except for a section dedicated to fitness with advice on diet and training to follow so as to acquire not a catwalk waistline, but martyrdom in the holy war."

With its bizarre format including articles on "breathing gymnastics to conquer the passions," evidently essential knowledge for those tempted to have a final fling before strapping on an explosive-laden corset, Al Khansa could indicate that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has made a strategic choice in favor of "women's emancipation through martyrdom," according to the Gnosis report....

But, the Italian spy review said, it is not clear whether al Qaeda's call to arms for women represents "female emancipation," or rather "a tactic to involve all components of the [Islamic community] in the global jihad."...

An aspiring female martyr, or "mujaheda," must learn the Koran by heart, have basic first aid training [and] be able to prepare an emergency kit "in which natural honey and water from the Zemzem spring at Mecca are indispensable since they flow directly from Paradise," Al Khansa advised.

A female militant must also "be content with what is strictly necessary, sending televisions and air conditioners to be burned." She should offer her own money for the cause and know how to shoot and "how to carry munitions on her shoulder," the Web site said.

Coptic Christians and Muslims in U.S. distrust each other

Some interesting information in this background piece published in the wake of the New Jersey murders. From Newhouse News Service, with thanks to all who sent this in:

In Egypt, they lived as a Christian religious minority in a predominately Muslim country.

That, along with economic troubles in Egypt, is what led many Coptic Christians to immigrate over the last 40 years to the United States, where several hundred thousand now live, mostly in New Jersey, New York and California....

"I don't think that Coptic people in the U.S. suffer from anyone," said Mamdouh Abdelsayed, a Coptic Christian who lives in Kearny. "We are not a minority anymore as we are in Egypt. . Dealing with Muslim people, we don't have problems. I'm doing my job, they're doing their job."

In Egypt, Coptic Christians feel their minority status every day, said Monir Dawoud, 65, who moved to the United States from Egypt in 1975.

"The media is all owned by the government, and the media is all Muslim, praising Islam and minimizing Christianity, making it very tough for Christians to live," said Dawoud, a surgeon in Hudson County and acting president of the American Coptic Association.

The killings of 21 Coptic Christians in riots five years ago in Kosheh, Egypt, remain a vivid memory for many.

In the United States, leaders of Egyptian Muslim and Coptic communities have tried to soothe relations, meeting several times at the Egyptian embassy in recent years.

"We can show we are the American-Egyptian family. We're all living here as foreigners," said Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, a New Jersey group. "If we live in peace together, we give a good impression to people back in Egypt."

Yet some Copts and Muslims say distrust still exists.

Ansar al-Islam spreads its wings

To Europe, that is. From Asia Times Online, with thanks to Ali Dashti:

BANGALORE - Ansar al-Islam's battlefield appears to be expanding. Until recently, this Islamist extremist group was known mainly for its violent attacks inside Iraq. Now indicators suggest that it poses a growing threat to Europe as well.

In early December, a plot to assassinate Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to Berlin was unearthed. Three Iraqis with suspected links to Ansar-al Islam were taken into custody in Germany. A few months earlier, Ansar al-Islam's hand was suspected in a plot to attack a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting in Istanbul.

The presence of Ansar al-Islam members in Germany or elsewhere in Europe is not new. At least 20 known supporters of Ansar al-Islam have been rounded up in Germany alone over the past year, and, according to German officials, about 100 Ansar al-Islam members are based in the country. The group is believed to have recruited volunteers in Italy and Britain. And its founder/leader Mullah Krekar has lived as a refugee in Norway since 1991.

Ali Dashti has also kindly sent along this additional material:

Ansar al-Islam statement claims responsibility for al-Seistani representative

A statement by Ansar al-Islam group in Iraq alleged in a statement on the Internet it had assassinated Mamhoud al-Madaeini the representative of Ayatullah Ali al-Seistani, while the Muslim Scholars Commission condemned the incident and described it as a criminal act.

A statement bearing the signature of Ansar al-Islam group, the unknown Abi Saad Waqqas squad, described al-Madeini as "one of the main supporters for the elections" and also threatened that his assassination will not be the last by this group.

The statement, threatened what it called "traitors and hirelings, who sold the honor and the conscience, preferred life on earth and sought to support the Jews and Christians against their Muslim brothers." The statement also warned against taking part in the elections set on January 30th.

Mullah Krekar, who has admitted that he is the "former" leader of Ansar al-Islam, has been living for years in Oslo, Norway, spending Norwegian welfare money and occasionally suing people for suggesting that he is a terrorist, of course using welfare money to hire his lawyer:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000640.php

Norway's controversial refugee mullah Krekar has lost his lawsuit against Progress Party leader Carl I. Hagen. Hagen's characterization of Krekar as a terrorist was ruled protected by free speech and the Oslo court instructed the former Ansar al-Islam leader to pay court costs totaling NOK 199,600 (USD 29,500). "Hagen called Krekar a terrorist and a guerrilla leader in a TV2 interview in October 2003, and said that he should be arrested and charged in either Norway or the USA.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/002256.php

Mullah Krekar convicted of terrorism in Jordan

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/001698.php

Mullah Krekar, former leader of the militant Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam, presented his book "Med egne ord" - In My Own Words - at a press conference on Thursday. The autobiography includes a series of shocking revelations, including the admission that Krekar tried to get funding from Osama bin Laden, newspaper VG reports. This 2004 Al Jazeera TV appearance by Mullah Krekar caused even more confusion when he was referred to as the head of the militant Ansar al-Islam, a connection he allegedly severed years before.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/001171.php

A group that Spanish police is investigating in connection with last week's terror attacks in Madrid has reportedly tried to establish itself in Norway. One suspect allegedly tried to move to Norway with the help of terror suspect Mullah Krekar's brother.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/000680.php

Mullah Krekar, founder of Ansar Al-Islam, the fanatical terror group linked to al-Qa'eda and blamed by America for a number of attacks on its troops, is being held in an Oslo prison while police investigate if he has any role in the Iraqi resistance. Last week, CIA officials passed the messages from Krekar, a Kurd who was granted political asylum from Saddam Hussein in Norway in 1991, to Norwegian prosecutors. The investigation into Krekar - arrested earlier this month on charges of conspiracy to murder a Kurdish politician in 2002 - has widened to take in his alleged role in plotting recent attacks, in Europe as well as Iraq.

Police fear Bali-style club bomb in London

This doesn't seem to be an unreasonable concern, given Bakri's recent calls to jihad. From The Guardian, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Police chiefs in London are "terrified" that terrorists will target a packed nightclub in a Bali-style bombing, it is reported today.

West End theatres and multiplex cinemas could also be targets, they believe.

Scotland Yard is so concerned that a popular entertainment venue may be the scene of an atrocity carried out by al-Qaida followers that it has set up a team to gather intelligence.

Officers have been sent to pubs and clubs throughout the capital to advise staff to watch out for people acting suspiciously.

Grand Mufti Hits Out at Critics of Islam

Now wait a minute, Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh. It is really just liars and enemies of Islam who speak of its "disrespect for human rights and freedom"? So I suppose the Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh of Iran, author of A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a liar and enemy of Islam?

I could spend all day quoting passages from this book that contradict the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but this statement from Tabandeh about freedom of conscience will have to suffice for now: if an apostate from Islam "is obdurate, or all hope of his reconciliation vanishes, he must be executed."

Also, compare the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, adopted by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The latter affirms:

Article 24 All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'ah.

Article 25
The Islamic Shari'ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.

That means, of course, that the death penalty for apostates, the devaluation of the lives of non-Muslims, stoning for adultery, amputation for theft -- all of it is affirmed as over against the rights affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I suppose enemies of Islam wrote the Cairo declaration too?

From Arab News, with thanks to Anthony:

JEDDAH, 16 January 2005 — Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, the Kingdom’s grand mufti, said the people who attack Islam accusing it of encouraging terrorism and extremism and denying human rights are telling lies and know very well they are spreading falsehood.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Makkah-based Muslim World League on inter-culture dialogue, Al-Asheikh said critics of Islam are driven by their enmity of the faith. He called upon Muslims to project the true face of Islam without any excesses or compromises.

“The accusations directed against Islam by those who accuse it of terrorism, extremism and disrespect for human rights and freedom come from people who know they are telling lies. They know very well that what they say (against Islam) is false and deep inside they know they are committing injustice and aggression by behaving the way they do. It is the enmity against Islam deep inside them that drives them to attack Islam,” he told the delegates from different countries.

Britain's online imam declares war as he calls young to jihad

Omar Bakri is up to his old tricks. From the Times Online, with thanks to all who sent this in:

AN EXTREMIST London cleric is using live broadcasts on the internet to urge young British Muslims to join al-Qaeda and has condoned suicide terrorist attacks. Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has lived in the UK for 18 years on social security benefits, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and told his followers that they were in a state of war with Britain. The Times monitored Mr Bakri Mohammed’s nightly webcasts in which he declared that the “covenant of security” under which Muslims live peacefully in the UK had been “violated” by the Government’s tough anti-terrorist legislation, The Syrian-born radical said: “I believe the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb (land of war). In such a state, he added, “the kuffar (non-believer) has no sanctity for their own life or property.”

In his broadcasts, conducted through an internet chatroom, Mr Bakri Mohammed stopped short of calling for terrorist attacks in Britain. But he said that Muslims should join the jihad “wherever you are” and told one woman that she was permitted to become a suicide bomber.

Mr Bakri Mohammed, 46, has indefinite leave to remain in the UK but could be detained without trial under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act if the Home Secretary were to decide he is a terrorist associate.

Last Monday he told his listeners: “Al-Qaeda and all its branches and organisations of the world, that is the victorious group and they have the emir and you are obliged to join. There is no need . . . to mess about.” Two nights later he said that the voices of dead Mujahidin were calling young Britons to fight. “These people are calling you and shouting to you from far distant places: al jihad, al jihad. They say to you my dear Muslim brothers, ‘Where is your weapon, where is your weapon?’ Come on to the jihad,” he said.

"This is not from the Quran. This is not from Islam at all"

The director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City has issued a predictable reaction to the murders of Hossam Armanious and his family. From NorthJersey.com, with thanks to Lsattr:

Islamic leaders said Saturday that the murders could not have been the work of someone inspired by the Quran.

"We are not a bloody people," said Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City. "This is not from the Quran. This is not from Islam at all."

Shedeed, who is Egyptian, said his group recently co-founded a social service organization with local Coptic churches, called Egyptian Family.

"We are trying to get religious leaders from both communities to meet on a monthly basis to break the ice between the people," he said. "We meet as individuals, but as organizations we never have done such a thing. We are trying to show that Egyptians together can benefit."

Shedeed said that as part of that effort, he attended Christmas Eve services at St. George's this year.

Asked about passages in the Quran that may suggest murdering non-believers in a manner that resembles the family's deaths, he replied, "The Quran talks about people fighting in the battle of war. It's not talking about people who live next to you. ... This has nothing to do with our community at all."

"The Quran stands very firmly against taking human life," said noted Islamic author Zayn Kassam, chairwoman of the religious studies department of Pomona College in California. "If someone read a verse and used it to justify the killing of four people, I believe that person is unbalanced. ... There are very few Muslims who would support this sort of thing."

Very few, eh? Well, it only takes one. In fact, Sura 47:4 does refer to "meeting the unbelievers in battle," but for Ahmed Shedeed to portray this as meaning only battle in warfare and not vigilante action ignores both modern events and the historical events. For example, take this story I recount in Islam Unveiled, from the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century:

Then one night, my husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them — killed them with his own hand.

Then there is the 1998 declaration by Osama bin Laden and other leading jihadists of open season on Americans anytime, anyplace: "to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

This fatwa is predicated on the assumption that Muslims everywhere are being warred against by the West. As such, a "battle" is raging at anytime, anywhere, and Qur'an 47:4 always applies.

If Ahmed Shedeed and his group really don't believe this, let them energetically cooperate with efforts to find the killer or killers and bring them the justice. But if I were in the FBI, I wouldn't be counting on their help.

New Jersey: an Islamic murder of Coptic Christians?

Was this family brutally murdered because they provoked Muslims in a chatroom? Were they slain because of the Islamic legal imperative to kill those who are deemed blasphemers? Note also that Sylvia's throat was slit, in line with Qur'an 47:4. "'Islamic Hate' Eyed in Slays," from the New York Post, with thanks to decknxf:

Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.

Armanious, an Egyptian Christian, was well known for expressing his Coptic beliefs and engaging in fiery back-and-forth with Muslims on the Web site paltalk.com.

He "had the reputation for being one of the most outspoken Egyptian Christians," said the source, who had close ties to the family.

The source, who had knowledge of the investigation, refused to specify the anti-Muslim statement. But he said cops told him they were looking into the exchanges as a possible motive.

The married father of two had recently been threatened by Muslim members of the Web site, said a fellow Copt and store clerk who uses the chat room.

"You'd better stop this bull---- or we are going to track you down like a chicken and kill you," was the threat, said the clerk, who was online at the time and saw the exchange.

But Armanious refused to back down, according to two sources who use the Web site.

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy would neither confirm nor deny that cops and prosecutors were looking into the religion motive, saying only that "nothing is being ruled out." But a relative of the mayor who answered the phone at Healy's home said there was information the murders were "religion-related."

"There are several theories we are looking into, but we are not commenting on any of them at this time," said Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Guy Gregory.

Armanious' fervor apparently rubbed off on his daughter, Sylvia — who would have turned 16 yesterday.

"She was very religious and very opinionated," said Jessica Cimino, 15, a fellow sophomore at Dickenson HS.

A family member who viewed photos of the bloodbath said Sylvia seemed to have taken the most savage punishment.

"When we saw the pictures, you could tell that they were hurt really, really bad in the face; especially Sylvia," said Milad Garas, the high-school sophomore's great-uncle.

The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia's throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross.

Also found murdered were the wife, Amal Garas, and the parents' other daughter, Monica.

Fred Ayed, the deacon at St. George and St. Shenouda Church, where the deeply religious family attended services, said he's worried that the murders could have a ripple effect.

"I am concerned for the safety of our community," said Ayed, who knew Hossam for 30 years. "People are scared because one family was slain like cows," said Moheb Ghabour, publisher of a local newspaper for the Coptic community.

Osama Hassan, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, described the relationship between Copts and Muslims as cooperative if not friendly.