"we make dua Allah allows your blood to spill over our hands"

I've been receiving some love notes over at RevivingIslam.com. The Forum there is by registration only, and some people have registered and sent me some posts from it, including this one. This led some at the Forum to think that I was registered there -- I was not and am not -- and to start railing against me and other "spies."

I don't ordinarily publicize threats I receive, and I had not originally planned to post this one. However, I ultimately decided to do so because I thought this one was noteworthy for several reasons: the mention of a "hit list" that is evidently well-known among the posters; the rabid anti-Semitism; the Qur'anic references; the forthright bloodlust; and the casual mixture of piety and murderousness that is common among jihad terrorists.

One poster put up my picture, with this underneath:

ROBERT SPENCER, the director of Jihad Watch, is a writer and researcher... http://www.jihadwatch.org/spencer/

To which one responded:

I believe he's already on the hit list, nothing new..

Other responses:

i support al qaida to the fullest... and what read that you munfiq [hypocrite] spy

aint no one stop us from supporting our brothers in JIHAD against these dirty crusaders, jews or mushriks [polytheists].

sis how you feel being singled out by this kafir [unbeliever]

Lol, i was shocked at first, but then, it made me more determined! Lol, if they think this is going 2 stop us ppl, then they got it rong.when ppl read ther stupid posts,they will want2 be more active and actually do something....Lol, and that robert, i feel like trowin him under a bus........or getting a missile and shootin him with it.Obviously i would need a missile first.Anyone got 1?..................LOL

Later on in the thread there came this:

To the Jew-lover Robert Spencer (may Allaah destroy him), if you or one of your brain-dead cult followers read this I want you to know that I hate you for the sake of Allaah and I make du'a [i.e., I pray] for your destruction. I want you to also keep in mind that while you may plot against Islaam, Allaah also plots. And Allaah is the best of those who plot. You are fighting a lost cause. You are following the same path as Abu Lahab in life and insha'Allaah [Allah willing] you will meet the same end as Abu Lahab in the aqirah (Hereafter).

Allah plotting is a reference to Qur'an 8:30: "And when those who disbelieve plot against thee (O Muhammad) to wound thee fatally, or to kill thee or to drive thee forth; they plot, but Allah (also) plotteth; and Allah is the best of plotters."

Abu Lahab was Muhammad's uncle. Muhammad cursed him to hell in the Qur'an for rejecting his claim to be a prophet: "The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will be plunged in flaming Fire, and his wife, the wood-carrier, will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre" (111:1-5).

One responded to the "may Allaah destroy him" post above:

Subhanallah [Glory be to Allah], this made me smile :)

And another responded:

we make dua [i.e., we pray] Allah allows your blood to spill over our hands.

It is interesting that so many Muslim bulletin boards and forums so quickly are given over to this sort of thing. The posters at Reviving Islam are young Muslims in England and America. The "Contact Us" page at the site seems to be blank, but I hope authorities know who runs the site and are on the way to shutting it down.

Fitzgerald: A tribute to Dominique de Villepin

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses the new French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin:

Born in Sale, jeek-by-jowl to Rabat, Dominique de Villepin has always believed that having spent the first few years of his life in Morocco has given him great understanding of Islam. He knows nothing about it. He persists in believing that there is a "good" Islam, and that the teachings of that "good" Islam must be supported. What there really is, as Ataturk understood, is a "sanitized" Islam that can, with the army and the police ready to enforce it, be monitored in the mosques. This is not the "real" Islam. All of the texts, of Qur'an and hadith, and all of the commentators and jurisconsults, come down on the side of the real, "bad" Islam. But as long as police and army, as in Turkey, are willing to monitor the khutbas (sermons at Friday Prayers), to censor the radio and television and newspapers in Arabic, to have agents (probably Berbers) constantly reporting on what is going on with the boys in the banlieue, with their bullets and bombs, then things can be kept under control.

But as in Turkey, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty from real Islam. Secularist supporters of Kemalism in Turkey know that the army is the final guarantor of Kemalism, and that the attempts of the non-secularists to gain power, in schools, in the police, in the government, are unceasing and extremely cunning, and the survival of Kemalism can never be assumed. Is this the future of France?

Even if that preening poseur and poetaster, D. de V., were suddenly to have had a change of heart, which is scarcely to be believed, his insistence that there is a "good" Islam and that the "bad" Islam is an aberration simply prolongs the confusion, and the day of intellectual reckoning.

And what will be the cost, to French taxpayers, of all that monitoring, all that paying for the interception of phone calls, all those agents in the mosques, all those security forces everywhere -- and with only the hope of sweeping back, as Kemalism sweeps back, the tide of Islam? Vaste programme, monsieur.

Will D. de V. solve France’s problem? The idea that there is a "problem" and that there must therefore be a "solution" is, dare one say it, a very naive notion, betraying a worldview that is often ascribed to Americans -- you know, we'll just pitch right in and fix things up.

There is a "problem" but as there is no solution, so it might better be described simply as a situation. Islam owes its origins to the need by pagan Arabs -- perhaps prompted by others, either a Jewish or a Christian sect attempting to convert them with things going awry -- to have, while conquering other, far more advanced, wealthy, settled populations of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and others (in the initial centuries of conquest), to possess their "own religion" which might emphasize the superiority of the Arabs -- hence the need to read the Qur'an only in Arabic, which book has been handed to the "best of people" and in their own language, and all the other features of the Arab supremacist ideology contained within a supposedly universalist religion.

The emphasis in the Western press and Western governments on terrorism is foolish, for terrorism is only one tactic, one instrument of the Jihad to spread Islam, or rather to create the conditions in which Islam may spread unopposed. Terrorism is not even the most effective tactic -- just as at present military force generally is not the best way to spread Islam across the globe The wherewithal to conduct this Jihad with greater force today has depended on several things -- but most of all, on the money that has flowed from an accident of geology. This money has been used most effectively, as the "wealth" weapon, to pay for all sorts of things: bribing diplomats (votes in the U.N.) and government officials (recycling petrodollars for their own benefit, and that of their friends), and businessmen (ditto), and journalists on the take. It has been used to pay for mosques and madrasas all over the world, both within the Islamic lands and in the Western world, thus helping to entrench Islam in countries whose political, economic, and social arrangements and whose peoples the adherents of Islam, cannot -- to the extent that they remain Believers (if they are silent dissenters from Islam, or open defectors--i.e., apostates -- it is another thing), possibly wish well.

The money weapon coincided with an event unheard-of in history: admission by one group of countries of large numbers of people who possessed a belief-system, an ideology, that inculcated hostility, often murderous hostility, toward the indigenous inhabitants of the lands they were permitted to come and settle among. This happened for various reasons, none of them attractive. The German and French need for manodopera, workers, led in the first case to the admission of Turkish "guest-workers" whom, it was dreamily believed, would carry with them the supposed "secularism" of Kemalist Turkey, and in any case they would be returning home. Neither assumption proved correct; the guest-workers came, but came to stay. And while a very few in the second and third generations have jettisoned Islam altogether, most have become more fervent in their faith.

In France the miscalculation was based on arrogant negligence of Islam, the psychology of Muslims, and the tenets of Islam. The works of French experts on the theory and practice of Islam -- Huart, Fagnan, Vajda, Dufourcq, Levi-Provencal, and many others -- simply were ignored, while johnny-jump-ups such as Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel, who continue to be wrong about almost everything, were listened to. A preening poseur such as Dominique de Villepin, a crook such as Chirac, have not made matters better. There was, of course, the fateful decision by Giscard d'Estaing to "reunite families" in order to diminish criminal or sociopathic behavior by maghrebins. That led to many wives, and even more children -- and to birth rates four or five times higher than that of the non-Muslims. The results are there for all to see.

Islam and not-Islam are immiscible. Try as one might, if one is Tariq Ramadan, to keep up the mountebank's patter, the jig is up – as even Dominique de Villepin may be beginning to realize. The nonsense cannot continue for much longer; too many people are, on their own, studying Islam -- and refusing to accept what a small army of apologists, Muslim and non-Muslim, have attempted, not without success until now, to convince them that, despite all the mounting evidence in word, and in deed, they have nothing to fear from Islam. But they do.

And the best strategy of all is to have as little to do with the Muslim world as possible, so that, on their own, a sufficient number of Muslims may become aware that the political, economic, social, and intellectual ills of the Muslim peoples and polities is a direct result of Islam itself. No foreign aid, no attempts to play to Muslim demands that the West remold itself for Muslim sojourners, no rewriting of history to accommodate Muslim "self-esteem" by exaggerating intellectual or other achievements. And work steadily, even though the largest transfer of wealth in human history has already occurred (and much of it wasted) from the oil consumers to Arab and Muslim oil producers, to diminish that revenue, the value of those reserves that, if their true cost to Infidels were to be properly internalized, would shoot into the stratosphere.

Don’t expect any of this from Dominique de Villepin.

Chicken jihad

Sunni Muslims destroy a Shi'ite mosque with a suicide bomb. In retaliation, Shi'ite Muslims burn down a Kentucky Fried Chicken, killing six people. This one is just as crystalline an example of linear reasoning as the killing of 17 Afghanis because a Gitmo interrogator may have flushed a Qur'an. "Six KFC workers die in Karachi violence," from the Financial Times:

Six employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken, the American fast food chain, were killed in Karachi overnight Monday when their restaurant was set on fire by Shi’ite youths seeking revenge for a suicide bomb attack on a local mosque, police and rescue workers said.

The KFC outlet, located in the southern city’s densely populated Gulshan-e-Iqbal district, was ransacked in a riot that also damaged petrol stations, bank branches, shops and dozens of vehicles.

The bodies of the KFC workers - five restaurant staff and a security guard - were found before sunrise Tuesday, when rescue workers entered the premises to check on the scale of damage. Four of the victims were burned to death while the two others froze to death after taking refuge in a refrigeration unit, a senior police official, Manzoor Mughal, was quoted as saying by Associated Press.

The riot followed an attack Monday on the Shi’ite Madinatul Ilm mosque in Gulshan, in which three assailants, suspected to be Sunni Muslim extremists, clashed with police before exploding a bomb that killed two of the attackers, two policemen and a worshipper. Twenty-six people were injured, AP said.

The surviving assailant told police he was associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Sunni militant group accused of orchestrating several attacks against minority Shi’ites, Christians and government officials, and suspected of having links with al-Qaida, the AP report said. About 80 per cent of Pakistan’s 150m people are Sunnis, while 17 per cent are Shi’ites...

2 terror suspects to be arraigned: U.S. citizens accused of planning to help al Qaeda with training, medical care

An update on this story from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Miami -- Rafiq Abdus Sabir, a doctor, kept mostly to himself, neighbors remembered Monday. He lived in a gated South Florida community west of the exclusive town of Boca Raton with a woman and two children. The couple drove a black sport utility vehicle and white two-door sedan, and fixed up the garage of their rented villa to serve as the youngsters' rumpus room.

Dan Kozan, an advertising consultant, had one encounter with his neighbor across the street when he moved into Villa San Remo three years ago, but it was enough. Kozan, 51, said he asked Sabir to move the cars of people visiting so Kozan could back out of his driveway more easily. The doctor, he said, ignored him.

"I'm friendly with most of the neighbors around here," Kozan said. "Not him."

Early Saturday, the FBI moved in and arrested Sabir, 50, as an alleged participant in a terrorist plot. Along with Tarik Shah, 42, a self-described martial arts expert who had been arrested the day before in New York, Sabir was accused of conspiring to provide material support to al Qaeda.

According to federal prosecutors, Shah agreed to train Islamic holy warriors in hand-to-hand combat techniques, while Sabir agreed to treat their wounds at a military base in Saudi Arabia...

According to the federal complaint, the result of a two-year sting operation, Shah and Sabir, both U.S. citizens, took an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda, the shadowy Islamic terror network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and some of the violence focusing on the U.S. occupation in Iraq.

Federal prosecutors said Shah had searched for locations suitable for secret weapons training, at one point inspecting a warehouse on Long Island, and agreed to provide a curriculum for hand-to-hand combat training.

The government said the men engaged in multiple recorded conversations with a confidential source and an FBI agent posing as an al Qaeda operative. During the conversations, Shah also described how he and Sabir tried to get to training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and said they were a "package" deal, Kelley said....

If found guilty of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization, each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000.

Spencer: Abu Zarqawi: Holy Man

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer's latest in FrontPage:

While the world media has been consumed with speculation about the health and whereabouts of jihad leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it has hardly noted at all a challenge he issued just before he was injured. Yet this challenge could in the long run prove to be more potent than the suicide bombings he continues to inspire in Iraq. It came in the form of an audiotape he released on May 20, in which he presents a detailed justification of his operations. His defense unfolds not on prudential, but on theological grounds: making copious reference to Islamic sources, Zarqawi does his best to portray the murderous behavior of his al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers group as legitimate jihad operations that every Muslim should endorse — and cheerfully torpedoes the Leftist dogma that all religions are equal in their capacity to inspire violence.

Since 9/11, American Muslim advocacy groups, influential elements of the government, and the establishment media have gone to great pains to assure us that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by a tiny minority of extremists who hijacked a peaceful religion. We were assured that Osama bin Laden and other jihad leaders were not Islamic scholars, and didn’t have an Islamic leg to stand on. The unquestioned assumption has been that the Islamic justifications they presented for their actions were transparently wrong from the mainstream Islamic standpoint. Soon the moderate mainstream would assert itself, we were told, and Muslims would denounce Al-Qaeda and other jihadists, repudiating and isolating them worldwide.

Why hasn’t this happened? Zarqawi’s May 20 communiqué suggests one reason why: it is the jihadists, not the moderates, who are reasoning from Islamic sources and presenting detailed Islamic theological arguments. By doing this, Zarqawi has thrown down the gauntlet to moderate Muslims worldwide, in effect saying to them: defend your vision of Islam or get out of the way. On the tape he criticizes them directly: “the wicked scholars have looked the other way and sold their Deen (religion) for a miserable price in this life.” He notes that one outcome of the present conflict will be to separate “the true believers from the rest.”

Zarqawi helps this process along by fulminating against “the defeatists from our own skin” who “decided to stab the true Mujahideen in the back and throw doubts about the permissibility of their operations.” These people have “in fact directly or indirectly helped the cross worshippers in their campaign against Mujahideen. The defeatists, the unfaithful, and the ill-intentioned people from our own skin, have criticized our operations against the enemies of Allah on the bases that some of these operations results in killing so called ‘innocent civilians.’”

On the contrary, Zarqawi asserts that “the Mujahideen carry out their operations under strict adherence to the rules of engagement as set forth by Allah, His messenger, our prophet Muhammad, and his companions. And why not? After all, the Mujahideen took to the battle fields only to establish the Deen of Allah (Islam), to make the word of Allah high above any others, and to gain the pleasure of Allah.” In his address, therefore, he undertakes to “put forth and clarify the judgment and the rules of Allah’s Sharia’ah (Islamic Jurisprudence) in connection with those incidents in which Muslims are killed as a result rather than the main target of Mujahideen operations.” He warns, however, that he does “not intend to address the legality of martyrdom operations for it has been decided by more than one scholar already.”

Zarqawi’s exposition of Islamic theology as he sees it is most revealing. “There is no doubt,” he says, “that Allah commanded us to strike the Kuffar (unbelievers), kill them, and fight them by all means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah who perform Jihad to elevate the word (laws) of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from their abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah. The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affect both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children and any other passive category specified by our jurisprudence.” He is arguing, in other words, that operations such as 9/11 are fully sanctioned by Islamic law.

And that holds true, he argues, even if Muslims are among the victims: “This permissibility extends to situations in which Muslims may get killed if they happen to be with or near the intended enemy, and if it is not possible to avoid hitting them or separate them from the intended Kafirs. Although spilling sacred Muslim blood is a grave offense, it is not only permissible but it is mandated in order to prevent more serious adversity from happening, stalling or abandoning Jihad that is. If one says that we must not allow the killing of Muslims under any circumstance, especially in light of modern war tactics, this means nothing except stalling or permanently abandoning Jihad. This will lead to handing over the land and people to the unbelievers who are full of hate for Islam and Muslims. The unbelievers will have a free hand to humiliate and persecute Islam and Muslims and Muslims will be forced to live by Kafir rules and be treated like slaves. Many Muslims will be pressured or forced to give up their religion, Islam will be altered, modified, and replaced with another form that will be totally different from that which was revealed to the one who was sent with the sword, peace and prayer be upon him.”

In support of his presumably unaltered Islam, Zarqawi quotes the Muslim Prophet Muhammad: “I was ordered to fight people until they bear witness that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, establish regular prayers, and pay Zakat (purifying charity). If they do, their blood and their wealth become sacred and their fate will be determined by Allah” (Sahih Bukhari, vol. 1, book 2, no. 24).

Zarqawi adds that “there are many Ayat (verses) [of the Qur’an] and Hadith [Islamic traditions] mandating Jihad and warning Muslims of the grave consequences of stalling or abandoning Jihad or staying behind.” He quotes Qur’an 2:191: “And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for persecution is worse than slaughter…” and cites various scholars as explaining the verse to mean that “the state of Kufr [unbelief] or Shirk [idolatry] is worse than the act of killing and worse for the believer than being killed. Therefore, preserving life, or any of the other four essentials at the expense of losing the Deen [religion], is a violation of Allah’s Sharia’ah.” In other words, unbelief is worse than killing, thus Muslims should not hesitate to kill unbelieving noncombatants. He asserts that “it has become known to people of understanding that the consequence of abandoning or stalling Jihad is worse than consequence of practicing it. Practicing Jihad may lead to loss of life and wealth, such and adversity falls under the individual or specific category. However, abandoning Jihad will lead to loss of Deen and life at the level of the entire Ummah [Muslim community].” He cites several Islamic scholars to justify jihad attacks against unbelievers even when those unbelievers are using Muslims as a shield, if “there is no other way of reaching, separating, and killing the Kuffar.”

Zarqawi’s tape amounts to a direct frontal assault on the glib and still oft-repeated assertion that the 9/11 attacks are condemned by Islam because Islam forbids the killing of innocent civilians. It is urgently to be hoped that all those courageous groups that identify themselves as forces for Muslim moderation — Free Muslims and the Center for Islamic Pluralism, as well as professed moderates such as Hussein Ibish and the Council on American Islamic Relations — construct responses to Zarqawi that reason from Islamic principles. For if Islamic moderates convince non-Muslims that Islam is peaceful, those non-Muslims will go home reassured, but that is all: only if the moderates can convince their fellow Muslims of this will there be any weakening of the jihadist initiative. With this audiotape, Zarqawi has seized the intellectual and theological initiative within the global Islamic community, and reinforced the jihadist claim to represent “pure Islam” — a claim that has proved to be a potent recruitment tool among Muslims worldwide, as well as here in the United States. If moderates do not or cannot take that initiative from him, the consequences could reverberate across the world for decades to come.

Pipes: The Ugly History of Jihad

Daniel Pipes has an interesting piece in FrontPage today, discussing David Cook's new book Understanding Jihad, which I have not yet seen. In his review, Pipes succintly sums up the history of the concept of jihad in Islam, showing the hollowness of claims that it has always primarily represented a spiritual struggle:

The Koran invites Muslims to give their lives in exchange for assurances of paradise.

The Hadith (accounts of Muhammad’s actions and personal statements) elaborate on the Koran, providing specific injunctions about treaties, pay, booty, prisoners, tactics, and much else. Muslim jurisprudents then wove these precepts into a body of law.

Muhammad’s conquests: During his years in power, the prophet engaged in an average of nine military campaigns a year, or one every 5-6 weeks; thus did jihad help define Islam from its very dawn. Conquering and humiliating non-Muslims was a main feature of the prophet’s jihad.

The Arab conquests and after: During the first several centuries of Islam, “the interpretation of jihad was unabashedly aggressive and expansive.” After the conquests subsided, non-Muslims hardly threatened and Sufi notions of jihad as self-improvement developed in complement to the martial meaning.

The Crusades, the centuries-long European effort to control the Holy Land, gave jihad a new urgency and prompted what Cook calls the “classical” theory of jihad. Finding themselves on the defensive led to a hardening of Muslim attitudes.

The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century subjugated much of the Muslim world, a catastrophe only partially mitigated by the Mongols’ nominal conversion to Islam. Some thinkers, Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328) in particular, came to distinguish between true and false Muslims; and to give jihad new prominence by judging the validity of a person’s faith according to his willingness to wage jihad.

Nineteenth century “purification jihads” took place in several regions against fellow Muslims. The most radical and consequential of these was the Wahhabis' jihad in Arabia. Drawing on Ibn Taymiya, they condemned most non-Wahhabi Muslims as infidels (kafirs) and waged jihad against them.

However, there are some elements of this analysis about which I have questions. Read on:

European imperialism inspired jihadi resistance efforts, notably in India, the Caucasus, Somalia, Sudan, Algeria, and Morocco, but all in the end failed. This disaster meant new thinking was needed.

Islamist new thinking began in Egypt and India in the 1920s but jihad acquired its contemporary quality of radical offensive warfare only with the Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966). Qutb developed Ibn Taymiya’s distinction between true and false Muslims to deem non-Islamists to be non-Muslims and then declare jihad on them. The group that assassinated Anwar El-Sadat in 1981 then added the idea of jihad as the path to world domination.

Does jihad's "contemporary quality of radical offensive warfare" refer to the idea that true Muslims must fight against false Muslims, or Islamists against non-Islamists? Or is the point that jihad is "radical offensive warfare" the contemporary innovation? The latter can't be so, since -- as this very analysis shows -- jihad has been conceived of as radical offensive warfare since the time of Muhammad. But the idea that Muslims declaring jihad against Muslims is a contemporary innovation is also false. This has occurred throughout history: the Muslim Mongols fought the Abbasids, the Abbasids fought the Fatimids, etc. etc. etc.

If anything, it is the "Islamist"/"non-Islamist" distinction that is the innovation. As this analysis shows, in earlier times every Muslim was a forthright Islamist, in that he knew that it was part of his religion to fight to extend Islam's political power.

In fact, Qutb and other contemporary jihad theorists such as Maududi were not innovators, but radical traditionalists who were fighting to restore what had been the mainstream understanding of jihad that had prevailed throughout most of Islamic history. You can find this explained in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers.

The article continues:

The anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan led to the final step (so far) in this evolution. In Afghanistan, for the first time, jihadis assembled from around the world to fight on behalf of Islam. Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian, became the theorist of global jihad in the 1980s, giving it an unheard-of central role, judging each Muslim exclusively by his contribution to jihad, and making jihad the salvation of Muslims and Islam. Out of this quickly came suicide terrorism and bin Laden.

Again, to attribute all this to Azzam is ahistorical. Travel for jihad is nothing new. For example, as I show in my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery), jihadis assembled from around the world in the tenth century to wage jihad against the Byzantines. Saif al-Dawla, ruler of the Shi’ite Hamdanid dynasty in Aleppo from 944 to 967, appealed to Muslims to fight the Byzantines on the pretext that the Byzantines were taking lands that belonged to the House of Islam; this appeal was so successful that Muslim warriors traveled to Hamdanid lands from as far off as Central Asia to fight in the jihads.

Nor is suicide terrorism an innovation: such operations are a feature of Islamic history. One example was recently unearthed by Dr. Andrew Bostom: John Paul Jones encountered suicide attacks by Muslim Turks in 1788!

“…for it was the intention of the Turks to attack us and board us, and if we had been only three versts further the attempt would have been made on the 16th [June 1788] (before the vessel of the Captain Pacha ran aground in advancing before the wind with all his forces to attack us,), God only knows what would have been the result…The Turks had a very large force, and we have been informed by our prisoners that they were resolved to destroy us, even by burning themselves, (in setting fire to their own vessels after having grappled with ours.) [note added by Jones: Before their departure from Constantinople, they swore by the beard of the Sultan to execute this horrible plan…if Providence had not caused its failure from two circumstances which no man could forsee.”]

That's from John Paul Jones’ Letter to Prince Potemkin, June 20, 1788, from Life and Character of John Paul Jones-A Captain in the Navy of the United States, John H. Sherburne, 1825, p. 308.

Pipes concludes that "the current understanding of jihad is more extreme than at any prior time in Islamic history." That may be, but just how that understanding is more "extreme" than that of previous times remains unclear. I have ordered Cook's book and am looking forward to receiving it.

Iraq: When Violence Comes To Campus

Once havens of tolerance, Iraq's universities are becoming battlefields in an escalating civil war. From Time magazine, with thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Rebecca Bynum:

On May 3, when the members of Iraq's new government were sworn in, Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi, 24, a pharmacy undergraduate at the University of Baghdad, decided to throw a party. As a supporter of a Shi'ite political party, al-Rubaiyi was celebrating the ascent of the country's Shi'ite majority after decades of repression under Saddam Hussein. But the revelry turned sour after officials at the college of pharmacy asked al-Rubaiyi and his friends to break up the event, saying it violated a university policy banning sectarian gatherings on campus. The students refused the request, and al-Rubaiyi scuffled with the bodyguard of the dean of the pharmacy college, Mustafa al-Hiti, before heading home. He never made it. A few hours later, he was shot and killed by unknown assailants on a street near his house.

It's what happened next that has put the school on edge—and induced worries that al-Rubaiyi's death could spark a wider, bloodier conflagration. In the aftermath of the killing, mobs of Shi'ite students rioted at the college of pharmacy, blaming al-Hiti and his bodyguard—both of them Sunnis—for al-Rubaiyi's murder and vowing revenge. Al-Hiti and his bodyguard deny having anything to do with the murder. As the violence spread to a cluster of adjacent colleges, Sunni faculty members had to be evacuated by security guards, colleagues and students. When the rioters showed up, they trashed classrooms and teachers' offices. Then came the reprisals: the next day, a Shi'ite law student who was close to al-Rubaiyi was found dead, fueling suspicions of an organized attempt to silence prominent Shi'ite voices on campus. "The atmosphere is now very tense," says Meitham, a pharmacy student who, along with others, does not want his full name used. "There is a sense that anything can happen, at any time."

For millions of Iraqis, it's a familiar concern. The country has been facing its most deadly spasm of violence in a year: last month alone, attacks killed more than 600 Iraqis, many of them Shi'ites targeted by Sunni jihadis bent on sowing civil war. The country's universities have long served as the bulwark of Iraq's secular society, refuges from the sectarian strife that threatens to rip the country apart. But now violence has come to the campuses. A rocket attack on an engineering college in the heart of Baghdad two weeks ago killed two students and injured 17 others. Bombs have been found at several colleges, leading many universities to institute full-body searches at their gates. Radical religious groups have infiltrated many student bodies, intimidating students and teachers alike. Some prominent Iraqis say the surge in extremism on campus holds grave portents for Iraq. "Once this poison enters the campus and infects the minds of our young people," says Mohammad Jaffer al-Samarrai, a geography professor in Baghdad, "then all hope is lost for society."...

Yes indeed. Read it all.

US to expand anti-terror, oil interests in Africa

From the Taipai Times, with thanks to Counterterrorism Operations:

The US is pouring more soldiers and millions more dollars into its anti-terrorism campaign in Africa, including in Algeria and chaotic Nigeria, both oil-rich nations where radical Islam has a following.

A new north and west African effort outlined Wednesday in a statement from the US Embassy in Senegal proposes spending US$100 million a year over five years to boost security in some of world's least policed areas, starting with a joint military exercise in the region next month.

An earlier anti-terror exercise with a budget of just US$6 million focused on troop training in four west African nations. The new campaign will target nine north and west African nations and seek to bolster regional cooperation.

Analysts were waiting to see if the program would be fully funded -- but said the intended budgetary increase shows the US is taking West Africa more seriously.

"If they're turning the corner to US$100 million, that's graduation into something much larger," said J. Stephen Morrison, Africa director at the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's still modest, but it's a dramatic step up."

Major Holly Silkman, a US military spokeswoman, said underpopulated border areas in the region could be sanctuaries for "terrorists or would-be terrorists."...

"We're concerned with the radical movement," said Silkman. "Islam isn't the problem, it's only the radicals."...

Great, Major. Now please explain to us how you propose to tell the difference.

2 Men, in New York and Florida, Charged in Qaeda Conspiracy

I have written on numerous occasions that there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists. While Americans prefer to imagine that the vast majority of American Muslims are civic-minded patriots who accept wholeheartedly the parameters of American pluralism, this proposition has actually never been proven. And evidence continues to come in that jihadists view the aggregate of peaceful Muslims not as a challenge, but as a recruiting ground -- and make copious use of the Qur'an and Sunnah in that recruitment. Stateside jihad alert from the New York Times, with thanks to all who sent this in:

A martial arts expert from the Bronx and a doctor from Florida have been arrested on charges that they conspired to train and provide medical assistance to Al Qaeda terrorists, federal and local authorities said yesterday.

The men, United States citizens who were identified by the authorities as Tarik ibn Osman Shah of the Bronx and Rafiq Sabir of Boca Raton, were captured in early morning raids in the Bronx and in Boca Raton on Friday, according to Paul J. Browne, a New York City police spokesman.

The arrests came as part of a two-year sting operation that ended with each man facing a single conspiracy charge. While the authorities said that they had no evidence that either man had actually provided support to terrorists, they said they had taped each man swearing his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, Mr. Browne said.

According to a statement released by David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John Klochan, the acting assistant director in charge of the New York office of the F.B.I., the complaint contends that between 2003 and sometime this month, the men met with a law enforcement informant and an F.B.I. agent who was posing as a Qaeda operative and recruiter.

The complaint said that in those meetings, which were recorded, Mr. Shah agreed to provide training in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat to Qaeda members and associates, while Dr. Sabir agreed to provide medical assistance to wounded jihadists in Saudi Arabia, the statement said.

"During these conversations, Mr. Shah repeatedly indicated his desire to train Muslim 'brothers' in the martial arts in order to wage jihad and also regularly discussed his desire to find people who were willing to press the fight," it said....

Cue the usual protestations of innocence and discrimination:

A report yesterday in The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale quoted a friend of Dr. Sabir's saying that the charges were absurd. "He is a quality guy and a quality physician," the friend, Dr. Daniel McBride, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, told the newspaper. "He's about helping others."

Mr. Browne said that Dr. Sabir attended City College of New York and received his medical degree from Columbia medical school. Last night, Lisa Kozan, a neighbor who lives across the way from Dr. Sabir in Villa San Remo, a gated community in Boca Raton, said she believed that Dr. Sabir had rented there for about four years.

She said that the doctor stood out from other neighbors by his Muslim dress and that the doctor and his family lived quietly in the community. "Other than that, we didn't talk to him, and they didn't talk to us," she said.

Mr. Browne said that Mr. Shah, who public records show lived in Beacon, N.Y., and Poughkeepsie before moving to the Bronx, was the son of an aide to Malcolm X.

Abbas: Suicide bomb era may be over

Suicide bombings are happening almost daily in Iraq, but in the place where the practice became internationally famous, we are being assured that it is all over. A Bridge For Sale Alert from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to JS:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview aired on Sunday that the era of suicide bombings may be over.

"We have started to deal with the culture of violence," he said. "We stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop." Asked on ABC whether the suicide bombing era had ended, he said: "I believe it is over."

But he warned that if progress toward a peace agreement was not achieved in meetings with Sharon next month, "despair and loss of hope will come back and a return to the old ideas" of armed resistance.

In other words, it's over unless we don't get what we want.

Explosion shakes U.N.'s Kabul HQ

Don't they realize the UN is their best friend? Evidently not. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An explosion shook the headquarters of NATO's 8,000-strong security force in the Afghan capital on Monday but there were no immediate reports of injuries, a spokeswoman for the force said.

The blast occurred "in the vicinity" of the International Security Assistance Force compound, said Lt. Col. Karen Tissot Van Patot. She said officers were investigating the cause of the explosion.

An Afghan police officer outside the compound, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a rocket had hit inside the heavily fortified base, which is near the U.S. Embassy and other diplomatic missions in central Kabul.

Saudi Arabia: Syria Hands Over Saudi Fighters Trying to Reach Iraq

But what happens to them after they're turned over to the Saudis? Are they released with encouragement to try again? From AKI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Riyadh, 30 May (AKI) - Syria has handed more than 30 Saudis caught trying to cross the border into Iraq back to Saudi Arabia, according to the Saudi interior minister Prince Naif. The Saudi newspaper Arab News reports that in the last few weeks Syria has arrested more than 300 Saudis it suspected of travelling to Iraq to join the insurgency there. Syria is under immense pressure to tighten up security along its "porous border" with Iraq.

Saudi Arabia says it has no idea how many Saudis are in Iraq, but analysts believe hundreds, even thousands may have gone there since the US-led invasion two years ago, which brought down Saddam Hussein's regime.

Earlier this month one influential Saudi cleric, Safar al-Hawali, said that while he supports the jihad against the US in Iraq, no-one outside Iraq has the right to participate in the fight. He also urged families to immediately contact the authorities if a male relative goes missing, so he can be stopped before he leaves the country.

Iraqi Muslim Leader Detained; 20 Killed

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops detained the head of Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim political party on Monday, according to party officials, police and the man's wife. South of the capital, two suicide bombers attacked a crowd of policemen in Hillah, killing 20 and wounding nearly 100....

The arrests came on the second day of Operation Lightning, a massive Iraqi-led anti-insurgent offensive in Baghdad that Abdul-Hamid's party opposes, believing security forces will trample on innocent people's rights.

Abdul-Hamid was taken from his home in the western Baghdad suburb of Khadra at about 6 a.m., along with his three sons and four guards, said party-secretary-general Ayad al-Samarei.

Al-Samarei accused American soldiers of raiding Abdul-Hamid's home and confiscating various items, including a computer. U.S. military officials could not immediately confirm the detentions. Iraqi officials were also reluctant to talk about the issue.

"This is a provocative and foolish act and this is part of the pressure exerted on the party," al-Samarei said.

"At the time when the Americans say they are keen on real Sunni participation, they are now arresting the head of the only Sunni party that calls for a peaceful solution and have participated in the political process," he added....

Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is Kurdish, expressed "surprise and discontent" on learning of Abdul-Hamid's arrest and called for his immediate release, according to a statement from his office. The statement did not identify who detained Abdul-Hamid.

"The Iraqi president said that no one gave prior notice to the Presidential Council about the arrest of Dr. Mohsen Abdul-Hamid. This way of dealing with such a distinguished political figure is unacceptable," the statement added.

A top police official, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, claimed U.S. forces arrested Abdul-Hamid as did his wife, Awatif Ibrahim.

"They (U.S troops) raided our house and my son's house, using bullets and stun bombs," Ibrahim told Associated Press Television News. "And they arrested him (her son) and they also detained my husband, Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party."

The party also released a statement alleging "occupation forces arrested Abdul-Hamid" and that an Arabic translator had assisted in the detention.

The Iraqi Islamic Party issued a statement demanding Abdul-Hamid's immediate release, saying he "represents a large sector of the Iraqi people."

"This irresponsible behavior will only complicate the situation," the party statement said....

Abdul-Hamid, aged in his late 60s, is regarded as a moderate Islamic leader. He was a member of the now dissolved U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and has been involved with the party since the 1970s and headed it since 2003.

So why would Mohsen Abdul-Hamid have been detained? Is this a foolish and clumsy attempt to silence dissent? Maybe.

Or maybe it's that fiendish Mossad. From IranDaily:

TEHRAN, Jan. 2--State Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a meeting with the head of Iraq's Islamic Party, Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, on Sunday warned against the irreparable consequences of Iraqi people's failure to participate in political activities.

According to a report released by SEC's Public Relations Office, Rafsanjani referred to the critical situation in Iraq and said a delay in elections will further tighten the grip of occupying forces over the destiny of the Iraqi people and their national resources, IRNA reported.

"Despite paying excessive costs, the US is mainly concerned about securing its own interests and reluctant to leave the country," he said.

He underlined that no other factor is more pivotal in saving Iraq than holding elections and letting the people control their own destiny.

For his part, Abdul-Hamid explained the latest developments in his country and said the US forces in Iraq proved their country to be the number one enemy of the Muslim world.

"The US has occupied Iraq to support the Zionist regime and with the hope of controlling the region's oil resources," he said....

Abdul-Hamid declared that terrorist groups and Israel's intelligence service Mossad are currently causing many problems and trying to inflict damage on the Iraqi nation.

Or maybe it had something to do with his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the forefather of Al-Qaeda and Hamas, which he affirmed despite his peaceful rhetoric. From IslamOnline:

BAGHDAD, April 23 (IslamOnline.net) - The Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) will not adopt violence as an approach to resist the U.S.-Anglo occupation of Iraq, the party's Secretary General Dr. Mohsen Abdul Hamid said Wednesday, April 23.

Speaking to IslamOnline.net, Abdul Hamid rejected any kind of cooperation with an occupation-installed government.

"It is abundantly clear that we reject the presence of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, but we will not use violence in resisting it," he said.

"Armed confrontation is useless and we will resist (the occupation) peacefully. The party and other Iraqi religious and national factions are on board when it comes to this, no doubt."...

"The parties in Iraq are a dime a dozen … Any body can stroll five persons together and form a party," Abdul Hamid said, referring to the anarchy and free-for-all looting that swept Iraq.

"But the IIP (Iraq's Muslim Brotherhood) is a time-honored party that dates back to 1944, when Imam Hassan al-Banna (the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928) dispatched his close ally Dr. Hussein Kamal Eddin.

"But the then government did not allow us to name the party after the Muslim Brotherhood and we instead established the society of Islamic brotherhood, which played a pivotal role in whipping up religious zeal in Iraq at that point in time," he added....

Asked whether or not the IIP would cooperate with the new U.S.-installed Iraqi government, Abdul Hamid said the party "will never cooperate with any government not elected by the Iraqi people under the umbrella of the international legitimacy."...

"The Americans would only bless a government that helps them set up military bases in Iraq and recognizes Israel. We, from the bottom of our hearts, are against this and we put it clear that they will not stay in Iraq for long."...

"We revived the party once again and are doing everything in our power to redraw its political, economic and social maps," he said, noting that the part had already set up ad hoc committees to draw up the executive regulation of the party and make some amendments to its constitution.

"We hope that we would succeed in lifting the blinkers that stand as a stumbling block between Islam and some of the Iraqi people…We do not care about the results, we only want to raise up the public awareness of the religion," he concluded.

What might he have been doing to raise up public awareness of the religion? Maybe we will be finding out soon.

UPDATE: Abdul-Hamid may already have been released.

Hamas capable of suicide bombings in Britain

I think this is only a matter of time, although there may be an awareness among jihad leaders of how difficult things would (probably) become for them after suicide attacks in the West. From WND, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

JERUSALEM – Hamas has several cells inside the United Kingdom and is capable of attacking the country, a senior Israeli security official told WND yesterday. The official spoke in response to a sermon, broadcast live on Palestinian television earlier this month, in which a cleric associated with Hamas threatened terror attacks against Britain.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiras, a popular Palestinian Islamic leader, said in a live sermon broadcast May 13, "We take this opportunity to hold Britain accountable and say there is revenge we can never forget! We cannot forgo the revenge we want to exact from Britain. We hold Britain responsible for what happened in Palestine. Britain is the cause, till this very minute, of every drop of blood dripping into this land."

Mudeiras, who was lamenting Israeli Independence Day celebrations, continued, "I say to you: You must look at our situation with an outlook of confidence in Allah's victory! If you help Allah [spread Islam], Allah will bring you victory. We once ruled the world and the day will come when, by god, we will rule the entire world. The day will come when we will rule the United States, the day will come when we will rule Britain, we will rule the whole world [and all will live in peace and comfort under our rule] except the Jews."

Indonesian Police Deployed to Protect Churches/Christians

An update on this story, from AFX via Forbes, "Indonesian market bombing sparks fears of new sectarian clashes"

TENTENA, Indonesia - Security forces were deployed at churches on Indonesia's Sulawesi island today after yesterday's bomb attack on a Christian town killed 20 people and threatened to re-ignite a violent conflict with Muslims.

About 3,000 troops were on duty in the troubled Poso region and the town of Tentena where blasts hit a busy market on Saturday in an attack police said could be the work of Islamic militants behind other major atrocities.

In Jakarta, senior officials held an emergency meeting, agreeing to step up counter-terrorist intelligence, while Indonesia's president called for calm in Poso and across the country in the wake of the incident.

Officials said those killed included an infant and a Christian cleric. Victor Batara, a senior police officer in the provincial capital Palu, said 11 people were still fighting for their lives.

Tentena lies in a region where clashes between Muslims and Christians have killed hundreds of people in recent years. A peace deal was struck in 2001 after a year of fighting left 1,000 dead, but sporadic violence has persisted.

Although Indonesia is home to the world's largest Islamic following, Christians and Muslims account for roughly equal proportions of the population on Sulawesi...

Iraqi forces' security net draws Zarqawi retaliation

Our Iraq update comes from the Lebanese Daily Star.

Thousands of Iraqi forces on Sunday threw a security net over Baghdad to snare insurgents, who quickly struck back with a string of car bombings said to have been masterminded by Al-Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Operation Lightning came a day after two of Iraq's most influential Shiite and Sunni organizations agreed to try to ease sectarian tensions pushing the country toward civil war.

Four car bombs in and around the capital killed 16 people, most of them security personnel, in a swift response to Iraq's widest homegrown clampdown since the fall of Saddam Hussein over two years ago.

Nine soldiers taking part in Operation Lightning died in a suicide car bombing at their roadblock just south of the capital, while two policemen were killed when a suicide car bomber targeted their patrol in southwestern Baghdad.

In an effort to mitigate escalating sectarian tensions, officials from the Sunni Committee of Muslim Scholars, considered close to some insurgent groups, met with representatives from the Badr Brigades - the military wing of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Organized by the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the gathering aimed to smother accusations that began earlier this month when the committee's leader, Harith al-Dhari, accused the Badr Brigades of killing Sunnis and executing their clerics. A number of Shiite clerics were also killed. The brigades denied the charges...

In western Baghdad, a car bomb targeting police commandos killed three people and wounded 20, an Interior Ministry source said.

An earlier suicide bombing near the Oil Ministry left two dead, while violence elsewhere claimed the lives of a British soldier and seven Iraqis. Insurgent attacks nationwide have claimed the lives of around 700 people so far this month.

"Squadrons and brigades directed by the sheikh of the mujihadeen Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on Sunday launched an operation planned and supervised by our sheikh," said an Internet statement attributed to his group...

They "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats"

Straight talk and refreshing honesty from General Myers. "Myers Defends Treatment of Guantanamo Prisoners," from AP, with thanks to DC Watson:

WASHINGTON (May 29) - The Pentagon's top general on Sunday defended the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. Navy prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and said the U.S. believes al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is wounded, though it's not known how badly.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. has done a good job of humanely treating detainees. Muslims in several countries have protested in recent weeks about allegations that a Quran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo as part of an interrogation of a prisoner.

The human rights group Amnesty International released a report last week calling the prison camp "the gulag of our time."

Myers said that report was "absolutely irresponsible." He said the U.S. was doing its best to detain fighters who, if released, "would turn right around and try to slit our throats, slit our children's throats."

In accord with Qur'an 47:4: "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..."

"This is a different kind of struggle, a different kind of war," Myers said on "Fox News Sunday."

"We struggle with how to handle them, but we've always handled them humanely and with the dignity that they should be accorded."

Many Iraqis See Sectarian Roots in New Killings

An unsurprising assessment from the New Duranty Times.

BAGHDAD - No one knows who tortured and killed Hassan al-Nuaimi, a Sunni Arab cleric whose body was found in an empty lot here last week, with a hole drilled in his head and both eyes missing. But the various theories have a distinctly sectarian tinge.

The Shiite police chief investigating the death said he suspected Sunni Arab extremists who have driven much of the insurgency in Iraq, much of it aimed at Shiites. The Sunni family mourning the cleric pointed the finger at the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia. But with Mr. Nuaimi buried, the truth, as so often with killings in Iraq, seems to be lost in rumor and allegations.

The only sure thing is that Mr. Nuaimi and another Sunni man who helped write sermons were killed within 12 hours of their disappearance from a mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhood in northeast Baghdad.

Their deaths, amid violence that has taken more than 550 lives across Iraq this month, renewed concern that the bloodshed may be shifting ever more toward crudely sectarian killings.

Hard-line Sunni leaders have pressed the case. "The killing in Iraq now is according to religious identity," said Sheik Abdel Nasir al-Janabi, a religious Sunni and a hard-line member of the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni political group that claims to have ties to the insurgency. "Now you're killed because you're a Sunni Arab."

Shiite leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, have responded to such talk with calls for calm and renewed appeals to Shiites that they place their trust in Iraq's fledgling democracy, not revenge killings.

But the urgency of the Shiite leaders' appeals reflects a deepening fear that the welter of allegations about Shiite death squads going after Sunni Arabs, true or false, may create a new reality, prompting still more sectarian killings and pushing the country ever closer to the brink of civil war...

Review May Shift Terror Policies

A long-overdue reassessment. "U.S. Is Expected to Look Beyond Al Qaeda," from the Washington Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader "strategy against violent extremism."

The shift is meant to recognize the transformation of al Qaeda over the past three years into a far more amorphous, diffuse and difficult-to-target organization than the group that struck the United States in 2001. But critics say the policy review comes only after months of delay and lost opportunities while the administration left key counterterrorism jobs unfilled and argued internally over how best to confront the rapid spread of the pro-al Qaeda global Islamic jihad....

The review marks the first ambitious effort since the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks to take stock of what the administration has called the "global war on terrorism" -- or GWOT -- but is now considering changing to recognize the evolution of its fight. "What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism," said a senior administration official who described the review on the condition of anonymity because it is not finished. "GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at."

In many ways, this is the culmination of a heated debate that has been taking place inside and outside the government about how to target not only the remnants of al Qaeda but also broader support in the Muslim world for radical Islam. Administration officials refused to describe in detail what new policies are under consideration, and several sources familiar with the discussions said some issues remain sticking points, such as how central the ongoing war in Iraq is to the anti-terrorist effort, and how to accommodate State Department desires to normalize a foreign policy that has stressed terrorism to the exclusion of other priorities in recent years.

"There's been a perception, a sense of drift in overall terrorism policy. People have not figured out what we do next, so we just continue to pick 'em off one at a time," said Roger W. Cressey, who served as a counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. "We haven't gone to a new level to figure out how things have changed since 9/11."

"No question this is the next stage, the phase two," another senior counterterrorism official said. "We are coming to the point of decisions."...

Pakistanis Have Head, Seek Bomber's Identity

A update on this story from the Washington Post, "Pakistanis Find Bloodied Head of Suicide Bomber," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

ISLAMABAD, Investigators have found the head of a suicide bomber who attacked a Muslim festival in the Pakistani capital, killing at least 19 people, and are trying to establish his identity, officials said on Saturday.

The attack occurred on Friday at Islamabad's Bari Imam shrine, less than half a mile from Pakistan's main government buildings and diplomatic enclave...

The bomber blew himself up in a gathering of minority Shiite Muslims at a festival also attended by majority Sunnis.

Nineteen people were killed and 65 wounded, six critically. Officials said most of the victims were Shiites.

Authorities have circulated a picture of the suspected bomber, shown with a bloodstained, clean-shaven face and announced an $8,300 reward for information...

Syria Arrests 300 Saudis

From Arab News, "Syria Arrests 300 Saudis: Report," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

JEDDAH — More than 300 Saudis have been arrested at the airport in Damascus and along the Syrian border on suspicion they were en route to Iraq to fight alongside insurgents, press reports said yesterday.

Relatives of some of the arrested told Al-Watan Arabic daily that the Saudis had no intention of entering Iraq in order to take part in a jihad against American and other occupation forces. They said some of the Saudis were arrested on arrival at the airport in Damascus.

“The Saudis had gone to Syria to spend their holidays,” the paper quoted the relatives as saying. A Saudi woman, said her husband was arrested soon after his arrival at the airport in Damascus. “He called me from the airport to let me know he had arrived safely. Then we had no word for a while and later we learned he had been arrested at the airport,” she told the daily. The paper did not say when exactly the arrest had taken place.

According to the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Faisal Mekdad, his country has arrested some 1,200 people over the past few months to prevent them from entering Iraq. Many of the those trying to cross the border into Iraq, most likely to join the insurgents, were sent home “to face trial” or were being held in Syrian jails, Mekdad told Reuters. He would not say exactly where the detainees were from but that they were from “Iraq’s neighbors and other countries in the region.” Mekdad said: “We have done a great job in this respect, something which should be recognized by the United States and others. We have arrested (about) 1,200 people who had come into Syria from other countries and who were going to the front,” he explained. The Bush administration has complained frequently that Syria is not doing enough to halt the flow of men and money to the insurgency in Iraq. Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, said his country’s neighbors could do more to prevent foreign fighters from entering Iraq...

Al-Arian Defense Wants Israeli Testimony Moved Back

Sami Al-Arian Walk Watch update from Haaretz, "U.S. court asked to move Israeli testimony to end of terror trial"

The defense team for four Arab Americans on trial for involvement in terror attacks has asked a Florida court not to let the Israeli witnesses testify at the trial's opening.

Professor Sami al-Arian, a computer lecturer at South Florida University, and three others are facing charges of aiding Islamic Jihad, which is responsible for dozens of terror attacks against Israelis.

The prosecution wants to open with testimony from several witnesses from Israel, including survivors of terror attacks, members of bereaved families and police officers.

The defense wants to avoid these testimonies at the very beginning of the trial, to prevent swaying the jurors' opinions before the prosecution has established a connection between the defendants and the terror attacks.

U.S. District Court Judge James Moody agreed with the defense, which made its request Thursday, that before the testimonies are heard the prosecution must prove that the suspects took part in plotting attacks and knew they would lead to murder. He also said these testimonies are more shocking than useful. But, in view of the prosecution's insistence, Moody said he would decide only after the trial begins.

Al-Arian and the other defendants are charged with transferring funds and messages to Islamic Jihad leaders for more than a decade. They also openly supported attacks in which both Israelis and Americans were killed, the charges say.

The prosecution said it intends to summon some 50 terror survivors, 17 Israeli police officers and 18 rescue team members to testify at the beginning of the trial on June 6...

Terrorists tie bomb belt to dog in Iraq

From the UK Telegraph, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

Insurgents in Iraq attached explosives to a dog and tried to blow up a military convoy near the northern oil centre of Kirkuk.

The canine bomb went off but the only casualty was the unfortunate animal, said police. The militants wrapped an explosive belt around the dog and detonated it as the convoy passed through Dakuk, 25 miles south of Kirkuk, said the town's police chief, Col Mohammed Barzaji.

"The dog was torn apart by the explosion which caused neither injury among the soldiers nor any damage."

Col Barzaji said the bomb had been detonated outside a Shia mosque. "Eight suspects have been detained."

This was not the first time that animals have been used in insurgent attacks. In 2003, donkey carts were used to conceal makeshift multiple rocket launchers in a flurry of attacks in Baghdad. Animal carcasses and human corpses have been used to conceal explosives.

Al Libbi's Notebook Leads to Arrest of Uzbek Courier, 16 others

From the New York Daily News, "Al Qaeda bust's a blow to terror," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

WASHINGTON - The capture this month of one of Al Qaeda's top commanders has led to the arrests of at least 17 more suspects, including a trusted "courier" for the group's top leaders. The courier, terrorist hunters hope, may bring them one step closer to Osama Bin Laden.

A notebook seized during the May 2 capture of Abu Faraj al-Libbi had coded entries, including names, and is being analyzed by a joint FBI and CIA exploitation unit in Virginia, sources said.

Al-Libbi has clammed up since his arrest, but at least 17 people - including some named in the notebook - have been rolled up.

One who was grabbed is an Uzbek operative who is suspected of being assigned to carry messages between top Al Qaeda leaders, a senior Pakistani official told the Daily News.

Officials have learned the Uzbek was in the U.S. prior to the Sept. 11 terror attacks to help an associate under arrest, another source said. Details of the trip were not available.

A U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed that the Uzbek man "was a courier" for al-Libbi. The source also said the presence of an Uzbek in the top ranks of the terror group proved reports of a rift in Al Qaeda between Arabs and Uzbek fighters "is wrong."

Uzbek and Chechen operatives of Al Qaeda have been known to marry into Pashtun tribal families in Pakistan's craggy northern frontier, ensuring their loyalty and protection. The CIA has long suspected Bin Laden was hiding there, along the border with Afghanistan.

But the Pakistani official said there are growing suspicions Bin Laden joined his son Saad in Iran long ago, since "there are no rumors he's been seen" in Pakistan's rough terrain...

"There would've at least been strong rumors and reports" of Bin Laden in Pakistan's northern frontier, he said, "and there haven't been any."

"They don't know where he is," Cannistraro added...

Israel to Release 400 Palestinian Prisoners

From AP via Fox News:

JERUSALEM — Israel's Cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners, a long-overdue gesture Israel had agreed to as part of a Mideast truce package.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Cabinet that the prisoner release would strengthen Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and "the moderate forces in the Palestinian Authority." Sharon's appeal meshed with recent U.S. efforts to shore up Abbas in the face of severe challenges from Palestinian militants.

The ministers voted 18-3 to approve the release. A ministerial panel will now meet to compile a list of those eligible to be freed. No one directly involved in deadly attacks on Israelis would be released, but Israel might be more flexible than in the past and free prisoners who haven't completed two-thirds of their terms, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position.

The Palestinians want Israel to consult them on which prisoners to release.

"This is not enough," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. He also asked that Israel resume handing over West Bank cities to Palestinian control immediately, as it pledged to do as part of the February truce package...

Can anything the Israelis do ever be "enough?"

Protests Worldwide Blast U.S. Over Koran

From AP via Fox News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Thousands of Muslims marched Friday in Islamic countries from Asia to the Middle East, burning symbols of America to protest the alleged desecration of the Koran by military personnel at a U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The rallies in Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere followed an admission Thursday by U.S. investigators that Islam's holy book was mishandled at Guantanamo Bay. But American officials claimed it was often inadvertent and denied that any Korans were flushed down a toilet, as Newsweek magazine had reported in a now-retracted article.

No injuries were reported in Friday's demonstrations, with police simply watching in most places. In India's Kashmir region, however, police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse hundreds of Muslims gathered outside a mosque in the capital of Srinagar.

Women in black veils marched through Kashmir, where schools and businesses were closed as part of the protest, and set American flags and copies of the U.S. Constitution ablaze...

And from AsiaNews, "Christians and Muslims together against Qu’ran desecration," with thanks to Nicolei:

Faisalabad – Pakistani Christians will join the ‘international day of protest against the desecration of the Holy Qu’ran” called by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of Islamic religious parties.

Mgr Evaristo Pinto, Auxiliary Bishop of Karachi, told AsiaNews that “we condemn the desecration of the Qu’ran by US soldier in Guantanamo Bay, because as we respect our sacred books so we respect and give honour to those of other religions. This type of insult is not justified under any circumstances,” he added.

Fr Aftab James Paul, diocesan director in Faisalabad for the National Commission for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said that “when we demand respect and honour for our religion, it is our duty to respect other religions and should not utter derogatory remarks or insult [their] holy books”.

“We are completely united in protest with our Muslim brothers,” he added...

Afghan Leader Killed; Hostage Tape Aired

From Fox News.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A video of an Italian aid worker who was kidnapped nearly two weeks ago in Kabul was broadcast Sunday on an Afghan television station. Meanwhile, Gunmen shot and killed the top Muslim leader in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province on Sunday, police said.

Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a supporter of U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai was shot while driving in the center of Kandahar city, said deputy police chief Gen Salim Khan. One of the cleric's aides, Haji Qari, said Fayaz died while being taken to a hospital in the city.

The hostage broadcast showed Clementina Cantoni, 32, a worker for CARE International, sitting with two men standing next to her with assault rifles in their hands pointed at her head.

Responding to prompts from a man who was not shown on the video, Cantoni identified herself and named her father, her mother and an uncle.

The tape, which was broadcast by independent Tolo TV, then zoomed in on the face of the Italian, who had a brown rug wrapped around her and a blue scarf over her head. Cantoni spoke quietly on the recording and looked nervous...

Chechen Rebel Claims Moscow Blackout

From Fox News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

MOSCOW — A rebel-linked Web site said Friday that Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev had claimed responsibility for the power outage that plunged Moscow into chaos two days earlier.

"Our sabotage units delivered a major blow to one of the most important life-support systems of the Russian empire," the Kavkazcenter site quoted Basayev as saying in an e-mail.

Russian officials have blamed worn-out equipment for Wednesday's power failure, which began with an explosion and fire at a 40-year-old substation.

The Federal Security Service declined comment on Friday's claim and telephone calls to the Industry and Energy Ministry were not answered.

But Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko was quoted earlier in the day as rejecting speculation that a terrorist act was responsible for the blackout.

"I think that this is not a terrorist act. We are just using old equipment, from 1958, which needs to be replaced," Khristenko told the RIA-Novosti news agency, the Gazeta.ru news Web site reported.

The blackout affected millions of people in Moscow and the surrounding region, stranding subway riders and trolley passengers, and leaving entire neighborhoods in the dark...

Knockoff Dealers Could Have Designs on Terror

A Senate panel is told that some traffickers of high-end counterfeits have ties to Hezbollah. From the LA Times, with thanks to EPG.

WASHINGTON — When Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lt. John Stedman was booking a clothing store owner last year on charges of selling counterfeit high-fashion merchandise, his attention was drawn to the large and colorful tattoo on the man's arm.

The tattoo included Arabic writing, suggesting it wasn't a gang symbol or the mark of one of the many organized crime syndicates that have helped make dealing in knockoff goods — like Gucci handbags, Prada shoes and Louis Vuitton watches — a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States.

It turned out to be a symbol of allegiance to Hezbollah, the Islamic militant organization that the U.S. government has designated as a terrorist group.

The case of the tattooed merchant was one of several in Southern California in which alleged Hezbollah operatives had been caught trafficking in counterfeit merchandise, Stedman and other experts told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

They said that suspected Hezbollah operatives in the U.S. and other groups accused of terrorist activity were raising as much as $30 million a year in America through the sale of counterfeit merchandise and other criminal enterprises, and sending unknown but substantial sums back home...

Muslim Protestors Burn Cross on Streets of London

From Barnabas Fund, with thanks to Nicolei.

More than 300 Muslim protestors set fire to a wooden cross outside the American Embassy in London last Friday 20th May. The crowd, led by Omar Bakri Muhammad and Yassar al-Siri, were protesting against the alleged desecration of a Qur’an by American military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. This followed claims by Newsweek magazine that a copy of the Qur’an had been put down a toilet. American and British flags were also burnt, and the protestors chanted calls for violence against the US and UK. Amongst the protestors were about 50 women, some of whom had brought their children.

At the time this protest took place, Newsweek had retracted their story about the alleged incident in Guantanamo Bay. Yet the cross-burning still took place, and has caused little interest in the British media...

Iraq: Violence Surges, 30 New Deaths

From the New Duranty Times, "Violence Surges Across Iraq With 30 New Deaths Reported"

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The surge of violence that has swept Iraq since its first elected government took office nearly a month ago continued Saturday, with at least 30 new deaths reported across the country, some of them in what appeared to be sectarian killings.

The latest attacks raised the total number of Iraqis killed this month to about 650, in addition to at least 63 American troops who have been killed, the highest American toll since January.

In two of the worst incidents reported Saturday, three suicide bombers tried to blast into a base shared by American and Iraqi troops at Sinjar, 40 miles from the northwestern border with Syria, killing at least one Iraqi border policeman and wounding at least 18 others, including 15 civilians.

Farther south along the Syrian border, in the Sunni Arab city of Qaim, a police commander confirmed the killing in recent days of 10 Shiite pilgrims returning from a shrine in Syria, The Associated Press reported.

According to officers with the Army's Third Armored Cavalry, which oversees the area west of Mosul, the attack at Sinjar began at 8.20 a.m., when an Opel sedan approached the base at high speed, and Iraqi forces shot the driver. As the car exploded, a second suicide bomber raced forward in a truck, came under Iraqi fire and detonated. A third vehicle then tried to ram a walk-through gate, the officers said, but the driver detonated under fire.

In other attacks, two Sunni Arab tribal leaders, one in Baghdad and the other in the northern city of Kirkuk, were killed Friday, according to police reports. In the Kirkuk killing, local officials suggested that the victim, Sheik Sabhan Khalaf al-Jibouri, might have been a target because of his attempt to have friendly relations with Kurdish leaders...

Just weeks into its tenure, the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been shaken by the level of violence, which has soared to levels not seen since before the elections in January. The government has announced a major security crackdown in Baghdad, which aides said they expect to begin on Sunday, with up to 40,000 Iraqi troops deployed and 600 checkpoints set up in an attempt to sweep up suicide-bombing cells and other insurgents...

Report: Injured Zarqawi has fled Iraq

Top insurgent may have been moved to Iran, source says. From Reuters:

LONDON - Al-Qaida’s leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had fled the country after being seriously injured in a U.S. missile attack, a British newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting a senior commander of the Iraqi insurgency.

Al-Zarqawi has shrapnel lodged in his chest and may have been moved to Iran, The Sunday Times newspaper reported, adding his supporters may try to move him on to another country for an operation.

The paper quoted an unnamed insurgency commander as saying the Jordanian-born militant was wounded three weeks ago when a U.S. missile hit his convoy near the northwestern Iraqi city of al Qaim.

“Shrapnel went in between the right shoulder and his chest, ripped it open and is still stuck there,” the commander said, adding a second piece of shrapnel penetrated Zarqawi’s chest but exited from his back.

“There was concern about spinal injuries,” the commander said. “But his ability to move eliminated that fear.”

The Sunday Times said Zarqawi, accused of masterminding many of the worst insurgent attacks in Iraq, was carried from his vehicle after the missile strike and given basic first aid in a hideout.

When he became delirious with fever four days later he was taken to hospital in the city of Ramadi, 68 miles west of Baghdad, it said. The paper did not say when the commander was speaking but said the source had proved reliable in the past...

Novak: Yemen: al-Qaeda in Broad Daylight

Speaking of reform, here's a Yemen update from the estimable Jane Novak in Religion Journal:

So did you hear the one about Yemen? They are "reforming" the press law. The proposed law now includes the death penalty for journalists.

How about this one? To unify the country, the government is confiscating Shia religious material.

How about this? This ally in the War on Terror is perpetuating an al-Qaeda jihad.

Recent public statements about Yemen paint a dire picture. Ayatollah al-Sistani and the religious establishment in Najaf, Iraq said there is a "brutal massacre" of Shiites going on. The defecting Yemeni Ambassador has stated that high ranking members of the Yemeni government and military are affiliated with al-Qaeda. Putting together the massacre with the al-Qaeda, it's like another 9/11 unfolding slowly in the mountains and cities of Yemen.

The Yemeni Ambassador to Syria, Ahmed Abdullah al-Hasani, is attempting to defect to the UK. He says that members of Al-Qaeda are in the highest ranks of Yemen's military and security forces. Al-Hasani says that it is very likely that President Ali Abdullah Saleh "knew in advance of the Cole explosion" which killed 17 U.S. servicemen. Indeed, Freedom House in 2003 reported that Saleh refused to even investigate the Cole bombing until the United States threatened military action. Also in 2003, al-Qaeda praised President Saleh as the only Arab and Muslim leader who is not an agent for the West or the East.

Currently President Saleh is refusing to act against terrorist financing, probably earning him more praise. Only one bank account in Yemen was frozen in response to a 2003 UN Security Council Sanctions Committee directive to freeze 144 terrorist affiliated accounts of persons, companies, and organizations. The other 143 terrorist associated bank accounts in Yemen remain fully functional. In 2004, the UN Sanctions Committee list of al-Qaeda owned Yemeni bank accounts was not even issued by the Yemeni government to Yemeni banks...

Read it all.

Mowbray: Islamic Hall of Shame

Joel Mowbray notes the tepid-to-hostile response from Kamal Nawash's fellow Muslim leaders to Nawash's Free Muslims March Against Terrorism -- especially an unsurprising dose of venom from the egregious Hussein Ibish. From FrontPage:

In the first of its kind for an event organized by a major national Muslim organization, Kamal Nawash and the Free Muslims Coalition (FMC) recently held the Free Muslims March Against Terrorism. Not surprisingly, the leaders of every other major Muslim organization shunned the march and declined to take a public stand against terrorism and extremism.

Noticeably missing from the list of over 80 sponsors Nawash rounded up was any of the Muslim groups that claim to be moderates, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Though these groups pay lip service to opposing terrorism, they couldn't put their money where their mouth is and bring themselves to stand side-by-side with the Free Muslim Coalition.

The reasons for the absence of the major national Muslim groups are obvious. The empirical evidence has clearly demonstrated where the true loyalties of organizations such as CAIR and MPAC lie. In this particular case, it is anathema for many Muslim groups to identify themselves with the unambiguous message of the rally. Nawash is among the few Muslim leaders-and certainly one of the very few leaders of the overtly political Muslim groups-to explicitly confront the real threat, the real root cause of terrorism: radical Islam.

This is worth monitoring from Nawash. It will be interesting to see if he really discusses the jihad passages of the Qur'an and Sunnah, and the legal superstructure they inspired, and tries to formulate a response that Muslims will find compelling.

Where most prominent Muslim leaders prefer ambiguity and moral equivalence, Nawash stakes out an unmistakable position, not only opposing just violent jihad, but the doctrines of Wahhabism and political Islam, as well. Nawash is, without exception, against the creation of Islamic states-anywhere. The other major Islamic organizations simply can't take this position. Their refusal to back even Nawash's message exposes their true sympathies...

If there's one thing that Nawash hopes to accomplish, it is to encourage other Muslims to speak up just as he has. Notes Nawash, "People who might want to speak out want somebody else to go first. Nobody wants to be a lone voice." Though not exactly a lone voice, Nawash must feel like one some days-especially when he looks at his colleagues at the other national Muslim organizations.

Read it all.

"Islam always spoke with the sword in the hand and I don't see why now we have changed attitudes and talk with the other civilisations"

Refreshing Candor Alert. "Iran: Vote for Rafsanjani and We Will Have Nuclear Bombs, Says Religious Leader," from Adnkronos International, with thanks to MG:

Tehran, 27 May (AKI) - Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hasani, a representative of Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in Iranian Azerbaijan, has no doubts as to who to vote for in the next presidential elections on 17 June. "You need to vote for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani," said Hasani. "This way we will finally be able to have for ourselves the atomic bomb to fairly stand up to Israeli weapons," said Hasani.

"Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam," said Hasani, the imam who led Friday prayers in the main city of western Iranian Azerbaijian.

What's that? Hasani says freedom and democracy are incompatible with Islam? What is he, some kind of racist Islamophobe?

"Islam always spoke with the sword in the hand and I don't see why now we have changed attitudes and talk with the other civilisations."

5 More Iraqis Killed in Suicide Bombings

Jihad bombings not only in Indonesia, but Iraq today.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two suicide attackers detonated car bombs in northern Iraq on Saturday, killing at least five Iraqis, and the government confirmed the death of a Japanese hostage abducted earlier this month....

At least 23 people have been killed in fighting in the past 24 hours, including three men trying to plant a roadside bomb that detonated in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Another five Iraqis died in Saturday's twin suicide car bombings at the entrance to an Iraqi military base in Sinjar, about 75 miles northwest of Mosul, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

Jihadists claim to have killed Japanese hostage

"Terror Gang: We Killed Hostage," from the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for shooting Akihiko Saito, 44, who had been missing in Iraq since May 8.

The video showed identification papers and a passport allegedly belonging to Saito, a former paratrooper and veteran of the French Foreign Legion.

The video displayed the body of a dead man on his back with a bloodied face that resembled Saito.

Indonesia: Twin Bombings Kill 20

From AP "Twin Bomb Explosions kill 20 in Indonesia"

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Suspected Muslim militants set off two bombs Saturday in a Christian-dominated town on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, killing at least 20 people and wounding 40, police said.

Witnesses said both bombs in the town of Tentena struck a busy meat and produce market near a police station. The first was followed 15 minutes later by a much larger one that flattened food stands.

A Christian clergyman and a 3-year-old boy were among the dead, and two policemen were among the wounded, police said.

Later Saturday police found an unexploded bomb outside a church in the same town, part of an area where Muslim-Christian clashes have claimed hundreds of lives since 2000...

Saturday's blasts came two days after warnings of unspecified attacks that prompted the United States to close its embassy and other diplomatic offices in Indonesia until further notice.

Muslims account for 90 percent and Christians about 8 percent of people in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. But on Sulawesi, the Muslim and Christian populations are roughly equal...

Four years ago, suspected militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah terror group bombed 11 churches on Christmas Eve, killing 19 people.

The group was also blamed for the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the resort island of Bali, a 2003 attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta and a blast at the Australian Embassy in September.

In January, police discovered 60 homemade bombs stashed in an abandoned house in Poso, about 35 miles from Tentena...

Intel: Iran Has Deployable Nukes Supplied by N. Korea/Pakistan

Talks on Uranium Enrichment a Ruse. Sources say Bush stunned by news of N.Korea transfer. From WND, "Intel: Iran equipped for atomic weapon," with thanks to PC Kills.

While European negotiators focus on Iran's development of enriched plutonium, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran already has completed all of the elements required for an atomic bomb.

The news has stunned President Bush, according to Geostrategy Direct, an intelligence news service led by national security reporter Bill Gertz of the Washington Times.

"It's an incredible piece of intelligence that overshadows everything we thought we knew on Iran's nuclear program," one U.S. intelligence source said.

Geostrategy says the intelligence information asserts North Korea this year transferred components to Iran to assemble a plutonium-based nuclear warhead.

The components were believed to have originated in Pakistan.

Iran insists its nuclear program is only for generation of electricity. But Washington contends Tehran's intentions are not peaceful, pointing to an enrichment program hidden from U.N. inspectors for nearly two decades before it was officially declared in October 2003.

The CIA has been tracking for the past two years Iran's efforts to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon, Geostrategy reports.

All of the agency's assessments were based on how much technology and enriched uranium Iran had obtained for its first nuclear warhead.

While dismayed by Iran's efforts, the CIA believed Iran needed at least another three years before it could assemble an atomic bomb.

"Instead, the entire Iranian uranium enrichment effort appears to have concealed a much more immediate aim," Geostrategy says.

Meanwhile, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, praised Iran for its decision Wednesday to continue suspension of its enrichment program and to continue talks with the EU-3 -- France, German and Britain.

In exchange, the Europeans will present plans for economic and political incentives that will become part of a final deal.

Also, the World Trade Organization rewarded Tehran for its decision by opening membership negotiations...

In late 2004, says Geostrategy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps tested a command and control network that would permit a nuclear weapons warhead to be placed on an enhanced Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile.

The CIA believes Iran could immediately assemble several nuclear warheads for the Shihab-3 arsenal.

"This means that U.S. forces in Iraq and southern Europe are under immediate Iranian threat," Geostrategy says. "Israel and Saudi Arabia are already under Iranian nuclear threat."

The CIA first obtained reports in 1994 of Iran obtaining plutonium components from North Korea.

The latest information, however, comes from a new and far more reliable source, Geostrategy says...

Islamists rally on Koran issue in Pakistan/Jerusalem

Still more on the story that never goes away, from Reuters.

ISLAMABAD - Thousands of Islamists rallied across Pakistan on Friday to protest against alleged desecration of the Koran by U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

The rallies, called by hardline Islamic groups opposed to Pakistan's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism, came hours after a deadly bomb blast at a Muslim shrine in Islamabad that killed at least 19 people and wounded dozens of others.

"We condemn sacrilege of the Koran by the U.S. extremists," said a banner held by women protesters at a rally in Islamabad attended by about 5,000 people in front of the parliament building about a km (half a mile) from the scene of the blast.

Protesters in the city of Quetta burned effigies of U.S. President George W. Bush and his key allies in the war on terrorism -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"The desecration of Koran is a part of the conspiracies against Muslims," pro-Taliban leader and cleric Fazal-ur-Rehman told a rally in the northwestern city of Peshawar, close to the Afghan border.

Similar protests were staged in Karachi, Multan and other cities.

On Thursday, Brig. Gen Jay Hood, commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, told a Pentagon briefing that no credible evidence had been found that a Koran had been flushed down a toilet but said U.S. military had identified five incidents of "mishandling of a Koran" at the prison...

Another Update from the Jerusalem Post, "Jerusalem Mufti demands US apology"

The top Muslim cleric in the Holy Land on Friday demanded the US apologize for alleged mishandling of the Quran by American military personnel at a US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, also called on Muslims around the world to boycott American products during his weekly sermon at the Aksa mosque.

"The United States should apologize to the Muslims for the mishandling of the Quran by US employees in Guantanamo and bring them to court," he said.

After the prayers, dozens of people, many holding Qurans, chanted anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, saying both countries are enemies of Islam. The protest ended peacefully.

Meanwhile in Nazareth, more than 5,000 people took part in a protest to condemn US policy. Demonstrators called on the Muslim world to unify against attacks against Islam...

US designates Islamic Jihad as terrorist group

From AP via the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Skeet Street and Jeffrey Imm.

The United States on Thursday designated the Islamic Jihad Group, active in Central Asia, as a global terrorist group.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the group coordinated bombing attacks against the US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, and the office of the Uzbek prosecutor general that killed at least two people and wounded nine last July.

He said the Islamic Jihad Group had broken away from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, already designated a terrorist group in 2000 and under UN sanctions.

By designating a group a terrorist organization, the United States can block travel by any of its members to the United States and seize any financial assets they may have in the country.

According to Central Asian terrorism experts, the Islamic Jihad Group is believed to have 350 to 400 members, about a quarter of whom have undergone terrorist training.

Grecula Plots Included Super Bowl Bombing

An update on this story from WCHS TV, "Suspect in bomb sale also allegedly plotted bombing during Super Bowl"

HOUSTON - A Pennsylvania man who was arrested last week for allegedly trying to sell a bomb to al-Qaida is now accused of a more sinister plot.

An FBI agent has testified that the suspect was ready to make and unleash a radioactive bomb at the Super Bowl. Ronald Grecula is also accused of suggesting that attackers use remote-controlled model airplanes, filled with explosives, to blow up bridges in the Northeast. He also allegedly discussed bombings at targets in New York and Washington, DC.

Grecula was arrested in Houston last week. He was caught in a sting operation, in which federal agents and local police were pretending to be part of the Russian mafia with ties to al-Qaida...

Shiites want to limit Islamic references in Iraqi constitution

No public debate over Sharia Law in Iraq. It could provoke rioting and bloodshed. From the Duluth News Tribune, with thanks to Skeet Street.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite legislators have decided not to push for a greater role for Islam in the new Iraqi constitution out of concern that the contentious issue will inflame religious sentiments and deepen sectarian tensions.

Instead, the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shiite coalition that won the most seats in January's elections, will advocate retaining the moderate language of Iraq's temporary constitution that was drawn up under the auspices of the American occupation authority.

Humam Hamoudi, the Shiite cleric who heads the 55-member constitutional committee that will draft the new document, said that any attempt to debate the issue of Islamic law could ignite a firestorm of competing sectarian demands and that the brief references to Islam in three paragraphs of the temporary constitution should be left untouched.

"These paragraphs represent the middle ground between the secularists and those who want Islamic government, and I think the wisest course of action is to keep them as they are," he said in an interview at his Baghdad home. "Opening up the subject for discussion would provoke religious sentiments in the street."...

Newsweek to Al-Jazeera: 'We Are Neutral' on Quran Descration

Newsmax discusses Newsweek's interview with Al Jazeera. Full transcript available at MEMRI.

Just days after Newsweek "retracted" its Quran-flushing story, a top editor with the magazine seemingly backed away from its flat-out retraction, telling the U.S.-hostile al-Jazeera network that Newsweek was "neutral" on whether Americans had desecrated the Quran.

In a May 19 interview with the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera, Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief Daniel Klaidman admitted the magazine made a "mistake" in publishing the story, and promised: "In the future, we won’t make these kinds of mistakes."...

The Memri transcript shows that Newsweek was cleverly telling millions of Arab viewers there story may still be true – they just did not have the evidence to support their original allegations.

The Al-Jazeera reporter asked Newsweek’s [Daniel] Klaidman, "But there is no proof that it [the Quran desecration] did not happen either."

Klaidman replied, "We are neutral on whether any form of Quran desecration took place. There are allegations out there, but the allegations have not been subjected to the kind of scrutiny or legal processes that normally ... you need before you can establish whether they are true, and we certainly know that the military has not confirmed any of these allegations.

"As to whether these things happened or not, we are, like the rest of the people out there and news organizations – we don’t know. We have heard the allegations, we continue to report, and the U.S. military and other entities are investigating, and as I said, we are neutral on whether any of this ever happened."

Klaidman also said Newsweek is continuing to protect the identity of the anonymous source that provided the Quran desecration report, despite calls for the magazine to unmask the source.

Klaidman said: "We have to protect the anonymity of our source because we made an agreement of confidentiality with this person."

But veteran newsman David Gergen of U.S. News & World Report told CNN, "There was an old rule in journalism that if an unnamed source lies to a news organization, that source loses his anonymity, by definition, because he misled people."

Activities of Tampa Terror Cell Outlined

Sami Al-Arian walk watch from AP, with thanks to Skeet Street.

TAMPA, Fla. - The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group responsible for scores of killings in suicide attacks in Israel, once had 40 percent of its overall leadership operating out of a cell in Tampa, a federal prosecutor said Thursday.

The Tampa cell was primarily responsible for raising money and serving as a communications center for the Islamic Jihad during the mid-1990s, Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Furr told a judge during a pretrial hearing for former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian and three other men.

"This is an elitist, little group of people, all highly educated, trying to convince people to go kill themselves on their behalf," Furr said.

Al-Arian and his co-defendants are scheduled for trial June 6. They could get life in prison if convicted on charges that include racketeering, providing material support to terrorists and money laundering.

The hearing was held to determine what sort of evidence the government may use at the trial. The defense attorneys have argued, among other things, that some of terrorism allegations are hearsay and cannot be directly linked to the defendants.

U.S. District Judge James Moody did not immediately rule.

Furr said Tampa was so central to the terrorist group's organization that at times when Islamic Jihad members in different countries could not communicate with each other, three-way telephone calls would be placed through Tampa...

Suicide blast rips through shrine in Pakistan

At least 20 killed during Shiite religious festival near Islamabad, from AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suicide bomber set off explosives Friday in the midst of Shiite Muslims reciting the Quran, killing at least 20 and wounding dozens gathered for a religious festival at a shrine near the capital.

The motive was not immediately clear, but there are frequent sectarian attacks in this Islamic country by extremist elements of the Sunni and minority Shiite sects.

An AP photographer at the scene counted at least 20 bodies, many in pieces. An intelligence official said at least 20 people were killed and 150 were wounded.

The bomb ripped through hundreds of worshippers as they were reciting from the Muslim holy book beneath tents at the Bari Imam shrine outside Islamabad.

“It was like hell,” said Syed Muktar Hussain Shah, 40, who had been waiting for a prominent Shiite leader, Hamid Moasvi, to address the gathering when the bomb went off. “I fell down ... when I woke up I saw dead bodies around me.”

“None of the bodies was intact,” said Dr. Wahid Abbas, who helped treat the wounded. “Some had legs blown off, some had their hands blown off.”

He and other witnesses said police collected the head of a suspected suicide bomber. Authorities did not immediately confirm that information...

Shiite worshippers, weeping and moaning, beat their chests in grief. Some clashed with police after officers charged the crowd with their batons to clear the way for ambulances.

Many also chanted, “Down with America!”...

An update from Bloomberg News, "Islamabad Bombing Kills 50, Injures 200 at Shrine"

A suicide bombing at a Muslim shrine in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, today killed at least 50 people, according to an ambulance service called to the scene.

Another 200 people were injured by the blast inside the Bari Imam shrine in the east of the city, the ambulance service, the Edhi Welfare Trust Group, said in an e-mailed statement. The bomber was 20 to 25 years old, the organization said without providing further details. Police estimated that 19 were killed and more than 100 hurt, according to duty officer Naseer Khan.

The shrine is behind the home of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. The bomb exploded at about 11:15 a.m. local time as hundreds of worshippers marked the anniversary of the death of Shah Abdul Latif, a spiritual leader buried there, Khan said in a telephone interview from Islamabad. There were no reports of casualties at Aziz's house...

Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris: "America will be destroyed"

Steve Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, writes in FrontPage, "Incitement Official"

Under Yasser Arafat, Palestinian Authority sermons were filled with incitement, including calls to kill Jews and destroy America. Few in the West at the time understood the danger posed by these religious proclamations; those intimately involved in the peace process were often willing to overlook them.

The Khatibs, or preachers, who give such sermons, are paid employees of the PA. Their messages are broadcasted live every Friday at noon from mosques controlled by the PA and appear on official PA TV.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris was a favorite Khatib of Arafat. Mr. Mudeiris is based at the Sheikh 'Ijlin Mosque in Gaza and makes regular appearances during the coveted Friday noon timeslot. One of his notable proclamations about America, from September 5, 2003, was, "America will collapse ... we consider America to be our no. 1." On May 21, 2004, Mr. Mudeiris made reference to America again: "the American dog, the Byzantine dog of our days ... To the Byzantine dog, you son of a bitch, I have brought an enormous army upon you, that starts here and ends here." In sermon from March 21, 2003, he said, "Allah will drown the little Pharaoh, the dwarf, the Pharaoh of all times, of our time, the American president. Allah will drown America in our seas, in our skies, in our land ... America will be destroyed."

When Abu Mazen came to power following Arafat's death, he promised to end incitement. On December 3, 2004, he appeared live on PA TV at the President's Mosque as an audience member of an exceptionally moderate sermon calling for Palestinians to recognize and tolerate others, and to avoid extremism. Mr. Mudeiris was notably absent at the President's Mosque, but quietly reclaimed his pulpit and TV spot soon afterward.

Recent sermons by Mr. Mudeiris include one from April 15, 2005, in which he said that Muslims prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan were forced to convert to Christianity. In his sermon on February 4, 2005, he called for Palestinians to conquer Israel. This year's New Year sermon was devoted to the destruction of America: "America has reached the top and we admit it, but it is headed for a bottomless pit, Allah willing. America, which is being led by its current president, to a bottomless pit. He leads it to death and destruction, Allah willing. America's grave was dug by Bush the day he invaded Afghanistan. Bush prepared this grave on the day he invaded Iraq."...

Hezbollah warns against disarmament

From our Stop the Presses Department and the Washington Times:

BENT JBAIL, Lebanon -- Hezbollah, the Shi'ite militia that dominates southern Lebanon, used the fifth anniversary of Israel's troop withdrawal to warn authorities not to try to disarm its fighters.

"Any hand that reaches out to our weapons is an Israeli hand that will be cut off," the group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, told a rally in a rare public appearance.

"If anyone, anyone, thinks of disarming the resistance, we will fight them like the martyrs of Karbala," he added, referring to the epic battle in southern Iraq more than 1,300 years ago that led to a permanent split in Islam between the Shi'ites and Sunnis...

The United Nations passed a resolution in September that compelled Syrian forces to leave Lebanon and demanded that militias in Lebanon give up their weapons...

Hezbollah, a fundamentalist group that seeks an Islamic state in Lebanon similar to that in Iran, is widely respected in much of Lebanon, where it is credited with driving out the Israelis.

With 12 members of parliament and a vast network of social services, job training and hospitals that serve Lebanon's impoverished Shi'ite community, the group also commands near-fanatical loyalty from Lebanon's Shi'ites...

Pentagon says detainee retracts Koran allegation

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON - The Guantanamo detainee who told an FBI agent in 2002 that U.S. personnel there had flushed a Koran in a toilet retracted his allegation when questioned this month by military investigators, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

"We've gone back to the detainee who allegedly made the allegation and he has said it didn't happen. So the underlying allegation, the detainee himself, within the last two weeks, said that didn't happen," chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told a briefing.

As an indication of the twilight zone world we live in these days, the 14 (or was it 17?) people supposedly killed in rioting in Afghanistan over this incident that never happened have not been accounted for, so we do not know if those deaths were real or propaganda. Guess we'll have to put up those, "Newsweek lied, people died" bumper tickers. " Gitmo detainees lied, nobody died," just doesn't have the same ring to it.

FBI records: Detainees allege Quran abuse

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

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, alleged in 2002 that guards mistreated the Quran, according to some of the hundreds of FBI documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU obtained the documents from the FBI through a federal court order in a lawsuit based on a Freedom of Information Act request. Most of them are records of detainee interviews with FBI agents.

According to the documents, released Wednesday by the ACLU, a detainee interviewed in August 2002 said guards had flushed a copy of the Quran in a toilet.

Others reported the Quran being kicked, withheld as punishment and thrown on the floor.

Prisoners also complained about "non-believers" touching the book, according to the documents....

White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Wednesday that past accusations have had credibility issues.

"There have been allegations made by detainees," McClellan said. "We know that members of al Qaeda are trained to mislead and to provide false reports.

"We know that's one of their tactics that they use. And so I think you have to keep that in mind as well."

Indeed. See page 16 of this. It would be refreshing if the ACLU would address that and indicate why they think these reports are credible.

Dennin: Terrorism and the Human Rights Community

Michael Dennin of Amnesty International USA explores the human rights community's strange silence on jihad activity:

On January 28, 2005 Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom released its report "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques," revealing materials propagated by official Saudi government and religious institutions advocating the murder of apostates and homosexuals, hatred against non-Muslims on account of their religious beliefs and the subjugation of women. These materials were collected and translated by Muslims and other experts who expressed concern regarding the presence of these xenophobic, hate-filled publications in Islamic institutions and their negative impact on religious life in the United States.

While the sheer audacity of our Saudi "allies" to propagate these morally repugnant publications on American soil may have come as a shock to some, no less disconcerting was the failure of the US offices of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join Freedom House Chairman of the Board R. James Woolsey in condemning the Saudi Arabian authorities for advocating and propagating an ideology of hatred that has "no place in a nation founded on religious freedom and toleration." Given that any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence is prohibited under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the unwillingness of HRW and AIUSA to respond to these human rights violations appears to be yet another consequence of the increasing politicization and ideological drift that is undermining the effectiveness, reliability and credibility of these organizations, as well as the defense and promotion of human rights here in the United States. Nowhere is this more obvious than the failure of these NGOs to address the issue of Terrorism, which is arguably the American public's most pressing human rights concern since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 (a recent National Election Studies report reveals that American voters think that Terrorism has been the most important issue facing the United States over the last four years). Despite the catastrophic loss of life and the continuing threat terrorists and their support networks pose to the human rights of US citizens, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty USA still refuse to consider the American people's chief concern an issue worthy of their prioritization. On the other hand, HRW considers "Opportunism Watch: Repression in the Name of Anti-Terrorism" a Global Issue, and Amnesty USA includes "The "War on Terror"" on its Topics list. The priorities of these organizations sends a clear message to the perpetrators and victims of terrorist violence - the responses to Terrorism are a major human rights issue, but Terrorism is not. Certainly, the terrorists and their supporters must be delighted with this arrangement - despite their absolute contempt and disregard for human rights, terrorist networks have unwittingly become the beneficiaries of a de facto alliance between themselves and human rights establishments that waste no opportunity to anathematize US security initiatives while conversely ignoring, for all intensive purposes, the words and deeds of terrorists and the people who incite and finance their hatred and violence.

Despite the concerns that have been raised for years regarding the transformation of these human rights organizations into Leftist political action groups, both HRW and AIUSA appear to be moving towards increasing, not decreasing, politicization and ideological drift. Furthermore, there appears to be no inclination on the parts of these organizations to address the disconnect between their agendas and the concerns of the American people. While it may be a bit much to expect the ideologues at Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International USA to disabuse themselves of their own particular certitudes and blindness to bias, it should not be asking too much of them to respond to the needs of the people whose interests they claim to defend.

UK: Housewife, others face terror charges

A housewife getting involved with jihad. This is more confirmation of a point I have often made: that jihadists are inseparable from the larger Muslim population. There is no reliable way to identify them within it until they do something. "City trio face terrorist charges at Old Bailey," from the Coventry Observer, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A HOUSEWIFE and two city men look set to stand trial next year on charges of providing weapons and funds to a terrorist group.

Frzana Khan, a 41-year-old housewife from Anthony Way, Stoke, Mohammed Ajmal Khan, 30, of Broad Street, Foleshill, and Palvinder Singh, 29, of Freeman Street, Foleshill, face charges of conspiring to provide money and firearms to Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

Tehran's Terror Master

A chilling portrait of Imad Mugniyah from Patrick Devenny in FrontPage (thanks to EPG):

“He is the most dangerous terrorist we've ever faced. He's a--he's a pathological murderer. Mugniyah is probably the most intelligent, most capable operative we've ever run across, including the KGB or anybody else. He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable, will show up--he only uses people that are related to him that he can trust. He doesn't just recruit people. He is the master terrorist, the grail, we are after since 1983.”

Read it all.

Jihadists 'deny Zarqawi claims'

There are reports that the mujahedin in Iraq have appointed a deputy commander, but the jihadists themselves have denied it. Apparently. "Militants 'deny Zarqawi claims,'" from the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:

Claims that al-Qaeda militants in Iraq have appointed a deputy commander have been denied in a statement on a website often used by the group.

The message followed a posting on a lesser known website that a new chief would take control while leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi recovers from wounds.

The authenticity of either statement cannot be verified....

The statements containing the reports of injury to Zarqawi and his temporary replacement both called on Muslims to pray for the regional al-Qaeda leader.

"We will go on in our way of jihad until victory or martyrdom and we call upon Muslims to pray for the mujahideen and for the safety of our sheikh."

U.S. closes its missions in Indonesia

From UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Jakarta, Indonesia, May. 26 (UPI) -- The United States shut down its diplomatic missions in Indonesia Thursday, until further notice, citing a security threat.

In a message posted on its Web site and sent by e-mail to American residents in Indonesia, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta stated that "the terrorist threat in Indonesia remains high."

The message warned, "Attacks could occur at any time and could be directed against any location, including those frequented by foreigners and identifiably American, and other western facilities or businesses in Indonesia."...

On May 22, thousands of Indonesian Muslim activists, including those from hard-line Islamic groups, rallied outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, denouncing the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book, the Koran, by interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Another message from a friend

The fellow who sent me this note has sent in a follow-up:

You are a servent of the devil and hell will be your abode if you do not stop fighting the religion of God I pray to the one true God that if Judaism, Christianity or any other religion you follow is true or is it Islam is true may God curse and destroy the liar.

Now there's an ecumenical spirit if I ever saw one.

your readers are so ignorant they dont study their own books, Muhammed is mentiones by name in the bible and so is Mecca.

Uh-huh. Chapter and verse, please?

and when I said conquer the world it was the religion I was talking about and not god you fool read the statement again god is the owner of all but christians are still obsessed with converting the world over and jews are obsessed with owning everything and controling the world.

Right. Got it. Today in PC America Jihad Watch was rejected by an accounting firm because their political views differ from mine. I find it astonishing that an accounting firm thinks anti-jihad money ain't green, and I don't know which clause of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the accounting firm rejects, but it was refreshing after that to get this message spewing invective and falsehood, and to be reminded thereby that this struggle is that of the human rights and the human dignity of all people. The jihadists very skillfully, even in the comments section here, try to claim that the "hate" is coming from those who resist jihad, not from the jihadists. Messages like the one above, however, show vividly that that charge is as nonsensical as charging FDR or Churchill with "hate" for standing up to Hitler and the Nazis. Of course, Hitler made that charge. (No, I am not comparing myself to FDR or Churchill. I am merely saying that when one resists evil, evil will try to portray the one resisting as the real culprit. It has happened before.)

Who are those dead Afghans?

Now here's a strange twist. From WND, with thanks to TC:

Virtually every major news agency in the world has reported without verification that between 15 and 18 Afghanis were killed in the riots.

There's just one problem. There is no more evidence for these deaths than there is that a U.S. interrogator flushed a Quran down the toilet.

Not a single name of even one victim has been released. No details of the circumstances of the riots were released from any official sources – either U.S. or Afghan.

Who were these victims? Were they rioters killed by police or military forces? Were they innocent victims attacked by fanatics? Were they Afghanis? Were they relief workers?

G2B has examined every English-language news story about these deaths through Lexis Nexis. G2B has scoured the Internet, including foreign and non-English-language news sources for any details of these deaths. And G2B has queried both U.S. and Afghan official sources for any details about these alleged deaths.

No U.S. officials contacted can provide any corroboration for any deaths. And Afghan officials uniformly clam up with apprehension at the mere asking of questions.

"I have no comment," said one official at the Afghan embassy in Washington who asked not to be identified.

When told he wasn't being asked for a comment, just any public information about the casualties in what has become the biggest international news story, he said: "I cannot say anything."

"There should be an investigation," he said. "I cannot say any more. Please do not quote me. This is very sensitive."

Now, some sources inside the U.S. government are saying off the record that they believe the death toll may have been deliberately exaggerated by Islamists – perhaps even some Afghan government officials – who want to make a point about the grievous nature of the supposed Quran desecration.

Web Posting Claims al-Zarqawi Fled Iraq

This just in from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

AMMAN, Jordan - An Islamic Web site statement claimed Wednesday that Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's point man in Iraq, has fled to a "neighboring country" with two Arab doctors treating him for gunshot wounds to his lung.

The claim's authenticity could not be confirmed. The site used to carry messages from al-Qaida, but has fallen out of use recently. Soon, the statement appeared on another militant site, where other posters quickly denounced it as untrue and unauthorized by the terror group.

"you still have time to repent and stop helping the cause of satan a instead of helpin the true religion of god to conquer the universe"

From this morning's Hate Mail Bag, more refreshing candor from another Muslim who does not bother to conceal that Islam has expansionist designs on the rest of the world:

Do you know that the religion of Adam, Noah, Moses and Jesus was Islam. the almighty is forgiving, you still have time to repent and stop helping the cause of satan a instead of helpin the true religion of god to conquer the universe and if you do not cease HELL is your abode. you dirty zionist pagan

Peace is hopeless if the aim of the Palestinians is total victory

As I have long argued. From Barry Rubin in Lebanon's Daily Star, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The central question of the Arab-Israeli - or at least the Israeli-Palestinian - conflict is whether it is a "normal" struggle over territory or an existential battle set by religion, identit, and other factors much less susceptible to resolution through compromise.

Many observers, drawing analogies from other issues without properly examining the specifics of the Arab-Israel case, conclude that it is a normal conflict and, consequently, can be easily settled if only the right formula is found. In fact, though, for much of the Palestinian side the question has remained one of total victory, in which only Israel's extinction and replacement by a Palestinian Arab, and perhaps Islamic, state extending between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is the acceptable solution....

The methodology of terrorism, the continuing demonization of Israel on a daily basis by the Palestinian Authority and its media, the insistence, even in 2005, of officially mourning Israel's original creation, and many other practices, reflect this world view. A more subtle aspect is putting the priority on violence and agitation rather than on building the infrastructure of a future state. In pursuit of total victory - or at least keeping the door open for its pursuit - the Palestinian movement has squandered international goodwill and the huge financial aid it received in the 1990s.

Huge financial aid? Why, I thought we were supposed to believe they were penniless.

Terrorists' backgrounds defy conventional wisdom

Of course, if CNN had been reading Jihad Watch, they would have known this long ago. Search the archives here and you will find stories going back to the beginning about Sageman's and other studies establishing that jihadists are generally better educated and wealthier than their peers. From the Stop the Presses Department, via CNN: "Expert: Not all al Qaeda poor, uneducated, devout" (thanks to Mediawatch):

(CNN) -- With his penchant for bow ties and sport jackets, Dr. Marc Sageman looks every inch the psychiatrist and professor that he is -- not the spy he used to be, nor the agent provocateur he is now.

Sageman has emerged as something of an intellectual bomb thrower, producing a groundbreaking study about Islamic terrorists and their terror networks that challenges conventional beliefs.

His research shows that many of these terrorists -- including the September 11 hijackers and other al Qaeda members -- tend to be fairly well educated and affluent, and don't come from deeply religious backgrounds.

After the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Sageman says he saw a void in knowledge about Islamic terrorists, at that point deciding to help fill it by building on his first-hand experience with in-depth research.

"There were a lot of talking heads, I just didn't think they knew what they were talking about," he recalls. "There were no real facts."

Sageman got his first glimpse inside the world of jihadis between 1987 and 1989, when he lived in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Officially, he worked as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy. But Sageman's real job was with the Central Intelligence Agency, working with members of what was then known as the mujahideen in the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Sageman left the CIA in 1991, having previously earned a medical school degree and Ph.D. in political sociology. He then trained as a forensic psychiatrist, saying that he eventually interviewed close to 500 murderers.

That background -- examining killers' psychiatric profiles, working for the CIA and living in the combustible and terrorist-heavy region of South Central Asia -- gives him the skills and perspective to study the September 11 hijackers and their ilk, he says.

Sageman began by compiling biographical information -- using material from public sources, including court documents and investigative news reports -- on the hijackers and the few associates named in the press.

"Even at the small number of 25 [terrorists], I realized the conventional wisdom was wrong."

The conventional wisdom, he says, being that these were poor, uneducated young men who had a long-term exposure to fundamentalist religious beliefs.

Cliques becoming terror cells

While teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, Sageman expanded on his research to include 162 terrorists and turned it into the groundbreaking book, "Understanding Terror Networks." He came across some compelling numbers:

• About two-thirds of the terrorists went to college, in an area of the world where only about 10 percent of young men get a post-secondary education

• About 87 percent came from generally secular backgrounds (most of the other 13 percent, who studied at the Muslim schools known as madrassas, were Indonesians)

• Most came from middle or upper-middle class households

Sageman calls "kinship and friendship" the main reasons young men join al Qaeda, claiming that friends and relatives brought more than 90 percent of the membership into the fold.

This means recruitment is much more personal than previously thought, he says.

He cites several cases, including that of September 11 hijacker Mohammad Atta and the so-called Hamburg cell, consisting of a group of like-minded young men. As their religious views became more extreme, they cut themselves off from the outside world and became involved in terrorist activity.

"They are very ordinary," he said. "They form cliques and radicalize each other.

Invariably, most of the groups that became al Qaeda followed that trajectory."

Fitzgerald: Four Things Around and About Al-Jazeera

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald offers some recommendations on how to deal with Al-Jazeera, and what the American media presence in the Middle East should be like:

1) The kid-gloves treatment of Qatar is based on the smiles of the al-Thani ruler -- what is he called now? Prince? King? These sheiks of petty sheikdoms like to give themselves grand titles! Like the man whom the British used to call "The Ruler of Bahrain," who then promoted himself to Prince and then just recently to king, much to the amusement of J. B. Kelly and others who had spent time in the Gulf. It rests also upon the good looks and supposed "feminist" credentials of his "progressive" wife (in those circles, it doesn't take much to be a far-sighed progressive -- why, appearing hijabless or having a job, or even driving a car will do the trick). Oh, the rich fantasy life of American diplomats and policymakers, and of course the world press, whether in their Lawrence-of-Arabia swoon (Lowell Thomas), or their “eternal verities of the wide Arabian sky and desert” swoon (Freya Stark) or in their can’t-stand-that-little-Jewish-Sparta-or-its-supporters so the Arabs-and-Muslims-and-especially-the-“Palestinians” must-be-promoted-on-every-occasion swoon (Peter Jennings, John Simpson, Edward Mortimer) -- take your pick.

Qatar needs America, America does not need Qatar. Qatar must stop subsidizing al-Jazeera, and while it is at it, it should be asked to send the influential and sinister Qaradawi packing. To Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. If he’s truly interested in what is Halal and what is Haram, Saudi Arabia’s the only place for him. And what beaches!

2) Al-Jazeera needs to be shut down or at least treated as, during the Cold War, one would treat Pravda and Tass, or during World War II, Der Beobachter Zeitung, and Der Stuermer, and Radio Berlin (Lord Haw Haw included) and Radio Tokyo (Tokyo Rose included). This requires thought. Shooting down the satellite that makes it possible? Interfering with transmissions? Are these technically possible, or not? No one need announce it is being done. It should "just happen." Too bad.

If such is not possible, then those who are now receiving Al-Jazeera, and therefore believe in its worldview -- which clearly threatens the lives and property and wellbeing and way of life of all Infidels, beginning but hardly ending with Americans and Israelis -- it should not be permitted anywhere in the Bilad al-Kufr, the Lands of the Infidels. Pressure can be brought to bear on cable companies and satellite channel networks. Those who offer Al-Jazeera or Al-Manar as part of their "packages" to consumers may find that they are the sudden objects of boycott -- and that boycott should be relentless and endless. Some time ago there was a posting here about "Erie Cablesystems" in northern Ohio and southern Michigan, all set to offer "Bridges TV," which is a Muslim channel designed to offer the "kindler, gentler" view of Islam, all family values and Ramadan observances, of course -- and perhaps a Karen-Armstrong potted biography of the "man who brought peace to the Arabian peninsula" and "improved the treatment of women and minorities" -- none other than Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets. Better living through boycotts: if moral and intellectual appeals fail, withholding one's custom. And in the case of Columbia and Georgetown, cut off donations and making clear that everyone will suffer unless the Middle Eastern apologists are reigned in, or forced to leave -- or in the case of Esposito, simply have their institutional connection severed (Esposito is well-supported by Arab interests and can survive without Georgetown, but Georgetown suffers greatly from its now-embarrassing connection to Esposito and Co.).

3) Al-Jazeera's programs have led directly to attacks on American soldiers and an increase in American deaths. Yet there are those who, as a recent movie made by an Egyptian-American sympathizer shows, Al-Jazeera's staff includes people who complacently assume, a bit too readily, that they can send their children to the United States for an education. That assumption must come to an end. Those who work for Al-Jazeera should understand that when they accept the job there, their hopes of living in the West -- which they realize, of course, is vastly superior to the world of Islam, even if they are doing their damnedest to destroy that same West and reinforce the power of the Jihad and of the Muslims -- and sending their children to be educated and live in the West are thereby dashed.

Starting to deny the great privilege of living, even for a short period, in the United States or the other countries of the advanced West, to the relatives of those implicated in the propaganda war will eventually have an enormous effect on the behavior and career choices of those who in the future may be considering working for Al-Jazeera and similar organs of hate, hysteria, and lies. They will have to think twice before putting their talents to work for the Jihad, spouting antisemitic and anti-American propaganda. Their children are going to have to remain and live in the world that they are helping to create. They will not be allowed, themselves, the escape-hatch of the West. That itself should cause them to behave a bit more responsibly, when their own children's future is at stake.

If they have talent, so much the worse for them that they lent that talent to evil. Goebbels was extremely talented; so was Leni Reifenstahl; so were a host of others who worked for the Nazis or for the late Joseph Stalin.

Write your Congressmen. Call your local government officials. Do what you can. Make a fuss. If you are related to a soldier, use that fact. No one likes to make an enemy out of the families of soldiers, especially the Reserves and the National Guard. Al-Jazeera has American blood on its hands. It is akin to Nazi propaganda. It should not be shown in this country. But at the very least, political figures should make sure that no close relative of anyone working for Al-Jazeera ever gets an entry visa. And if any Republicans balk, do not hesitate to go to Democrats and to point out the virtue of taking a strong position on Islam. That will be one more useful anti-Jihad measure that costs nothing, and risks no American lives.

4) It is equally absurd that the American government chooses to waste money attempting to “win Arab friends” by beaming into their countries not lectures on the meaning of the First Amendment, nor on the ways in which personal autonomy and freedom of conscience are protected and encouraged, nor anything about the “free marketplace of ideas,” nor all those quotations from Jefferson and Lincoln and Mark Twain that, for example, the young Jose Figueres said helped him to transform Costa Rica. Instead, we are sending them images of what? Muslim families leading Muslim lives. Why should we pander to them, or make it seem as if we have to assure them that Muslims can live safely in the United States? If anything, we should be showing them our schools and our hospitals, and make clear that we believe we have nothing to apologize for, and that they must look to the tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam (this need not be said, but programs artfully crafted can artfully suggest) to find the source of their desarroi and sub-development. No more transmissions Arabia-wards of Britney Spears, please. We are not trying to entertain or titillate, nor even to win friends. We are trying to offer information, and to provoke thought, not about us, but about their own societies. And that thought will, if it is real thought and not the usual nonsense, inevitably lead to the “reform” i.e. the constraining of Islamic practice. One might even have programs on Ataturk. Who’s afraid of mentioning everything he did in the 1920s and 1930s? Or on the late Ali Dashti of Iran, or on others who wrote penetratingly of Islam, or perhaps a program on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, there are several possible programs right there. And if American-government sponsored channels don’t carry this stuff, they should be closed down, for they are then nothing more than jobs programs for Arabic speakers. It is particularly important that, for example, Maronites and Copts and Arabic-speaking Jews and ex-Muslims monitor this material, to make sure that taxpayers’ money is not going to people who, while purportedly working for the government, present material that undercuts it or Infidels in general, or delivers a message that may be interpreted as appeasing or otherwise deliver the wrong message. The personnel at the top of these new channels should be examined to make sure taxpayers are not inadvertently supporting the wrong people, who may simply be outwardly plausible. But it takes an Arabic-speaker to pick up, or to properly “place” through a whole series of delicate hints, someone. Native Americans just can’t do it; they lack the right antennae. They are innocents abroad, and when it comes to Islam and Muslims, they are innocents at home as well. Nice when it’s a story by Mark Twain, not so great when American lives depend on wariness and low cunning and high intelligence.

Spain: Engineer 'designed missiles for attacks on Israel'

From Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

ALICANTE — An aeronautical engineer has been arrested for allegedly designing missiles for the Palestinian terrorist organisations Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Marwan Ismail Dahman, who was born in Gaza, in Palestine but is a naturalised Spaniard, was arrested in Benidorm in the Alicante province, the Spanish daily El Pais reported.

He allegedly offered to design a new type of Qasam missile which can potentially be used for attacks on Israel.

Police sources said plans for the missile design, which had been sent by fax to the two Palestinian terrorist organisations were found in Dahman's house.

Does the Muslim American Society want an Islamic government in the United States?

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross meets the slick Mahdi Bray on PAX-TV to debate the prevalence of Sharia sentiments in the US. "MAS's Muslim Brotherhood Problem," by Gartenstein-Ross in the Weekly Standard:

ON MAY 14, 2005, PAX-TV's Faith Under Fire broadcast a debate that I took part in against Mahdi Bray, the executive director of the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Freedom Foundation. Bray had selected the debate topic in advance, and chose to argue about "The United States of Islam?"--that is, whether American Muslims wanted to see Islamic law (sharia) implemented in the United States. While I unwaveringly agreed that most American Muslims don't want to see the United States ruled by Islamic law, I nonetheless jumped at the chance to debate this topic against Bray. After all, the Chicago Tribune recently published a story detailing how the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood operates in the United States as none other than MAS. So while most American Muslims don't want to see the United States governed by sharia, Bray's organization does. And while researching for the debate, I found that MAS--except in its most public of statements--is quite open about its agenda and allegiances. Even a brief review of various MAS chapters' websites provides a revealing look at what the national organization is teaching its members.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD is an international Islamist group that largely operates underground and behind the scenes, with branches in about 70 countries. The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian schoolteacher who--in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and abolition of the caliphate--bemoaned the sickness of the Ummah, or larger Muslim community. The Brotherhood's response to this perceived sickness was to emphasize doctrinally that Islam encompasses all the affairs of man. As al-Banna wrote, "Islam is faith and worship, a country and a citizenship, a religion and a state. It is spirituality and hard work. It is a Qur'an and a sword." The group also emphasizes that Islam is a universal faith. As al-Banna put it, Islam "has encompassed all aspects of human life, for all peoples and nations, and for all times and ages."

Because the Brotherhood views Islam as all-encompassing and universal, one of its highest goals is to spread Islamic law. The Chicago Tribune explains that the controversial "ultimate goal" of the U.S. Brotherhood is "to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well." Brotherhood members did emphasize to the Tribune that they operate within the laws of the countries where they live:

They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day--perhaps generations from now--a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law.

Read it all.

Bin Laden planning an 'Islamic state'

Stop the presses! It seems that Osama bin Laden is working to establish (gasp) an Islamic state! I have discussed this in five books now and innumerable articles, and so I am glad to see that AP is coming around. (Thanks to OBL r Us for the link.)

An alleged militant on trial for a terror conspiracy targeting the US and Israeli embassies claimed today that terror masterminds Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will soon set up a Muslim caliphate state.

Abed al-Tahawi made the statement in brief remarks to reporters before the military court convened to hear the prosecution sum up its case in his trial.

"Although they accuse them of being terrorists, the heroes Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will come back to the scene soon to set up an Islamic caliphate state," he said....

Saudi-born bin Laden has long advocated the creation of a caliphate, where Islam would be the source of the law and the state ruled by a religious leader, known as the caliph -- a title taken by the successors of the prophet Muhammad....

ICE Campaign Against Illegal Money Transmitters & Underground “Hawalas” Yields 140 Arrests & 138 Indictments Nationwide

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) press release (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Michael J. Garcia, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), today announced that a nationwide campaign by ICE agents against unlicensed money transmittal businesses and underground “hawalas” has resulted in the arrest of 140 individuals, 138 criminal indictments, and the seizure of more than $25.5 million in illicit proceeds since the enactment of the USA Patriot Act, which requires such businesses to be licensed and registered.

“Over the past two weeks, ICE has shut down a number of unlicensed money transmittal businesses that were responsible for the transfer of millions of dollars to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran," said Assistant Secretary Garcia. "ICE targets these illegal operations because we know that terrorist and other criminal organizations can use these underground businesses to move illicit funds anywhere in the world with no questions asked."

In recent days, ICE has won guilty pleas from two defendants and arrested another on charges of operating unlicensed money transmittal businesses.

On Friday, May 20, Rahim Bariek, 46, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan and resident of Herndon, Virginia, pleaded guilty in Alexandria to operating an unlicensed money transmittal business that wired millions of dollars to Iran, Pakistan, and areas in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban between 2001 and 2003. On November 14, 2001, roughly two months after the 9/11 attacks, Bariek testified before the U.S. Senate about how important it was for “hawaladars” like himself to abide by federal laws governing such businesses. Those who skirt the rules “give all hawala a bad name,” he testified. A subsequent ICE probe revealed that Bariek was operating an illegal money transmittal firm in Virginia that illegally wired $4.9 million to Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Bariek faces a maximum five-year sentence when sentenced on July 29, 2005.

On Friday, May 20, Noor Alocozy, 41, a native of Afghanistan native living in San Francisco, pleaded guilty to federal charges of operating an unlicensed money transmittal business that funneled nearly $1 million to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. The investigation by ICE, the FBI, DEA, and IRS revealed that Alocozy’s business had been utilized by Jack Idema, the former Green Beret-turned bounty hunter who is currently imprisoned in Afghanistan for allegedly torturing Afghan civilians. During the investigation, Alocozy provided ICE investigators with copies of business ledgers indicating that Idema used Alocozy’s business to send funds from the U.S. to Afghanistan, presumably in support of his quest to capture Osama bin Laden and collect the $50 million reward. Alocozy is scheduled to be sentenced on August 26, 2005.

On May 13, 2005, Eltaib Yousif, 41, a resident of Castro Valley, California, made his initial court appearance in federal court in San Francisco after being arrested by ICE agents on charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business. According to the indictment, Yousif illegally moved more than $1.5 million outside the country between September 2001 and November 2003. The investigation began after San Francisco ICE agents received a tip from ICE agents in New York about suspicious deposits being made into accounts at Citibank branches there and in the Bay Area.

These enforcement actions result from an ICE investigative strategy that targets the underlying financial systems that terrorist and other criminal organizations may exploit in raising, moving, and storing illicit funds. ICE seeks to deny criminal organizations access to these systems. One system that has repeatedly proven vulnerable to such exploitation involves money transmittal businesses and related hawalas....

Man Jailed in Connection with Illegal Money Transfer Firm that Moved $100 Million to Pakistan - On April 4, 2005, Farooq Malik, a citizen of Pakistan, was sentenced to 43 months incarceration and three years supervised release following his conviction for operating an illegal money transmittal business and aiding and abetting. The sentence resulted from a 21-month investigation by ICE and IRS agents into illegal money transmitting businesses in New York and New Jersey that began in 2002. Malik, a resident of Astoria, NY, was one of six individuals arrested in June 2003 who were linked to a criminal scheme that routed more than $100 million to Pakistan through an unlicensed money transmitting business known as Access, Inc. of USA, located in Iselin, N.J. Malik operated an illegal money transfer business called Link to Link, Inc. in Long Island, NY, that transferred funds to Access, for subsequent transfer to Pakistan. Several other defendants in the case have pleaded guilty.

ICE Dismantles Illinois Illegal Funds Transfer Firm That Moved Funds to Iran - On March 22, 2005, ICE agents arrested Hossein Esfahani, in Lincolnwood, Illinois, on charges of operating an illegal money transmittal business and transferring funds to Iran in violation of the U.S. embargo on Iran. The criminal complaint alleges that Esfahani moved more than $3.75 million to domestic and international locations from his unlicensed money service business in Illinois from 1999 through 2003. The majority of Esfahami’s illegal money transmittals were directed to money exchanges in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Those Dubai money exchanges, in turn, converted the wired funds into Iranian currency and then directed the funds to recipients throughout Iran, according to the complaint. During the enforcement action, Esfahani resisted arrest and ICE agents found a loaded .22 caliber pistol in his house that he was not licensed to possess.

ICE Dismantles Virginia Illegal Funds Transfer Firm That Moved $23 Million to Syria - On March 15, 2005, ICE agents arrested Louay Habbal, 45, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Syria, for operating an unlicensed money transmittal business located at his Vienna, Virginia, residence. Habbal was arrested upon his arrival at Dulles International Airport in the United States on a flight from Damascus, Syria. The indictment alleges that Habbal operated a business called Mena Exchange that received funds from customers nationwide and deposited these funds in bank accounts in Virginia and elsewhere. After taking a portion of these funds as a fee, Mena Exchange transferred more than $23 million to Syria and other nations between November 2001 and July 2004. ICE agents seized more than $100,000 from the company’s accounts.

Ohio Doctor Charged with Illegally Transferring Funds to Iran - On November 4, 2004, a federal grand jury in Cleveland, Ohio, issued a 38-count indictment against Mohammad Anvari-Hamedani charging him with money laundering, illegal exports to Iran, and filing false tax returns. The ICE investigation revealed that Anvari-Hamedani illegally transferred more than $4 million to Iran using bank accounts in the United States, Great Britain, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, the investigation revealed that funds were also transferred to Iran using a “hawala” scheme using several individuals from various locations in the United States....

Hizballah in America

"Hezbollah in America," from the Washington Times, with thanks to omdb2ar:

Aside from al Qaeda, no terrorist group has killed more Americans than Hezbollah, which is bankrolled by Iran to the tune of at least $100 million a year. Hezbollah's main theaters of operation are Lebanon, its home country (where it killed hundreds of Americans during the 1980s), and the West Bank and Gaza, where it helps Palestinian rejectionists target Israel. But the group is active in the United States as well. Hezbollah is believed to have cells in at least 10 U.S. cities.

Although the organization has yet to launch an attack on U.S. soil, its U.S. activities are far from benign....

Outside of metropolitan Detroit, last month's arrest of Nemr Ali Rahal, a 41-year-old businessman, at his Dearborn home on charges of smuggling funds to Hezbollah, went largely unreported by the news media around the United States. But the story deserves our attention. In Mr. Rahal's house, agents found a videotape of a Hezbollah rally he attended in Lebanon three years ago. The FBI said it found $600 worth of change in buckets in the Rahal home, and that he said the money was meant to go to "orphans" -- the children of suicide bombers. Mr. Rahal has been charged with stealing more than $400,000 by means of credit-card fraud. When Mr. Rahal returned Feb. 9 from a trip to Canada, Customs agents found traces of explosives on his passport.

In March, Mahmoud Kourani of Dearborn pleaded guilty to providing material support for Hezbollah. He will be sentenced next month. Kourani ( whose brother is Hezbollah's chief of military security in southern Lebanon) is an illegal alien who sneaked into the United States from Mexico in February 2001. Federal authorities have repeatedly arrested suspected Hezbollah operatives for attempting to smuggle night-vision goggles and other military equipment to the organization. One suspect, arrested in 1998, skipped bail and fled to Lebanon before returning to the United States last year to face federal charges. In 2003, a federal court convicted a Hezbollah cell based in Charlotte, N.C., on charges of aiding Hezbollah by operating a cigarette-smuggling ring. The leader of that group, Mohammed Hammoud, received 155 years in prison.

Ex-Liberian leader receiving al-Qaeda support, prosecutor says

Charles Taylor may find that in accepting this support he has taken on more than he can handle. In my forthcoming book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery) I discuss how the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes appealed to Muslims for help in a dynastic dispute. They came into Europe and stayed.

John VI was not the first Christian ruler to make alliances with Muslims; nor was he the first to pay for doing so. But his alliance may have had the worst long-lasting effects. Unfortunately, the short-sightedness of modern Western rulers makes them all liable to be the next John VI Cantacuzenes. From AP, with thanks to Twostellas:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Liberia's exiled former president, Charles Taylor, received money recently from an al-Qaeda operative and is trying to destabilize west Africa, prosecutors for Sierra Leone's U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal said Tuesday. Chief prosecutor David Crane said Taylor harbored members of al-Qaeda including those who allegedly took part in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1997, and was allegedly in contact with a member of the terrorist network as recently as last month.

"Al-Qaeda has been in west Africa. It continues to be in west Africa, and Charles Taylor has been harboring members of al-Qaeda," Crane said, adding that he believes west Africa is going to become the next Afghanistan.

Muslims plan anti-American protests

Global protest update. "Extremist Islamic groups behind unrest over Newsweek story," from WND, with thanks to EPG:

Despite Newsweek's retraction of its Quran-in-the-toilet story, plans are proceeding for a global anti-American protest Friday involving leading Islamic organizations.

Since the story broke, evidence shows that supporters of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban have been at the forefront of fomenting the protests around the world, and they are continuing to do so.

Spencer: Taking the Sting Out of Jihad

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage today:

Robert Redford and Paul Newman aren’t in on it this time, but The Sting has become a key weapon in stateside anti-terror efforts. Last week a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man named Ronald A. Grecula went to Houston for a meeting. He told the men he had arranged to meet there that he had “no loyalty for America.” Blaming the U.S. government for his losing a custody battle for his children, Grecula was prepared to build a bomb and sell it to Al-Qaeda for use in the United States.

But Grecula’s Houston meeting didn’t go entirely as planned: the men he met were undercover FBI agents, and Grecula is now under arrest.

Last August, Yassin M. Aref, imam at the Masjid Al-Salam in Albany, New York, was arrested along with one of the mosque’s leaders, Mohammed Hossain. They were allegedly involved in a money-laundering scheme connected to a plot to kill Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations with a shoulder-fired missile. But like Grecula, they were dealing with FBI agents, and are now awaiting trial.

Two months later in Nashville, Tennessee, an Iraqi named Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily, who had spoken to a friend about “going jihad” and planning to “blow something up,” took $1,000 out of the bank to buy weapons. According to a Justice Department press release, Al-Uqaily made inquiries about buying “four grenades and two handguns….Al-Uqaily told the individual he wanted two or three machine guns with clips and bullets, as well as ‘missiles.’ After discussing prices for the weapons, Al-Uqaily allegedly expressed an interest in a missile designed for use against a tank.”

But this again was a sting, although Al-Uqaily claimed that he himself was working on a “reverse sting.”

In January 2005, federal agents cooperated with Nicaraguan officials in a sting operation that headed off the sale in Managua of SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles that could have been used to bring down commercial airliners. Another sting led to the August 2003 arrest of Hemant Lakhani, who got caught trying to do the same thing: sell missiles to jihad terrorists. Lakhani is now 69 and awaiting trial in New Jersey, although his severe ill health — he has undergone three operations this year alone — may make a trial impossible. And in March 2004, Ilyas Ali, an American citizen, and Muhamed Abid Afridi, a Pakistani, pleaded guilty to plotting to sell Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They too were dealing with undercover agents.

Six separate cases, six successful sting operations. It is reassuring to see the feds doing their jobs well, preventing the names of Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily, Hemant Lakhani, Ronald A. Grecula and the rest from joining those of Muhammad Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari in murderous infamy. It seems as if whenever a would-be jihad terrorist wants to plot large-scale mayhem in the United States, he runs into an FBI agent. If agents are really as thick on the ground as they seem to be from the frequency of these stings, the day will come when one agent will attempt to buy shoulder-fired missiles from another agent, with nary a genuine jihadist in the room.

But of course each of these cases also suggests that a day may come in which jihad terrorists actually succeed in buying shoulder-fired missiles, with nary an FBI agent around, and bring down aircraft with them. They emphasize that there is an unknown number of Muslims in America who are actively plotting the deaths of Americans and the destruction of American institutions -- despite the blanket denials of groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations and the willful silence of media outlets anxious to appease those groups. Media attention tends to focus not on the presence of Muslims with violent jihadist sympathies in the United States, but on the discomfort and pain that law enforcement operations cause for American Muslims.

Unless all these men caught in stings have been framed — as some of their defenders have claimed — their arrests are evidence that that focus is misplaced. After all, virtually every day the news brings us more curious little details: in September 2004, a man arrested by American authorities was found to have a computer disc containing a crisis management plan for the San Diego Unified School District. In late April 2005, firefighters conducting a routine inspection in a Brooklyn supermarket found 200 automobile airbags and a room lined with posters of Osama bin Laden and beheadings in Iraq. An element in the airbags can be used to make pipe bombs. That same week a 19-year-old resident of New York State, Mark Robert Walker, pleaded guilty to charges of trying to aid a terrorist organization. According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, “prosecutors determined Walker, who also used the name ‘Abduallah,’ was an administrator of an Islamic Web site that supported the terrorist group Al-Ittihad Al-Isiami.” One official remarked that Walker seemed “like a lost guy who got obsessed with jihad.”

As long as there continue to be young men in the United States who are “obsessed with jihad,” we can all be grateful that the sting operations seem to be going so well. What would complement them perfectly at this point would be a searching and honest public debate about what has made them necessary: what makes young men “obsessed with jihad” in the first place. Only then can we afford to be confident that officials are dealing with the cause, and not just the symptoms, of our present troubles.

Web sites claim al-Zarqawi wounded

Pentagon and U.S. intelligence officials question authenticity, from CNN.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the Jordanian-born insurgent leader in Iraq -- has been wounded, several Islamist militant Web sites reported Tuesday.

The message could not be independently verified.

In Washington one Pentagon official with access to military intelligence said, "We have no information that would confirm that he has been wounded or injured." The official added, "Nor have we seen anything that says he hasn't been. We just don't know."

Some Pentagon and U.S military officials find the claim doubtful, saying similar rumors in the past have never been confirmed.

The latest message is attributed to militant Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, who has posted messages from al Qaeda in Iraq before.

It said that al-Zarqawi's comrades are very proud of what they described as his heroic wounds. The message also threatened that the "resistance will get tougher" as U.S.-led attacks on insurgents intensify.

The message also asks for "prayers for our leader."

The author "doesn't go into the seriousness of the injuries," said Octavia Nasr, CNN's senior editor for Arab affairs, who analyzed the posting.

"He asks the brothers, as he calls them, to pray for his health and to pray that God will protect him. He does also say that they see this injury as an honor, a mark of honor and there was a little threat there in that message, threatening what they call the enemy -- that is, of course, the U.S. forces.

"If indeed there is an injury, the injury is serious enough for the group to be inclined to announce it publicly so that in case of death, it won't be a total shock."

The message "could be just a prelude to announcing something even more serious," Nasr said.

While the statement is similar to previous messages from al-Zarqawi's group, it doesn't bear the group's logo...

They have a logo?

Al Azhar Plans TV Channel to Promote Islam

From AKI, EGYPT: SUNNI AUTHORITY PLANS TV CHANNEL TO PROMOTE ISLAM, with thanks to Skeet Street.

Cairo - The most authoritative Sunni Muslim academic body, the al-Azhar University, is planning to launch a satellite TV channel with the aim of countering "anti-Islam onslaughts" and fighting "radical Islamic thoughts" broadcast on other Arabic satellite channels. The project was recently approved by the Islamic Research Academy (IRA), the highest authority at the al-Azhar University, the Saudi newspaper Arab News reports.

The channel was first proposed a year ago, but lack of funding proved a problem, and earlier this year the Egyptian information ministry turned down another request for a religious satellite channel, or even to allocate airtime on Egyptian television to defend Islam. However, the man behind the plan, academy committee member Abdel Rahman al-Adawi, says it has become their religious duty to launch the channel, following recent media attacks on Islam, the Koran, and the Prophet Muhammad's sayings and teachings.

"The academy's follow-up committee was alerted to this danger and realised that we should stop any attempt to demean the image of Islam and Prophet Muhammad," Sadawi said. "Part of our campaign is to counter a colonial war against Muslims and their faith."

He stresses, however, that the channel would not attack other people or groups, saying, "We will carry out what Islam preaches, which is to embrace other religions."..

Federal judge denies Al-Arian's bid to move trial out of Florida

Al-Arian walk watch. From AP, with thanks to Teri:

A federal judge Monday denied a request by Sami Al-Arian to move his terrorist financing trial out of Florida, where defense attorneys say they fear jurors might have been tainted by publicity and politics.

U.S. District Judge James Moody said the pleadings by Al-Arian and co-defendant Hatim Naji Fariz did not convince him that jurors would be so prejudiced against the men and two other co-defendants that they could not get a fair trial.

Moody said in the ruling he had taken proper precautions to ensure the jury would be impartial and fair.

A jury of six men and six women and 10 alternate jurors was selected last week for the trial, expected to take six months. Testimony begins June 6.

"I am extremely disappointed," said William Moffitt, Al-Arian's defense attorney. "This is probably the first time that I will go into a case believing that my client is not presumed innocent."

Pennsylvania Man Arrested on Terror Charges

Endangering us all because of his personal grudge. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

HOUSTON — A man who told undercover agents he has "no loyalty for America" has been charged with trying to build a bomb and sell it to an affiliate of Al Qaeda, officials said Monday.

Ronald A. Grecula, 68, of Bangor, Pa., was arrested Friday in Houston during a meeting with undercover FBI agents, U.S. Attorney Michael Shelby said. At the meeting, Grecula indicated willingness to build and sell an explosive device that would be used against Americans, officials alleged in court documents.

Grecula was angry at the government over losing custody of his children, with whom he fled to Malta. He met a confidential source in prison there while awaiting extradition to the United States for the alleged kidnapping of the children, then 10 and 3, in a custody dispute in 2002.

Iraq: 366 suspected jihadists arrested

Iraqi counter-jihad update. "366 held in anti-insurgent blitz," from AFP, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

THOUSANDS of US and Iraqi soldiers have swept through Baghdad's western suburbs, arresting 366 suspected insurgents in the largest joint military operation to date.

The US military said the raid was aimed at quelling a recent upsurge in car bomb attacks in the violence-plagued capital, which have averaged almost one a day this month.

The sweep, codenamed Squeeze Play, kicked off yesterday and involved 1500 US and 2500 Iraqi soldiers, including 600 commandos from the interior ministry's special Wolf Brigade, US military spokesman Major Webster Wright said.

Another spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Clifford Kent, said: "This is the largest combined operation with Iraqi security forces to date."...

The suspects included at least two Syrians, two Egyptians and two Yemenis, he said.

Thailand detains Muslim school owner, three students on possible al-Qaeda ties

What's this? Misunderstanders of Islam running Muslim schools? Ibrahim Hooper, call your office. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Advertising he owner of a Muslim religious school and three of his students were being held for questioning about possible links with al-Qaeda after soldiers seized military training videos from the terrorist organization at their school, an army spokesman said yesterday.

The school in the southern Pattani Province was raided last Thursday after the military learned that it had been used for military training, said Colonel Arkhom Pongprom.

Adinan Jehazae, 33, the owner of the Jihad Witthaya school, and the students were being detained in an army camp in the province and undergoing interrogation, the spokesman told reporters.

"They are being questioned about how they acquired the al-Qaeda videos and we believe whoever has such videos must have bad intentions ... and is a threat to national security," Arkhom said.

Kashmir: Jihadists blow up bridge en route to Hindu holy site

What was that again about respect for sacred things? Amarnath is a Hindu temple in Kashmir. Well, of course, this is just the bridge, not the temple itself. But there have been enough temples destroyed in the past. "Militants blow up bridge on Amarnath yatra route," from PTI, with thanks to Sunindia. The "militants" in question are, of course, the mujahedin of Kashmir.

Militants have blown up a bridge on the route to holy cave shrine of Amarnath in Pahalgam area of Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, official sources said here today.

Bridge no. 2 at Chandanwari, 15 km from Pahalgam, was blown up by using an Improvised Explosive Device late Monday night, the sources said.

Chandanwari is the first halting station for the pilgrims en route to the holy cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas.

New Spencer Book Up At Amazon

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing) by Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer is now available for pre-ordering at Amazon.com.

Amazon has it listed as coming out on September 25, but I am told that it will actually be available on August 8. At least as things stand now.

The cover says:

You think you know about Islam and the Crusades. But did you know:

• The Crusades were defensive conflicts

• Muslim persecution of Christians has continued for 13 centuries -- and still goes on

• Islam teaches that Muslim must wage war to impose Islamic law on non-Muslim states

• American Muslim groups are engaged in a huge cover-up of Islamic doctrine and history

• Today's jihad terrorists have the same motives and goals as the foes of the Crusaders

• Muslims are killing non-Muslims for their beliefs -- in Western countries, today

What's with the little pig at the top? Politically Incorrect Guide. Get it? This book is the second in a projected large series of Politically Incorrect Guides, of which the pig is the mascot.

Iraq: Restaurant Bombed, Assassinations Continue

From the UK Telegraph, "Restaurant bomb kills four, injures dozens"

Four people have been killed and more than 100 injured after a bomb exploded at lunchtime in a Baghdad restaurant.

The explosion happened in the Talibiya district in the north of the capital, police said.

Earlier, a top government aide was assassinated.

Wael Rubaie was killed as he was being driven to work at the Ministry of State for National Security in Baghdad. His driver was also killed.

Al-Qa'eda's wing in Iraq said in a statement on the internet that it was behind the assassination.

In a separate attack insurgents exploded a suicide truck bomb outside a mayor's office and shot a security official, killing at least seven people.

The truck bomb exploded in the town of Tuz Khurmatu south of the oil city of Kirkuk, killing five people and wounding 18...

Report: "American Pilot" was Iraqi-American Businessman

It looks like the "American pilot" that Al-Qaida In Iraq claims to have murdered was an Iraqi-American businessman instead. From HomelandSecurityUS.com, "REPORT: Islamic Terrorist Thugs Murder U.S. Pilot in Iraq," with thanks to KAOSKTRL.

22 May 2005: al Qaeda in Iraq published a statement on Sunday stating that they killed a U.S. pilot they captured. The alleged victim is reported to be Neenus Y. KHOSHABA of Illinois. Although they posted no photographic evidence to indicate that the victim was murdered, the Islamic terrorists posted many of his personal papers, including his Illinois driver’s license on the website. Countering al Qaeda’s claim was a spokesman for U.S. forces who denied having any report of a plane being downed within the past 24 hours and no pilot had been reported missing.

A high-ranking official with Iraq's Assyrian Democratic party, however, identified Mr Khoshaba as a US-Iraqi businessman from an Assyrian family who was kidnapped last week. "I can't confirm his death, but I can identify the hostage," the official said. "Mr Khoshaba was a US-Iraqi businessman based in Chicago who moved back to Iraq after the war in 2003.

"He was apparently tricked by a group of people posing as representatives from the oil ministry, who told him that they were looking for someone with a dual nationality and had business opportunities to offer him. "There had been no word from him since," he said.

According to reports, Mr Khoshaba lived near Baghdad Jadida, in eastern Baghdad...

Pakistan: More Anti-US Protests Planned

Never mind that it probably never happened; more protests are in the offing, from Dawn, "MMA announces plan for anti-US protests," with thanks to Fanabba.

ISLAMABAD - A largely attended anti-US convention on Sunday announced a series of protest demonstrations in the country and across world after observing the May 27 international protest day against the desecration of the Holy Quran by American interrogators in the Guantanamo Bay prison. The convention organized by the Islamabad chapter of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and presided over by Qazi Hussain Ahmed was attended by members of the components of the MMA and other religious and social organizations.

The speakers rejected withdrawal of a report about the desecration incident by the Newsweek magazine and demanded handing over of the culprits for their trial in accordance with Islamic laws. Speaking on the occasion, Qazi Hussain said that desecrators of Holy Quran, the divine book preaching love, peace, justice, equality and moderation, and their supporters would be chased all over the world and made to repent their misdeeds.

He said: “We can restore Muslim Ummat’s respect only through unity and changing our rulers for which we have to launch a targeted movement by peacefully taking to the streets.” He assured that the protests would be peaceful and target of their abhorrence would not be local minorities, particularly Christians, who, he said, were an oppressed and poverty-stricken community.

The MMA president announced that women and children would hold a big protest demonstration after an all-male demonstration on May 27. Jamaat Dawat wal Tauheed chief Professor Hafiz Saeed termed the world-wide wave of protests as a blessing in disguise which could pave the way for Muslim unity...

Iran Reformists Barred From Presidency

From AP, with thanks to OBL r Us.

TEHRAN, Iran - All reformists who registered to run in next month's presidential elections were rejected by Iran's hard-line constitutional watchdog, which approved only six out of the 1,010 hopefuls, state-run television reported.

The announcement Sunday prompted a crisis meeting by reformers, who immediately threatened to boycott the election.

"We are warning the Guardian Council that we will not participate in the election if it doesn't reverse its decision," Rajabali Mazrouei, a top member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, told The Associated Press.

"Barring reform candidates means there will be no free or fair election," he said.

There was similar outrage last year when the Council — which supervises the elections — disqualified more than 2,000 reformists from legislative elections, leading to a low turnout. Reformists denounced that vote as a "historical fiasco."

The council's announcement, however, appeared to be the final decision and effectively leaves reformers seeking democratic changes within the ruling Islamic establishment without a candidate...

[Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst said,] "Apparently hard-liners prefer discrediting the country rather than giving up power despite unpopularity."

Details on the Uzbek Riots and Gov't Crackdown

Update on the Uzbekistan unrest from the LA Times, "Uzbek Witness Tells of Brutality on Both Sides," with thanks to Skeet Street.

ANDIJON, Uzbekistan — They called themselves "the Brotherhood." Devout Muslims and astute businessmen, they grew to include about 200 associates. They ran bakeries, garment and shoe factories, carpentry and leatherwork shops, even a medical center and charitable activities.

They were the business elite of this city of 300,000 in eastern Uzbekistan's poor but densely populated Fergana Valley, known as a hotbed of Islamic fervor.

But the authoritarian government of President Islam Karimov saw them as a threat, and put 23 members on trial last year as alleged religious extremists running a criminal organization. All but one were imprisoned during the proceedings.

As the trial approached its conclusion, a volatile mixture of political and religious repression, poverty and radical Islam exploded in violence and death on May 13, raising concerns about the political stability of a key U.S. ally in Central Asia. The Pentagon said last week, without providing details, that activities at a U.S. base here that support operations in Afghanistan had been scaled back because of concern about the events in Andijon.

Witness accounts from reporters for Western wire services, local human rights activists and others in Andijon have indicated there was brutality on both sides on that day of bloody clashes, which began when armed fighters staged a jailbreak, freeing the imprisoned businessmen.

According to a defense lawyer who offered the most detailed account yet of what happened, the freeing of prisoners and subsequent protest rally that ended in a fierce government crackdown was organized not by some shadowy terrorist group, but by the imprisoned businessmen's frustrated and angry relatives and friends.

As described by Rashanbek Khadzhimov, a lawyer who took part in the businessmen's defense: "Their friends, their colleagues who were still free, and their relatives just lost their heads. If I had known what they were thinking I would have stopped them...

The government placed the death toll in the town of Andijon at 169, although human rights activists and others said hundreds more had been killed. The dead included armed militants and unarmed civilians who had come into the street to support the freed businessmen and to complain about unemployment, low living standards and Karimov's authoritarian rule. The death toll included at least 32 police and soldiers, according to the government...

Saudi Scholars Demand Perpetrators of Qur'an Abuse be Tried by Islamic Court

Never mind that it probably never even happened; they want somebody to get the death penalty for it. From AFP, "Saudi scholars want Islamic court to rule on alleged Quran abuse," with thanks to all who sent this in.

RIYADH - Eighteen Saudi Muslim scholars and thinkers demanded Saturday that those involved in the alleged desecration of the Quran at the US detention facility of Guantanamo Bay be tried by an Islamic court.

“It won’t do any good if the State Department (eventually) apologizes or if it rejects this act, or if its authors are tried,” they said in a statement obtained by AFP.

“That would amount to throwing dust in the eyes as was the case in the trials of those who committed the crimes (of abusing prisoners at Iraq’s) Abu Ghraib jail ... The Islamic nation will not settle for less than the trial (of the Guantanamo culprits) by an Islamic court,” said the mostly Salafi signatories...

“All Muslims are required to strive seriously and consistently to expose the intentions of the aggressor through various media and to revive the boycott of US products,” said the Saudi scholars, who also demanded the release of the Guantanamo detainees...

Zarqawi: "It is a Crusade war"

The assumption that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by a tiny minority of extremists who have hijacked a peaceful religion is still held uncritically by most people. However, it has lost a lot of ground: even some Muslim reformers acknowledge that theirs is a minority position, and here and these even mainstream media sources have admitted that in Islamic theology the jihadist perspective dominates today.

Still, many Islamic spokesmen and their allies in America tell us glibly that the 9/11 attacks are condemned by Islam because Islam forbids the killing of innocent civilians. Now here is Zarqawi offering an Islamic refutation of that view, centering particularly on the fact that Muslims are killed in his "martyrdom operations." I ask all who identify themselves as Muslim moderates -- Khaleel Mohammed, Jamal Badawi, Stephen Schwartz, Ibrahim Hooper, anyone -- to supply, please, a reply to this piece by Zarqawi, reasoning from Islamic principles. For if Islamic moderates convince non-Muslims that Islam is peaceful, those non-Muslims will go home reassured, but that is all: only if the moderates can convince their fellow Muslims will there be any weakening of the jihadist initiative.

"Zarqawi: And The Grandchildren Of Ebn Al-Alqami Have Made A Come Back," from the pro-jihad site Jihad Unspun, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The Media Department of Al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers presents the following statement by Mujahid Sheikh Abu Mesa’ab Al-Zarqawi, may Allah preserve him.

In The Name Of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

{Soon will you remember what I say to you (now. My (own) affairs I commit to Allah: for Allah (ever) Watches over His Servants.} 40:44

Praise be to Allah, whose Help glorifies Islam, whose Irresistibility humiliates Shirk (rejection of oneness), whose Command manages all affairs, whose Planning draws the Kafirs (unbelievers) in little by little, whose Justice causes days of blessings and days of suffering to alternate, and whose Grace makes final victory belongs to the pious. And peace and prayer be on the one that with his sword, Allah elevated Islam status.

The constant struggle between righteousness and falsehood since the beginning of creation till the Day of Judgment has been the practice of Allah. Past history has shown us various forms of this struggle.

We are now witnessing a renewal of one chapter of this struggle, at the hands of the cross worshippers, who have announced it loud and clear: It is a crusade war.

They came and spread mischief and oppression, violated Muslim sacred symbols, spread their Kufr (rejection of faith) system, and transgressed all bounds against Muslim honor and dignity. They were and still are being aided by their allies from Shia. The Shia sect has always spearheaded any war against Islam and Muslims throughout history.

All this is happening while the rulers of this Ummah (nation) are in a state of apostasy, the wicked scholars have looked the other way and sold their Deen (religion) for a miserable price in this life, and while righteous people were unaware of the nature and scope of the current campaign against Islam.

The True Mujahideen have stood up to defend this Deen (Islam) and protect Islam’s honor and dignity. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and out-supported. But they decided to answer the call of Allah to go for Jihad to eradicate Kufr and Kafirs.

They were faced with the most powerful, indecent, and arrogant military machine in modern times. But the practice of Allah dictates that in these kind of confrontations, the falsehood is superior in numbers and armor so that Allah tests His Servants and separates the true believers from the rest. This also illustrates that victory can only be realized by the Grace of Allah. Therefore, this will lead the true believers to invoke Allah to come to their aid and they will have no doubt that Allah is sufficient for them.

The huge gap between what the enemy of Allah has (in terms of personnel, weapons, logistic support, etc.) and what they (the Mujahideen) have, led them to conclude that they must come up with an effective way to make up for their deficiency in order for the torch of Jihad to stay lit. Martyrdom operations were the answer. Therefore, the Martyrdom Seekers Brigade came into existence. Graduates of this Brigade, have wasted no time and sped as fast as they can towards the enemies of Allah in order to pound their shelters, spread terror in their heart, and win the pleasure of Allah. They raced as far as they can on the road to paradise. They inflicted very heavy casualties on the enemies of Allah and expose the true weakness of the American military machine. By the Grace of Allah, the Mujahideen have dismantled the myth about “the American super power”, and have proven that the US can no longer claims that it has an unbeatable military force. The results of those martyrdom operations renewed hope on the part of many Muslims, Alhamdulillah (Praise be to Allah).

However, the defeatists from our own skin decided to stab the true Mujahideen in the back and throw doubts about the permissibility of their operations. They have in fact directly or indirectly helped the cross worshippers in their campaign against Mujahideen. The defeatists, the unfaithful, and the ill-intentioned people from our own skin, have criticized our operations against the enemies of Allah on the bases that some of these operations results in killing so called “innocent civilians”.

The Mujahideen carry out their operations under strict adherence to the rules of engagement as set forth by Allah, His messenger, our prophet Muhammad, and his companions. And why not? After all, the Mujahideen took to the battle fields only to establish the Deen of Allah (Islam), to make the word of Allah high above any others, and to gain the pleasure of Allah.

In this address, I will put forth and clarify the judgment and the rules of Allah’s Sharia’ah (Islamic Jurisprudence) in connection with those incidents in which Muslims are killed as a result rather than the main target of Mujahideen operations. I do not intend to address the legality of martyrdom operations for it has been decided by more than one scholar already.

The origin of this address is taken from a research study done by our Mujahid, Sheikh Abu Abdulallah Al-Muhajir, may Allah preserve and sustain him (2).

My success can only come from Allah.

There is no doubt that Allah commanded us to strike the Kuffar (unbelievers), kill them, and fight them by all means necessary to achieve the goal. The servants of Allah who perform Jihad to elevate the word (laws) of Allah, are permitted to use any and all means necessary to strike the active unbeliever combatants for the purpose of killing them, snatch their souls from their body, cleanse the earth from their abomination, and lift their trial and persecution of the servants of Allah. The goal must be pursued even if the means to accomplish it affect both the intended active fighters and unintended passive ones such as women, children and any other passive category specified by our jurisprudence. This permissibility extends to situations in which Muslims may get killed if they happen to be with or near the intended enemy, and if it is not possible to avoid hitting them or separate them from the intended Kafirs.

Although spilling sacred Muslim blood is a grave offense, it is not only permissible but it is mandated in order to prevent more serious adversity from happening, stalling or abandoning Jihad that is. If one says that we must not allow the killing of Muslims under any circumstance, especially in light of modern war tactics, this means nothing except stalling or permanently abandoning Jihad. This will lead to handing over the land and people to the unbelievers who are full of hate for Islam and Muslims. The unbelievers will have a free hand to humiliate and persecute Islam and Muslims and Muslims will be forced to live by Kafir rules and be treated like slaves. Many Muslims will be pressured or forced to give up their religion, Islam will be altered, modified, and replaced with another form that will be totally different from that which was revealed to the one who was sent with the sword, peace and prayer be upon him.

This is exactly what they (the unbelievers) are aiming for. They are doing their best to accomplish their goal, and they are being aided by many of so called “Muslims” and the Ulama (scholars) of money and corruption. So which adversity is more dangerous in the sight of Allah?

Zarqawi goes on to quote hadith and various Islamic scholars. To dismiss him as being "not an Islamic scholar" is not enough: moderate Muslims must formulate an answer to this kind of Islamic argumentation. The world is still waiting.

U.S., Iraqi Troops Launch Baghdad Offensive

Countering the jihad in Iraq. But still nothing on the pilot.

From AP via ABC News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Seven Iraqi battalions backed by U.S. forces launched an offensive in the capital on Sunday in an effort to stanch the violence that has killed more than 550 people in less than a month, targeting insurgents who have attacked the dangerous road to Baghdad's airport and Abu Ghraib prison.

Aides to a radical anti-American Shiite cleric, meanwhile, sought to defuse tension between Sunnis and the majority Shiites after a recent series of sectarian killings.

Iraq's government took the diplomatic offensive, joining the United States in its oft-repeated demands that Syria close its porous border to foreign fighters....

Al-Qaida In Iraq Claims to Murder American Pilot

An announcement from the pro-jihad site Jihadunspun:

We have just received news that Al-Qaida in the Land of the Two Rivers have captured and subsequently executed an American pilot. While it is unclear when and how the pilot was captured by Al-Qaida, here is their statement, uncut and uncensored as translated by JUS.

Al-Qaida Organization Takes Responsibility For Executing An Amercian Pilot; Releases Photographs

In The Name Of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

O Allah! Make our shots hit their intended targets and fasten our feet firmly to the ground.

Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds. Final victory is on the side of the believers, and no aggression except on those who transgress all bounds. Peace and prayers be on the Imam of Mujahideen, our prophet, Muhammad, his family, and his companions.

Your brothers in the Al-Qaida organization in the Land of the Two Rivers have detained an American pilot. After questioning him, it became known that he launched air raids and bombed many Mosques as well as the Ashtar Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad during the invasion. He also admitted bombing many civilian houses.

At the conclusion of the investigation, the verdict of Allah was carried out on this Kafir.

{And Allah has full power and control over His affairs; but most among mankind know it not.}12:21

Allahu Akbar....Allahu Akbar...Allahu Akbar.
Glory is to Allah, His Messenger and to the Mujahideen

Al-Qaida in the Land Of The Two Rivers
14 Rabie Al-Thani, 1426

Houser: The Battleground

Mark Houser writes in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, "The battleground: Europe has become a hiding place for terrorists"

Editors note: To find out what governments and courts are doing to stop the growing threat of Islamic terrorist groups in Europe, reporter Mark Houser visited Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain in March and April on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Today's stories are the first in a series of reports on what he discovered.

Despite the brutal slaying of an Amsterdam filmmaker and tension broiling between Muslims and non-Muslims, Dutch courts continue a string of acquittals in terrorism trials.

Europe, the cradle of Western Civilization, also is a hiding place for enemies plotting its ruin.

The most infamous, Mohammed Atta, e-mailed U.S. flight schools and devised the airliner hijackings that would kill nearly 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, while living in an apartment in Hamburg, Germany. A Spanish court is now deciding if an al-Qaida cell in Madrid helped Atta's group with money and a safe house...

America remains a prime target. In the apartment of one Madrid suspect still at large, Spanish police found detailed diagrams of Grand Central Station.

Another suspect had a map of Pittsburgh in his apartment. Investigators don't know why.

Europe has an estimated 23 million Muslims -- about 10 times as many as America -- mostly from the Middle East and North Africa. Some are recent immigrants; others were invited by the host governments in the 1960s to provide cheap labor and stayed...

Read it all.

Kill the reporter carrying the camera

From an Iraqi insurgent sniper training manual, with thanks to Little Green Footballs.

Under a picture with the heading "who would you kill first?" is the following:

"The first one is the Soldier (second from right) because he has a MG, heavy machine gun. Then is the stupid Soldier on the left. He is a very easy target (look how he is elevated from the ground), then the Soldier or the reporter carrying the camera. First, because the camera can be used as binoculars; second, it is the most difficult thing to hide the death of a reporter in Iraq."

DC: Fundraising for Hamas Fundraiser

From the Northern Virginiastan, "Fundraising for the HAMAS fundraiser"

On Sunday, May 22, a fundraising dinner to support Abdulhalim Ashqar, charged with raising funds for HAMAS, and aspiring assassin Ahmed Abu Ali, will be held at the Sheraton Premiere Hotel in Tysons Corner. Confirmed speakers include our old buddies Shaker Elsayyed and Mahdi Bray and Imam Seraj Wahhaj, identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombings.

What makes the Sheraton Premiere, aside from its central location, the "go-to" place for holding Islamic functions? CAIR is hosting two events - its MD-VA chapter annual fundraiser and its "Islamophobia" conference there. Does the Sheraton Premiere not have any scruples about who books its facilities?...

IPPA: Tomorrow "Day of Outrage"

Did you know there is an Islamic Political Party of America, also known as the "Party of Peace?" They are calling for a National Day of Outrage to protest the alleged Qur'an desecration at Gitmo. Thanks to JS:

On Monday, May 23, 2005, the Islamic Political party of America is calling on every Muslim, Man, Woman, in the United States of America to call the Office of the President of the US, Vice President, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, voice your Outrage over the interrogators tormenting Muslim prisoners by the worst act of “blasphemy” ever devised by man against Islam and the Holy Quran...

Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it.

Pakistan: Al Qaeda Arrests

From the Pakistan Daily Times, "Six arrested for Qaeda link," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

MULTAN/PESHAWAR: Police arrested six militants in separate raids for allegedly sheltering Al Qaeda fugitives and planning rocket attacks against the army, police and security officials said Friday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three of the suspects were captured this week in Multan. The three are said to be members of the banned Hizbul Mujahideen outfit.

The officials said that Ali Sher, Hafiz Ijaz Ahmed and Pir Muhammad Jamil were captured this week during a raid in Multan.

“I confirm that these people sheltered some Arab Al Qaeda men in recent months. They are in our custody and we are questioning them,” one security official said.

During the raid they seized some compact discs and a diary that contained names and telephone numbers of some Al Qaeda figures, another security official said...

“We also seized four rockets, some guns and detonators from a house they were hiding in,” said Abid Ali, police chief in Bannu, who accused the three of being members of the Jaish Mohammed militant group. Pakistan has outlawed several militant groups that support Al Qaeda, and its security agencies have arrested more than 700 Al Qaeda men after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

Chechen Rebels Planned “Second Beslan”

From MosNews, "Chechen Rebels Planned “Second Beslan” - Prosecutor," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

Four Chechen rebels, detained in April 2005, planned to carry out a Beslan-style terrorist attack at a village in the republic of Ingushetia, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Nikolai Shepel was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

A reserve group of 11 guerillas, led by warlord Aslanbeck Hatuev, would have seized a school in the republic neighboring North Ossetia on Sept. 1, 2004 if anything had gone wrong in Beslan. Like the Beslan hostage-takers, they were also trained by the Arabian mercenary Abu Dzeit who had worked out the plan of the seizure. He was killed in February 2005 by Russian special forces.

The group included fewer people than Beslan one because the village of Nesterovskaya, chosen by the rebels, is smaller. One of the four arrested rebels, Rezvan Hodzhiev had to work as a guide for the others, as he had studied in the school and knew its layout. The same role was played by Beslan hostage-taker Vladimir Hodov. Nikolai Shepel also reported that the investigation has already determined the names of some of the other members of the group.

After the terrorists’ leader realized that the Beslan seizure had been “successful”, the deputy prosecutor explained, he told the second group to halt preparations....

During the hostage-taking and the siege in September of last year 330 people, including 180 children, were killed in Beslan.

al-Shaibah: I was just the messenger

More news on the Hamburg cell trial from New Zealand Stuff, "Al Qaeda captive's story in 9/11 trial spotlight," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

BERLIN: An al Qaeda courier was sent to Afghanistan just before the September 11 attacks to convey the message "Eleven Nine", but did not know the significance of the numbers and was not part of the plot, a central figure in the conspiracy told US interrogators.

The assertion was made by captured al Qaeda figure Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and is contained in documents, obtained by Reuters, which were sent by the United States to Germany this month.

The story's credibility will be tested next Tuesday when the documents are presented to a Hamburg court trying another September 11 suspect, Moroccan Mounir el Motassadeq.

In the papers, sent by the US Department of Justice and obtained by Reuters, bin al-Shaibah is quoted as saying another Hamburg-based Moroccan, Zakariya Essabar, was sent to Afghanistan as an unwitting messenger to tell al Qaeda leaders when the attacks on the United States would take place.

Essabar, a Moroccan who like the others was based in Hamburg, was to deliver the message to a contact called Mukhtar.

Bin al-Shaibah "asked Essabar to convey the message Eleven Nine to Mukhtar, but insisted that he did not tell Essabar what the message meant", the documents say.

At another point in his questioning, bin al-Shaibah "described Zakariya Essabar as a close associate, quickly adding that Essabar did not have any foreknowledge of the events of 11 September", they say.

But at yet another time, bin al-Shaibah – in jail at an undisclosed location – described how an aide to Osama bin Laden "instructed Essabar to return (from Afghanistan) to Germany and to obtain a US visa so that Essabar could travel to the United States to take part in the planned attacks".

Neither bin al-Shaibah nor Essabar was granted a US visa.

Canadian Report: West Africa is Terror Hotbed

From our Stop the Presses Department and UPI, "Analysis: W. Africa may be terror hotbed"

Washington, DC -- A newly declassified Canadian intelligence report warns that West Africa is breeding a militant Islamist threat with "significant potential" for growth for groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service brief, which was obtained by United Press International, says religious and ethnic divisions coupled with state corruption and severe poverty in parts of West Africa provide fertile grounds for al-Qaida and affiliated groups to recruit supporters and plot attacks on Western interests...

Last week, seven men alleged to be members of Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algeria-born movement with links to al-Qaida were charged by a Mauritanian court for plotting acts of terror.

The group, known by the initials GSPC, was identified as an "immediate concern" in the CSIS brief. It is estimated to have 300 fighters in the region, is on U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, and is charged with kidnapping dozens of European tourists in the Sahara desert.

Experts say, however, local authoritarian regimes that continue to denounce Islamic political groups as terrorists in order to stifle opposition may increase sympathy for the movements. They say the Mauritanian government of President Maaouya Ould Taya is not alone in inflating the domestic terror threat as a pretext to repress socio-political freedoms in a manner that could foment radicalism.

I see, opposing them just makes the situation worse. I guess we should just do nothing and hope this little terrorism problem goes away on its own.

West: Aftemath of Toilet Caper

Diana West is on the case in her latest Washington Times piece.

So, Newsweek had "little idea how explosive" its Koran-down-the-toilet story would be, writes Paul Marshall in National Review Online (NRO).

OK, I buy that — although Newsweek is hardly exceptional in its failure to understand Islam 101. Still, the anonymously sourced, now-retracted story — evidence of "media mistrust of the military," writes the Wall Street Journal — didn't become "explosive" until after Imran Khan, a Pakistani anti-U.S. opposition leader (and divorced son-in-law of the late financier Sir Jimmy Goldsmith) held a press conference to light the fuse.

And then what happened? White House spokesman Scott McLellan put it this way: "The report had real consequences. People have lost their lives. Our image abroad has been damaged." Regarding the spate of killing and mayhem across the Muslim world, the New York Post's John Podhoretz wrote that people "are dead for no reason other than some 'good and credible' source had an axe to grind with one of his bosses 15,000 miles away in the United States."

The "report" did this? Our "image" has been damaged — only now? For no "other" reason? Something's missing. That is, Koran-gate offers more than just another example of Washington politicking or good, old-fashioned media bias. Neither drove rioters to murder last week on the Arab-Muslim "street" any more than they drove Mohammed Atta to mass murder a few years ago in the friendly skies. It was jihad then, and jihad now, the rigid ideology that infuses medieval blood-lust with an unlikely longevity in a post-Enlightenment, technological age. Which is why the Newsweek story is not about us. Rather, it underscores something about them that is much more significant.

Us and them: The words are "divisive"; the concept politically incorrect. But what Michael Isikoff and Newsweek have done with their admittedly flimsy instance of reporting is focus our eyes on the chasm that lies between the Muslim world in which a book — one book — is sacred and life is cheap, and the Western world where speech is free and life is precious.

Read it all.

Boylan: What do you think is the cause of terrorism now?

An original Jihad Watch article by Patrick Boylan.

Curing the symptoms - Ignoring the disease: An approach to fighting terror by intelligence and counterterrorism experts

On a one week tour of the various agencies responsible for Homeland Security, a simple question “What do you think is the cause of terrorism now?” put forward to a number of “terrorism experts”, got me various answers such as illiteracy, to believe it or not, American policy abroad, but Islam was definitely not the problem! Some of the “experts” who did part of the PowerPoint presentations seemed to be more impressed with themselves than with getting to the true cause of terrorism.

At the Department of Homeland (in)Security, four, yes four! “experts” had that “Deer caught in the headlights” look when asked the simple question, “What do you think is the cause of terrorism now?” The standard response was, “Our “Mr. “Expert” will answer that when he gets up here.” When Mr. “Expert” was in the hot seat he was put about by my simple questions about his presentation such as:

“Why do you have Conventional and Un-Conventional Terrorism on that slide, and what exactly does that mean?”

Mr. “Expert” answered “Well, I’m not sure. No one has ever asked me that question before.” Now that gave me a real warm fuzzy feeling.

One of Mr. “Experts” slides had the words “Takfirs = sleeper cells”, Of course I’m sure he meant Takfiri’s who are members of the extremely violent Al Takfir Wal Hijra whose more notorious and deadly members include Zawahiri, and allegedly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Youssef and Atta.

Another interesting word was “Shahida’a”. Your guess is as good as mine, but I will lay my money on “Shaheed”(martyr) or “Shahada”(Concept of Martyrdom).

At least Mr. “Expert” was honest in saying he had no idea how the words were pronounced and what they meant. Asked after the presentation by me if he had read the Quran, he said no, but one of his senior bosses was Ali Mustapha, as if having a Muslim boss was reason enough that Mr. “Expert’s” presentation, which he declared was not for the public’s viewing, was correct and educational. Far from it! He hadn’t read the Quran, but he was definitely sure that Islam was a religion of peace!

I wonder if “Mr. Expert” knew DHS policy director of the department’s Security Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Faisal Gill too? Gill a thirty three year old Muslim lawyer with no intelligence experience, was appointed to his position through the recommendation of Grover Norquist, buddy of White House power broker, Karl Rove. Faisal Gill is also a well known associate of Alamoudi, (close associate of Al Arian, on trial) now under indictment on terrorism related charges. This association of course was left out when Gill filled out his SF–86 forms for employment with DHS. Oops! Lots more to come.

Mr. “Expert’s” two lady assistants, I thought they said they were agents, who deferred any terrorism questions to Mr. “Expert”, were more interested in bragging about how the department had caught and fined an American chicken farmer $11 million for hiring illegal workers. With a flourish, one of the ladies even did the worn out “Ka-ching” hand pull. What a victory!

Asked whether any terrorists had been apprehended, there was that deer in the headlights look and quick response, “Mr. “Expert” will answer those questions when he addresses the group”. Of course! Oh yes, a fourth highly paid lady ran the computer. Good enough for government work I guess. The “expert” also said Al-Qaeda was degraded and had franchise operations. Does that mean they now operate like a convenience store franchise? And if they were “degraded” why would anyone want their franchise? These terrorists are getting really smart, like our intelligence agencies, and operating like corporate America.

At the FBI, another wonderful PowerPoint presentation with nothing you couldn’t find on the internet, except the fact that there are separate divisions, or cells, or groups or something like that, that study Sunni Terrorist Groups and Shia Terrorist Groups in the FBI’s war on terror. Of course the presenter whose knowledge of events was impressive, regurgitated the Islamic apologist line when asked what was the cause of terrorism now. “It’s a coupla’ things like poverty, some of those places are real hell holes, and lack of education, and resentment towards American policy in the Middle East.” (Then why the separate cells studying Shia terrorist groups and Sunni Terrorist groups? I wondered. I left that one alone, the young man was doing such a fine job!)

That line about American policy has been used so often, it’s even worse than the “ka-ching”. Of course I couldn’t leave that alone, maybe it was the pain killers I was on, maybe it was the ankle holster the agent wore (I’ve always wanted one of those) so I proceeded to give him a quick history about recent Islamic terrorism.
“…I don’t see American policy in the Jihad in Kashmir, where Muslims are killing Hindus, in Thailand where Muslims are killing Budhists, in Indonesia where Muslims are killing Christians, in the Philippines where Muslims are killing Christians, in Chechnya and Russia where Muslims are killing …” You get the idea?

“Would you not agree Islam is a peaceful religion and extremists have hijacked the religion?” asked the agent.

“No” I answered. “Have you read the Quran sir?” I asked.

“No I haven’t”

“If you read the Quran, maybe that should be required reading, you will see it has nothing to do with extremists as we like to label them. It is in the very teachings of the Quran that calls for jihad and beheadings etc are made to all Muslims, not just to extremists.”
I knew then, I was not going to be offered a job there, maybe I should have asked Grover to put in a good word for me, but then again he refused to answer Paul Sperry’s question whether he was Muslim or not. Which tells me this Irish-Catholic-Jew would be left out in the cold for daring to mention the “Emperors new clothes.” What ever happened to Sensitivity Training? Maybe like all FBI agents who have to undergo “Muslim Sensitivity Training”, I should apply to undergo the same training and see how sensitive it is. You think?

The CIA presenter seemed to be the only one who knew what he was talking about, but he didn’t tell us a thing. I knew asking him my standard question would get me a standard answer, so I kept myself busy looking for bugging devices or cameras etc, and couldn’t wait to get to the museum. I wondered why the intelligence community hadn’t moved forward from thinking of present Islamic terrorism as some progression of the 70’s and 80’s terrorism. Great advances had been made in the toys the CIA now employs, why not the same advances in getting to know the enemy without being Politically Correct?

The rest of the trip to DOS, DOD etc was the same. Bosses and underlings threw in a few Arabic words and names that sounded impressive to some, wrongfully claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, that the Mujahadeen became AL Qaeda, and pompously stated that by keeping an eye on checking accounts(less than two percent of people in the Muslim world that spawns terrorism, have checking accounts) was deterring the terrorists from getting financial aid. Yes they had heard of the ‘Hawala” system but obviously believed that Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers were stand-up citizens and dutifully made large transactions through banks and traceable activity.

Seems some countries in South America and “other” places have a new scam to separate American tax payer’s from their money. Its becoming popular to claim Al-Qaeda activity in their backyards to coincide with visits by U.S. officials. Now that’s a winning scheme, maybe some of our own cities that got left off the DHS “Give Away of Millions” crap shoot should… Just a thought!

At the pentagon a presentation took on a dog and pony show, with no substance and nothing new revealed. Team work was impressive though. Clichés such as “When you’re up to your a— in alligators, its too late to drain the swamp” were used to brush aside my question “What did the NCTC (National Counterterrorism Center)Organizational Chart mean by Al-Qaeda and Sunni Affiliates Group. Why are they categorized as affiliates and not Islamic terrorist groups? And what happened to the Shia Terrorist Groups not represented on your chart?”

In one week an aware and somewhat knowledgeable student of Terrorism, would have learned that our intelligence community is no closer to understanding the Islamic terrorist mindset than it was before 9/11. It seems the ignorance and arrogance of some, in charge of keeping us safe, is only inflating their expanded egos and securing their over-paid jobs, while the terrorists like Osama are giving up millions and their comfortable lives to spread their religion of violence and intolerance throughout the world.

London: Anti Israel Demonstration

From the Jerusalem Post, "Calls for Israel's destruction in London"

A central London rally organized by the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Saturday heard Respect Party MP George Galloway advocate a general boycott of Israel, as well as other speeches calling for Israel's destruction.

Dark gray clouds poured heavy rain on London's Trafalgar Square, as a crowd waving Palestine flags and anti-Israel banners filled the square to hear speakers shout vitriolic anti-Israel speeches. Demonstrators chanted Islamic slogans and flags calling for "victory to the intifada" were waved. Leading figures in Britain's anti-Israel coalition also lined up to attack Israel.

Andrew Birgin, of the Stop the War Coalition, urged the destruction of the State of Israel. "Israel is a racist state! It is an apartheid state! With its Apache helicopters and its F-16 fighter jets! The South African apartheid state never inflicted the sort of repression that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians," he said to loud applause. "When there is real democracy, there will be no more Israel!" concluded Birgin. "Allahu Akbar!" yelled several men repeatedly in response...

Galloway, the newly elected MP for the anti-Iraq war Respect Party, used the rally as an attempt to launch an international boycott of Israel.

"It's about time that the British government made some reparations for the Balfour declaration," said Galloway. "Instead, Tony Blair said that Israel has no better friend than the British government. We say to Mr. Blair: You should be ashamed by that.

"The Palestinian people are like the 300 Spartans holding the pass of Thermopylae, until the others can arrive and come to their side. We will join them, by boycotting Israel. By boycotting Israeli goods. By picketing the stores that are selling Israeli goods," he said to cheers and applause...

Jihad warriors on the march from Cambodia to Southern Thailand

From TNA, with thanks to Peter in Bangkok:

Cambodian Muslims flock to Thailand's troubled South SA KAE0, May 19 (TNA) – Thai immigration officials on the Thai-Cambodian border have reported an unusual rise in the number of Muslim men from Cambodia travelling to Thailand's three southern border provinces.

More than a hundred Cambodian Muslims a day have recently crossed the border into Thailand, the deputy immigration chief at Aranyaprathet, Pol. Lt. Col. Nirut Reungjinda told TNA on Thursday.

That is about ten times more than usual, he said.

Thai immigration officials are thoroughly inspecting the Cambodian Muslims as the cross the border and making copies of their passports and travel documents.

''Most of them have informed our immigration officials they wanted to visit their relatives in southern Thailand. Some have said they were travelling further to Malaysia to attend religious studies,'' he said.

Oh, that makes it all right. We know that no jihadist activity ever takes place in mosques. (Search through the archives here to see just how sarcastic that is.)

Italian hostage 'not well' but alive -- and captors demand Islamic law provisions as condition for release

"Italian hostage 'not well' but alive," from UPI, with Jeffrey Imm:

Kabul, Afghanistan, May. 21 (UPI) -- An Italian relief worker taken hostage in Kabul is alive, but unwell, her alleged captor said during a phone call, the ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

Clementina Contini, kidnapped Monday in the Afghan capital, "is not well and has an infection in one eye," according to a caller who identified himself as Temor Shah.

In a series of at least five ultimatums phoned in to a French news organization and all postponed before the deadline, Contini's kidnapper demanded Afghanistan ban the sale of alcoholic drinks, cancel a TV program considered offensive by Islamic fundamentalists, and improve the condition of the madrassas, or Islamic religious schools.

Truce Now With Israel, More Demands Later, Islamic Jihad Activist Says

No surprise here. The agenda has always been and remains the recovery of the lands of Israel for the Dar al-Islam. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to Nicolei:

Jenata, West Bank (CNSNews.com) - If it were up to Ibrahim Alsakra, a member of Islamic Jihad who recently won a seat in municipal elections in the Palestinian Jenata district near Bethlehem, he would make an agreement with Israel based on a total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction came out ahead overall in recent municipal elections, radical Islamic groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad made historic gains in the once-solid Christian area of Bethlehem.

Now there are fears that Hamas could win parliamentary elections scheduled for this summer, something that would complicate any attempt to renew Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

"If Hamas controls parliament it will [be] an Islamic State. That's not good," said a Bethlehem resident. It will not be good for the peace process, he added.

Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad are opposed to any negotiated settlement with Israel, and they aim to establish an Islamic state in all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel proper. But recently some leaders have spoken of talks with Israel.

Sitting in his home, dressed in a long white religious robe and keffiyeh (a Palestinian head scarf), the bearded Alsakra said he is not a politician - that he ran for public office to serve the people.

Alsakra said he spent nine years in an Israeli prison for security-related offenses, which he would not name. Before that, Alsakra said he worked as a plumber and did jobs in Israeli settlements. (The Israeli settlement of Tekoa on a nearby hilltop is visible from the village.)

Alsakra said he went to prison as a Fatah activist and came out as a member of Islamic Jihad. After his release, he decided that he could not work in the settlements and fight to take over the land at the same time.

"Fatah is now weak," Alsakra said. The Islamic organizations tried to liberate Palestine, but the situation is bigger than Islamic Jihad, he said. Therefore, they are willing to enter into a temporary agreement, he added.

"We made an agreement with the Israeli side now and stopped everything. Now we're looking for Israel to respect the agreement," Alsakra said.

Scrappleface: Mosque Closings Spark Weapons Shortage

A joke for Saturday morning: Scott Ott writes humorously at Scrappleface, "Baghdad Mosque Closings Spark Weapons Shortage"

Since Friday's announcement by a Sunni Muslim cleric that Baghdad's Sunni Mosques would close for three days to protest killings blamed on Iraqi security forces, consumers said they're struggling to find alternate sources for weaponry.

"My children and I stood on line at a back-alley dealer for seven hours just to buy mortar rounds," said one unnamed local resident. "My uncle just called and he's got one rocket-propelled grenade left, and has completely exhausted his family's supply of roadside bombs."

Indeed, industry sources report that the price of all kinds of small armaments jumped 73 percent within minutes of the announcement that the mosques would close.

"When you get an improvised explosive device at the mosque, you can rely on the quality," said one unnamed regular customer. "But a lot of the stuff you buy on the street is shoddy work that might send you to Allah before you get to the crowd of infidels. I think we're going to see a lot of second-rate martyrdom work until the mosques re-open."

PLEASE NOTE: This is a parody, folks. It is not a real news story.

Thai militants 'use al-Qaeda training'

It's an "insurgency, not jihad." Never mind those, uh, Al-Qaeda military training CD's. From AFP, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

MUSLIM separatist militants in Thailand's southern provinces are using al-Qaeda military training CDs, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said today.

"On May 19 authorities searched Jihad Witaya or Ponoh Jihad (Islamic school) and found ammunition, evidence of military training, secret documents concerning an independent Pattani state, and al-Qaeda training CDs which they have adopted for their struggle," Mr Thaksin said during his weekly radio address.

He did not elaborate about the discs' origin.

Education authorities have been ordered to shut down the school, whose owner remains on the run, and to find new schools for its former students, Mr Thaksin said.

A combined police and military force raided the school in the Yaring district of Pattani province yesterday, seizing evidence including the training CDs....

The Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG), on Thursday said the violence was driven by local grievances and there was no evidence of external involvement.

"But if this situation is left to fester, it could attract jihadists from outside Thailand," crisis group Southeast Asia project director Sydney Jones said.

ICG called the unrest an "insurgency, not jihad" but said Mr Thaksin's policies risked pushing more Muslims towards those behind the unrest.

In his address Mr Thaksin said he had used a recent trip to Jordan to study and understand Islamic teaching, and "correct" Muslim behaviour.

"All Thai Muslim fellow countrymen do not have to worry that I will not understand you," he said.

"I totally understand, but for people who cite religion for their own gain and hurt others, I will not give up."

Does he really understand?

PA Website Publishes "Protocols"

From WND, "Official PA site publishes 'Protocols' in Arabic," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

JERUSALEM -- An official Palestinian Authority information website directly affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas has published on its Arabic language section a copy of the ''Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' a classic anti-Semitic forgery, while the English section does not contain the work, WND has learned.

Abbas recently had been credited by the U.S. and Israel for fighting anti-Israel incitement.

Al-Nakba.com, the official Internet website of the Palestinian State Information Service, SIS, published an Arabic translation to the ''Protocols,'' a notorious forgery authorized by the anti-Semetic Czarist police in early 20th-Century Russia that purports to be minutes of a meeting of top Jewish leaders plotting world domination.

The Arabic version of the Al-Nakba site contains the full work, which was translated by a Lebanese Druze militant and taken directly from the website of the hard-line Islamic Da'wa Party in Iraq, according to an analysis provided to WND by Israel's Center for Special Studies.

The SIS was founded in 1996 by an executive decree of Yasser Arafat, then Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. The institution is responsible for "organizing and developing information and media activities in the Palestinian territories."

Al-Nakba literally means ''the catastrophe.'' The official site serves as a propaganda device regarding the situation surrounding Palestinian refugees who claim to have been displaced as a result of Israel's founding, says the Center for Special Studies.

The site has been updated several times since Abbas took office in January.

''The Al-Nakba Web page contains 'The Protocols' [so that] the Palestinian and Arab reader may infer that the foundation of the state of Israel and the emergence of the problem of Palestinian refugees are nothing but a part of the implementation of the so-called 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,''' reports the Center.

But the English language section of the site does not mention the ''Protocols.'' It mostly contains information about displaced Palestinians and copies of official Israeli texts marking the establishment of the Jewish state...

Indian Muslims Protest Alleged Quran Abuse

They will have the US at war with Islam if they have to drag it into such a war kicking and screaming. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CALCUTTA, India - Muslim protesters burned, spit and urinated on a U.S. flag Friday in eastern India, accusing Americans of desecrating Islam's holy book as anger persisted despite the retraction of a magazine report that a Quran was flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. officials have said they found nothing to substantiate the Newsweek report that interrogators at the prison camp in Cuba flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet to unnerve an inmate.

But given frequent reports of mistreatment at the camp from released detainees, some Muslims remained convinced the desecration happened and U.S. officials pressured the magazine to deny the story....

Thousands also took to the streets in Somalia's capital of Mogadishu and the Palestinian territories, but the demonstrations were nothing on the scale of rioting in Afghanistan last week in which 15 people died and protesters threw rocks at police.

Riot police watched but did not stop some 500 protesters who shouted slogans against the United States and forced a traffic shutdown in the heart of the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.

The protest began at a mosque after Friday afternoon prayers conducted by the "imam" or chief priest, who then led demonstrators to the road.

"Death to America!" they cried as men spat on the flag.

They asked a boy in the crowd to urinate on it, and hit the flag with shoes and leather slippers. The 20-minute protest ended with the burning of two American flags.

Muslims are the largest minority in predominantly Hindu India, forming more than 12 percent of the 1 billion-plus population.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, some 2,500 Palestinian Hamas militants streamed out of mosques Friday chanting, "Death to America, death to Israel."

Muslim preacher Maher Haraz demanded that "America apologize to all Muslims worldwide, and punish those that trampled on the Quran and stuffed it in the toilet."

"There will be a Muslim uprising in the world, an uprising of the Quran," Haraz declared....

The Bush administration has called on Newsweek to explain how it got the story wrong and to report on U.S. military practices intended to ensure the Quran is handled with respect. The State Department told its embassies to spread the word abroad that America respects all religious faiths.

Muslims worldwide are sure to believe that.

London: "USA watch your back, Osama is coming back"

Pro-jihad demonstration in London. "Protest against USA draws about 100 in London," from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A hundred or more people protesting the alleged desecration of the Quran gathered outside the US Embassy Friday, chanting "kill, kill George Bush" and other anti-American slogans.

Many in the crowd covered their faces with scarves.

A man with a megaphone led chants including "USA watch your back, Osama is coming back" and "bomb, bomb New York."

Pakistani Muslim clerics: suicide attacks in Kashmir OK

Did you hear about the Pakistani fatwa the other day saying that suicide attacks were against Islam? Well, it didn't please everyone: note that here it is a question of against whom the attacks are directed. The acts are good if they kill the right people. "Suicide attacks in J&K justified: Pak clerics," from ANI, with thanks to Nicolei:

Religious leaders in Pakistan have described the suicide attacks by Muslim freedom fighters in Kashmir as "justified", but "not justified" if waged within Pakistan.

The religious leaders said that such attacks were also justified if carried out by Muslim freedom fighters in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

They said that in those countries where Jehad is being waged the suicide attacks are justified, but such attacks are prohibited where Jehad has not started even if it is a non-Islamic country.

Tiny minority of extremists? Nope:

The statement from as many as 40 religious parties in Pakistan has come as a response to the recent `fatwa' issued by a section of clerics saying that suicide attacks were forbidden in Islam.

Hitchens: Why does the New York Times insist on calling jihadists "insurgents"?

In "History and Mystery" in Slate (thanks to Dave Washburn), Christopher Hitchens skewers the dhimmi editorial policies of the New Duranty Times, pointing out the importance of something I have emphasized many times -- that we should listen to how the jihadists themselves characterize what they are doing, and respond accordingly:

When the New York Times scratches its head, get ready for total baldness as you tear out your hair. A doozy classic led the "Week in Review" section on Sunday. Portentously headed "The Mystery of the Insurgency," the article rubbed its eyes at the sheer lunacy and sadism of the Iraqi car bombers and random murderers. At a time when new mass graves are being filled, and old ones are still being dug up, writer James Bennet practically pleaded with the authors of both to come up with an intelligible (or defensible?) reason for his paper to go on calling them "insurgents."

I don't think the New York Times ever referred to those who devastated its hometown's downtown as "insurgents." But it does employ this title every day for the gang headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. With pedantic exactitude, and unless anyone should miss the point, this man has named his organization "al-Qaida in Mesopotamia" and sought (and apparently received) Osama Bin Laden's permission for the franchise. Did al-Qaida show "interest in winning hearts and minds … in building international legitimacy … in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology," or any of the other things plaintively mentioned as lacking by Mr. Bennet?

The answer, if we remember our ABC, is yes and no, with yes at least to the third part of the question. The Bin Ladenists did have a sort of "governing program," expressed in part by their Taliban allies and patrons. This in turn reflected a "unified ideology." It can be quite easily summarized: the return of the Ottoman Empire under a caliphate and a return to the desert religious purity of the seventh century (not quite the same things, but that's not our fault). In the meantime, anyway, war to the end against Jews, Hindus, Christians, unbelievers, and Shiites. None of the "experts" quoted in the article appeared to have remembered these essentials of the al-Qaida program, but had they done so, they might not be so astounded at the promiscuous way in which the Iraqi gangsters pump out toxic anti-Semitism, slaughter Nepalese and other Asian guest-workers on video and gloat over the death of Hindus, burn out and blow up the Iraqi Christian minority, kidnap any Westerner who catches their eye, and regularly inflict massacres and bombings on Shiite mosques, funerals, and assemblies.

A letter from Zarqawi to Bin Laden more than a year ago, intercepted by Kurdish intelligence and since then well-authenticated, spoke of Shiism as a repulsive heresy and the ignition of a Sunni-Shiite civil war as the best and easiest way to thwart the Crusader-Zionist coalition. The actions since then have precisely followed the design, but the design has been forgotten by the journal of record. The Bin Laden and Zarqawi organizations, and their co-thinkers in other countries, have gone to great pains to announce, on several occasions, that they will win because they love death, while their enemies are so soft and degenerate that they prefer life. Are we supposed to think that they were just boasting when they said this? Their actions demonstrate it every day, and there are burned-out school buses and clinics and hospitals to prove it, as well as mosques (the incineration of which one might think to be a better subject for Islamic protest than a possibly desecrated Quran, in a prison where every inmate is automatically issued with one.)

Then we might find a little space for the small question of democracy. The Baath Party's opinion of this can be easily gauged, not just from its record in power but from the rancid prose of its founding fascist fathers. As for the Bin Ladenists, they have taken extraordinary pains to say, through the direct statements of Osama and of Zarqawi, that democracy is a vile heresy, a Greek fabrication, and a source of profanity. For the last several weeks, however, the Times has been opining every day that the latest hysterical murder campaign is a result of the time it has taken the newly elected Iraqi Assembly to come up with a representative government. The corollary of this mush-headed coverage must be that, if a more representative government were available in these terrible conditions (conditions supplied by the gangsters themselves), the homicide and sabotage would thereby decline. Is there a serious person in the known world who can be brought to believe such self-evident rubbish?

On many occasions, the jihadists in Iraq have been very specific as well as very general. When they murdered Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brilliant and brave U.N. representative assigned to Baghdad by Kofi Annan, the terrorists' communiqué hailed the death of the man who had so criminally helped Christian East Timor to become independent of Muslim Indonesia. (This was also among the "reasons" given for the bombing of the bar in Bali.) I think I begin to sense the "frustration" of the "insurgents." They keep telling us what they are like and what they want. But do we ever listen? Nah. For them, it must be like talking to the wall. Bennet even complains that it's difficult for reporters to get close to the "insurgents": He forgets that his own paper has published a conversation with one of them, in which the man praises the invasion of Kuwait, supports the cleansing of the Kurds, and says that "we cannot accept to live with infidels."...

In my ears, "insurgent" is a bit like "rebel" or even "revolutionary." There's nothing axiomatically pejorative about it, and some passages of history have made it a term of honor. At a minimum, though, it must mean "rising up." These fascists and hirelings are not rising up, they are stamping back down. It's time for respectable outlets to drop the word, to call things by their right names (Baathist or Bin Ladenist or jihadist would all do in this case), and to stop inventing mysteries where none exist.

Read it all.

Jihad by Satellite

Steven Stalinsky in FrontPage details jihad TV in America:

Rep. Steven Rothman, a Democrat of New Jersey, and Rep. Joe Knollenberg, a Republican of Michigan, yesterday sponsored a MEMRI briefing on Arab and Iranian satellite channels available in America. Their broadcasts have the potential to incite viewers to jihad and contain messages of hate against Jews and Christians. As the content of such programming is exposed, it is hopeful that the Federal Communications Commission - which answers directly to Congress and the mission of which includes regulating international television in America - would consider legal proceedings against American companies that air Arab and Iranian TV channels spewing hatred.

Programs on these channels include statements clearly directed at Americans. During an official Friday sermon on August 27 aired on Sudanese TV, for example, a preacher stated that Jews engineered the attacks of September 11, 2001. He cited a quote fabricated by the Nazis and inaccurately attributed it to Benjamin Franklin: "The malaria microbe known as the Jews, which the U.S. carries in its stomach, will kill it sooner or later." He added, "These Jews hasten America's death. The U.S. must be aware. We offer this advice via the TV channels."

Similar Nazi falsehoods have resurfaced of late on other Arab and Iranian TV stations available in America, such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar. Tuning into those channels can be strikingly similar to watching Nazi propaganda. Programming includes shows devoted to distortions in Jewish religious texts, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," Jewish corruption throughout history, and the blood libel. On a UAE/Saudi channel Al-Majd program of March 22, 2004, the secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front Party of Jordan, Sheikh Hamza Mansour described the "sick psychological nature" of the Jews, adding that they make "matzoth out of innocent children's blood."

Read it all.

Iraq's Qaeda denies meetings in Syria

Not only are they in Gaza; they're in Syria, too. "Iraq's Qaeda denies meetings in Syria - Web," from Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

DUBAI, May 20 (Reuters) - Iraq's al Qaeda has denied U.S. accusations that an upsurge in car bomb attacks in Iraq was ordered at a meeting of insurgents in Syria, according to an Internet statement posted on Friday.

"The enemies of God are floundering after the increase in attacks against them," the group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said. "Is there no longer any room on earth so that the mujahideen (holy fighters) have to meet in Syria?"

How's that again? Syria isn't on earth?

"These attacks ... were planned in Iraq and your brothers are continuing their jihad (holy war) and fighting God's enemies," al Qaeda Organisation for Holy War in Iraq said in the statement dated May 19 and posted on an Islamist Web site.

Al-Qaida-linked terrorists in Gaza

From the Shocked! Shocked! Department, via the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A new Muslim terrorist group linked to al-Qaida has started operating in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Authority security officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

Jundallah, or "Allah's Brigades," consists mostly of scores of former Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, the officials disclosed. They said Jundallah gunmen launched their first attack on IDF soldiers near Rafah earlier this week.

The IDF said four soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack.

Jundallah is a radical Muslim group that has close ties with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, said one official. "We know for sure that the group is especially active in the southern Gaza Strip," he added.

Another official said that, according to intelligence gathered by the PA security forces, Jundallah consists largely of Hamas and Islamic Jihad dissidents who were unhappy with their groups' ostensible pragmatism.

"They believe that Hamas and Islamic Jihad have become too moderate," the official said, referring to the two groups' agreement to temporarily suspend terror attacks on Israel.

The emergence of Jundallah in the Gaza Strip confirms suspicions that al-Qaida has been trying to set foot in the area ahead of Israel's planned withdrawal.

Muslims Skeptical of Newsweek Retraction

Some are still trying to kindle the flames of jihad over the Qur'an toilet non-incident. Has anyone noticed that this could be the first time that the Muslim world has actually believed a story that was first reported by a Western media outlet? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

"Although the magazine that published this piece of information has backed off it, we call on the American administration to investigate the incident, which we consider a major crime against more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world," Jassem al-Kharafi, the parliament speaker in Kuwait — a top U.S. ally — said in the Al-Watan daily Wednesday.

U.S. officials have said they found nothing to substantiate the Newsweek report that interrogators at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet to unnerve an inmate.

But given frequent reports of mistreatment at the camp from released detainees, some Muslims remained convinced the desecration happened.

"In Guantanamo they're throwing Muslims into the garbage. ... To flush their holy book down the toilet is the easy part," said Walid Kazziha, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo.

"It is easy for (the Americans) to humiliate the Quran, for them it is just a book," said Fatma el-Hefny, a student there.

In the Arab World, the street reaction to the Quran desecration was limited to a demonstration by several thousand university students in the Yemeni capital San'a on Saturday and another by several hundred activists from the Islamic militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip a day earlier.

Uzbek Troops Capture Rebel Leader Easily

Uzbek Unrest Update. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

KORASUV, Uzbekistan - Breaking through a wooden gate and firing only a single warning shot, Uzbek forces on Thursday captured a rebel leader who had proclaimed plans for an Islamic state in this border town.

The arrest and takeover of the town of 20,000 quelled the last open bastion of resistance to the U.S.-allied government in the volatile Fergana Valley....

The crackdown in Korasuv came as the Uzbek Foreign Ministry condemned Kyrgyzstan for letting more than 500 Uzbeks fleeing the violence cross the border, and said weak border controls had led to "serious riots" and actions staged by religious groups....

Rakhimov had told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he would be "building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran."

He didn't mention Hizb ut-Tahrir, the banned extremist group that aims to create a worldwide Islamic state and claims to eschew violence. President Islam Karimov, who has outlawed all public Islamic practices outside station-controlled Islamic institutions, has claimed the group was connected to the Andijan uprising.

On the Kyrgyz side of the border across from Korasuv, a man who said he was a Hizb ut-Tahrir adherent disavowed Rakhimov's uprising as going against the group's philosophy.

"Of course it's every Muslim's dream and aim to create an Islamic state," said Abdullo, who gave only his first name out of fear for his safety. "However, you can't build a caliphate this way, through an uprising."

Rashad Kamolov, 27, wearing the white skull cap characteristic of observant Muslims here, said the Korasuv uprising would play into Karimov's hands.

"This revolt will do no good to the Muslims. It will only bring harm," he said. "Now Karimov will be able to shout to the world, 'Look! It's Muslims."

The government has denied its troops opened fire on unarmed civilians during anti-government protests in Andijan last week. It says 169 people were killed in clashes between authorities and militants. Opposition leaders say more than 700 people died.

POSTSCRIPT: After a previous post about Uzbekistan, a blogger named Serdar Kaya published an attack on me and my work. I never would have seen it had he not sent it to me, but we had a courteous and fruitful email exchange after that. It led not to full agreement, but to some understanding, and I appreciate his not stooping to the hit-and-run method of attack favored by most of the anonymous cowards who email me. We may not agree on everything, but we can disagree with mutual respect.

I'd also like to thank Confederate Yankee for defending me from Serdar Kaya's characterizations of my work, with which I still disagree despite my appreciation for his willingness to discuss things civilly.

Al-Arian: Jihad on trial

Al-Arian walk watch: will he walk because the very fact that he once had powerful friends indicates that he is not guilty? That would only be true if we could assume that those powerful friends had any real idea of the threat Al-Arian represented, and there is no clear evidence that they did. Al-Arian trial update from Haaretz:

The visual icing on Arian's political cake is a photograph of him with George Bush from March 2000, eight months before Bush was elected president. Candidate Bush was then stumping in Florida and stopped to have his photo taken, along with his wife, Laura, with Arian at a local strawberry festival. It was not a chance meeting. Arian was a central actiivst for Bush's election in 2000 and afterward said proudly that he himself had persuaded many Arab Americans to join the Republican Party at the time.

The secret of Bush's charm in the eyes of the pro-Palestinian activist from Florida has to do with Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen al-Najjar, who was arrested in 1997 on suspicion of supporting Islamic Jihad and held in custody until being deported to Lebanon in 2002. The exact suspicions against Najjar were classified and his lawyers were never allowed to see them. Arian made the case a symbol of the Arab-American struggle and found an attentive ear in Bush, who happened to be looking for support in Florida ahead of the election. Bush promised to help and even raised the subject at his initiative in one of the debates with Al Gore. Bush in fact did relatively well among the Arab and Muslim community in the 2000 election, but Arian derived less satisfaction from this friendship.

Attorney Moffitt explained that he does not intend to present his client's political connections just to embarrass the high officials. For him, the logic is simple. All the meetings and conversations took place in the period when the state alleges that Arian was a dangerous terrorist involved in a plot to kill Americans, Moffitt noted in the letter. In other words, if the FBI knew all along that Arian was a local leader of a terrorist organization, why did the agency not warn the White House, the presidential candidates and the members of Congress against meeting with him?

It could be because he wasn't in fact a local leader of a terrorist organization. Or it might be because they are short-sighted political ops whose value system is measured at the voting booth.

Iraq: "Leave your jobs within four hours otherwise you will get yourself killed"

Today's Iraqi jihad update. "Iraqi oil official, 18 others killed," from Reuters:

BAGHDAD - Gunmen killed an Oil Ministry official on Thursday and escalating violence claimed at least 18 more lives, fuelling fears Iraq may be moving towards civil war.

The oil official, Ali Hameed, was shot outside his home as he left for work, a police official said.

Mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents have stepped up attacks on officials and security forces since a Shi'ite-led government was announced last month. They have killed more than 500 people in a campaign that has challenged government promises of stability....

The escalation in violence has raised concerns the country could erupt into a full-scale civil war. Discoveries of people killed execution-style and dumped at various sites -- 50 have been found since Saturday -- have stirred sectarian passions.

Most victims were Shi'ite Muslims but some were Sunnis.

Four more bodies were found on Thursday, this time just south of Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit. Police said they had been shot dead...

Zarqawi's followers issued a new warning against Iraqi forces on Thursday in leaflets in Baiji, residents said.

"Leave your jobs within four hours otherwise you will get yourself killed," said the leaflets hung on mosques.

Suspected Taliban militants kill five Afghans working on US-funded project to end opium farming

"Taliban kill 5 Afghans," from the Pakistan Daily Times, with thanks to
Nicolei:

KANDAHAR: Suspected Taliban militants ambushed and killed five Afghans working on a United States-funded project to end opium farming on Wednesday, said senior provincial official Ghulam Muhiddin.

The workers were attacked as they drove through Helmand province, said Muhiddin. Two of the victims were engineers working for Chemonics, a US-based company; one was a government engineer and the other two were a driver and a policeman employed as a security guard, he said. "Police are investigating the killings and are searching for the Taliban attackers," Muhiddin said. Carol Yee, a senior Chemonics worker in the area, confirmed the killings. She said the men were working on a project to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers growing opium, the raw material for heroin. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent in Afghanistan by various organisations to persuade farmers to grow legal crops.

Afghanistan last year produced nearly 90 percent of the world's opium, sparking warnings that it is fast becoming a dangerous "narcotics-state" less than four years after the end of its role as a haven for Al Qaeda.

Becoming?

Fitzgerald: Saving Israel in spite of itself

Jihad Watch Advisory Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald assesses the jihad against Israel:

What is surprising about the Jihad against the Infidel state of Israel is how transparent have been the attempts to disguise it for Western audiences, yet how successful those attempts have been, and not only in the outside world, but in Israel itself.

No discussion of anything in the Middle East, or elsewhere that involves Muslims, can take place without a thorough grasp of what Islam is all about. Is there a special unit in the Pentagon and the State Department made up of people well-versed in Qur'an, hadith, and sira (obviously not Muslims themselves, or non-Muslim apologists such as Sells and Esposito), and who furthermore have been adequately supported in their studies of the history of Jihad and of dhimmitude? Why not? Is there another entire parallel world of people who are trained, and who can be listened to instead of to the assorted PLO propagandists and antisemites who see "Likud" conspiracies everywhere – not to mention the leftists who see the cause of "Palestine" as a way to assert their third-world credentials (it's getting awfully hard to depict the Arabs, who have recently received 5-6 trillion dollars in unearned and unmerited wealth, as part of the "Third World" -- but since when did reality matter?) as well as a chance to beat up not only on Jews (leftist antisemitism is a powerful force) and but also upon the United States. Among the latter are Rashid Khalidi, Joel Beinin, Laurie Brand, Juan Cole -- just to offer a list of the most recent presidents of MESA, the scandalous association of "Midde Eastern Scholars of America" which, for all I know, may have a few real scholars still in it. Just like the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, which broke away from the MLA more than a decade ago, surely the real scholars of Islam and the Middle East should make their case before the public and above all to Congress -- which must not be fooled by the word "scholar" or by the invocation of various "prestigious" university titles or associations. These mean exactly nothing, except as an indication of how cleverly the real story of Islam has been pushed to one side by propagandists unfit to walk the halls where once Arthur Jeffery, Joseph Schacht, Richard Gottheil, and others once walked.

At Columbia, Georgetown, and various other places, when one compares the few real scholars of the past with the clowns who have usurped their places, one gets a melancholy Hyperion-to-a-satyr sense of things. Not so much lachrimae rerum as -- Who engineered this? Who was not looking when the Middle Eastern Departments of this country were, most of them, transformed in such insidious fashion? What brave and intelligent administrators and university presidents and members of the faculty -- members outside the Middle Eastern Studies departments -- are going to make the investigation, based on a true understanding of Islam, and the subsequent cleaning-up their highest priority?

Imagine an English department that failed to mention Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Johnson, Keats, Dickens, or Joyce. Well, plenty of Middle Eastern departments are so busy with their courses on the "Arab-Israeli" conflict, and the "construction of Palestinian identity," and most recently -- sensing that something about Islam is in the air – with attempts to describe all talk about Islam as just so many varying "discourses" representing different political "agendas." This is a transparent attempt to prevent any serious investigation of the tenets of Islam and their reception over 1350 years, and the remarkably similar ways, over those 1350 years and from Spain to eastern Asia, Muslims first conquered and then subjugated, and then slowly asphyxiated, all sorts of non-Muslim peoples: Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs (under the Mughals), Confucians, others. An unbroken record of mistreatment and violence. But if MESA has much to do with it, our attention will continue to fix on the essentially trivial example of the sliver of Infidel-controlled territory upon which many people believe that most ancient of Middle Eastern peoples, the Jews, have every right to re-establish their commonwealth. But of course, in the view of Islam, no Infidels anywhere have rights -- except insofar as those "rights" may be generously granted by the dominant Muslims, "rights" that at any point can be removed at will.

Fascinating that a few British observers in the 1930s wrote about Jihad; that Shlomo Carlebach's observations on the Jihad, preserved amusingly by Edward Said in his preposterous "The Question of Palestine" in the early 1950s, also showed an understanding; and that more and more scholars even in peace-hypnotized Israel are realizing, with clear-sighted alarm, that the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel is not susceptible of "solution." Or rather, that the only long-term "solution" that will not result in the disappearance of Israel and the seizure of the Holy Land by Muslims is that of Israel remaining overwhelmingly and obviously strong, which requires it not give up any more territory, so that the Arabs will be able to invoke "Darura" as the reason for not going to war in the military sense. Anyone care to take issue with that? Is anyone assuming that things will just be hunky-dory, if not for the Jews then at least for the Christians who might want free access to the Holy Land, if Israel disappears?

In all other senses -- diplomatic, political, economic, demographic -- the war will continue. It cannot but. The Muslim Arabs, or most of them (and one must make policy not on the basis of the handful of the enlightened or the plausible, but on the basis of the primitive unenlightened -- those mobs in Gaza, for example) have to continue the Jihad. They simply must.

But the Israelis have to come to their senses. The late George Ball, an enemy of Israel, used to insist that we should "save Israel in spite of itself" He meant, of course, that we should force it to make suicidal concessions. The phrase, however, can be appropriated and put to better use.

And that "saving Israel in spite of itself" would require making clear that there is no "two-state solution" and indeed, no "solution" at all. The very idea of a "solution" to many of the world's problems is itself a reflection of silliness, or naivete, or stupidity. The only "solution" is the one that worked for the United States in the Cold War: wait, and wait, and keep up the pressure, and keep up military and other kinds of warfare against an enemy that is active on all fronts, and hope that eventually the environment requires an end to the use of fossil fuels, or there is some gathering understanding, even if it is not expressed, by intelligent Muslims that they have far more to lose by going in for the kill against Israel than if they concentrated instead on constraining Islam. In that way the many failures -- political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral -- of the world of Islam might, to the degree that Islam is constrained, be undone, or remedied, and an otherwise hopeless situation ameliorated.

What comments are for

Why do I allow comments on this site?

Sometimes I wonder, but ultimately it is to allow reasonable people to discuss aspects of the issue at hand, strategize about what to do about it, and make related observations. From time to time this has been notably successful — particularly thanks to our own Hugh Fitzgerald and those who have engaged him in discussion.

Comments continue to be almost completely unmoderated. My staff and I are overtaxed as it is, and I only read comment threads very occasionally. However, I did look in on one last night and ended up deleting quite a few comments (which does not mean that I endorse those that remain). If you wonder why, remember: threats are unwelcome. Insulting and racist messages are unwelcome. Foul language is unwelcome. Calls to genocide or nuclear action against holy sites are unwelcome. Etc.

I didn't create Jihad Watch to be a hate group, as we are often accused of being. Of course, jihadists have co-opted the language of "hate" and "racism" from legitimate civil rights movements because they know how effective it is in discrediting their critics in America -- and such claims directed against Jihad Watch are specious and inaccurate. In reality, Jihad Watch is a vanguard organization in the defense of universal human rights. What is the best way to defeat the global jihad that threatens those rights? Not by venting and cursing and threatening. This plays into the hands of those who would destroy us, and that is a stupid and suicidal thing to do.

I have requested it before: think strategically when you post. Don't write something that works to the advantage of those who want to discredit the genuine information that this site provides. Comments that are boorish, aggressive, etc., or tangled into knots answering some obvious provocateur, will only discourage thoughtful people who are actually in a position to influence policy from using this site as a resource.

Since the anti-jihad struggle is a struggle for the equality of dignity and rights of all people, it would be nice if the anti-jihad commenters who posted here behaved as if they believed in those things too, and took the moral high ground, in contradistinction to the jihadists.

One more time: this site is dedicated to raising awareness of the nature of the foe that faces the Western world and all free people. This is necessary because most policymakers and analysts in the West so far continue to ignore or deny outright the true nature of that foe. Until that changes, the jihadists have the advantage, even if it is not one of military might; there are other ways to win wars.

Don't let your comment be one that helps them increase that advantage.

Phares: The Long-Planned 'Spontaneous' Riots

From the insightful and estimable Walid Phares in Frontpage:

With one sentence, Newsweek triggered a series of violent intifadas in countries as remote as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and beyond. That's at least how mainstream media, government officials, and most of the public see it. The truth is more complicated: Islamists had been planning these riots long before this story ever made it into print.

True, the short piece by Michael Isikoff and John Barry, which attempted to unveil a new scandal, became the trigger for mass violence led by Islamists across the world. But the jihadists had mobilized for a counteroffensive against the "infidels" long ago. Ironically, these two developments have something in common: both undermine the credibility of the U.S-supported democracy movements in the Arab world.

The violent marches in Pakistan and Afghanistan were not an abrupt and sudden reaction to the weekly magazine's sentence accusing U.S. personnel of desecrating a copy of the Muslim holy book. Since the fall of Tora Bora in December of 2001, al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants were waiting for this moment: they call it "al awda," meaning the "return." Patiently, the leaders of the jihadists, including Thawahiri, Mullah Umar, and the various Islamists of Jamiet Islami and Hizbu Tahrir, were working on mounting the major counteroffensive against the democratically elected government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan. Day after day, from Kabul to Kandahar, the Afghan society was moving away from the mental and political grip of the Taliban. And year after year, more and more al-Qaeda leaders were being eliminated and arrested, two over the past few weeks alone.

The more lethal danger facing the jihadi ideology is the success of democracy in the region. Afghani women voted by the millions; Iraq's 8.5 million voters braved Zarqawi's killers; a million marchers challenged Syria's military in Beirut, and just this week, Kuwaiti women forced parliament to give them the right to vote. By jihadi standards, the war of ideas is being lost. The Newsweek story gave them the ability to counterattack and try to gain ground in their terror war.

Preparing their "come back," the Salafists understood that demonstrations are their best weapons for the time being. Suicide bombings and beheadings made them look as evil as they are, even in the eyes of most Arabs and Muslims. They saw how popular expressions from Kabul to Beirut, from Tehran to Baghdad, captured the imagination of younger and younger Muslims, but also the attention of public opinion in the West. Back in the early winter, Ayman al Thawahiri, al-Qaeda's number two, called on his followers to "take back the country and reduce Karzai to his palace." That was the mission order: to find a way to re-conquer the street and, from there, the entire Arab world. On Al Ansar websites, on al Jazeera and on Hezbollah's al Manar TV, a global propaganda campaign has been waged since 2002, increasing sharply since the fall of Saddam. In the chat rooms I visit, the dominant motif is: America has made war on Islam as a whole, as a religion...

Read it all.

Fake emails purportedly from me

I just received a form email from Daniel Okrent, Public Editor of the New York Times:

Thank you for your comments. Everything sent to this mailbox is read by either me or my associate, Arthur Bovino. If a further reply is appropriate, you will be hearing from us shortly.

The only problem is that I did not send any message to Daniel Okrent.

Likewise my friend Ali Sina of Faithfreedom.org recently received a hostile message denouncing him and his work, signed by...Robert Spencer.

Clearly someone or some group is using my name and email address. I don't think there is anything I can do to stop this, so I am stating it publicly here: messages are being sent in my name that I did not write. If you have received a message from me that contains foul language or departs from my stated positions, it isn't actually from me. If you aren't sure, please contact me at director@jihadwatch.org.

Report: Muslim World Largely Anti-American

From the Stop the Presses Department via AP, with thanks to OBL r Us:

NEW YORK - Anti-American feelings are widespread in the Muslim world and extend to U.S. consumer brands, according to a report released Wednesday. It suggested the U.S. burnish its image with a change in tone and by publicizing aid programs.

The United States should emphasize its development aid to Muslim countries rather than try to persuade Muslims to support U.S. policies in Iraq or in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to the Council on Foreign Relations report.

The report, by Charney Research, is based on 14 focus groups conducted last December and January among college-educated men and women in Egypt, Morocco and Indonesia.

Anger at U.S. foreign policy and at the U.S. government dominated spontaneous reactions in all three countries.

And here's a Tiny Minority of Extremists Update:

Many young Muslims said they admired Osama bin Laden, while views of President Bush were uniformly negative. All focus group members rejected U.S. views of the war in Iraq, saying the United States invaded on a false premise to further its own regional goals.

Anti-Semitic stereotypes also were noted. Focus group members saw the United States and Israel as synonymous and estimated the proportion of Jews in the U.S. population at up to 85 percent; it is 2 percent.

It's a shame that this report recommends that the US "should emphasize its development aid to Muslim countries." The idea that that will help anything is based on a fallacy and an erroneous understanding of the jihad ideology.

Zarqawi tape justifies Muslim deaths

"Zarqawi Tape Justifies Deaths," from Australia's SBS.com, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Iraq's al-Qaeda leader, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi has purportedly defended the killing of "innocent Muslims" in suicide bombings aimed at international troops, saying it is in the name of religion.

The comments were included in an audio tape released on an Islamist web site, with the voice introduced as al-Zarqawi.

"The killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom operations has been sanctified by many scholars even if it meant killing innocent Muslims," said the voice.

"This legality has been agreed upon ... so as not to disrupt Jihad," said the voice, speaking in Arabic.

Lately I have been getting more criticism than usual for not supporting moderate Muslims. One blogger asked: "Why are Spencer and Bat Ye'or joining with the Wahabis in defending the most rigid reactionary interpretation of the Koran? We know these reactionary interpretations dominate the Muslim world. That's the problem. Why don't they welcome challenges to monolithic interpretation, which would allow a liberal modern Islam to emerge? Why are they doing the Wahabis' work for them?"

Of course I welcome challenges to reactionary Wahhabi interpretations of the Qur'an, and any genuine attempts to mitigate the violent exhortations of the Qur'an and Sunnah. One of my chief objections to various moderates has been that all too often their new interpretations are presented as if they are what Islam really teaches, and has always taught, and we are asked to believe that this is really the majority view in the Islamic world.

Others (notably Khaleel Mohammed) acknowledge that theirs is a minority view, but have not so far been forthcoming in explaining how they propose to convince their fellow Muslims, as opposed to non-Muslims, that their take on Islamic theology is correct.

And here, from Zarqawi, comes a test case. I would ask all moderate Muslims, including Khaleel Mohammed and any others, to explain how they would convince Zarqawi and those who are swayed by him that "the killing of infidels by any method including martyrdom operations" has not been "sanctified by many scholars even if it meant killing innocent Muslims." Or if they can't prove that this interpretation has not been "sanctified by many scholars," then please at least construct an Islamic theological argument as to why these scholars are wrong.

If you can do that, I will support you wholeheartedly. Write me here, at director@jihadwatch.org.

"Yes muslims want to rule the world"

I get emails virtually every day telling me I don't know what I'm talking about, and I would ask those who write them or who aren't sure to check my work against the Islamic sources I quote. I was recently contacted by a professor who did just that, and thereby realized that what I was saying was true.

But anyway, this email was different. The writer started out by saying to me:

You claim that you have studied Islam for 20 years, but you have shown great ignorance about one branch of islam, "Jihad".

Yes, I've heard that one before, that I've gotten jihad all wrong. But this guy went on to show that I was right even while telling me I was wrong:

Jihad is about striving against evil with your hand, tongue and heart. Put simply this means you can do jihad with force (i.e. military), by speaking out against evil or just hating the evil that you see (in your heart).

Quite so. And that jihad with military force, when directed against those whose only "evil" is being unbelievers, is what I am dedicated to opposing.

It just so happens that the ideologies which the rest of the world lives under including most of the muslim world is considered evil(capitalism or communism etc). Therefore these systems have to be abolished by all forms of jihad, whether military or not. Also note that it is the evil ideologies that are to be destroyed not the people living under them, they will become dhimmi's.

Whew! That's reassuring! We won't be annihilated, we'll just become second-class citizens! (And not actually citizens at all.)

Dhimmi's are non muslims living under muslim rule and protection, for if they were attacked it would be the duty of muslims soldiers to protect them and risk their lives in doing so. In return for the right of this protection and the right to practice their religion they must pay a tax called Jizya. I admit their might be restrictions on how much they can practice their religion due to islamic morals but this has happened in the past and they managed to come to some compromises then so why not now. The dhimmi's will not be treated badly because the prophet said "Whoever hurts a non-Muslim person under protection, I am his adversary, and I shall be an adversary to him on the Day of Resurrection.", the prophet(pbuh) also said "One who kills a non-Muslim person under protection (Arabic: dhimmi) will not even smell the fragrance of Paradise.". The prophet(pbuh) was very tolerant towards non muslims under his rule and God willing muslims would follow his example.

Note that this man is advocating imposition of the dhimma today, and he acknowledges freely that it will involve a special tax for non-Muslims as well as "restrictions on how much they can practice their religion." Give him points for honesty: most Muslim spokesmen today will not admit that this is still part of Islam at all.

I don't want to bore you so i'll get to the point. Yes muslims want to rule the world but only because we feel we will abolish evil, corruption and corrupt ideologies off the face of the world. We want to bring the light of islam to the world and save it from its man made laws (which are spreading corruption) and replace them with divine laws. So you see we have good intentions but they can easily be misunderstood.

May God guide you.

I see it all now: Muslims want to rule the world so as to do good things. Well, that makes it all OK! How silly I have been to oppose this! If it weren't for the numerous incompatibilities between Sharia law (and not just "extreme Sharia law", either, as one silly new book styles it) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this would be just picture-perfect.

Sir, thank you for your email! And may God guide you too!

Staged outrage?

"Muslim protests planned in advance?" From WND, with thanks to EPG:

JERUSALEM – Muslim protests throughout the Middle East regarding a now-retracted Newsweek report that claimed U.S. Army interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Quran down the toilet are being organized by anti-Western jihadists and were planned several months ago with the magazine article serving as a convenient trigger, a senior Israeli security source told WND.

He warned that if not quelled, the gatherings can turn into violent mass anti-American revolts.

"Jihadists have been planting the seeds for quite some time for mass anti-American protests in the Middle East, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where pro-Taliban elements have been looking for an excuse to revolt against what they see as Western imposed governments," the security official said. "The Newsweek article was just the excuse they needed."

Jihad Watch on MSNBC

In case you missed it, MSNBC's "Connection: Coast to Coast" featuring Ron Reagan gave a prominent mention to Jihad Watch yesterday. You can access the video here.

Tony Maciulis constructed a timeline of what may have led up to the Newsweek controversy on the web. Robert's entry of May 9th featuring Pakistani Imams praising the cricket player Imran Khan for his calls for Pakistan to break off ties with the US was shown as one of the first blogs to mention the alleged desecration of the Qur'an at Gitmo. Regular Jihad Watch readers will know that those stories have been circulating for a long time. This particular story, however, was sent in by Skeetstreet.

We want to thank everyone who contributes to Jihad Watch by sending in stories, making comments, or making contributions. With your help, we are making a difference. Yesterday, even MSNBC noticed.

Islamic Rebels Claim to Hold Uzbek Town

The abuse rained down heavier than usual after I posted this last Monday. How dare I support the brutal Karimov regime? (I don't.) How dare I say that the people who are revolting in Uzbekistan are jihadists? They're just reacting to years of oppression. All right. But this just came in from AP (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist). How to explain it? It is hard to get reliable information, but I suspect that jihadists are trying to co-opt the legitimate opposition to Karimov. That sort of thing has happened before.

May 18, 2005 - A Muslim rebel group claimed Wednesday it had seized control of a small Uzbek town on the border of Kyrgyzstan and vowed to build an Islamic state. Diplomats and U.N. officials toured a nearby city where government troops fired on demonstrators, reportedly killing hundreds.

The leader of the rebel group, Bakhtiyor Rakhimov, said his forces controlled Korasuv, a town of 20,000, and were ready to fight any government troops that came to crush his rebellion. An AP reporter in Korasuv saw no sign of government officials in the town.

"The town is in the hands of people. People are tired of slavery," Rakhimov told The Associated Press while leaning down from the back of a horse. "We will be building an Islamic state here in accordance with the Quran."

The group claimed to have 5,000 militants.

The government of President Islam Karimov quickly shrugged off Rakhimov's claims.

"It's all sheer nonsense, everything is normal there," Uzbek Interior Minister Zakir Almatov said when asked whether the government would move against the insurgents in Korasuv....

Feds Uncover Alleged Plot to Assassinate Ft. Worth Cop, Federal Agent

From CBS-11 News, with thanks to RSH:

Det. Campbell and his wife go to these extraordinary lengths because they and their children have been marked for assassination. A ruthless criminal crime family he spent years investigating and helped break up in 2003 wants them dead. Federal authorities confirm that the Palestinian gang known as the "Ghali crime family," which ran one of the nation's most prolific retail theft rings from Fort Worth, has hatched what one top official called a "credible" plot from behind bars. The plot targets Campbell, his family, and Campbell's longtime partner in the investigations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Scott Springer....

It was not the gang's first contract murder plot that federal authorities uncovered. The first murder plot by the Ghali organization targeted Agent Springer and the federal prosecutor on the case, Joe Revesz. Court transcripts show that an effort by the jailed family leader Mohammad Ghali to hire Crip gang members to arrange the hits for $500 was discovered in October 2003 as he was awaiting trial and most of his associates were in jail. The plot was effectively foiled with audio surveillance and jailhouse informants before it could progress much beyond the planning stages. That and a subsequent attempt by Ghali to bribe customs agents by giving them a free SUV was cited in February by a federal judge as grounds to stack years more prison time on the crime family's convicted leader, Mohammad Ghali....

Agent Springer, an investigator with the Dallas-based office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to comment about the second assassination plot against him. In courtroom testimony about the first murder plot against him, Agent Springer testified that Ghali had told a jailhouse informant "that he would like to stand before our families and us and peel our skin off with a razor."

Agent Springer's boss, ICE Special Agent in Charge Ken Cates, spoke of the unusual persistance of the Palestinian gang's continued plotting from behind bars.

"There does continue to be credible threats against our agents and against the detective that were involved and in fact we continue to conduct investigations, both in the immigration arena, as well as in the customs law arena...directly related to the continuing threats," Cates told CBS-11 last month....

The story begins nine years ago, when Det. Campbell and Agent Springer formed a special joint federal operation to investigate a North Texas-based infant formula theft ring that generated untold millions in ill-gotten gains. In the mid-1990s, a criminal gang of Palestinians and Egyptians was running a large network of thieves who would steal infant formula from retail shelves. They would sell it, for pennies on the dollar, to convenience store operators who were part of the organization. The merchandise would be repackaged and sold back to legitimate retailers and wholesalers. Large retail chains across Texas and elsewhere around the nation complained that similar theft rings run by Middle Eastern immigrants were costing them tens of millions of dollars in losses, but law enforcement seemed unable to do much.

But by 2000, the efforts by Campbell and Springer paid off in North Texas. The gang was dismantled in a series of raids and federal convictions that would later be overturned on various technicalities by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Remnants of the original gang led by Palestinian immigrant Mohammad Ghali and members of his family meanwhile moved in to fill the void. Immediately after the attacks of 9-11, informants called the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force and other law enforcement agencies to allege that the Ghali crime family had built the illegal business back up. They allegedly were shipping millions in illegal proceeds to the Middle East to help finance terrorist groups.

British judge OKs sending terror suspect to U.S.

Babar Ahmad update. From AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

LONDON - A judge ruled Tuesday that a British man can be extradited to the United States to face charges of supporting terrorism, conspiring to kill Americans and running a Web site that U.S. authorities say was used to fund terrorists.

The United States has promised not to seek the death penalty for Babar Ahmad. Home Secretary Charles Clarke, the top British official in charge of law and order, has 60 days to decide whether Ahmad will be extradited.

Ahmad’s lawyers said they would appeal the ruling. The 31-year-old computer specialist has been in custody since his August arrest on a U.S. extradition warrant....

Ahmad’s lawyer, Muddassar Arani, said her client “has been made a scapegoat.”...

Ahmad, who was indicted in Connecticut in October, is accused of running several Web sites, including Azzam.com, which investigators say was used to recruit members of the al-Qaida terror network, Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban network and Chechen rebel fighters in Russia and to outfit them with gas masks, night-vision goggles and camouflage gear.

Manji: Do Riots Save Islam's Honor?

Irshad Manji in the LA Times (thanks to JS):

As I write, Muslims worldwide are scheduling demonstrations for the end of this month against those who insult Islam. They'll peacefully protest not just the possibility of the Koran's desecration at Guantanamo but the proven torture at Abu Ghraib as well as civil rights violations suffered by ordinary Muslims in the United States. They have every right to condemn these injuries.

Will they also speak out against the bloody, fiery riots that, in the name of honoring Islam, are killing an increasing number of Muslims and non-Muslims?

It's a question worth asking.

Indeed it is.

"Our Sunni faith stipulates that the sword and bullets be the only dialogue between us and worshippers of the cross"

"Iraq's Qaeda warns Sunnis against constitution," from Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iraq's al Qaeda blasted calls by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for Sunni Muslims in Iraq to participate in drafting a new constitution, saying those who did would be infidels, according to an Internet statement.

Nothing new in such a claim.

"The crusaders' hag (Rice) came to sully the land of the caliphate...and wants the participation of apostates and secularists claiming to be Sunnis," the group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in the statement posted on a Web site used by Islamists on Tuesday.

"Would anyone draft the constitution other than those who do not believe in God's book...," said the statement dated May 16. "Our Sunni faith stipulates that the sword and bullets be the only dialogue between us and worshippers of the cross."

"Our Sunni faith stipulates that the sword and bullets be the only dialogue between us and worshippers of the cross"? What happened to tolerant, pluralistic Islam? How will those who call themselves moderate Muslims convince these people that their Sunni faith does not call for use of the sword and bullets against Christians? Ibrahim Hooper? Jamal Badawi? Khaleel Mohammed? Anyone? Anyone?

Afghan clerics defer jihad call against U.S.

The bogus story may long resonate, but the jihad is off for now. From Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A group of Afghan Islamic clerics have deferred a call for holy war against the United States over a magazine report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran after the report was retracted.

The clerics in Badakhshan province said on Sunday the United States should hand anyone guilty of desecrating the holy book to a Muslim country for prosecution in three days or they would declare jihad, or holy war, against the United States.

But Newsweek magazine, which first ran a story in its May 9 issue saying U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Koran down a toilet, on Monday retracted the report.

"We will consult and discuss our next move with other Ulemas," said the head of Badakhshan's council of clerics, Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman, when asked about the jihad call.

Qur'an allegation may long resonate

"Koran Allegation May Long Resonate," from the Washington Post, with thanks to John Pardon:

"The damage cannot be controlled by the belated retraction from Newsweek under U.S. government pressure," said Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the major Islamic party alliance in Pakistan, who spoke by telephone from Islamabad. "The desecration of the Holy Koran by U.S. soldiers shows that the United States is on a path of clashing with Islam."

Ahmad said that his alliance, the Muttahida Majlis Amal, was planning nationwide protests May 27 and that it had "coordinated with Islamic organizations all over the world to join us in this day of condemnation."

Here's some interesting background on Qazi Hussain Ahmed.

Spencer: The Real Lesson of Newsweekgate

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage on the Newsweek Qur'an flushing imbroglio:

When in April EBay offered a consecrated host for sale, imagine if Catholics had rioted and seventeen people were killed.

The media would have been full of stories about the dark side of the “Christian Right.”

Imagine if, when Muslims desecrated the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus in 2000, destroying it with hammers, rampaging Jewish mobs had killed dozens of Palestinians.

The establishment media response would again have inundated us with stories about the heroic Palestinians and their Israeli oppressors.

Neither of those things really happened. But seventeen people have been killed and hundreds wounded in riots by Muslims since Newsweek published its story about an American interrogator flushing a Qur’an down the toilet at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

And yet the media establishment seems preoccupied only with the fact that Newsweek, in publishing a false story that it has since retracted, has done a very bad thing. And that the Bush Administration must do something to calm tempers and soothe feelings in the Islamic world.

There is no excusing Newsweek’s irresponsibility in this. But this is not really a story about media bias or carelessness at all. There is a much larger story that is getting hardly any attention at all. The gorilla in the living room that no one wants to notice, is that flushing a Qur’an down the toilet should not be grounds to commit murder.

This aspect of the story is being ignored by spokesmen on both the Left and the Right. After the initial reports of rioting, Juan Cole sputtered, “Whatever goddam military genius came up with the bright idea of flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo should be court-martialed, and Bush had better get out there apologizing before this thing spirals further out of control.” On the other side of the political spectrum, Paul Marshall wrung his hands in National Review: “Even if Newsweek publishes a full retraction, the damage is done. Much of the Muslim world will regard it merely as a cover-up and feel reconfirmed in the view that America is at war with Islam.”

Neither Cole nor Marshall, however, made any moral judgment about the rioters. Marshall was furious with Newsweek: “It would be charitable to think that if Newsweek had known how explosive the story was it may have held off until it had more confirmation. If this is true, it is an indication that the media’s widespread failure to pay careful attention to the complexities of religion not only misleads us about domestic and international affairs but also gets people killed.” Cole, for his part, directed his anger at the Bush
Administration: “As a professional historian, I would say we still do not have enough to be sure that the Koran desecration incident took place. We have enough to consider it plausible. Anyway, the important thing politically is that some Muslims have found it plausible, and their outrage cannot be effectively dealt with by simple denial. That is why I say that Bush should just come out and say we can’t be sure that it happened, but if it did it was an excess, and he apologizes if it did happen, and will make sure it doesn’t happen again (if it did).”

Neither one says anything whatsoever about a culture that condones — celebrates —wanton murder of innocent people, mayhem, and destruction in response to the alleged and unproven destruction of a book.

The question here is one of proportionate response. If a Qur’an had indeed been flushed, Muslims would have justifiably been offended. They may justifiably have considered the perpetrators boors, or barbarians, or hell-bound unbelievers. They may justifiably have issued denunciations accordingly. But that is all. To kill people thousands of miles away who had nothing to do with the act, and to fulminate with threats and murder against the entire Western world, all because of this alleged act, is not just disproportionate. It is not just excessive. It is mad. And every decent person in the world ought to have the courage to stand up and say that it is mad.

I suspect that even Juan Cole and Paul Marshall, somewhere in the back of their minds, know that it is mad too. But why don’t they say so? Because Rule #1 in the establishment (Left and Right) view of this present conflict is that it has nothing to do with Islam. To bring a moral judgment to bear upon Muslim people, or to explore the ways in which Islam fuels the conflict, is therefore absolutely forbidden.

This kind of analysis, dominant as it is in the media, does the Western world an enormous disservice. The reaction to the Newsweek story in the Muslim world only shows how critical it is that the elements of Islam that give rise to fanaticism and violence be examined and confronted. Lives are at stake. But Cole and Marshall, and many others like them on both the Left and the Right, can’t see this necessity through the enveloping fog of political correctness.

CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense

Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha in FrontPage on CAIR's latest bogus hate crimes report:

Should you read Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005, an annual report issued last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), you’ll learn how the Muslim experience in America is worsening. Specifically, the number of “anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States” has gone up dramatically: from 42 cases in 2002, to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 in 2004.

This news prompted headlines in the mainstream media. “Muslims Report 50% Increase in Bias Crimes,” announced the New York Times; “Crimes, Complaints Involving Muslims Rise,” broadcast the Washington Post; and “Muslims Cite a Rise in Hate Crimes,” echoed the Los Angeles Times. That these leading newspapers treated the CAIR study as a serious piece of research served as an important endorsement.

But CAIR is part of the Wahhabi Lobby, so (unlike the mainstream media reporters) we thought it a good idea to take a closer look at the report. We examined in detail some “examples of anti-Muslim hate crime reports received by CAIR in 2004,” on p. 43, plus some “samples” on p. 53 and discovered a pattern of sloppiness, exaggeration, and distortion:

1) CAIR cites the July 9, 2004 case of apparent arson at a Muslim-owned grocery store in Everett, Washington. But investigators quickly determined that Mirza Akram, the store’s operator, staged the arson to avoid meeting his scheduled payments and to collect on an insurance policy. Although Akram’s antics were long ago exposed as a fraud, CAIR continues to list this case as an anti-Muslim hate crime.

2) CAIR also states that “a Muslim-owned market was burned down in Texas” on August 6, 2004. But already a month later, the owner was arrested for having set fire to his own business. Why does CAIR include this incident in its report?

3) CAIR lists the March 2005 lawsuit filed by the Salmi family for the firebombing of their family van as one example of a hate crime reports it received in 2004. However, the crime named in the lawsuit occurred in March 2003, was already reported by CAIR in 2003, and should not have been tabulated again in the 2004 report.

4) CAIR reports that “a home-made bomb exploded outside of the Champions Mosque in the Houston suburb of Spring, Texas,” staking its claim on eyewitness reports that on July 4, 2004, “two white males” were seen placing the bomb. We inquired about the incidents and found that Spring’s sheriff department could not locate any police files about an explosion. Further inquiries to the mosque and an e-mail to CAIR both went unanswered. There is scant evidence that any crime even occurred.

5) CAIR notes that “investigators in Massachusetts are still investigating a potential hate motivated arson against the Al-Baqi Islamic Center in Springfield.” However the case was long ago ruled a simple robbery, news that even CAIR’s own website has posted. The Associated Press reported on January 21, 2005, that prosecutors determined the fire was set by teen-age boys “who broke into the Al-Baqi mosque to steal money and candy, then set the fire to cover their tracks.” The boys, they clarified, “weren’t motivated by hatred toward Muslims.”

6) CAIR describes what happened to a Muslim family in Tucson, Arizona: “bullet shots pierced their home as they ate dinner in October 2004” and two months later their truck was smashed and vandalized. But the only evidence that either incident was motivated by hate of Muslims is the Dehdashti family itself, not the police. Detective Frank Rovi of Pima County Sheriff’s Department, who handled the shooting investigation, said that according to the neighbors, the desert area by the Dehdashti house was often used for target practice. Neither incident was classified as a hate crime and both cases were closed by February 2005, long before the CAIR report went to press.

Read it all. Many good links in the original.

Italy: Police detain terrorist suspects

European jihad update from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Police were targeting a group in Milan composed mainly of Tunisians and accused of planning attacks against Italian targets, RAI radio and news agency ANSA said.

In Turin, authorities were acting against a group suspected of having links to a subversive Moroccan group identified as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, ANSA said.

BP: Personnel Failures Led to Texas Blast

Texas Refinery blast update. This is the one in which terrorism was ruled out before an investigation was made. There seem to be quite a few unanswered questions remaining, but lucky for them, the investigators seem to have been right about there not being terrorism involved -- just gross, enormous negligence and incompetence. From AP, with thanks to Daniel Pipes:

May 17, 2005 - "Deeply disturbing" errors by employees led to the oil refinery explosion and fire in March that killed 15 workers, and some employees could be dismissed as a result, plant operators said Tuesday.

BP PLC, one of the world's largest oil companies, released its interim report on the March 23 blast at the Texas City plant, which happened in a unit that boosts the octane level of gasoline when it was brought up to full production after a two-week shutdown for routine maintenance. More than 170 workers were injured.

"The mistakes made during the startup of this unit were surprising and deeply disturbing," Ross Pillari, president of BP Products North America, said in a statement. "The result was an extraordinary tragedy we didn't foresee."...

"The core issue here is people not following procedures," Pillari said, noting that the workers restarting the unit were experienced and trained. "If they had ... followed procedures, the accident wouldn't have happened."...

The BP investigation determined that fluid level in a tower was 20 times higher than it should have been. Water or nitrogen in the tower when the unit was restarted may have caused a sudden increase in pressure that forced hydrocarbon liquid and vapor into the unit's stack.

But investigators still don't know what ignited the resulting vapor cloud. Earlier theories have suggested that sparks from a running truck engine could have been to blame.

Investigators found that supervisors seemed to be absent at times during the unit startup, and crews didn't know who was in charge.

Also, any of six supervisors had a six-minute window in which they could have sounded an alarm to evacuate the area, but that alarm was never sounded, Pillari said. The decision, he said, denied other workers "the opportunity to get out of harm's way."...

100 Israeli terror victims to be flown to Florida for Islamic Jihad trial

Now this will be most interesting. Sami Al-Arian will be confronted with the fruit of his labors. From Haaretz, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Some 100 survivors of terror attacks, relatives of those killed, police investigators, Magen David Adom paramedics, and ZAKA volunteers will testify in what American authorities regard as the most important terrorist trial in the United States since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The group will be flown to Tampa, Florida early next month to serve as prosecution witnesses in the trial of four Arab-Americans accused of belonging to Islamic Jihad and raising funds to finance terror attacks, including some that took place in Israel.

The trial is due to start on June 6, with jury selection to begin this week.

The Israeli witnesses, flying to Florida at the expense of the U.S. government, include survivors of terror attacks going back to 1989, as well as relatives of some of those killed, eyewitnesses, doctors from the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in South Tel Aviv and police officers....

Among the terror attacks for which the four are being charged are the Bus 405 incident, from 1989, when an Islamic Jihad man forced an Egged bus off the highway and into a ravine on the road to Jerusalem, the 1992 pitchfork attack at a training base, the 1995 double suicide bombings at Beit Lid, the 1996 bombing at the Dizengoff Center, and a terror attack in Karkur in 2002. More than 100 Israelis and Americans were killed in the attacks mentioned in the 118-page indictment.

The Israelis will be asked to testify about their experiences.

The lead defendant in the case is Sami al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer engineering professor who has been held by authorities for the last two years. Also on trial are Sameeh Hammoudeh, Hatim Naji Fsariz and Ghassan Zayed Ballut.

Afghanistan, Pakistan Angry at Newsweek

Muslim mobs have murdered innocent people, and Afghanistan and Pakistan want Newsweek to pay. I certainly don't think anyone should mistake Newsweek for journalism in the future, but the idea that it should pay for this murderous madness is just one more manifestation of the collective unwillingness to hold Muslims accountable for their actions.

From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Afghanistan's government said Tuesday that Newsweek should be held responsible for damages caused by deadly anti-American demonstrations after the magazine alleged U.S. desecration of the Quran, and it suggested that foreign forces may have helped turn protests violent.

Pakistan joined the international criticism of the magazine's article and said Newsweek's apology and retraction were "not enough."...

The article sparked protests in several other Muslim countries.

Afghan presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said Newsweek's retraction Monday was a "positive step" toward clearing up concern about the report.

"But at the same time, we feel angered at the way this story has been handled," Ludin told a news conference Tuesday. "It's only fair to say at this stage that Newsweek can be held responsible for the damages caused by their story."...

Pakistani officials also expressed anger that the magazine got its story wrong.

"Just an apology is not enough. They should think 101 times before publishing news that hurts hearts," Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said in Islamabad.

In Saudi Arabia, the country's top religious authority Tuesday condemned the alleged desecration and urged an investigation into the report.

Grand Mufti Adul-Aziz al-Sheik issued his statement a day after Newsweek retracted its report, saying a full inquiry still should be launched "to alleviate the sorrow that befell Muslims."

"We condemn and denounce this criminal act against Muslims' most sacred item," al-Sheik said.

Qaeda recruiting Canadian Muslim converts

How do they recruit these converts? What use do they make of the Qur'an in doing so? How are those who proclaim themselves to be moderate Muslims combating this recruitment? These are all forbidden subjects. From the Pakistan Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

MONTREAL: Canadian converts to Islam have become a major source of Al Qaeda combatants, posing a risk to the country's security, according to an intelligence report cited by the Toronto Star newspaper. "Converts are highly prized by terrorist groups for their familiarity with the West and relative ease at moving through Western society," the newspaper wrote on Saturday, quoting an internal Canadian Security Intelligence Service report. "There is a direct threat to Canada and Canadian interests from Al Qaeda and related groups," said the document, adding that converts "are prone to extreme views because of their new-found zeal." The report said Islamists are also spurred by "the perception that the West is attacking Islam on multiple fronts." The perception "continues to anger the Muslim world and contributes to support for radical views."

Pakistan: No reform of madrassas

They have been called "universities of jihad," and they're going to stay that way. But note that they are not teaching terrorism -- they no doubt do not believe that what the jihadists do constitutes terrorism. "Clerics adamant against 'interference' in madrassas," from the Pakistan Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei.

ISLAMABAD: Leaders of madrassas (Islamic seminaries) said on Sunday that they would not allow the government or anyone else to interfere in madrassa matters such as their syllabi and examination system.

In a communiqué issued after the Deeni Madaris Convention arranged by the Wafaqul Madaris Al Arabia, madrassa leaders said seminaries would continue working towards making Pakistan an Islamic and democratic state and would stay united and would not allow anyone interfere in madrassa matters. It also said they would not accept the imposition of embargos to fulfil the agenda of the West. "Religious schools weren't involved in any kind of politics or terrorism and they don't want to fight the government, but they want it to accept their demands through dialogue because religious schools will not accept any imported philosophy in the name of so-called enlightened moderation," the declaration added.

Syllabi reforms in madrassas would continue because they (madrassa leaders) believed that teachers in religious schools had the capability to teach conventional education, it said, adding that madrassas would also not accept the government's financial assistance at any stage...

Pakistan Muslim League President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told participants that madrassas were not preaching terrorism. "As a former interior minister, I conducted an inquiry to examine whether seminaries were involved in terrorism and found that not a single one was involved in such activities," he said...

Pakistan: Militant group's student wing denounces ''liberalism"

Will democracy take root in the Islamic world? Not if these students have anything to say about it. From Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: Talaba-e-Jamatud Dawa will organise a series of seminars from May 17 to June 4 against liberalism, secularism and the establishment of the Aga Khan Education Board, said the organisation's president Hameeedul Hassan on Sunday.

Talabe-e-Jamatul Dawa is the student wing of Jamatud Dawa,a religious
organistion headed by Hafiz Saeed. Hassan and Asif Khurshid, the
organisation's information secretary, said in a press conference that the Aga Khan Board followed America's agendas and it should not be allowed to make decisions about academic syllabi. They said that seminars would raise awareness about Islam, fundamentalism and anti-liberalism. A seminar will be held in Lahore on June 2.

Al-Arian trial finally to begin

After months of jockeying and posturing, Al-Arian is finally fit to be tried. "Ex-professor's trial to begin," from the Kansas City Star:

MIAMI - After 814 days in prison, many of them spent in solitary confinement, former college professor Sami Al-Arian goes on trial this week.

He is charged with commanding a terrorist cell that flourished in Tampa and infiltrated the University of South Florida.

Al-Arian and eight co-defendants are accused of raising money for
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel....

"The tension is that we want the government to be aggressive and to root out terrorists," said Aubrey Jewett, a political-science professor at the University of Central Florida. "But, of course, we are always concerned, and I think rightly so, that the government may overstep its bounds."...

He may walk. And if he walks, we are in big trouble.

Al-Qaeda still using the fear factor

"Fear is still the factor Al-Qaeda," from the Stop the Presses Department via the StarOnline, with thanks to Nicolei:

ISLAMABAD: Being big in al-Qaeda is clearly not what it used to be, but the fear factor is.

While al-Qaeda's ability to inspire like-minded Islamist groups has grown, its own core members haven't succeeded in carrying off a major overseas attack since Sept 11, 2001....

"The inner core of al-Qaeda is intact, but as a group it's been degraded. Its survival depends on associated groups," said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore based security analyst and author of Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror.

"Linked to al-Qaeda" has become a catch-all phrase to describe any group that carries out an attack, and either declares admiration for Osama, announces a hitherto unheard of or distant affiliation to al-Qaeda, or has bona fide ties....

Whether or not there is an actual link is unimportant. The ideological connection is all-important.

PA Sermon: Muslims Will Rule America

Nobody in public life ever asks why typical Muslim "sermons" read just like political rallies, or why so many of their "holy men" are terrorists or supporters of political terror. Why? From MEMRI, "This Week's Palestinian Authority Sermon: We (Muslims) Will Rule America; Israel is a Cancer; Jews are a Virus Resembling AIDS; Muslims Will Finish Them Off"

"Allah has tormented us with 'the people most hostile to the believers' – the Jews. 'Thou shalt find that the people most hostile to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists.' Allah warned His beloved Prophet Muhammad about the Jews, who had killed their prophets, forged their Torah, and sowed corruption throughout their history.

"With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.

"You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations.

"Ask Britain what it did to the Jews in the early sixth century. What did they do to the Jews? They expelled them, tortured them, and prevented them from entering Britain for more than 300 years. All this was because of what the Jews did in Britain. Ask France what it did to the Jews. They tortured them, expelled them, and burned their Talmud, because of the civil strife the Jews wanted to spark in France, in the days of Louis XIX. Ask Portugal what it did to the Jews. Ask Czarist Russia, which welcomed the Jews, who plotted to kill the Czar - so he massacred them. But don't ask Germany what it did to the Jews. It was the Jews who provoked Nazism to wage war against the entire world, when the Jews, using the Zionist movement, got other countries to wage an economic war on Germany and to boycott German merchandise. They provoked Russia, Britain, France, and Italy. This enraged the Germans toward the Jews, leading to the events of those days, which the Jews commemorate today.

Muslims routinely blame the hated for the hatred directed toward them. It is also America's fault they hate us. This is a dubious intellectual position at best, and one too easily bought into by America's intellectual left.

"But they are committing worse deeds than those done to them in the Nazi war. Yes, perhaps some of them were killed and some burned, but they are inflating this in order to win over the of the media and gain the world's sympathy. The worst crimes in history were committed against the Jews, yet these crimes are no worse than what the Jews are doing in Palestine. What was done to the Jews was a crime, but isn't what the Jews are doing today in the land of Palestine not a crime?!

Stock Palestinian propaganda. Israeli Jews are the "new Nazis." This line is reinforced at every opportunity.

"Look at modern history. Where has Great Britain gone? Where has Czarist Russia gone? Where has France gone - France, which almost ruled the entire world? Where is Nazi Germany, which massacred millions and ruled the world? Where did all these superpowers go? He who made them disappear will make America disappear too, God willing. He who made Russia disappear overnight is capable of making America disappear and fall, Allah willing.

"We have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world – except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relived of the Jews - even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew."

Hmm, rule the world and kill the Jews...that was tried once before, as I recall..

Afghan Muslim leaders demand handover of Qur'an desecrators

Never mind that it didn't happen. "Afghan Ulema demands hand over of desecrators of Holy Quran," from GEO World News, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

KABUL: At least three hundred Ulema in Afghanistan have demanded the US that those responsible for the desecration of the Holy Quran at Guantanamo Bay must be handed over in three days otherwise a Jihad would be launched against the US.

What was that thing that happened on 9/11/01?

That wasn't a jihad?

This is another example of a tendency that has run through Islamic history: when something happens that Muslims see as a provocation, they declare jihad and use it as a pretext for jihad recruitment. What if a jihad was already going on? No matter: the pretext changes, the jihad remains. I wrote an article about this recently. Remember this the next time someone tells you that if only we would leave Iraq, or stop supporting Israel, or what have you, there would be peace with the Islamic world. That idea is based on ignorance of the jihad ideology.

Kashmir: Grenade blast at school

Kashmir jihad update from Sky News, with thanks to Twostellas. How they can murder schoolchildren and continue to believe in the justice of their cause is beyond me.

A grenade has exploded outside a school in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir - wounding up to 25 schoolchildren and parents.

The blast hit just as hundreds of children were leaving the school, with dozens of parents waiting outside.

Islamic rebels are suspected of being behind the attack.

The grenade was apparently thrown at a passing vehicle from India's Border Security Force.

However, it missed its target and exploded outside the school in central Srinagar...

More than a dozen Islamic rebel groups have been fighting in India's portion of Kashmir for the region's independence, or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan.

The 15-year insurgency has claimed more than 66,000 lives.

Fitzgerald: The marriage game

Jihad Watch Advisory Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the phenomenon of marriage scams and visa fraud -- a rampant practice which unfortunately receives little attention:

“I was just a stepping stone to a green card," said one victim of visa fraud. "I married a terrorist. I married somebody who did not like America, who didn't like Americans."

I have known one or two of these stepping-stones. Some are complete innocents, others don't want to know. But it is not always the Green Card alone. Sometimes it is the Green Card, and the stepping-stone's property, or even inheritance, as well.

And it happens all over Europe as well as in North America and Australia. Indeed, one can find guides on Muslim websites for the "muhajiroun" as to the advantages of marrying an Infidel woman. And since women are essentially chattel, who really cares what happens to them?

The advantages are clear:

1) If you are a Muslim student and enter into this "temporary" (from your Muslim point of view, the only point of view that counts) union, you will have a source of steady sex -- and all that cooking and cleaning are not to be sneezed at, either.

2) Protection against expulsion or against visa-expiration (at least until recently). If you can father a child, or six, while in the particular Infidel country you happen to be in, that polyphiloprogenitive activity may get you in, like Flynn.

3) Economic benefits -- those Infidel women sometimes own property, and why not enjoy the Infidel loot, or at least some of it, by waiting around for it to drop from your wife's inheritance into your lap. Several spectacular cases of such come to mind.

4) While Arab and Muslim apologists now enjoy dismissing any realistic assessment of Islam, of its tenets, as merely the result of the West's, or America's, supposed "need" to "create the 'Other'" (funny since Islam itself is based entirely on the need to subjugate, push back, destroy 'the Other' -- i.e. the Infidel), in fact the Arabs and Muslims who manage to inveigle Infidels into marrying them often exploit their own seeming outward exoticness, their physical "otherness": shades of the Sheik of Araby and other cliches that linger in the substratum of some incurably Emma-Bovaryish minds, intrigued by the liquid brown eyes, and soft speech -- in short, by the tariqramadanish come-hither that ought to be so transparent, and to which one must now add that frisson of societal and political transgression that can now be derived from sleeping with someone who, in ways the foolish Infidel does not understand -- is in the deepest sense, the enemy.

But before becoming so entangled, Infidel women should pay a visit to their nearest art museum. And look carefully at the sculptures and the paintings. And go to the cafe, where some CD of Mozart may be playing. And look around, and think about what, in your afternoon at the museum, would be allowed, or could have come out of, the world that your would-be husband comes from. Think: you have no idea what his real views are.

No one should enter into any such liaison without reading the extensive testimonies of women who married into Islam and "reverted" -- and then little by little saw what they took to be the underside, but turned out to be the beating heart, of Islam. And left their husbands, and re-reverted. There used to be a category of literature for children called "cautionary tales."

Those tales need to be updated for Infidel adults.

But your naivete affects, in the main, you, and your children. The naivete about Islam of American policymakers, who are slowly, slowly beginning to realize that perhaps "democracy" cannot be imposed, and that there is absolutely no connection in any case between "democracy" and de-islamization (meaning the imposition of Kemalist constraints on Islam, in order to create a secular class sufficient to keep the Kemalist ball rolling), and that Infidel interests are not served by the further misallocation of men, money, material, and attention in order to pursue the will-o'-the-wisp of this Light Unto the Muslim Nations.

Besides, for 80 years there has already been a Light Unto the Muslim Nations. It is called Turkey. Ataturk did what he could to constrain Islam, step by systematic step. And in those eighty years not one circumjacent or distant Muslim state emulated Turkey (except, very briefly, in Afghanistan, where the semi-enlightened ruler seemed to be interested in the Turkish experiment). Turkey itself is in constant danger of what, from the Infidel point of view, would be a relapse into greater, not less, Islam -- as Erdogan, that male sparrowhawk, chirpily pecks, pecks, pecks away at the foundations and protections of Kemalism, disguising his tying down the Turkish army, the last protector of Kemalism, as merely "complying with the requirements of the E.U." -- and who can object to that?

A futile policy, based on ignorance of Islam, or on the continued dreamy belief that Islam itself is not a problem, or that the idea of Jihad is a recent invention -- see the "Army War College study," recently put out by one Lt.-Commander Aboul-Enein, and wonder just who thinks this sort of thing, full of misstatements about Islamic tenets and what Muslim attitudes really are, was worth sponsoring. It’s just one more attempt by someone who, while no doubt a reasonably fine fellow and decent lieutenant commander in the Navy, either has no idea what Islam is all about: bearing the name Aboul-Enein, and calling yourself a "Muslim" does not make you an instant expert on what is uttered in khutbas all over the Middle East, especially if you have yourself been raised in Mississippi. Or perhaps he does know, but out of professional fear or filial piety, cannot allow himself to say.

There was recently in the news the story of a lady who realized that her husband saw her only as a way to get a Green Card, while he continued to hate America (where he could now live safely). She had the courage to publicly explain how silly and trusting and innocent of Islam she was.

If she can do it, so can the highest-ranking officers in the American army, and so can the officials in the Pentagon.

And they had better.

Jihadists Leave 15 Dead in a Series of Attacks in Iraq

Today's Iraqi jihad update, "Insurgents Leave 15 Dead in a Series of Attacks in Iraq," from the New Duranty Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, - Sunni-led insurgents renewed their bloody attacks across Baghdad and outside the capital today, leaving at least 15 people dead and a number wounded, including three children.

A roadside bomb in a southwest district of Baghdad aimed at Iraqi soldiers in a passing convoy killed two civilians and wounded four, a police official said. Another Iraqi Army unit was attacked by a roadside bomb in Khan Bani Saad, about six miles northeast of the capital, killing four soldiers, the police said.

In central Baghdad, a mortar fell on the College of Engineering, killing two students and wounding 12 others, an Interior Ministry police official said.

Armed men also opened fire on an Iraqi National Guard patrol, killing two civilians and wounding three people, one of them a guardsman and the others civilians, the official said.

An officer in the Ministry of Defense was attacked "by a large terrorist group" in southern Baghdad this morning, the ministry said in a statement, but apparently escaped injury. Escort guards opened fire, killing four of the attackers and capturing a large amount of weapons and ammunition, the statement said.

South of Baghdad, in the town of Al Muwelha, armed men attacked a
preliminary school as students were taking an examination. Two teachers were killed and many were wounded, a Babylon provincial police official said. It is believed that the same group opened fire on local shops, leaving at least one man dead, the official said.

In Sadat al Hindiya, also south of the capital, a police officer and his wife were killed by an unidentified armed group and their three children were badly wounded, the Babylon police official said.

Today's attacks followed the discovery of the bodies of 46 people who had been killed. In addition, two suicide bombers blew themselves up near a town courthouse just north of Baghdad, killing five other people and narrowly missing a regional governor...

Multiple bodies found at each of three sites in Iraq

Evidence of mass assassinations and more goverment assassinations in Iraq, from USA Today:

BAGHDAD — More than 30 bodies were discovered in three locations across Iraq this weekend amid a wave of violence Sunday that targeted government officials and religious leaders.

Two clerics — one Sunni, one Shiite — were gunned down in separate incidents around Baghdad before 9 a.m., raising concerns that sectarian-motivated killings may become a growing part of Iraq's daily mix of violence.

Later in the day, police discovered the bodies of 13 men in a shallow grave near Sadr City, a Baghdad slum, Iraqi army Brig. Hussein Muhssen al-Fariji said.

The men had been blindfolded, their hands bound and were shot several times each in the head, he said. Some of the victims had broken legs and arms, as well as gunshot wounds to the legs, signs that they had been tortured, al-Fariji said.

The situation bore similarities to a case nine days ago, when 14 men were found in a shallow grave in the same area. Those men, all Sunni farmers from the countryside south of Baghdad, had also been blindfolded and shot execution-style. Police said they were investigating to determine whether the cases were connected.

Separately, 11 more bodies were found late Saturday at a deserted chicken farm in Huqoul, a town about 25 miles south of the capital, police Capt. Muthna Khalid Ali told the Associated Press. The victims had their hands tied behind their backs and gunshot wounds to the head, according to an AP journalist at the scene....

Indonesia court upholds verdict on cleric Bashir

Thirty months for the Bali bombings. That makes Bashir Indonesia's William Zanzinger. From Reuters, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

JAKARTA, May 16 (Reuters) - An Indonesian high court has upheld a two-and-a-half year sentence handed to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir for his role in the 2002 Bali blasts that killed 202 people, an official said on Monday.

Lawyers for Bashir, who is accused by some foreign governments of leading the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah network, said they would appeal to the Supreme Court once they received official confirmation.

"In their ruling, the panel of judges upheld the verdict made by the South Jakarta district court (on March 3)," Hussein Kasim, spokesman of the Jakarta High Court, told reporters.

I wonder if Bashir has a cane that he twirls round his diamond ring finger.

Qur'an Gitmo shocker: Muslims don't believe Newsweek's retraction

No surprise here: as I said yesterday, "Newsweek's belated retraction is unlikely to blunt the force of this as yet another new pretext for jihad." "Muslims doubt Quran climbdown," from CNN:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical after a U.S. magazine backed away from a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated copies of the Quran while questioning prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

The account in Newsweek magazine's May 9 issue has been blamed for sparking deadly riots in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world.

On Sunday, Newsweek backed away from the report and offered its sympathies "to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."

But Muslims said they suspected that pressure from Washington was behind the magazine's climbdown, Reuters reported Monday.

"We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan.

"This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it."

On Sunday, a group of clerics led by Aman vowed to call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States in three days unless it handed over the interrogators reported to have desecrated the Quran...

CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said "desecrating the Quran is a death-penalty offense" in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.

The Pentagon said last week it was unable to corroborate any case in which interrogators at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defiled the Muslim holy book, as Newsweek reported...

"It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," Reuters quoted 42-year-old writer and journalist Hafizullah Torab as saying. "No one will accept it."...

"Newsweek is backtracking, but it's not just their report," said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. "All innocent people released from U.S. custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Koran."...

Uzbek toll rises as unrest spreads

Learned analysts have long insisted that Uzbekistan was a bastion of Islamic moderation. I have responded the way I always do: by asking how these moderates counter jihadist recruitment. The response: silence or abuse. But it looks as if the answer these learned analysts did not want to give was: they don't, and they can't -- except by force of arms. Another update on the Muslim Uzbek riots, from CNN:

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan -- The death toll from a crackdown by Uzbekistan security forces is mounting amid reports that unrest has spread from Andijan to at least three other towns.

More than 700 people reportedly have been killed in clashes last week in the region bordering Kyrgyzstan, The Associated Press reported Monday.

The unrest, which began Thursday, is the worst since Uzbekistan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Uzbek government, which witnesses say has fired on demonstrators in affected areas, blames Islamic extremists for inciting the violence.

Saidjahon Zaynabitdinov, head of the local Appeal human rights advocacy group, said Monday that government troops had killed about 200 demonstrators Saturday in Pakhtabad, about 20 miles northeast of Andijan, AP reported.

That violence would have come a day after about 500 people reportedly were killed in Andijan -- Uzbekistan's fourth-largest city -- when government troops put down a prison uprising by alleged Islamic militants and citizens protesting dismal economic conditions.

Andijan remained tense on Monday after gunfire continued throughout the night, AP said.

"The people now are more afraid of government troops than of any so-called militants," Zaynabitdinov told Associated Press Television News.

In a separate clash Sunday in the border town of Teshiktosh, eight soldiers and three civilians were killed and hundreds of Uzbeks fled into neighboring Kyrgyzstan, according to witnesses.

In another border community, Korasuv, an estimated 5,000 people went on a rampage Saturday and forced authorities to restore a bridge across a river that marks the border with Kyrgyzstan, AP reported.

United Nations relief experts were dispatched along the border to assess the needs of refugees, although there did not appear to be a mass exodus from the region into Kyrgyzstan.

On Saturday, a U.N. official said 528 people from Uzbekistan crossed the border into the Jalal-Abad area of Kyrgyzstan.

The roads leading from Andijan appeared to be blocked by Uzbek troops Sunday...

UPDATE: The presence of jihadists in Uzbekistan, which is still disputed by some, does not justify the brutal and bloody response of the Karimov regime. Uzbeks are between a rock and a hard place. My condolences to the victims.

Newsweek goofs, 16 killed

"Oops, we goofed," says Newsweek. 16 are dead and the jihad knives are being sharpened -- Newsweek's belated retraction is unlikely to blunt the force of this as yet another new pretext for jihad. The pretexts are ever new; only the jihad is constant. Another update on the great Qur'an toilet flushing riots of 2005: "Newsweek says may have erred in Koran report," from Reuters, with thanks to all the many dozens of Jihad Watch readers who have sent this in:

WASHINGTON - Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it may have erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to victims of deadly violence sparked by the article.

The weekly news magazine said in its May 23 edition that the original source of the allegation was not sure where he saw the assertion that at least one copy of the Koran was flushed down a toilet in an attempt to get detainees to talk.

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

The report has sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza.

On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the interrogators in question.

The May 9 report quoted unnamed sources as saying that military investigators probing abuse at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, found that interrogators had placed copies of the Koran on toilets and "in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet."

Newsweek said a Pentagon spokesman told the magazine late last week that the story was wrong and that the military has found no credible evidence to support separate allegations of Koran desecration made by released detainees...

Dozens of corpses uncovered in Iraq

From Al Jazeera, with thanks to Skeetstreet, who asks: "Where is the moral outrage? It appears the Muslim world reserves that rage for the alleged Qur'an flushers."

Thirty-four corpses of men shot dead, beheaded or with their throats cut have been uncovered across Iraq, medical and security sources said.

Thirteen of the corpses were found in Baghdad's Sadr City.

Police Lieutenant Colonel Shakir Wadi Al-Maliki said the 13 slain men, most appearing to be aged in their early 20s, were wearing civilian clothes and lying in a shallow grave in a vacant lot.

Judging by the nature of their wounds and the state of bodily decomposition, police officials believed the men were shot either late on Saturday or early on Sunday.

An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies lying in the grave with their hands tied behind their back, eyes blindfolded and at least three bullet wounds in each of their heads.

Eleven corpses of men shot dead were also discovered by police in the town of Iskandariyah, south of Baghdad, police and medical sources said.

"Police found 11 bodies in an agricultural zone close to Iskandariyah. All are of middle-aged men," police captain Yahya al-Mamudi told AFP.

"We have received 11 bodies. They were shot dead a few days ago," said Mohammed al-Saidi of the hospital in Iskandariyah.

Soldiers killed

Police said at least three of the dead had been identified as Iraqi soldiers.

The defence ministry, in the meantime, said 10 bodies of soldiers, all with their throats cut, had been discovered close to the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad.

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." (Qur'an 47:4).

Saudi ‘martyrs’ fuel Iraq’s insurgency

A religious awakening led Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani to become "an anonymous fireball." (An intriguing contrast to Pentecost.) Yet we are still to believe that to examine the workings and causes of such religious awakenings would be irrelevant. How long will the media (left and right) continue this masquerade? From the Washington Post via MSNBC, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

Before Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani exploded himself into an anonymous fireball, he was young and interested only in "fooling around."

Like many Saudis, he was said to have experienced a religious awakening after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and dedicated himself to Allah, inspired by "the holy attack that demolished the foolish infidel Americans and caused many young men to awaken from their deep sleep," according to a posting on a jihadist Web site.

On April 11, he died as a suicide bomber, part of a coordinated insurgent attack on a U.S. Marine base in the western Iraq city of Qaim. Just two days later, "the Martyrdom" of Hadi bin Mubarak Qahtani was announced on the Internet, the latest requiem for a young Saudi man who had clamored to follow "those 19 heroes" of Sept. 11 and had found in Iraq an accessible way to die.

‘Melting pot for jihadists’

Hundreds of similar accounts of suicide bombers are featured on the rapidly proliferating array of Web sites run by radical Islamists, online celebrations of death that offer a wealth of information about an otherwise shadowy foe at a time when U.S. military officials say that foreign fighters constitute a growing and particularly deadly percentage of the Iraqi insurgency.

The account of Qahtani's death, like many other individual entries on the Web sites, cannot be verified. But independent experts and former government terrorism analysts who monitor the sites believe they are genuine mouthpieces for the al Qaeda-affiliated militants who have made Iraq "a melting pot for jihadists from around the world, a training group and an indoctrination center," as a recent State Department report put it. The sites hail death in Iraq as the inspiration for a new generation of terrorists in much the same way that Afghanistan attracted Muslims eager to fight against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

I discuss this phenomenon in Onward Muslim Soldiers. Between Afghanistan and Iraq there was Bosnia. Where will be next? The pretext changes; the jihad remains constant.

Pakistan: Police unwilling to monitor prisoners if they’re freed

From Pakistan's News International, with thanks to Nicolei:

ISLAMABAD: The government has been told that Station House Officers (SHOs) of different police stations all over Pakistan are not ready to monitor the activities of repatriated Pakistani prisoners from Guantanamo Bay in case they were freed from jails at home.

Despite being released by the Americans some eight months ago, these 35 prisoners continue to languish in jails without any charge.

The tug of war between the Interior Ministry and the provincial government over the issue of non-cooperation of SHOs in monitoring the activities has contributed a lot to the misery of families of these prisoners, who wait for their release with little hope....

The source said the interior minister had been telling the participants of the committee that government wanted to rehabilitate these prisoners as many of them belonged to very poor families and the government could not take the risk of releasing them only to make them available to the religious groups for a future ‘jihad’.

More Iraq Violence

Our Iraq jihad update comes from Reuters, "Nine dead in U.S. assault, blasts hit Baghdad"

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said on Saturday nine of its troops were killed in an offensive against insurgents and foreign fighters in western Iraq, and guerrillas struck again in Baghdad, leaving at least five people dead.

Backed by air power, U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers have been trying to root out guerrillas in the rebellious Anbar province to weaken an insurgency that has escalated attacks since a new Iraq government was announced April 28.

The assault, which entered its seventh day, is designed to root out guerrillas in one of their most active areas near the Syrian border.

Insurgents struck again in the capital when a suicide car bomber blew himself up next to an Iraqi police patrol in central Baghdad, killing at least four people, police sources said.

The blast echoed across central Baghdad and thick black smoke rose from burning vehicles in what has become a daily scene since Iraq announced a cabinet.

In a second attack, insurgents hurled grenades at a police convoy in western Baghdad, killing one policeman...

In the oil refining town of Baiji, a car bomb blast killed five Iraqis on Friday evening, police said.

Two policemen and two civilians were killed in clashes in the town of Samarra on Saturday, police Captain Hashem al-Sulami said...

Pakistan Denies Drone Killing on its Territory

From Reuters, "Pakistan denies report U.S drone kills Qaeda leader"

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan denied on Saturday U.S. media reports that a senior al Qaeda leader was killed in a missile attack by an unmanned U.S. intelligence Predator aircraft on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border. ABC News, one of several U.S. news networks reporting the U.S. strike, said sources from unnamed intelligence agencies identified the man as Haitham al-Yemeni. "Nothing has happened in Pakistan. If something happened in Afghanistan, we don't know," Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed told Reuters.

A U.S. military spokesman in Afghanistan said he had no information about the veracity of the reports.

Al-Yemeni, a native of Yemen known for his bomb-making skills, had been tracked in the hope that he would help lead the United States to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, intelligence officials were quoted as saying by ABC.

With the capture in Pakistan earlier this month of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, thought to be al Qaeda's number three man, officials feared that al-Yemeni would go into hiding, and so decided to take action, ABC said on Friday.

The CIA refused to confirm or deny the report, ABC said.

The CIA has the authority to fire against senior al Qaeda figures anywhere in the world, though it is unclear whether the Pakistanis approved of the action in advance, ABC said.

This would be the fourth known time the CIA Predator has opened fire on al Qaeda targets, ABC said...

Uzbek Police Fire on Crowd

An Update on the Muslim Riots in Uzbekistan from CBS News, "U.S. Ally Fires On Its People"

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan - President Islam Karimov claimed Saturday that authorities tried to negotiate a peaceful end to protests, but that troops were forced to open fire when insurgents who had seized a government building attempted to break through an advancing line of Uzbek police and soldiers.

He said 10 government troops and "many more" militants died in fighting Friday in the eastern city of Andijan. Relatives of the victims condemned the government, accusing troops of killing innocent civilians. Witnesses said 200 to 300 people were shot dead.

Soldiers loyal to Karimov, who has maintained tight control over this Central Asian nation, fired on thousands of demonstrators Friday to put down an uprising that began when armed men freed 2,000 inmates from prison, including suspects on trial for alleged Islamic extremism. The U.S. State Department expressed concern on Friday that members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, were freed...

State Dept. Vows to Boycott Hamas Representatives Unless...

In news from The Forward, "Bush Administration Vows To Boycott Hamas Militants Elected in Territories," with thanks to III44(?, my apologies).

The Bush administration "will neither recognize nor engage with" members of Hamas or Hezbollah who are elected to office unless the two militant groups disarm, a top American diplomat told the Forward.

David Satterfield, the second-ranking official at the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said that the Bush administration is not attempting to block the groups from participating in Palestinian or Lebanese elections. But, he added, the Bush administration would only recognize armed militant groups "if they lay down their arms."

Satterfield's comments, which appeared to overturn several earlier remarks from the American brass, come as Hamas and Hezbollah officials are vowing to hold on to their weapons.

But, as Daniel Pipes and others here have repeatedly pointed out, how would this alter the overall goals of these groups? How would laying down their arms change their goal of destroying Israel?

Internet Vigilante Targets Terrorist Web Sites

A profile of the founder of Internet Haganah from St. Louis' KMOV, "Internet vigilant [sic] targets terrorist Web sites," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

For most of us the war on terror involves soldiers and federal agents in foreign countries. But one local man is waging his own battle thousands of miles from the frontlines.

In this News 4 Extra, Marc Cox takes us inside that man's war room where his successful campaign is drawing death threats.

It's no surprise terrorist groups uses the Internet to spread the message of hate. It even boasts videos allegedly showing U. S. troops being killed by roadside bombs in Iraq.

But you may be shocked to learn the Web server hosting this site is based in the U.S. Enom.com is based in Bellevue, Washington.

“By and large, it's American companies that provide the services necessary to keep those sites online,” says Aaron Weisburd.

Weisburd takes that personally. This computer programmer now uses his cyber skills full time to root out terrorists. His Web site, Internet Haganah, tracks terrorist sites and shuts them down.

In three years Weisburd and his dozen volunteers have managed to get 650 sites taken offline. Those sites are used for fundraising and recruiting so Weisburd's success led one terrorist leader to issue a death threat against him.

“When you know you're on al Quaida's list, everything else is sort of like, not quite as exciting,” he says...

Indeed.

Atlanta: Programmer Accused of Hacking DL Files

From Access North Georgia, "AP NewsBreak: Programer accused of hacking driver's license files," with thanks to Kemaste.

A computer programmer for a sensitive state agency, who apparently was hired without undergoing a background check, has been charged with computer intrusion and theft for accessing Georgia driver's license files without authorization.

The Georgia Technology Authority said Asif Siddiqui was arrested April 28 at the agency's offices near the state Capitol after the agency discovered he had logged into the database outside of work hours without having a reason to do so...

The agency has no idea how many files were accessed or what, if any, personal information may have been compromised, Wade said. The files potentially included names, addresses, home telephone numbers and Social Security numbers of thousands of Georgians...

Boston: Two Arrests For Alleged Jihad Fundraising

From AFP via the Khaleej Times, "Libyan, Lebanese in US arrested over alleged jihad funding," with thanks to Skeetstreet.

BOSTON, Massachusetts - Two men, one Libyan and another Lebanese, were arrested Thursday and charged with financing jihad through a charitable front group, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.

Emadeddin Muntasser, 40, of Braintree, Massachusetts, and Muhamed Mubayyid, 40, of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, were accused of six counts of conspiracy and defrauding the government, prosecutors said in a statement.

“Organizations that conceal their true activities to abuse our tax laws, and in this case fund their support of the mujahadeen and jihad, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” US Attorney Andrew Sullivan said in a statement. Jihad is a holy war against infidels.

Muntasser is president of Care International based in Boston, Massachusetts and Mubayyid is treasurer.

Between 1993 and 2003, Care collected 1.7 million tax-free dollars as a charitable organization...

In the 1990s, Muntasser was involved in running Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Boston, which was tied to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing according to the indictment, and Muntasser then went on to found Care.

Riots Spread Over Alleged Gitmo Qur'an Desecration

More on the great Qur'an toilet flushing riots of 2005 from the Pakistan Tribune, "Qazi terms sacrilege of Holy Quran as desecration of Ummah," with thanks to ? (Folks, please bear with me. If I'm unsure about the name, I'm leaving it off - please include a note with the name you want used by the link if possible - thanks, Rebecca)

LAHORE - MMA President Qazi Hussain Ahmad has said that desecration of the Holy Quran is desecration the whole Muslim Ummah. He said this while addressing Jumma congregation here in Jamia Masjid Mansoora. He held that MMA would voice observe protest day all over the world against the incident of sacrilege of the Holy Quran by US troops.

MMA has contacted Islamic movements in all the countries so that a forceful protest could be demonstrated across the world on one day, he told. A mammoth protest rally will be held in Islamabad on that day, he told.

He went on to say that love for the Holy Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and respect for the Holy Quran is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of the Muslims. Muslims are an Ummah and the conspiracy is on to dislodge this love from the hearts of the Muslims, he warned.

The incident of flushing the Holy Quran by the US troops before the Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo bay prison facility is evidence of utter degeneration of US mentality, he remarked.

Citing to publication of derogatory cartoon in Washington Times he said that the entire responsibility of this humiliating treatment rests with General Pervez Musharraf who captured our Muslim brethren and handed over them to US, he alleged.

Qazi held that US considered Muslims its potential rival and targeted them after USSR defeat in Afghanistan...

More attempts to rewrite history here. Qazi perpetuates the myth that the mujahideen in Afghanistan actually brought down the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, White House spokesman Scott McClellan chimes in with more appeasing language in this update from ABCNews, "Muslims protest over Koran desecration reports," with thanks to ? (sorry guys.)

Angry protests have raged across the Muslim world from Indonesia to Gaza over a report that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran.

In Afghanistan, at least nine people were killed on Friday in protests over the report, bringing the country's death toll to 16 this week in its worst anti-American demonstrations since the fall of the Taliban.

Washington sought to stem Muslim anger as allies demanded investigations and thousands took to the streets in outrage over the Newsweek magazine report that interrogators at the US military prison in Cuba had put the Muslim holy book on a toilet and flushed it down.

The unrest spread to Pakistan, which called for a US probe.

Hundreds of people held a peaceful protest in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

In Gaza, several thousand Palestinians marched through a refugee camp in a protest organised by the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Several hundred Palestinians also marched in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The escalating violence prompted the Bush administration to express sympathy with the demonstrators and urge calm.

"We want Muslims around the world to know that we share and understand the concerns that they have," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"We will not tolerate any disrespect for the holy Koran," he added.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had also urged Muslims on Thursday to resist calls for violence, saying US military authorities were investigating the Koran allegations and calling disrespect to the holy book "abhorrent to us all".

Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God, treating each book with deep reverence, and the episode has embarrassed the United States, which has sought closer ties with Muslim allies as it wages its war on terrorism...

Al-Arian Trial May Embarrass Politicians, White House

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write in Newsweek, about Sami Al-Arian's "Friends in High Places"

The lawyer for a Florida-based professor accused of leading a violent Palestinian terror group will seek to embarrass the U.S. government next month by introducing evidence that his client attended numerous meetings at the White House and met with high-level figures in both political parties, including Hillary Clinton and White House political director Karl Rove, according to recent court records.

Former computer science professor Sami Al-Arian—a longstanding prime spokesman for Arab-American political causes—goes on trial next month on charges that he served as a secret leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The PIJ is a State Department-designated terrorist organization that U.S. officials charge is responsible for a rash of suicide bombings and other attacks that led to the deaths of Israeli and American civilians...

Just how much access Al-Arian had is detailed in a letter written to federal prosecutors by his lawyer, William Moffit, that was recently entered into the court record. Moffit states that Al-Arian attended meetings at the White House with both Clinton and Bush every year between 1998 and 2001. In addition, the letter states, Al-Arian also attended a briefing at the Justice Department in July 2001, met with Al Gore in November 1998 and Hillary Clinton in October 1999. It also states that President Bush sent a written apology to Al-Arian’s wife in 2001 when the couple son’s was denied access to the White House—reportedly because of his connection to his father.

“Each of these events occurred at a time that the government is alleging that Dr. Al-Arian was somehow a dangerous terrorist involved in a conspiracy to kill Americans,” Moffit wrote in his letter.

“Dr. Al-Arian’s access to these political figures coupled with the fact there was public-source information regarding many of the contentions that form the basis of the government’s indictment seem to belie the notion that Dr. Al-Arian was in anyway considered by anyone in the intelligence or law enforcement communities to be any kind of threat to the United States or a threat to harm any officials of the United States.”

Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor, is charged with conspiring to commit murder, conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist group, extortion, visa fraud, perjury and other crimes—all in connection with his alleged service as a member of the “Shura Council,” the top governing body of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

According to the indictment, which relies heavily on secret wiretaps, Al-Arian regularly communicated with top PIJ officials in the Mideast, helping to manage their finances, dispatching funds to the group and relaying messages among its top leaders. In some of the intercepted conversations, Al-Arian allegedly praised suicide bombings, kidnappings and drive-by shootings by PIJ. “I call upon you to try to extend true support to the jihad effort in Palestine so that operations such as these can continue,” he wrote in one fund-raising appeal after a suicide bombing that killed 22 Israelis in 1995....

There is another related story in The St. Petersburg Times profiling the Al-Arian children for those interested.

Al Qaeda in Yemen Targets US Interests in Gulf

From Middle East News Online, "YEMENI CELL TARGETS WESTERN INTERESTS IN GULF," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

CAIRO - An Al Qaida cell was said to have planned to attack Western interests throughout the Gulf with stolen Saudi missiles.

The cell was based in Yemen and planned to attack U.S. and Western targets in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The Sunni group was said to be aligned with Al Qaida and maintained access to the Saudi military.

Eight purported members of the cell have been prosecuted on charges of terrorist offenses and attempting to seize military equipment. They were being tried in a Sanaa security court that has detailed the charges against the defendants.

On May 9, a Yemeni prosecutor said the cell also planned to attack the United States and European Union states with surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades obtained from Saudi military supplies. The prosecutor identified the Al Qaida cell as being part of the "General Organization of Unification Battalions."...

Muslim Riots in Uzbekistan

From AP via ABC News, "Violent Uprising Breaks Out in Uzbekistan"

ANDIJAN, Uzbekistan — Thousands of people, many of them armed, took to the streets of an eastern Uzbek city on Friday, demanding freedom for 23 prominent businessmen on trial for alleged ties to an Islamic terror group. The protest quickly turned violent, with nine people reported killed and dozens wounded in clashes with police.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and other leaders immediately rushed to Andijan, where witnesses reported chaos in the streets and security forces firing in the air. The city 300 miles east of Tashkent near the Kyrgyz border has been the scene of growing unrest in recent weeks.

The Russian news agency ITAR-Tass agency said armed protesters surrounded police in two districts. Nine people were killed and more than 30 wounded, it said. In a sign of the seriousness of the situation, the government cut all foreign TV news programming, replacing them with Uzbek and foreign entertainment channels.

Tensions were also running high in the capital Tashkent, where police shot and killed a man they mistakenly thought was a suicide bomber outside the Israeli Embassy. The man was carrying wooden objects that appeared to be explosives, said a police official who wished to remain unnamed.

Both the Israeli and the U.S. embassies in Tashkent have been targeted by suicide bombers in the last year. The government blames Islamic extremists...

Witnesses said some of the protesters attacked a prison and freed its inmates. Atakhonjonov said he could not confirm reports that the crowd had attacked an army garrison as well...

Al Qaida Still Operating in Somalia

This will come as no surprise to those who have been following the Bin Laden saga. From AP via ABC News, "Ethiopia: Al Qaida Operating in Somalia," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Ethiopia's prime minister warned on Thursday of the danger posed by a "very active al-Qaida cell" in Somalia's capital and said a stable government is the best way to eliminate the terrorist threat in the chaotic Horn of Africa country.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in an interview with The Associated Press days ahead of an election in which he is seeking a third consecutive term, said his government supported the Somali transitional government formed in neighboring Kenya last year and would do everything possible to help it take power and eliminate the terrorist threat.

"Wherever there is distress, wherever there is acute poverty, social dislocation, the potential for a terrorist state exists," Meles said. "We have a very active terrorist cell in Mogadishu, which has been involved in terrorist activities in Kenya."...

Sure, Meles, it was poverty and "social dislocation" that blew up our Embassy in Kenya, right.

IDF Chief: Bin Laden's Location Known

From the Jerusalem Post, "Ya'alon: Bin Laden's location known," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

The IDF's chief of General Staff said in an interview published Wednesday that the location of al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden is known, and he is in hiding on the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier.

"I don't think that they don't know where he is. There are operational difficulties in putting your hands on him, for all sorts of reasons. But it is not true that they don't know where he is located," Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told Maariv.

Ya'alon, a former head of IDF Intelligence, said, "Ultimately, in order to get your hands on him you will need what we perfected and that is what we call 'targeted assassination.'"

Fridays in Cairo

From Israel's Haaretz.com, "In Cairo, Friday is military day" with thanks to Smokem.

CAIRO - The sidewalk near the Al-Azher mosque is too narrow. On one side is the mosque fence, which also encompasses the huge university campus, and on the other, a safety railing made of thick metal pipes. On a normal day, these two obstacles leave a passage of about 1.5 meters; on Fridays, it shrinks to a few dozen centimeters. The rest of the space is taken up by a squad of security guards dressed in black carrying thin, painful-looking nightsticks and equipped with safety shields against demonstrators and stone throwers.

Squad after squad, these security forces are stationed along the sidewalks, in double rows, standing close together in the oppressive Cairo heat waiting for the prayers to end and the danger to pass. Anyone trying to enter the Al-Azher mosque during the prayer services has no choice but to pass through dozens of police officers and soldiers, who will scrutinize his face and walk, and will not hesitate to use force if he arouses suspicion and shove him into one of dozens of military trucks that have been converted into improvised paddy wagons for demonstrators. The vans are fitted with small barred windows, handcuffs wait on the seats, sandwiches and water for the soldiers lie next to them, until they have to be cleared to make room for the detainees, should there be any. This is the situation near the Al-Azher mosque, as well as near the school for gifted children next to another mosque in the city, and next to the Al-Fateh mosque, and near the Al-Nur mosque. Friday has turned into military day.

Friday prayers, and not only in Egypt, have become a political signpost. Like the security forces in Jerusalem, who count the days from one Friday to the next, the same is true in Egypt, Iran, Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, a region in which religious organizations, Muslim or Jewish, grit their teeth because a government that is not sufficiently devout, in their view, is running the country that God gave his subjects. In Jewish Jerusalem, it is a traitorous prime minister, who is handing over sacred land to the enemy, and in Cairo, it the president, who is accused of kowtowing to the Americans - the modern Huns - who seek to destroy Islam...

More Car Bombings in Iraq

Our Iraq jihad update from AP via the Washington Times, "Iraq Car Bombings Kill 21, Injure 90," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A car bomb exploded in a jammed commercial district Thursday, devastating the area and turning the sky gray as shops and restaurants caught fire in the most deadly of a string of attacks that killed 21 and included the assassinations of a general and a colonel on their way to work.

Iraqis expressed growing fury at the relentless bloodshed, throwing stones at police and U.S. forces who came to the scene of the bombing. More than 90 were also wounded in Thursday's violence.

Sounds more like they're expressing fury at American soldiers and their "collaborators," the Iraqi police, to me.

The attacks came as U.S. troops were in the midst of a major offensive near the Syrian border, 200 miles northwest of Baghdad. Fierce clashes were reported with insurgents on the outskirts of the town of Qaim, where angry residents lashed out at U.S. forces.

"They destroyed our city, killed our children, destroyed our houses. We have nothing left," one man in Qaim told Associated Press Television News. He did not give his name and hid his face with a scarf to address the camera.

Oh right, the insurgency is our fault...

Five more American troops died in Iraq, two during the offensive Wednesday and three others when their convoys hit roadside bombs Thursday in Baghdad and surrounding areas, the U.S. military announced. At least 1,611 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

More than 420 people have died in the two weeks since Iraq's first democratically elected government was announced.

At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.

"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."...

Except for this little jihad insurgency that has already lasted for more than 1350 years and counting...

Al-Libbi To Face Trial in Pakistan Before in U.S.

It's hard not to suspect that the reason they caught al-Libbi leaned more on the side of his assassination attempts on Musharraf, than for his other al-Qaeda work. From AP via Fox News, "AP: Pakistan Won't Soon Hand Al Qaeda's No. 3 to U.S."

CANBERRA, Australia — An alleged terrorist reputed to be Al Qaeda's No. 3 will face trial in Pakistan before Islamabad considers handing him to the United States, Pakistan's foreign minister said Thursday.

Pakistani intelligence agents captured Libyan Abu Farraj al-Libbi last week after a shootout. He is suspected of being behind two bombings targeting Pakistan's president and was also allegedly involved in a plot to kill its prime minister.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri (search) said there was no chance of al-Libbi being handed to the Americans before he is prosecuted in Pakistan.

"Of course we have to (prosecute him). He's a man who's tried to kill our president twice," Kasuri told The Associated Press in an interview in Canberra.

But the United States would be given access to information gleaned by Pakistani investigators, Kasuri said.

"The United States and Pakistan intelligence (agencies) have so much trust in each other, working on many issues for the last 50 years," he said...

Rice Plays Cringing Dhimmi

In response to the Qur'an toilet flushing riots in Afghanistan. From the Turkish Press, "Rice seeks to stem Muslim anger over alleged Koran desecration"

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, seeking to stem Muslim anger over alleged desecration of the Koran by US troops, on Thursday called disrespect for the holy book "abhorrent" and promised to punish offenders.

Rice used an appearance before a Senate committee to issue a special opening statement addressed "directly to Muslims in America and throughout the world" on the reported incidents at the US 'war on terror' prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Disrespect for the holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States," she said. "We honor the sacred books of all the world's great religions. Disrespect for the holy Koran is abhorrent to us all."

Muslims have been enraged by a report that interrogators in Guantanamo placed copies of the Koran in a toilet to rattle prisoners. Seven people have been killed in protests in Afghanistan.

Rice said US military authorities were fully investigating the allegations that have also drawn sharp criticism in Pakistan, a staunch US ally. "If they are proven true we will take approrpriate action."

She said Americans "share and understand" the concerns of Muslims but added, "I am asking that all our friends arund the world reject incitement to violence by those who would mischaracterize our intentions."

Rice said religious freedom and protection of a person's right to worship freely was one of the founding principles of the United States and something taken very seriously here...

In our latest update, Brit Hume reported on Special Report tonight that it was a Gitmo detainee who ripped pages of the Qur'an and flushed it down the toilet in order to clog it in protest.

Seven Jailed in Tajikistan

From Turkish Press, "Seven jailed in Tajikistan for membership in outlawed Islamic group," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

DUSHANBE - A court in Tajikistan handed down prison sentences of three to nine years Wednesday to seven people accused of belonging to an outlawed Islamic group Hizbi Tahrir and agitating for the overthrow of the Central Asian country's government.

"They were found guilty of fomenting racial and religious hatred, organising an armed group, calling for the overthrow of the government, and participating in an extremist group and illegal party," said Sadyk Kurbanov, the judge in the northern Sogd district.

"The extremists, among whom were two students, were arrested six months ago while handing out Islamic leaflets in a local market. During searches of their home Hizbi Takhrir literature was found," he told AFP.

Hizbi Tahrir, or the Freedom Party, was founded in the 1950s in the Middle East and is considered one of the most active fundamentalist Islamic organisations. Thousands of people in Muslim Central Asia are believed to be members.

The party's main goal in Central Asia, which was under Communist rule until the Soviet collapse in 1991, is the creation of a religious state throughout the region...

Three Bombings in Muslim Southern Thailand

From CNN, "Three bombs explode in Thai south," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm & Two Stellas:

YALA, Thailand - Three bombs exploded in Thailand's restive Muslim south on Thursday, police said, wounding at least nine people in a region where more than 600 people have died in 17 months of violence...

The largely Malay-speaking southern region, where separatists fought low-key insurgencies in the 1970s and 1980s, has been rocked by almost daily blasts and killings since the violence erupted in January 2004.

Passenger Yells “Allah Achbar,” Plane Diverted

From the UK Courier, "Holiday jet passenger tells of terror alert," with thanks to JS:

A DUNDEE University graduate told last night how he and his family found themselves at the centre of a terror alert when a passenger on board their holiday flight started shouting slogans linked with Muslim extremism, forcing the flight to be aborted and evacuation of their plane.

James Dargie (32), a 1995 geography graduate now working as a marine data manager with the Countryside Council for Wales, told how passengers “screamed with terror” when a man of Muslim origin started shouting “Allah Achbar” or “God is Great” as their plane taxied for take-off at Larnaca Airport in Cyprus yesterday afternoon.

Mr Dargie, who had boarded London-bound BA flight 663 with his wife Mona and young son Tomos just minutes earlier, told how a “wave of panic” spread among passengers as the chanting began.

As airline staff tried to ascertain what was happening, the captain announced that the flight was being aborted before it had even begun and all passengers and crew would have to leave the aircraft.

As security personnel boarded the plane, the disruptive passenger was quickly taken into custody and all other passengers were required to disembark...

Can Arab TV Be Jihad-Proofed?

Steven Stalinsky writes in the NY Sun, "Making Arab TV 'Jihad-Proof'"

Memri's TV Monitor Project, which has now spent a year tracking Arab and Iranian satellite TV, has shown that as these channels are beamed into the West - and America in particular - they have the potential to incite viewers to jihad. France has recognized this danger and within the last year banned two channels: Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV and Iran's Sahar TV. The European Union as a whole is also looking to ban certain channels.

Arabic and Farsi speakers living in the West who depend on Middle Eastern satellite TV for news are inundated with daily messages of hate. In North America, the following are just some of the many satellite channels available: Al Jazeera, Al-Majd, Iqraa, ART, LBC, Nile, Future, MBC, NBN, Ajaman, Al Alam (Iran), Al Manar, and Orbit. State TV channels are available from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, Dubai, Tunisia, and Libya...

If you're susbscibed to the NY Sun, you can read it all, or better yet, visit Memri TV directly.

Australian Mufti Mixes Motives

Andrew Bolt writes in the Australian Herald Sun, "Mufti mixes motives, " with thanks to JS. (In a quick aside, my apologies to all if I don't give proper thanks. I would rather error on the side of not giving a thank you than put up the wrong name. A quick note next to the link you're sending in will help me - thanks, Rebecca)

We should be grateful Australia's most senior Islamic cleric has trekked to Baghdad to save the life of Australian hostage Douglas Wood.

But the Mufti of Australia, Sheik Taj El-Din El-Hilaly, has at the same time shown -- again -- that not all the Muslim extremists who threaten us are in Iraq.

Surely now even his closest supporters see that this man of hate should no longer represent our Muslims.

Hilaly on the weekend filmed an appeal in Arabic for Wood's kidnappers to spare the life of the 63-year-old engineer, who had been bashed, shaved bald, and threatened with execution if coalition forces were not pulled out of Iraq.

Hilaly is a Sunni extremist, like the men believed to hold Wood, and in his appeal, broadcast in Iraq, he told them: "We value your jihad and your efforts."

But, he added: "We call upon you to do something for the sake of our community and all Australian society, which does not support (Prime Minister John) Howard's pro-American policies. You know the Australian forces in Iraq are protected by American forces and don't do anything -- it's all politics."

I can think of only one plausible way to read this -- our senior Islamic cleric values the terrorists who kill and kidnap countless victims, most of them Iraqis. And he wants Wood freed because killing him won't help Muslims here, most Australians already think Howard is a toady, and the real enemy is America.

Of course, excuses were immediately made for the Mufti, as they always are when he is discovered vilifying Jews or Americans, or praising suicide bombers and terrorists...

Read it all.

Pentagon reviews G-Bay reports

Once again, this is the difference between the West and the supporters of the global jihad. If this really happened at all, the one who did this foolish thing will be prosecuted. He will not be lionized as a hero. From AFP, with thanks to Nicolei:

WASHINGTON: The US Defense Department is reviewing allegations that interrogators at a military detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, desecrated a copy of the Holy Quran by stuffing it in a toilet to rattle Muslim prisoners, a Pentagon spokesman said on Wednesday.

“The allegation is being reviewed,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.

Whitman, however, defended the treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison where more than 500 men are being held as suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda combatants. “We have given great consideration to the detainees and their religious practices,” he said. “We’ve given them culturally appropriate meals, we give them opportunities to worship, we give them appropriate religious materials like the Holy Quran.”

Pakistan: thousands attend jihadist's funeral

Tiny minority of extremists update. "Thousands attend militant’s funeral in Waziristan," from AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

MIRANSHAH: Chanting slogans against America, thousands of mourners gathered in a Pakistani border town on Wednesday to bury an Islamic militant they claimed was killed in a clash between Taliban militants and American forces inside Afghanistan, witnesses said.

The US military, however, said it had no reports of fighting in the area of eastern Afghanistan where the Pakistani man, Akhtar Zaman, had purportedly died.

The funeral was held in Sarobi, a town in the North Waziristan tribal region, opposite the Afghan province of Khost. Mourners also chanted slogans in support Taliban-led militants that have stepped resistance in Afghanistan in recent weeks.

“Down with America! God is Great! We are with mujahedeen!” mourners shouted, according to residents of the town, who estimated about 6,000 people attended the funeral. There were no reports of violence.

A Day Late And A Dollar Short

This is what he says now. Of course, you can say anything to deceive the unbelievers. "War is deceit," said the Prophet Muhammad. "Anti-bin Laden fatwa backed," from News 24, with thanks to EPG:

Madrid - An alleged al-Qaeda member said on Tuesday that he endorsed a fatwa issued by Spanish Muslims against Osama bin Laden, condemning terrorism as he took the stand as a suspected member of a cell that allegedly helped plot the September 11 attacks.

Separately, the three-judge panel overseeing the trial rejected a defence request to release on bail a jailed suspect who filmed video of the World Trade Centre in 1997 and allegedly passed on a copy of the tape to al-Qaeda operatives.

Lawyers for Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun had argued the video was the innocent work of a tourist and that excerpts played in court when their client testified on April 27 failed to reveal anything
incriminating...

Sure. He was just a tourist. It's just coincidence that his group took down the same towers -- and had tried to do so four years before he filmed them.

U.S. Marines Push Toward Syrian Border

From AP, with thanks to EPG:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Hundreds of U.S. Marines pushed through a lawless region on the Syrian frontier Tuesday after battling past well-armed militants fighting from basements, rooftops and sandbag bunkers. Insurgents kidnapped the provincial governor as a bargaining chip.

As many as 100 insurgents were killed in the first 48 hours of Operation Matador, as American troops cleared villages along the meandering Euphrates then crossed in rafts and on a pontoon bridge, the U.S. command said. Many of the dead remained trapped under rubble after attack planes and helicopter gunships pounded their hideouts....

At the Pentagon, Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Tuesday that the assault in the northern Jazirah Desert had run into well-equipped and trained fighters.

"There are reports that these people are in uniforms, in some cases are wearing protective vests, and there's some suspicion that their training exceeds what we have seen with other engagements further east," he said...

Federal Agents Seize 1,000 Fake Badges

I hope the agents have some idea of who Sergio Khorosh was dealing with. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

NEW YORK - A man has been charged with possessing an illegal cache of about 1,000 counterfeit law enforcement badges, authorities said Tuesday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Sergio Khorosh on Monday at his Bronx home after he accepted delivery of about 100 fake U.S. Marshals Service shields. The delivery was being monitored by the agents, who had first intercepted the badges last month in a shipment from Taiwan to San Francisco.

During a search of Khorosh's home, agents discovered about 1,000 more badges, some resembling those of the FBI, Drug Enforcement
Administration and New York Police Department, court papers said. Also found were six firearms, including semiautomatic pistols.

Authorities were investigating whether Khorosh was supplying police impersonators.

"We think this goes way beyond collectors," said Martin D. Ficke, special agent in charge for ICE's New York office...

Sharp observation, there, Ficke.

190 Fake Student Visas Rejected Last Month

From AP, with thanks to EPG:

WASHINGTON - Nearly 200 people were turned away after trying to enter the country on student visas last month when their names failed to show up in the government's new database of foreign students, a Homeland Security Department official said Tuesday.

One of the 190 cases has led the agency to investigate a possible conspiracy to bring groups of foreign students illegally into the United States, said Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security.

Universities, schools and other institutions that enroll foreign students had until Aug. 1 to enter identifying information of all enrolled foreign students into the Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS.

Hutchinson said border security officials contacted schools when a student's name did not appear on the foreign student tracking system. If the school didn't have the required immigration forms from the student, the student was refused entry.

"It's not just a matter of a glitch in the system," he said. "They were really trying to come in under false information. That does not mean they are terrorists, but it certainly poses a challenge to the integrity of our system and potential danger to our country."...

"This does not mean they are terrorists." It doesn't mean they aren't, either.

Islamic Biological Warfare

"NBC: Islamic Biological Warfare," from the Strategy Page, with thanks to EPG:

It turns out there are there are Islamic "Weapons of Mass Destruction" after all. In particular, biological weapons. But these mass killers have been developed within Islamic nations, and are doing most of their damage there. The war on terror has taken many American doctors to Islamic nations, and they have discovered a heretofore hidden AIDS epidemic. This is not the first time this has happened. AIDS quietly entered India, and South East Asian nations, but was finally discovered, and received attention. But in most Islamic nations, AIDS is not supposed to happen, and the governments, religious leaders and general population will not even admit the disease is there. But it is, and in large numbers. While promiscuity and prostitution are common in Islamic nations, talking openly about it is not. As a result, AIDS has spread for years through the Middle East and other Islamic nations without much, if any, official or media attention. This is nothing new. Same thing happened in Africa, even in nations with few, if any, Moslems. Cultural traits made it difficult for many African nations to admit AIDS, and its favorite methods of transmission (drugs, homosexuality, promiscuity) existed. Now some African nations have a third or more of their adult population infected. Billions has been donated by Western nations to provide medical assistance to African nations that now admit they have a problem, but infrastructure and corruption problems are preventing many of the infected from getting any care. Same pattern is developing in the Islamic world. No official statistics yet, but the medical underground hints at high, and rising, infection rate. And little, if any, local willingness to recognize a problem exists.

But it's not just AIDS. In Nigeria, faith based paranoia on the part of Islamic clergy, and politicians, caused a polio epidemic, which is now spreading to other Islamic nations. The UN has been trying for years to wipe out polio (which has been eliminated in most Western nations). In the last few years, UN medical resources were massing to wipe polio out in one of the last places where it still thrives; northern Nigeria. But some local Islamic clergy got the idea that these foreigners and their medicine (polio vaccine) were actually out to poison young Moslem females and make them sterile. Yeah, it's nuts, but it went over big in northern Nigeria and stopped the polio eradication program cold. The Islamic clerics finally relented (after the UN brought in Islamic medical experts, and jumped through a lot of hoops), but by then it was too late. The polio was moving to areas where it had earlier been eliminated. Since you can track where a polio strain came from, it is now known that the "Nigerian strain" is responsible for outbreaks as far away as Indonesia. So far, there are only about 1,300 cases in Nigeria and elsewhere. Polio is not nearly as bad as AIDS. Many of those infected with polio never know they have it, but they can spread it. About one half of one percent of those who get it can end up paralyzed for life, usually in the legs. Polio mostly hits young children.

Many Islamic radicals continue to blame Western conspiracies for the polio outbreaks, which are hard to hide. AIDS, on the other hand, causes a breakdown in the immune system, and the actual cause of death is always something else (that makes you sicker, quicker, because your weakened immune system cannot deal with it.) But the Islamic radicals, when confronted with the AIDS outbreak in their midst, blame it on outsiders. This sort of thing does not happen in an Islamic culture...

Ethiopia: The Forgotten Front in the War on Terror

From the Strategy Page, with thanks to EPG:

Members of Somalia's parliament claimed that Ethiopia is continuing to support Somali rebels. The alleged Ethiopian support includes occasional forays by Ethiopian troops into Somali territory. The Somali officials claimed Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia on May 10. Ethiopia denied the allegation. However, Ethiopia has claimed that Eritrea has ties with some Somali factions. As for the Ethiopia-Eritrea situation, American diplomats fear that Ethiopia and Eritrea could miscalculate in their current border confrontation and resume fighting. The US wants to deny Al Qaeda bases in the Horn of Africa region. An Ethiopia-Eritrea war would destabilize the area and frustrate US counter-terror efforts. So keeping the peace here is a crucial effort in the war on terror...

Australia: death threat follows prayer vigil for Wood

"Kill threat after Wood prayer vigil," from the Australian Daily Telegraph, with thanks to Mackie.

DEATH threats were made to an Arab community radio station after it organised a prayer vigil for abducted Australian Douglas Wood.

The station, 2ME, received calls this week from Muslim extremists threatening to kill staff if they continued to campaign for the release of Mr Wood.

2ME general manager Graham Dick said breakfast announcer Anis Ghanem received the threats off-air after he asked his Arab listeners to pray for Mr Wood.

"One of these people told him to stop encouraging the release of Mr Wood in Iraq. The announcer said he was going to hang up and this guy said 'There is no point hanging up because I am going to come around there and neck you'," Mr Dick said.

"Neck you," eh? It seems that has a different meaning in Australia from its meaning in America.

Mr Ghanem said he was considering going to the police but would push ahead with his campaign for the Australian Arab community to demand Douglas Wood's release...

Qur'an desecration becoming a pretext

...for the unleashing of anti-American sentiments. Afghan riot update, from "Afghans killed in anti-U.S. riots" in CNN:

KABUL, Afghanistan -- At least four people have been killed and 70 injured in violent protests in Jalalabad over reports U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base desecrated copies of the Quran during questioning of prisoners held there.

The trouble started as thousands of demonstrators marched Wednesday through the streets of Jalalabad, in the eastern part of the country, officials and eyewitnesses said.

Afghan's interior ministry reported police fired at the crowds when they began to attack government buildings.

A witness told CNN that police as well as U.S. troops fired into the air to keep the crowds under control.

Thirteen people were arrested, the interior ministry said.

A group of protesters attacked the governor's house and the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, according to a Pakistani foreign ministry official, but no one was injured.

An Afghan official in Jalalabad said the crowd also attacked U.S. Army vehicles, and U.S. soldiers fired into the air before leaving the area.

Rallies were also held in several cities in neighboring Pakistan, where the religious party alliance MMA announced plans to mount a countrywide protest against the United States Friday...

Jihad Heats up in Afghanistan

Two Marines killed. "Battle Leaves 23 Afghan Insurgents Dead," from ABC News:

KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S. Marines tracked down a band of insurgents in eastern Afghanistan and sparked a battle that left about 23 rebels and two Americans dead, the U.S. military said Monday, in the latest sign of a revived Taliban-led insurgency.

The military said warplanes also joined the five-hour clash with about 25 insurgents on Sunday evening in Laghman, a province of an eastern opium-producing region where U.S. forces have regularly fought with militants....

Militants opposed to the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai have made good on threats to step up their three-year-old insurgency, carrying out assaults and bombings that have killed dozens of Afghan and U.S. troops and government officials in recent weeks...

U.S. Navy SEALs in Indonesia anti-terrorism drill

Not quite an anti-jihad alliance, but a good sign. From the Jakarta Post, with thanks to L:

JAKARTA - U.S. Navy Seals and Indonesian forces are practicing anti-terrorism drills, including boarding ships and battling pirates, in a palm-fringed string of resort islands near Jakarta, officials said on Monday. The programme, aimed at improving the ability of the two nations' forces to work closely, was part of a broader effort by Washington to boost regional security, a U.S. official said.

"We are not using any lethal assets. It involves only non-lethal assets," said Max Kwak, a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.

"The war on terror is also part of it," he added, but declined to say where the drills were being held or how many U.S. troops were involved.

Piracy is a big concern for Asian and Western security forces who warn that terrorists could exploit lawlessness in the region, particularly in the key Malacca Strait shipping lane, to launch a crippling attack on global trade.

Fears among some states bordering the strait that the United States was seeking a policing role were a factor behind the launch last year of coordinated patrols by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

"This event is an exercise, not a joint operation at sea between the Indonesian military and the U.S. Pacific Command," said Lt. Col. Edi Fernandi, a spokesman for the Indonesian navy's western fleet...

Pakistani and 2 Frenchmen go on trial for terrorism

Two Frenchmen? But didn't they subscribe to the peaceful, tolerant, Europeanized, TariqRamadanized Islam? From AP, with thanks to Nicolei:

PARIS: A Pakistani man and two Frenchmen of North African origin charged with terrorism for their alleged roles in a network to recruit jihad fighters went on trial here on Wednesday.

Police apprehended the three in 2002 for allegedly providing logistical support to would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid. Investigators could not confirm that suspicion later.

French suspects Hassan el-Cheguer and Hakim Mokhfi told investigators that they had been recruited for jihad by Ghulam Rana (67), a Pakistani who heads the ‘Chemin Droit’ (Straight Path) humanitarian group in France. Rana denies the allegations.

A "humanitarian" group. That reminds me of Sayyid Qutb: "The foremost duty of Islam is to depose Jahiliyyah [the society and rule of unbelievers] from the leadership of man, with the intention of raising human beings to that high position which Allah has chosen for him." Gee, thanks. How humanitarian of you.

Pakistan Prime Minister condemns desecration of Qur'an

An update of this story. "PM condemns Holy Quran desecration," from the Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Wednesday condemned the incident involving the desecration of the Quran by US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay and said such incidents could not affect US-Pakistan relations.

Talking to BBC while in Thailand, he said the incident was deplorable, but such incidents would not affect bilateral relations. Reiterating Pakistan’s stance that Abu Farraj Al Libbi was an important Al Qaeda operative involved in terrorism in Pakistan, he said, “We have been on Al Libbi’s trail for a long time and have finally succeeded in catching a dangerous terrorists. We are very happy.” Asked if radical Islam was a problem in Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz said Pakistanis were as normal as anyone else in the world, but in every society there were people with views different from the majority.

Nice footwork, Shaukat.

Zarqawi group vows more jihad in Iraq: website

Still breathing threats and murder. From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

DUBAI - The group of Al Qaeda’s Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has denied US charges that it used human shields in fighting with US forces but vowed more attacks against the Americans, according to a statement posted on the Internet Wednesday.

“They accuse our mujahedeen (holy warriors) of using human shields. But you are deceiving yourselves, worshippers of the cross... Wasn’t it the Americans who used women and children as shields in Fallujah?” said the statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.

The US military waged a major assault on Fallujah in November in a bid to oust rebels from the city west of Baghdad.

“Our mujahedeen rush to death... they want to die as much as you care to live,” added the statement, signed by the Al Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers.

The US military said Monday that insurgents used patients as human shields in a weekend battle in a hospital in Hadithah, 260 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of Baghdad, that left four US troops dead....

In the statement, the group vowed more attacks by its ”martyrdom-seekers” against US forces in western Iraq....

“Dozens of Americans, even more than 100, have been killed,” the statement said, adding that its fighters were pursuing their “jihad and delivering blows to God’s enemies.”...

“One of the lions of the martyrdom-seeking brigade carried out a heroic operation against a police post on Abu Nawas street Tuesday, hitting several of the guardians of the Jews and Crusaders,” it said.

"Jews and Crusaders." I.e., "Remember when we beat those Crusaders? Wasn't it great? Come on, let's recover our former glories..."

Spencer on KSFO now

I know you hate it when I do this, but here goes anyway. Sorry for the late notice. I am just about to go on KSFO Talk Radio 560 out of San Francisco. We're scheduled to be talking about the egregious "Kingdom of Heaven" flick.

Saudi Arabia: 'Voice of the Jihad' Editor Reportedly Arrested

You can find many reports about various issues of "Voice of Jihad" in the archives here. It is a primary Internet recruitment tool for the mujahedin. From AKI, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Riyadh, 11 May (AKI) - A militant arrested two days ago in the Saudi capital Riyadh has been identified by the police as the man in charge of al-Qaeda's information operation in the country. The pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat quotes a source from the Saudi interior ministry as saying he is the editor of the monthly on-line magazine 'Voice of the Jihad'. The Saudi national is reported to have been arrested after being injured during a gun battle on Monday.

A statement from the ministry said Abdel Aziz bin Rashid bin Hamdan al-Tawili al-Anzi is "one of the promoters of deviant ideology" ("deviant" being the word the Saudi authorities often use to refer to al-Qaeda), publishing statements from al-Qaeda's Saudi cell on the internet. The interior ministry also said his preaching and statements were used to defame peaceful Islamic principles "for evil purposes", and that al-Anzi said it was permissible to shed non-Muslim blood and kill security officers on religious grounds.

I'd like to see the Interior Ministry refute those assertions on Islamic grounds.

"How are we going 2 kill these filthy kafirs if we cnt even do anything?"

A poster in the Reviving Islam forums describes his surprise at discovering that the anti-jihad site Johnathan Galt Films was indeed not a pro-jihad site, and counsels his fellow posters to be careful when discussing jihad — your interlocutor may be an unbeliever:

Johnathangaltfilms.com/movies - This is a webiste, which i thougth was a muslim website ages back, as it had all these abu hamza vids etc......I was like.wohooooooo.

But read the 'about us' page and u will get a shock.This is a anti terror agent, Johnathan Galt, who set up a website called islamic-news.... dot sumthing, and he was actin so much and pretendin 2 b a jihadi, that he got so mny jihadi bros 2 post audios n videos of jihad etc, because they thougth that he was a jihadi like them.He even says that he had abu hamza emailin him n postin videos of his private talks etc, n allhu alem, he may b lyin or tellin the truth, but he has got alot of abu hamza vids. N he also sed that these r the evidences he is usin againt our bro abu hamza.N that smelly kafir [unbeliever],filthy kafir is the one who was workin n gettin A hamza dwn. Subhan'Allah [Glory be to Allah], this kafir fooled our muslim bros.

Brothers, we need 2 b careful.Im not sayin, dont talk about jihad, be all khushi khusi(happy happy) about it n b silent,No im not sayin that. I believe it is our DUTY 2 talk about it n tell evry1 we must do jihad,but bros, jst b careful.All the brothers r gettin locked up, and thats allahs will, but our generation is the next generations of mujahideens, n if we r gettin locked up even b4 we can go 2 the battlefields, how are we goin 2 do anything?

How are we going 2 kill these filthy kafirs if we cnt even do anything? Uno bros, in my area, I actually think, some bengali oldies r mi5 workers.they gve a khutbah [sermon] in our local masjid [mosque],tellin all the oldies 2 spy on the young practisin bros so that they dnt becum ' terrorist' Astagfirullah [I ask Allah forgiveness]. We cnt trust anyone these days.Not even ppl on the net.Some of these ppl, n allah knws best, on the forums cud b that jonathan galt's agents. I hope ive sed what i wanted 2, n that is simply,Be Careful bros.

And i just want 2 add, im not sayin we shudnt talk about jihad, n im not sayin we shud jst sit at home.No,Never will i say this.It is our duty 2 talk about it n it is fard [obligatory] upon us 2 do jihad.

Madrid Bombers Trained at Bosnia-Based Al Qaeda Campus

Jihadists working from bases in Europe -- and even in that vaunted bastion of Islamic moderation, Bosnia. From Bulgaria's Sofia News Agency, with thanks to Fraser:

The terrorists that carried out the Madrid bombings in March 2004 have been trained at special Al Qaeda based in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The news was broken Tuesday by the chief of the local police department Dragomir Andan at a special press conference. RIA Novosti cited the top police chief as saying that all 11 terrorists left for Spain passing through Sarajevo.

It was also reported that the explosives used in the terror acts were produced in Bosnia.

"Death to America" in Afghanistan over Gitmo Qur'an rumor

Protests in Afghanistan over the Qur'an in the toilet rumor. "Afghan students say 'Death to America,'" from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan students chanted "Death to America" and burned an effigy of President Bush on Tuesday, following a report that copies of the Quran were desecrated at the U.S. detention center for terror suspects Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials and witnesses said.

Hundreds of students marched from a university campus into the eastern city of Jalalabad and blocked the main road toward the capital, Kabul, intelligence chief Sardar Shah said. There were no reports of violence.

Television footage showed students chanting and calling for an apology for the alleged abuse of Islam's holy book. An object which witnesses said was an effigy of Bush could be seen burning.

In a recent edition, Newsweek magazine reported that in order to rattle suspects, U.S. interrogators placed Qurans on toilets and in at least one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."

In Washington, the State Department on Tuesday described the reported desecration of copies of the Quran as "reprehensible."

"Obviously, the destruction of any kind of holy book, whether it's a Bible or a Koran or any other document like that, is something that's
reprehensible and not in keeping with U.S. policies and practices," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

Casey said the allegations are "certainly serious and it would be important to have them be looked into."...

Elation in Harlem as Girl Held in Terror Inquiry Is Released

This may be another one for our Keystone Kops Department, but there are more questions than answers in this update of this story. From the New Duranty Times, with thanks to EPG.

It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed "an imminent threat to the security of the United States."

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family.

One girl, an immigrant from Guinea, was back in her East Harlem high school yesterday among the jubilant friends and teachers who have insisted all along that the accusation was absurd. The other girl, who grew up in Queens, was still in detention, but was granted an order from an immigration judge that will allow her and her parents to return to their native Bangladesh as soon as the trip can be arranged.

Many questions remain unanswered in a case that has been marked from the start by secrecy, including closed hearings, sealed F.B.I. declarations, and orders barring the lawyers from disclosing government information. James Margolin, an F.B.I. spokesman, did not return calls seeking comment on the latest developments, and earlier had said he could not discuss the cases...

CAIR: How Close to Terrorism?

And remember: CAIR condemns "terrorism." From Andrew Whitehead and Lee Kaplan in Frontpage:

The conviction of a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) state operative is but the latest apparent link between that Islamist organization and Islamist terrorism. On April 13, 2005, Ghassan Elashi, founder of the group's Texas chapter (CAIR-Texas) – as well as longtime associate of CAIR's top leadership and beneficiary of CAIR fundraising and support – was convicted of laundering money for Islamic terrorist organizations from November 1995 through April 2001.

Dating back to the early 1990s, Elashi had close ties to CAIR's leaders Bassam Khafagi, Imam Siraj Wahaj, and Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, former civil rights coordinator and communications specialist for the "Muslim civil rights group."

Elashi founded CAIR’s Texas chapter sometime before October 2000. (CAIR-Texas first appeared as an affiliate on the CAIR national website at that time.) Therefore, it is evident Elashi was a high-ranking CAIR official at the time he committed the pro-terrorist crimes for which he was convicted.

Elashi's conviction is bad news for CAIR. Its ties with Elashi are too deep and the evidence of CAIR's complicity too obvious for CAIR to spin. For example, just after the Islamic terrorist attacks of 9/11, the CAIR website contained a section entitled, "What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks," which solicited contributions to the "NY/DC Emergency Relief Fund." The only problem was, this so-called "Relief Fund" never existed. The link provided by CAIR led the would-be contributor directly to the Holy Land Foundation website. The Holy Land Foundation, a government-designated terrorist front group, was also shut down by the U.S. government for funding terrorism overseas. The trial of its leadership is scheduled to begin next year.

And just who was the head of the Holy Land Foundation? Elashi.

A coincidence? Not likely. However, that will not mean CAIR will immediately admit the connection

Consider CAIR’s reaction when a CAIR official was questioned about former CAIR Randall Royer on Fox’s “Hannity and Colmes” TV program:

HANNITY: Did you not have a spokesman for your group at one time, a guy by the name of Royer that was on your staff that was convicted?

BEDIER: I think several years ago we had that individual in our group. And if you're inciting that somehow we're responsible for the actions or behavior of the individuals after they left our organization, that would be similar to somebody that worked for FOX five years ago and then commits a crime and FOX would be responsible for it.

In fact, Royer was an active official in CAIR at the time he committed his crimes. This exchange is classic: When you can’t dispute the facts, fib and hope the person you’re talking to doesn’t catch you. In this case, Hannity didn’t pursue the matter, and Bedier got away with it...

Read it all.

Iraq: Four suicide attacks kill at least 66

Today's Iraq jihad update: four suicide attacks. It's a good thing the Qur'an forbids suicide, or I guess we would be seeing even more of these. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD - Four suicide bombs killed at least 66 people in Iraq on Wednesday, the latest attacks in an escalating campaign of guerrilla violence that has killed nearly 400 Iraqis since a new government was unveiled two weeks ago.

In Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, a suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle among a crowd of mainly Shi'ite migrant laborers from southern Iraq who had gathered to look for work.

Police said at least 28 people were killed and 60 wounded.

A policeman at the scene of the blast in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, said the explosion was near a police station but the target was the crowd of workers....

Mainly Sunni guerrillas have often targeted Shi'ites, sparking fears they are trying to stoke sectarian civil war.

In the town of Hawija, southwest of the strategic oil city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, a suicide bomber walked up to an army recruitment center and detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 32 people and wounding 34, hospital sources said.

A third suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a police station in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, killing at least three civilians. Police said the bomber was trying to reach the police station but blew up his car before reaching the building.

A suicide car bomb attack on a police patrol in the Mansour district of Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian, officials at the Interior Ministry said....

Pipes: Will the Saudis Blow Up Their Own Oil Infrastructure?

Daniel Pipes writes in Frontpage:

Investigative writer Gerald Posner reveals something most extraordinary in Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection, his book to be published by Random House later this month: that the Saudi government may have rigged its oil and gas infrastructure with a self-destruct system that would keep it out of commission for decades. If true, this could undermine the world economy at any time.

Posner starts by recalling various hints that Americans dropped back in the 1970s, that the high price and limited production of oil might lead to a U.S. invasion of Saudi Arabia and a seizure of its oil fields. For example, in 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger murkily threatened the Saudis with a double-negative: “I am not saying that there’s no circumstances where we would not use force” against them.

In response, Posner shows, the Saudi leadership began to think of ways to prevent such an occurrence. They could not do so the usual way, by building up their military, for that would be futile against the much stronger U.S. forces. So the monarchy – one of the most creative and underestimated political forces in modern history – set out instead to use indirection and deterrence. Rather than mount defenses of its oil installations, it did just the opposite, inserting a clandestine network of explosives designed to render the vast oil and gas infrastructure inoperable – and not just temporarily but for a long period.

That is the finding that Posner, author of ten books (including Case Closed, the definitive account of the John F. Kennedy assassination) details in a chapter titled “Scorched Earth,” based on intelligence intercepts he gained access to. The Saudi planning began in earnest, he reports, after the Kuwait war of 1990-91, when the Iraqis left behind an inferno of oil-field fires … which, to everyone’s amazement, was extinguished within months, not years. In response, the Saudis thought of ways to assure their oil would stay off the market. They began:

"exploring the possibility of a single-button self-destruct system, protected with a series of built-in fail-safes. It was evidently their way to ensure that if someone else grabbed the world’s largest oil reserves and forced them to flee the country they had founded, the House of Saud could at least make certain that what they left behind was worthless."...

Read it all.

Navy investigates carrier security breach

Abdoul Masmoud Yessoufou update. From CNN, with thanks to Peter, who notes: "If he's 'not a terrorist,' he has some interesting hobbies."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. and British military and law enforcement officials are investigating how a man was able to sneak on board the USS Harry S. Truman last month while the aircraft carrier was making a port call in Portsmouth, England.

He apparently was able breach British security at the dock and then board a small ferryboat that carried crew members to the Truman, which was anchored a short distance from the shore.

Navy officials believe the intruder was on board the ship for about half an hour before he was caught. The incident occurred April 9.

Security personnel searched the area where the intruder was caught and found that he had not planted any explosives or caused any damage. It was determined that he was not a terrorist.

British law enforcement officials identified the intruder as Abdoul Masmoud Yessoufou, and told CNN that he also had tried to breach security at British airports and other military facilities.

Muslim Brotherhood - of Terrorists

These are the people the US is hinting at playing ball with. From Steven Stalinsky in FrontPage:

In recent months there have been multiple reports in Washington that the U.S. may begin a dialogue with the Muslim Brotherhood – the world's most prominent Islamist organization. As the U.S. News & World Report of April 25 reported, U.S. intelligence officials have been meeting with members of the Brotherhood and one unidentified source called them, “probably more a part of the solution than a part of the problem.” Some Washington think tanks have also begun to float this in the nation's capital.

It should be noted that the philosophy of the Brotherhood – which has inspired the likes of Al-Qaeda and Hamas (which defines itself as the groups' Palestinian branch) today is led by many telegraphic spokesman who often appear on Arab TV stations in favor of terrorist attacks. For example, Dr. Abd Al-Muni'm Abu Al-Futuh, from the General Guidance Council of the Muslim Brotherhood appeared on al-Jazeera TV on April 25, 2004, where he stated:

"We, as Muslim Brotherhood and as the world leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, support the armed resistance in Iraq against the American occupier, one hundred percent. I personally, as all members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and around the world, wish to carry weapons against the American occupation…This is a matter of religion, not politics. When a Muslim land is occupied, Jihad becomes an individual duty…."

That is traditional and mainstream Islamic theology, as I show in Onward Muslim Soldiers.

Deputy leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Al-Sayyid Ahmad Al-Habib, made a similar appearance on Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV, on April 8, 2004: "The truth is that the resistance, whether in Iraq or in Palestine… defends the nation's honor…Therefore, the issue…martyrdom (i.e. suicide) operations carried out by boys and girls, and also the operations carried out by the Iraqi resistance – these redeem self-confidence and hope, because a nation that does not excel at the industry of death does not deserve life." Last year Muhamad Madi Othman 'Akef took over as the Brotherhood's “supreme guide.” At the time he gave a series of interviews laying out the ideology of his group. He explained it was “a religious duty” to attack American and Israeli soldiers and speaking to the Egyptian weekly Al-Arabi on January 18, 2004, he denied being in dialogue with the U.S., which he dubbed“Satan.” Discussing the coming collapse of America, 'Akef gave an interview to the Egyptian weekly Nahdhat Misr on January 21, 2004: “The matter of America's attempt to take over the world is not new…I expect America to collapse soon. The elements of this collapse in America [already] exist, and Allah is the Savior.” According to the Muslim Brotherhood website last year 'Akef discussed the coming conversion of Europe and America to Islam: “I have complete faith that Islam will invade Europe and America, because Islam has logic and a mission. The Europeans and the Americans will come into the bosom of Islam out of conviction.”...

Fitzgerald: Are we at war with Islam?

Jihad Watch's Hugh Fitzgerald considers the common claim by Muslim leaders that the West is at war with Islam:

The more accurate formulation would be: the adherents of Islam, following correctly its tenets, as expressed in the Qur'an and Hadith, and in the example of Muhammad set out in the Sira, have been making war, whenever and wherever possible, and employing whatever instruments at the time are available (combat, wealth, "pen, tongue," and now demography) to spread Islam, to prevent non-Muslims from setting up any obstacles to the further spread and ultimate dominance of Islam, and to ensure that any non-Muslims permitted to remain alive without being forcibly converted will, nonetheless, have to live lives of deliberate humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity. During some long periods when Islam was weak, and the awareness of the outside world also feeble, the only kind of Jihad that was practiced against the outside world were expeditions by slavers and looters to Western Europe (a million whites seized, and many villages destroyed, over several centuries, Eastern Europe and Russia -- several million victims, including Circassian and Georgian and other Christian women seized for their noted beauty), and to Africa (tens of millions of black Africans, mostly young males castrated at the point of seizure, and then marched overland, and then taken often by sea for part of the journey, to the slave markets of Islam: Jeddah, Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Algiers, Constantinople, even as far as Ottoman-ruled Smyrna). The mortality rate was 90%.

That has been the history of Islam's relations to all non-Muslims. Conquest, destruction, slavery, demands from within the lands conquered for jizyah. It is little different today, though disguise is of the essence. The Bumiputra system used against Hindus and Chinese in Malaysia is simply a disguised jizya tax by the Malaysian Muslims. Yet Muslims now demand foreign aid from Infidel states, and act as if it is theirs by right and must not either be stopped or have any strings attached to it: see the fury of the P.A. over the American Congress's attempt to funnel aid through American aid agencies; see the Egyptian government's complacent belief that no matter what it did to secretly help Iraqi weapons projects, no matter what nuclear projects it is up to itself, no matter how completely it ignores its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords, and becomes instead a world center of antisemitism, no matter how much anti-Americanism its people display in that most hostile of countries, it will still continue to receive, for no conceivably sensible reason, some $2 billion a year from American taxpayers, apparently helpless to prevent their government from paying what has now become a jizyah tax, just like all the others we pay to every Muslim country that does not have oil revenues.

Islam is at war with Buddhists in Thailand and in Burma, and at war with Confucians and atheists in China. It is at war with Hindus in Bangladesh, and Pakistan, and Kashmir, and India itself. It is at war with Christians in the Philippines, and in Indonesia, and in Malaysia, and in Bangladesh, and in Pakistan, and in Iran, and in Saudi Arabia, and in Iraq, and in Lebanon, and in Egypt, and in Algeria. Islam is at war with whatever Jews can be found, in and out of Israel, since so very few remain, after years of persecution and murder, within the lands ruled by Muslim Arabs. Islam is at war with everyone, for Islam divides the world between Believer and Infidel. Anyone who reads and re-reads the Qur’an, and then reads the commentators, and the jurisconsults, and the muhaddithin, and then looks at the history of Islamic conquest -- reading, for example, "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam" which is perhaps Bat Ye'or's greatest work of history -- and then looks at Muslim attitudes and behavior today, can come to only one conclusion: Muslims are at war with, and remain a permanent danger to, all non-Muslim societies. If some are not fervent in their Islam, we still do not know what might set off such fervency. Those who place such abstract principles as "tolerance" and "pluralism" above the reasonable need to preserve civilizations, such as our own, which first created and promoted such principles, against those who do not in truth believe in those principles and in the long run would destroy them and the civilization that developed them, are wrong. Lincoln was not the first, nor the last, to understand that in war-time, the same measures do not necessarily apply as during peace-time.

Those who see things aright, and who have taken the trouble to study Islam, know that this war can be contained, and that it need not involved large-scale military conflict. But that conflict can be avoided, across national borders, and within the borders of European nations, only if Muslim countries and groups are kept from acquiring major weaponry, or forced to disgorge what they have, and are kept from migrating in greater numbers to the West (they have little desire to go elsewhere), and those here limited in their sinister campaigns of Da'wa (in which Islam is not fully spelled out until, for the convert, he or she has already signed up for the Army of Islam), which are aimed first at the most marginal and therefore most vulnerable populations -- marginality defined as both economic and psychic.

Far from making war on Islam, the United States has repeatedly rescued Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia, extended aid for decades to Turkey and Iran, always been prompt to offer other kinds of aid (the aid post-tsunami rushed to Aceh, the most Muslim part of Indonesia), protected Muslim Kuwait and even-more Muslim Saudi Arabia from Saddam Hussein (a choice that looks, in retrospect, not quite as obviously right as it once did), and continues to give aid, against its own best interests, to Pakistan (a recipient for decades of American military and political support), to Egypt, and to the "Palestinian" Authority. And of course tens of billions, even hundreds of billions, have been spent to rescue the Iraqis from their own latest Lord of Misrule, and to build up the country -- all the while taking casualties because of the inability of Iraqis to do the job themselves. They are unable to fight for their own country though there are 25 million of them. So very few of them capable of feeling, among the rumors and lies and crazed through-the-prism-of-Islam perceptions of the universe, any real or lasting gratitude to American infidels - precisely because they are infidels.

Muslims make war, with or without military means, because Islam itself is suffused with a war-like and aggressive doctrine. Refusal to see this does not make the doctrine go away. Imaginary "Muslim moderates" who are then imagined to be a "majority" do not make the texts of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira change. They do not make the massacre of the Banu Qurayzah prisoners disappear. Or the assassination of Asma bint Marwan. Or the attack on the Khaybar Oasis. Or little Aisha. Or a hundred other events in Muhammad's life, Muhammad who is uswa hasana, in the Qur'anic phrase, the very model for all Muslims, for all time.

Islam makes war and calls it "peace" and "justice." From a Muslim perspective, of course, this is perfectly true. Islam brings with it a pax islamica, and the "justice" of Islam. Quite right. No Muslim should really disagree.

But those of us who have made the choice not to accept Islam, and who find that the more we discover about it, the more horrified we become (and let's face it: a few years ago, we knew almost nothing about it, and were prepared, for example, to assume that the last word on the subject might be, for the more naive, John Esposito, and at a slightly lesser level of naivete, Bernard Lewis). Now we have studied, and are trying as best we can to get others to study. It would even be nice if a few journalists, before offering their platitudes and plongitudes, at least admitted they knew little about Islam. It would be nice if the cheerleaders of the "Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations" Project in Iraq would stop to consider and even study the nature of Islam, and begin to ask themselves if Iraq is not in fact the obvious place, almost a god-given place, to exploit -- merely by leaving, for nothing more is called for -- the fissures between Arab and non-Arab Muslim, between Sunni and Shi'a. And then to concentrate on preventing the islamization of Europe -- not by throwing Israel to the wolves, which is the hollow and self-defeating strategy of the Alastair-Crooke-and-Patrick-Seale variety, urged on by the deplorable men now in charge of the E.U. bureaucracy and foreign policy, but by waking Europeans up to the betrayal, by their own elites in the government and the press, of the long-term interests of the indigenous Infidels.

Again, this sentence is either true or false