"We are Mujahideen for the sake of our nation"

A communiqué on "Rumsfeld's Comments" from the Mujahideen Army General Headquarters in Iraq. Note the religious language: "victory or martyrdom" -- yet the learned analysts will still refuse to take them at their word, to understand the intransigence of the jihad ideology that is behind those words, and will eventually call for negotiations with these people. They will decline to learn that negotiations are for the mujahedin only another way to attain their goal, not a setting in which they moderate or change that goal. They will dismiss the religious language here as meaningless boilerplate, not realizing how key it is to understanding this properly.

And then the learned analysts will wave their hands in their cocktail parties and say, "Spencer? Jihad Watch? Pah!" But come see me in ten years and we'll see who was right. From Uruknet.info, with thanks to Designnut:

June 28, 2005

This communiqué is post as is without changes.

The Mujahideen Army General Headquarters
Baghdad
The Republic Of Iraq

Urgent Release

Subject: Rumsfield's Comments

Oh great sons of Iraq!

We confirm to you, as well as the generally known media which as usual herd behind what comes out from these war criminals and these liars by profession. They lie so often that it has become the diseases, which with god's will, bring their end.

We have not entered in any negotiations with the occupiers or anyone who represent them or the puppet government.

The Mujahideen Army is in full adherence to the military doctrine of the of the Mujahideen Central Command MCC, and the Political views of Rafidan - The Political Committee of the MCC.

We are Mujahideen for the sake of our nation. And our aim is either victory or martyrdom in it's path.

And god is witness to our oath!

God is greater than all, God is greater than all, God is greater than all!

And Glory to God, his prophet, and the believers!

The Mujahideen Army
Baghdad on the 19th of Jamadi the first 1426
The 26th of june 2005

Hostage Roeder: "Ahmadinejad Threatened to Kidnap My Son"

More on Iran's thuggish new President from Spiegel Online, with thanks to Simon:

The newly elected president of Iran has been accused of being involved in the 1980 American hostage crisis. Former hostage David Roeder, 66, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, that Ahmadinejad threatened to kidnap his son and cut off his fingers and toes. "You don't forget someone like that," the former Assistant Air Force Attache says. SPIEGEL ONLINE: You are claiming that the newly elected president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of those involved in taking and holding you hostage in Iran from November 1979 to January 1981. How can you be sure?

Roeder: He was present at at least a third of my personal interrogations, which took place nightly for a little over a month early on in the hostage-taking situation. He seemed to be calling the shots, but from the background. The interrogators would ask a question and it would then be translated from Farsi into English by a woman interpreter.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did they try to exert force on you to answer the questions or did you cooperate freely?

Roeder: I decided that initially I wasn't going to respond in any way, shape or form. They had me handcuffed to a chair and at least during the first few sessions, blindfolded as well. But once the blindfold came off, they had developed a plan that Ahmadinejad was instigating. Because I was not cooperating, they threatened that they were going to kidnap my handicapped son and send various pieces of him -- fingers and toes is what they mentioned -- to my wife if I didn't start cooperating. You don't forget somebody who is involved in something like that....

SPIEGEL ONLINE: You don't think you could have forgotten him after all these years?

Roeder: No, absolutely not. Not when he was involved in threatening my son.

Islamic states demand Muslim permanent seat on UN Security Council

Why? What does the UN deny them now? "Islamic states want permanent seat on UN Security Council," from AFP, with thanks to EPG:

SANAA (AFP) - Foreign ministers of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) opened a meeting with a call for a Muslim permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu urged a greater role for Muslim countries in world affairs and demanded a "permanent representation for the Islamic world on the UN Security Council".

"The Islamic world, which represents one fifth of total mankind, cannot remain excluded from the activities of the Security Council which assumes a fundamental role in keeping security and peace in the world," he said Tuesday.

Ihsanoglu announced on Monday that ministers would discuss proposals for the representation of the 57-member Islamic body on the Security Council during their three-day conference in the Yemeni capital.

Pakistan: 17 ex-Guantanamo prisoners released

Another one from the Which Side Are You On Department, from Pakistan's Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei:

LAHORE: Al Qaeda suspect Hafiz Ehsan Saeed's father died during Ehsan's detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but Ehsan said that although he mourned the loss, he would go for Jihad again if given the chance.

Great! Free him!

"I was quite upset when I heard the news (of my father's death) but I will sacrifice anything for Islam," Saeed told Daily Times on Monday. Saeed is one of the 17 jihadis released by the Punjab government after keeping them imprisoned for nine months after their return from Guantanamo Bay.

Talking to Daily Times, most of the freed men reiterated Saeed's resolve to "go for Jihad again." They said they would sacrifice anything for Islam even though they were tortured at Guantanamo.

Yeah, like the old naked women on the chest torture. The horror! The horror!

Their relatives rejoiced that their kindred had been released, but added that the men remain committed to their faith. The men were between the ages of 25 to 30 years and seemed to be in good health. They were released after their relatives submitted affidavits and sureties that they would not be involved in anti-state activities.

United States authorities arrested the men from Afghanistan on suspicion of being linked to Al Qaeda and kept them in Guantanamo prison for three years. Nine months ago, they were found innocent of these charges and given to Pakistani authorities. Authorities here detained these men while intelligence agencies investigated them further. The men were found not involved in any crime in Pakistan.

All right. Then what jihad are going to "again"?

Asked why the men were kept in Pakistani prisons after being cleared by US authorities, Maulana Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, the Punjab chief minister's adviser on religious affairs, said local authorities wanted to investigate whether the men had been brainwashed and were still involved in any terrorist activity...

Yep. Gotta watch out for that brainwashing. It's unfortunately common in Pakistan.

If it ain't Ahmadinejad, it's his twin brother

Some of the 1979 hostages say that Iran's new President Ahmadinejad was one of their captors. Others say he wasn't. Thanks to PAR, I have here put a recent photo of Ahmadinejad next to the infamous hostage photo in which some claim he appears.

I think it is the same man. What do you think?

Muslim nations vow to end jihad in Iraq

This is probably one for the Bridge For Sale Department, but we'll see. "Muslim nations vow to help end Iraq insurgency," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinpolitan Irredentist:

SANAA (Reuters) - Foreign ministers of Muslim countries on Thursday pledged cooperation with Iraqi authorities to help end a bloody insurgency waged there by Iraqis and foreign Arabs.

Ministers of member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Yemen agreed to help "rebuild Iraq and enabling the Iraqi government to maintain security and stability," Yemeni Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi told reporters.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Wednesday he held informal talks in Sanaa with officials from neighboring states about foreigners coming to fight in Iraq.

Several countries who share a border with Iraq including Kuwait, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, are all OIC members.

3 Buddhists shot dead, teachers' homes attacked in Thai south

Mute laborer jihad in Thailand update from MediaCorp News, with thanks to Twostellas:

PATTANI, Thailand : Three Buddhists including a mute labourer were shot and killed and teachers' homes were attacked in southern Thailand, police said, as authorities vowed to boost security funding to counter rampaging violence.

Srang Saewong, 56, a mute highway worker in Yala province, was shot dead in Bannang Sata district as he drove to work.

"I don't see a motive such as personal conflict. He was mute and his wife was also mute, so it's just part of the campaign of unrest," police Lieutenant Colonel Sakarin Bumpensamai of Bannang Sata told AFP.

Chicken trader Tonkui Saephoo, 72, was shot dead at a food market in Yaring district of Pattani province by unidentified gunmen, police said, adding that investigators were still at the scene.

In the same province, 52-year-old Thanat Nilvisut, a janitor at Pattani Technical College, was shot dead as he traveled to work.

More than 720 people have died in near-daily attacks or clashes with
security forces since January 2004, when a bloody raid on a weapons depot triggered an uprising in the three majority-Muslim southern provinces bordering Malaysia.

In Narathiwat province, suspected Islamic insurgents spray gunfire at
teachers' homes, resulting in at least one teacher being shot in the
arm...

Spencer: Death Threats and Tolerance

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage:

“May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again….Amen.”

“I believe he’s already on the hit list, nothing new.”

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

These are threats I have received recently. Last week, when I spoke at the New York Tolerance Center about “The True Nature of the Jihad Threat,” I discovered that news of these threats have somehow found their way to the New York Police Department, which -- unbeknownst to me until I arrived at the venue -- dispatched its “Hercules Team” to ward off any who might have wanted to make those threats reality. The Team, a group of courteous and accomplished plainclothesmen, turned away one young man with a backpack at the door, after he refused to let them search his bag.

Against that somewhat ominous backdrop, I spoke about the violent intolerance of the Islamic jihad: its imperative to impose Sharia, with its institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims and women, and its mandate to commit violent acts that is rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah, supported by mainstream understandings of those texts, and elaborated by Islamic law. I tried to impress upon the crowd the threat that the jihad poses to central notions of human rights enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Bravo for life’s little ironies: after this talk about the need to defend the West from this furious and fanatical form of intolerance, I was confronted by a young man and a young woman who were quite offended by my -- you guessed it -- intolerance. The Muslims who made it necessary for us to have our conversation under armed guard because of death threats did not offend them. My talk did. We had a brief discussion -- until the young man refused to shake my hand and I realized that no real exchange of ideas was going to be possible -- in which I found that their views reflected not just their personal opinions, but a large number of common prejudices and false assumptions about the nature of the present conflict, the meaning of tolerance itself, and more.

The young man, for example, insisted to me that my focus was wrong. He told me that even though he was a Jew, he believed that Israel was a worse violator of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights than the jihadists, and reiterated several times that America is the world’s greatest terrorist, not any jihadist. These are, of course, fashionable notions on the Left and some sectors of the Right, but that doesn’t make them true.

Israel a worse threat than the global jihad? What violence is Israel fomenting in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Bosnia, and elsewhere around the globe? Where are Israelis spreading an ideology that demands that its adherents subvert the states in which they live and replace their societies with a radically different social model that denies equality of rights to women and certain religious groups? Where are Israelis teaching their children that the noblest thing they can do with their lives would be to strap bombs on themselves and blow themselves up in a large crowd of unsuspecting civilians?

I am sympathetic to the Palestinian Arab refugees, some of whom I know personally. But let us not forget that the refugee problem was not created by Israel, but by the Arab states surrounding Israel that started war against her, making the displacement of peoples necessary where it need not have been. Those states also refused to take in those refugees.

It is also true that the obstacle to peace today in the Middle East is not Israel, which has always been willing to come to a negotiated settlement, but the Palestinian Arabs’ attachment to the jihad ideology, which will admit of no peaceful coexistence or any lasting negotiated settlement, but only truces on the way to total victory: the destruction of Israel and reduction of the Jews remaining in the area to dhimmi status.

Israel remains today the only Western-style republic in the Middle East, with the possible and increasingly problematic exception of Turkey. I am in daily contact with Christians from the Middle East, who feel hemmed in on both sides. Most, continuing cultural habits ingrained by centuries of dhimmitude, identify with the Muslims and excoriate Israel. Others are aware of what Sharia means: were peace to come to the area, it is unquestionable that Christians would enjoy more rights and freedoms in Israel than they would in a Palestinian Sharia State (and the Sharia is already invoked in the constitution of the PA). Where in the Muslim world do religious minorities enjoy the rights they do in Israel? Yes, the wall has made life hard for Christians and others in Bethlehem and elsewhere. Blowing people up in buses and restaurants made life hard too. Jihadist brutality and intransigence made the wall necessary.

And America is the greatest terrorist? In this the young man echoed views better expressed by the likes of Osama and Abu Hamza, but let that pass. The fact nevertheless remains that even if the most lurid tales coming out of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are true, they are simply no comparison in terms of human rights violations to the day-to-day record of Saudi Arabia and Iran, the world’s most notable modern Sharia states. To ascribe jihad violence to a reaction to American imperialism is to ignore the jihad conquests that went on for centuries before there even was a United States.

Of course, I was not dealing with the clearest of thinkers. The young man insisted that my talk was about “True Islam,” and that I had said that all terrorists were Muslims, when in fact the talk was entitled “The True Nature of the Jihad Threat,” and I had said no such thing about terrorists (I actually said that there was no global terrorist network comprised of Jews or Christians acting on theological imperatives from the mainstream of their traditions.) But unfortunately, it would be too hasty to dismiss all this as the muddled views of two somewhat under-informed and overly propagandized young idealists: such views are held by millions in the United States today.

Even worse came from the young man’s companion, a Syrian Muslim young lady, wearing pants and no hijab. She complained that my talk did not reach out to moderate Muslims like her -- indeed, she said, it was full of “vitriol” and left the audience more intolerant than they were when they came in. Their view of my intolerance was reinforced, they said, when a New York Tolerance Center official, delighted with my talk (and finding in it no “vitriol”), told me they wanted to have me back next year to be part of a panel. The Tolerance Center official asked me to give them the names of my “dream panel” -- people I’d like to appear with. Off the top of my head, I named Bat Ye’or, Rafael Israeli, and Ibn Warraq. The couple was dismayed: no Muslims! And not only that, but all people identified with “The Right”! I tried to tell them I’d be happy to appear with Tashbih Sayyid, or, indeed, any other Muslim who cared to discuss these things with me, but by that time I was having trouble getting a word in.

However, I never did find out exactly what they found intolerant about my talk. Since I insisted -- as I always do -- that Muslims and non-Muslims must face the reality that jihadists are using the Qur’an and Sunnah to recruit and motivate terrorists, and that only when they face this problem will there be any chance for a viable solution, I can only think that that was their problem. Of course, many on both the Left and the Right consider it in the worst possible taste to suggest that today’s terrorism might have anything to do with Islam (despite the fact that this cuts the ground out from any genuine Muslim reformers, whom they profess to support). Couple that with a Saidist inability to see non-Westerners as anything but victims, and Westerners as anything but perpetrators, and you have a potent brew that clouds men’s minds.

Is it intolerant to speak about the intolerance of others? Is it intolerant not to tolerate evil? Is it intolerant to set out facts that are uncomfortable and that most people don’t want to face? This Jewish/Muslim couple runs an organization that is designed to foster understanding between Jews and Muslims by bringing Jewish and Muslim children together to “celebrate” the “religious identities” of each. How do they keep Muslim children from celebrating the aspects of their religious identity that call Jews apes and pigs (Qur’an 2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166) and says they are under Allah’s curse (9:30) and must be fought (9:29)? I do not know. But I know that if they simply ignore such aspects of Islam, they will someday be unpleasantly surprised by a recrudescence of Qur’an-inspired anti-Semitism and violence.

Tolerance is a keystone of modern Western societies. But if it is an absolute value, it is a one-way-ticket to cultural suicide. As I spoke with my accusers that evening, the policemen all around us made it vividly clear where the real intolerance was coming from. Should the policemen have been more tolerant of the jihadists who issued the threats against me, and the young man who refused to let his backpack be searched? Should the British and Americans have tolerated Hitler? Should the Cold Warriors have tolerated the Gulag? “Toleration of the unacceptable,” as Bob Dylan once said, “leads to the last round-up.” I am trying to head that off. Intolerant? Sue me.

Iran's New President: “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world”

"President invokes new Islamic wave," from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Anthony:

IRAN’S ultra-conservative President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, threw down a challenge to the West yesterday by declaring that his election victory marked the dawn of a new Islamic revolution that would spread around the world.

“Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.”...

More expert analysis follows:

As Mayor of Tehran, he was reprimanded by the Supreme Leader for a similar speech.

“He needs to be put in check by the Supreme Leader, who will make it quite clear that, if anyone’s going to talk about exporting Islam, it’s the Supreme Leader and not the President,” one veteran analyst said.

Yes, let's watch for that to happen. As if he weren't the Supreme Leader's man.

President Ahmadinejad’s win has given the ideological Right renewed confidence and, most importantly, absolute power. Analysts fear that the country is now a step closer towards a dictatorship.

What is it now?

The Shari’a Committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq Publishes Booklet Titled: “Why We Fight – and Against Whom?”

Jihad ideology update from the SITE Institute, with thanks to Anthony:

The Shari’a Committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq recently published a 49-page booklet titled: “Why We Fight - and Against Whom?” which was electronically distributed across several al-Qaeda affiliated forums. Allegedly written by Abu Hamza al-Baghdadi, a member of the Shari’a Committee, the booklet is primarily divided into two “examinations,” each containing several “quests” outlining the group’s position concerning their jihad and branding Shi’ite Muslims as an enemy “worse than Jews and Christians, because they chose for themselves a path other than that of Islam, and have opened the widest doors of infidelity.”

The booklet discusses in great detail the motivation for the mujahideen, explaining that they are fighting what they see as “contemporary persecution” by those who do not follow Islam, or are followers of an Islamic faith they do not hold true. Their stated goal in this battle is to propagate their brand of Islam, and at the same time, expunge the “corruptive elements” within society, including “idols, prostitution and fornication,” and smash the “false proselytizers… and the governments protecting them.” Further, Muslim governments who support Western prospects are accorded greater enmity, and jihad against these “Imams of infidelity” takes “priority over fighting Jews and crusaders.”

Concluding the publication, the Shari’a Committee of al-Qaeda in Iraq assails democratic government, believing it a deification which impugns Allah’s rule and “since democracy is a system that claims to be the highest authority, it must be considered a religion.” Whoever adopts this “religion,” including members of parliament or the people who voted for their election, is branded an infidel and “must be treated accordingly.”

Subscribe to SITE's superb Intel Service and you can get much more.

Ex-Hostages Say Iran Leader-Elect a Captor

A follow-up to this story from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran's new president-elect. Watching coverage of Iran's presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion - the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

"This is the guy. There's no question about it," said former hostage Chuck Scott, a retired Army colonel who lives in Jonesboro, Ga. "You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him."

Scott and former hostages David Roeder, William J. Daugherty and Don A. Sharer told The Associated Press on Wednesday they have no doubt Ahmadinejad, 49, was one of the hostage-takers. A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos.

However:

Not everyone agrees. Former hostage and retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer, of Peoria, Ariz., said he doesn't recognize Ahmadinejad, by face or name, as one of his captors.

Several former students among the hostage-takers also said Ahmadinejad did not participate. And a close aide to Ahmadinejad denied the president-elect took part in the seizure of the embassy or in holding Americans hostage.

Spain: Two accused of recruiting Iraq suicide bombers

Eurabia update from Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MADRID — Spanish police arrested two more people - a Moroccan and an Algerian - on charges of recruiting Islamic militants to fight against United States-led forces in Iraq.

The arrests followed the detention of 11 people earlier this month accused of ties to Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is a key figure in the insurgency in Iraq.

Ridoune Elourma, a 29-year-old Moroccan, was picked up Tuesday in Puigcerda, a city in the north-eastern region of Catalonia.

Police said they arrested him when he crossed into Spain to buy supplies for a construction project he was working on in the nearby French town of La Tour de Querol.

It emerged that Elourma was refurbishing a chalet belonging to Josep Pujol, son of former Catalan regional president Jordi Pujol.

In fact, he was at the wheel of an SUV owned by the politician's wife, Marta Ferrusola, at the time of his arrest.

Josep Pujol issued a statement saying Elourma was simply an employee of the construction company he hired to do some work at his property, and that he had loaned the Moroccan his mother's vehicle so he could pick up materials.

The other suspect apprehended this week was 31-year-old Algerian national Mohamed Saad, traced on Monday in Valencia.

Authorities had been looking for the two men since the raids mounted on 14 June as part of 'Operation Tigris' in which 11 men said to be linked to Zarqawi and his Ansar el Islam group were arrested.

The Spanish cell is said to have made up a support network for Zarqawi's 'jihad' or holy war agsinst US-led forces in Iraq, connections in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as in Britain.

Mexico Nabs 2 Iraqis Near U.S. Border

No doubt they were just trying to visit their relatives in San Diego. From AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:

MEXICO CITY — Mexican agents in Tecate captured two Iraqis who had hoped to sneak into U.S. territory without proper documents.

Federal authorities say Samir and Munir Yousif Shana told investigators they were contacted by a person in their hometown of Baghdad, who said he could smuggle them into San Diego.

The two have relatives in San Diego.

New Cover for new Spencer book

The cover of Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer's forthcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery Publishing) has been altered a bit from the first provisional cover that appeared at Amazon last month.

The main change is that this new cover contains an enthusiastic endorsement at the top. How do you like it? Just in case you can't read it, it says:

"May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again. Amen." -- "Praise" for the author on RevivingIslam.com

Amazon now has it listed as coming out on August 1. Last I heard from Regnery, it will be out August 8. But that may have changed.

From the back cover:

Everything (well, almost everything) you know about Islam and the Crusades is wrong -- because most textbooks and popular history books are written by left-wing academics and Islamic apologists who justify their contemporary political agendas with contrived historical "facts." But fear not: Robert Spencer (author of the bestseller Islam Unveiled) refutes the popular myths in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades). Spencer reveals facts that you won't be taught in school and will never hear on the evening news, supplies a revealing list of "Books You Must Not Read" (as far as the PC left is concerned), and takes you on a fast-paced politically incorrect tour of Islamic teaching and Crusades history that will give you all the information you need to understand the true nature of the global conflict America faces today.

In the coming weeks I will share with you some endorsements the book has received.

Corrupted Scriptures and those who read them

In my comments on Daniel Pipes' article on Allah and God yesterday, I wrote this:

It is not actually Islamic doctrine that, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God." Their followers did that. The Qur'an, addressing Muhammad and the Muslims, says of the Jews: "Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly?" (2:75). This verse, combined with the fact that the Old and New Testaments do not bear witness to Muhammad as he expected, have led mainstream Muslim theologians to extend the charge of willfully perverting the Scriptures to Christians as well, although the charge is not made against Christians in the Qur'an.

In response, a frequent reader of Jihad Watch wrote this to me:

I've never really heard a Muslim ever say that the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament were transmitted perfectly at first, and only later corrupted. They don't give the Bible even that much credit, it seems.

While this is true of many -- particularly modern -- Muslim commentators, it is not true across the board. Why does this matter? Because if, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God," their followers cannot be held responsible. But if it was the followers who supposedly corrupted what had been pure Scriptures, then they bear the guilt for their act. And indeed, one of the meanings in Arabic of the word dhimmi is guilty people. One of the sources of their guilt is this alleged corruption of the Scriptures -- which indicates how deeply the concepts of the dhimma are embedded within Islam. (And for the thousandth time, if that is not faced it cannot be dealt with. If Muslim reformers are sincere, let them acknowledge this and work to eradicate it.)

Anyway, here is some evidence for my position. Not only have Muslims said to me personally that the Torah (Taurat) and Gospel (Injil) were transmitted perfectly at first, and only later corrupted, it is in the Qur'an:

"And We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps, confirming that which was (revealed) before him in the Torah, and We bestowed on him the Gospel wherein is guidance and a light, confirming that which was (revealed) before it in the Torah - a guidance and an admonition unto those who ward off (evil)." (5:46)

This verse assumes an uncorrupted Injil (containing "guidance and light") given to Jesus, confirming an uncorrupted Taurat given to Moses.

Cf. the classic Qur'an commentator Ibn Kathir on Qur'an 5:13:

"They change the words from their (right) places...) Since their comprehension became corrupt, they behaved treacherously with Allah's Ayat, altering His Book from its apparent meanings which He sent down, and distorting its indications. They attributed to Allah what He did not say, and we seek refuge with Allah from such behavior."

Thus Allah sent it down perfectly to Moses, and the Jews supposedly later altered it "from its apparent meanings which He sent down."

Likewise also another classic commentary, or tafsir, that of Al-Tabari, on Qur'an 2:75:

"...God states that it was a group of those who heard God's speech who did the altering [thereby] stressing the gravity of the lie they brought, after He had confirmed the proof and demonstration for them; and He notified His believing servants of the vanity of their hopes about the faith of their surviving descendants in the truth, light, and guidance which Muhammad brought them. Thus He said to them: 'How can you expect these Jews to affirm your truthfulness, when you inform them by what you tell them of something invisible which they have not witnessed or seen? Some of them heard from God His command and prohibition, then changed it and altered it and denied it. Those of their surviving descendants who are among you are more likely to deny the truth you have brought them, not having heard it from God but only from you; and it is more probable that they will alter the qualities and description of your prophet, Muhammad, in their scriptures, and change them wittingly, and then deny him and give him the lie. [They are more likely to do this than their predecessors who heard the speech of God directly from God; they altered it after they had understood it and known it, intentionally altering it]..."

"They heard from God His command and prohibition" -- which means they received it uncorrupted -- "and then they changed it and altered it and denied it." "They" of course obviously refers here to the Jews, not to Moses.

Here also is Ibn Kathir on Qur'an 5:46:

"...We made the Injil guidance and an admonition that prohibits committing sins and errors, for those who have Taqwa of Allah and fear His warning and torment. Allah said next, (Let the people of the Injil judge by what Allah has revealed therein.) meaning, so that He judges the people of the Injil by it in their time. Or, the Ayah means, so that they believe in all that is in it and adhere to all its commands, including the good news about the coming of Muhammad and the command to believe in and follow him when he is sent."

If people were ever to judge by the Injil, it must in this view have existed uncorrupted at some point.

In fact, some ancient Muslim commentators insist that the Gospel was never corrupted. This doesn't mitigate Christian guilt -- these commentators see the Christian refusal to accept Muhammad as conferring guilt upon them in any case. Often they see the Christian New Testament as it stands as bearing witness to Muhammad, and charge the Christians with perversity for not acknowledging that. Here is Ibn Khazem, writing in 1064 AD:

Since the Quran must be true it must be the conflicting Gospel texts that are false. But Muhammad tells us to respect the Gospel. Therefore, the present text must have been falsified by the Christians after the time of Muhammad....The Christians lost the revealed Gospel except for a few traces which God has left intact as argument against them.

Other authorities who accepted the Injil as authentic: Al-Tabari, Amr al-Ghakhiz, Al-Bukhari, Al-Mas'udi, Abu Ali Husain Bin Sina, Al-Ghazzali, Ibn Khaldun, and more recently, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, about whom I wrote in Onward Muslim Soldiers. He wrote: "In the opinion of us Mohammedans it is not proved that corruption (tahrif-i-lafzi)...was practiced." Likewise Fakhruddin Razi: "The Jews and early Christians were suspected of altering the text of the Taurat and Injil; but in the opinion of eminent doctors and theologians it was not practicable thus to corrupt the text, because those Scriptures were generally known and widely circulated, having been handed down from generation to generation."

The upshot of all this is that it reinforces the idea, as Pipes puts it, that "Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details." No non-Muslim should enter into "inter-faith dialogue" without a clear awareness of that fact.

Iran's New President was 1979 hostage-taker

Jihadist in the seat of power. "AP Photo shows Iran’s new President as 1979 US hostage-taker," from Iran Focus, with thanks to Solomon:

London, Jun. 29 - Iran Focus has learnt that the photograph of Iran’s newly-elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, holding the arm of a blindfolded American hostage on the premises of the United States embassy in Tehran was taken by an Associated Press photographer in November 1979.

Prior to the first round of the presidential elections on June 17, Iran Focus was the first news service to reveal Ahmadinejad’s role in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran.

The identity of Ahmadinejad in the photograph was revealed to Iran Focus by a source in Tehran, whose identity could not be revealed for fear of persecution.

Muslim Man Sues Homeland Security

I have been doing a great deal of speaking around the country, and that means I have been doing a lot of flying. Three times recently I have been unable to check in electronically, and have waited an inordinately long time at the check-in counter while the airline employee checking me in talked in low tones on the phone. Why? The first time this happened, the airline official, staring intently at her computer screen, blurted out, "Oh! You're on the No-Fly List!" Then, after a great deal of typing, phone talk and staring at the screen, without further explanation or any answer to my incredulous inquiries, I was cleared to fly. Another time the airline employee got on the phone and talked in a very soft voice for a very long time. Straining forward, I made out "No Fly List" mentioned at least twice among the mumbling.

I don't know anything more about this, but I suspect there is someone named Robert Spencer on the No-Fly List. And this fact seems to have caused me minor delay and inconvenience on several occasions. However, even if it caused me major delay and inconvenience, I would never dream of suing Homeland Security or anyone else. I would rather they be overcautious than unduly careless. I will put up with the inconvenience rather than compromise the DHS's constitutional anti-terror activities and thereby increase the risk of more attacks. But here is yet another attempt to shift focus from jihad terrorism to the resistance to it, and to hamstring that resistance. Courtroom jihad update from AP, with thanks to Anthony:

CHICAGO -- A U.S.-born Muslim who says he was unjustly detained and questioned at customs checkpoints sued the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday over the "degrading process."

In the complaint filed in Chicago federal court, Akifur Rahman said customs agents held him for several hours on four occasions since March 2004 while he was re-entering the country from abroad, even though he had proper identification.

Rahman said he's "afraid of what may happen every time I return from a trip outside the United States."

"This lawsuit seems to be the only way to ... insure that this degrading process is not repeated," Rahman read from a statement.

According to his lawsuit, Rahman, of suburban Wheaton, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security in April saying his problems stemmed from an "unfortunate misidentification" in which his name could be a near match of someone on a government watch list.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and "the adoption of adequate policies to ensure the reasonably expeditious re-entry" of U.S. citizens whose names are similar or identical to those on watch lists....

The damages Rahman is seeking are not the problem. The "'adoption of adequate policies to ensure the reasonably expeditious re-entry' of U.S. citizens whose names are similar or identical to those on watch lists" is. This is something that could compromise DHS efforts to track real terrorists.

You'll never guess who is behind this:

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing Rahman are seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.

U.S. citizens deny charges of terrorism

Tarik Shah and Rafiq Abdus Sabir update from AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

New York - Two U.S. citizens accused of being al-Qaida loyalists pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges on Tuesday.

An indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan late Monday charged Tarik Shah, 42, and Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 50, each with a count of conspiring to provide material support to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network....

Prosecutors allege Sabir, an Ivy League-educated doctor, agreed to treat holy warriors in Saudi Arabia. Shah, a jazz musician and a self-described martial arts expert, allegedly agreed to train them in hand-to-hand combat.

Court papers filed last month described Shah's zeal to train "brothers" for urban warfare.

Both men allegedly pledged their allegiance to al-Qaida during a May 20 meeting in the Bronx that was secretly recorded....

Shah is "charged with wanting to give al-Qaida members karate lessons," his attorney, Anthony Rico, told reporters. "The concept in and of itself is ridiculous given the seriousness of terrorism."

Yeah, it isn't as if a jihad terrorist might need to fight anyone. He would be too busy waging the jihad within his soul to conform his life to the will of Allah.

Philadelphia: FBI plans terrorism watch for weekend

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

John C. Eckenrode, special agent in charge of the FBI's Philadelphia office, said the bureau had not received any "specific or credible threats" related to Live 8 or other events.

Even so, he said, the FBI's local antiterrorism command post would be on 24-hour duty in the coming days, and hundreds of Philadelphia-based agents from a variety of agencies - experts in hazardous materials, weapons of mass destruction, explosives - would be ready to "deploy at a moment's notice."

Among other things, Eckenrode said, agents would monitor the arrival of the USS Cole, a destroyer attacked by terrorists in Yemen in October 2000, which is scheduled to dock at Penn's Landing tomorrow.

Murdock: Bombers doing far worse to Quran

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock (thanks to Mackie) notes the hypocrisy of the ongoing Qur'an-abuse controversies:

Associated Press reports, among others, document how militant Islamists treat Shiite shrines with all the deference the SS showed synagogues in the 1940s.

• June 1, 2005: A suicide bomber blasted the funeral of Mullah Abdul Fayaz, a moderate cleric, at his eponymous mosque in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He killed Kabul's police chief and 20 others, while wounding 50.

• Jan. 20, 2005: A suicide bomber exploded inside the Ghocha Park Mosque in Sheberghan, injuring 21.

• June 30, 2003: An earlier bombing at Fayaz's mosque injured 16.

To date, colleagues of the Gitmo Boys have killed 21 and wounded 89 in Afghan mosque bombings.

Iraq's picture is even bloodier. Examples:

• May 23, 2005: A car bomb at a Baghdad mosque killed two and wounded 22, including 11 children.

• March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber detonated himself during a funeral at a Mosul mosque, murdering 47 people and injuring at least 101.

• Feb. 18, 2005: On Ashoura, Shiites' holiest day, homicide bombers attacked two Baghdad mosques, killing 25 and injuring 30.

• Feb. 18, 2005: A car bomb killed eight and hurt 10 at an Iskandariyah mosque.

• Aug. 26, 2004: Mortar shells pummeled a Najaf mosque, killing 27 and injuring 63.

• March 2, 2004: Homicide bombers, mortars and hidden explosives at mosques in Baghdad and Karbala killed 181 and wounded 573 Ashoura worshippers.

• Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb outside a Najaf mosque killed 85 and injured 140.

Add the 386 killed and 970 injured in Iraq to the Afghan figures above: The terrorist pals of Guantanamo's al-Qaida and Taliban residents have butchered 407 Muslims and injured 1,059 more in these mosque attacks.

After crying for these murdered and maimed Muslims, weep for the Qurans destroyed. At worst, a May 27 Pentagon probe revealed, U.S. personnel at Guantanamo mistreated Qurans on 13 occasions, only five deliberately, notwithstanding requirements that soldiers "handle the Quran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

In one "atrocity," a Quran was stacked atop another Quran on a TV set. Interrogators twice "either touched or stood over" the Quran during questioning. Most regrettably, a soldier relieved himself outdoors last March 25. The breeze shifted towards a cellblock, and an adjacent air duct splattered his urine onto a detainee's nearby Quran and uniform. The soldier was reprimanded and reassigned to gate-guard duty.

Compare this to the Islamofascist explosions that reduce Allah's words to ashes.

The Women’s Role in Jihad Against the Enemy

More peace and tolerance from inside those password-protected Muslim forums, from the SITE Institute, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
June 28, 2005

A message posted to a password-protected al-Qaeda affiliated forum, which contains a section concerning women and the Muslim family, titled: “To You, My Muslim Sister: The Women’s Role in Jihad Against the Enemy,” seeks to motivate Muslim women to enter jihad in physical and supporting capacities as part of a larger discussion of a sickness overwhelming the “Islamic Nation” that is hindering their fight against the enemy.

The author believes that a “disease” is ravaging the ranks of the Muslims, causing “misery and humiliation” upon them by their enemies. The disease is considered a “weakness,” which is defined as “love of life and hatred of death,” and is only improved through jihad and “fighting for the sake of Allah.” Here, the message indicates, is where the Muslim women may play an important role and raise men who are not owned by “cows, trees, crosses, and altar worshippers….”

Spencer: “Yes, I am a Terrorist”

No, no, it is not I who am a terrorist -- it's a quote from Time's proto-suicide bomber, Marwan Abu Ubeida. Here is this week's column in FrontPage:

“Yes, I am a terrorist. Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Qur’an] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim.”

These are the words of Marwan Abu Ubeida, the subject of a Time magazine piece entitled “Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber.” It is gratifying to see Time being willing to take this trip into Marwan’s mind, since most mainstream media outlets have been singularly uninterested in the thought processes of jihad terrorists. But even Time doesn’t explore the implications of Marwan’s words. And this is no trivial omission: jihadists from Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to Marwan Abu Ubeida have consistently made clear that today’s jihadists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur’anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide — as well as to hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, and sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general.

Marwan makes it clear: “The jihadis are more religious people. You ask them anything — anything — and they can instantly quote a relevant section from the Qur’an.” He is chillingly forthright: “The only person who matters is Allah — and the only question he will ask me is ‘How many infidels did you kill?’” He invokes Qur’an 8:60: “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy.” The jihad ideology Marwan reflects is rooted in the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. The longer we postpone confronting that fact, the worse the problem will grow.

Yet both liberal and conservative media analysts do not want to face this. They think that by speaking about the Islamic roots of jihad violence they will undercut moderate Muslims. But in fact, no reform in Islam can ever take place without an acknowledgment of what needs to be reformed. The near-universal refusal to provide that acknowledgment is just one reason why that reform is virtually certain not to be forthcoming. The contemporary problem of global Islamic terrorism will never be solved unless people are willing to speak forthrightly about the nature of the challenge we face and work to find positive solutions. Ignoring or distorting the true nature and source of the problem will only postpone the crisis, and make its ultimate resolution more difficult.

The media is failing the American public on this issue. But the truth will out, if in other venues. It’s time for the direct approach. One organization is taking the truth about jihad terrorism directly to the people: The People’s Truth Forum. On September 21 I will be participating in a symposium on terror, sponsored by the Forum, entitled, “The Radical Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security.” This symposium will challenge media bias head-on by exploring forthrightly such unexamined dogmas as the idea that regionalized economic conditions and American injustices are the real cause of terrorism, not any imperative derived from Islamic theology. We will explore the mindset of people like Marwan Abu Ubeida who think that terror is commanded by God, providing a profile of the slaughterers of innocents that is urgently needed — and has not been provided by the media in almost four years since 9/11.

Other speakers include the renowned terrorism expert Harvey Kushner, author of Holy War on the Home Front; Brigitte Gabriel, a former anchor for world news in the Middle East and a prominent Arab-American journalist; and Judith Jacobson, vice-president of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) and the coordinator of the Columbia University SPME chapter. This promises to be one of the few places in modern-day America where you will be able to hear the truth about what we're up against. Get more information about how you can attend at www.peoplestruthforum.com.

The People’s Truth Forum was organized to heighten public awareness about the issues that matter most. The Forum hopes to host similar events around the country in the future and thereby to circumvent the information stranglehold of the mainstream media — a stranglehold which, with its cavalier refusal to face the facts, leaves us all that much more vulnerable.

New York Imam Ahmad Dwidar: In 1995, I Heard Sermons Calling on Muslims to March on the White House and Turn It into the Muslim House

A bit more about that "totalitarian ideology" the President referred to tonight, from an interview with the imam of the Islamic Center in New York, Dr. Ahmad Dwidar. From MEMRI-TV, with thanks to Carolyn:

Dwidar: In 1995 I heard some sermons, saying that Muslims should march on the White House from some of the mosques.

Host: What do you mean by "march on the White House"?

Dwidar: One cleric said in his sermon: "We are going to the White House, so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become into the Muslim house."

Host: How? I don't understand.

Dwidar: This is simply a slogan. I'm only saying this to...

Host: Are they going to occupy the White House or what?

Dwidar: No, they say that through the domination of Islam and its ideas, the White House will change.

Host: This will happen one day, but not this way. Islam will be victorious, no doubt, but not this way.

Dwidar: It will not happen unless the Muslims abandon their slogans and become a role model. If a Muslim doctor who invents a cure in the hospital or performs an important operation successfully – all the media will broadcast it live and announce it worldwide. The Muslim who makes do with breaking the wooden podium, with screaming, and with patronizing, condescending rhetoric that "Islam is coming, and it will change the face of the earth," while at the same time he cannot even change the face of the Islamic capitals, which overflow with garbage – this path will lead to no good.

Note that Dwidar doesn't object to the end, only to the means. Presumably if a Muslim stopped being condescending and cleaned up the capitals of Islamic states, he could legitimately set his sights on the Islamization of the United States.

Fitzgerald: First Thoughts On the Bush Speech

The President is speaking about Iraq, and Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald has some initial impressions:

I have been watching someone on television positively hallucinating about "winning" some "war on terror" by sticking it out in a country called "Iraq" where there are citizens who think of themselves as "Iraqis" and who are eager to put into place what sounds amazingly like the American Bill of Rights, after decades of enduring terrible misrule at the hands of some strange regime apparently totally unconnected to the behavior of the gentle Iraqis themselves -- possibly these mis-rulers arrived from outer space.

I didn't catch mention, in this "important address to the nation," of the words "Islam" or "jihad" or anything except some reference to the "murderous ideology" of "the terrorists."

So I suppose Europe has nothing to worry about, just as long as it goes quietly, step by step, and islamizes the way a frog is cooked -- by slowly turning up the heat, by indiscernable degrees.

I feel secure now in the knowledge that my leaders have understood the threat, and are not relying merely on brute force, and have decided to take their stand in Iraq, and after the military phase, to pour American aid in so as to create that Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations which is already having such major effects, we were told, because "elections have been held in Lebanon [where the Christians may lose their confessional arrangement, and the new head of Lebanon is an outspoken admirer of Saudi Arabia], in the "Palestinian territories" [yes, and what a success that has turned out to be, with the performance of Hamas, not to mention the corruption and meretriciousness of Mr. Abbas, the phony leader of a made-up people, who waits while Sharon helpfully writes out his own Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya, and presents it with a little wink -- please do not break until at least 6 months go by], and in "Saudi Arabia" [this must be a reference to the municipal election where the most fundamentalist of the usual fanatics swept the board -- well done, democratic experiment in Saudi Arabia!].

Unmentioned went, for some reason, the election in Iran, where a former Teheran mayor, a tireless pothole-fixer, was elected, and will show the world that in his version of Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations pothole-fixing and fanatical Islam can exist in the same mind of the same maximum leader of the same totalitarian regime. This is something the smug speaker gave no signs of comprehending.

Is Allah God?

In FrontPage today, Daniel Pipes takes up a question that has often been considered by commenters here: is the Allah of Islam the same as the God of the Bible? This is not just a matter for theological wrangling; the policy implications of the question begin to come clear along the middle and particularly at the end of Pipes' article. Says Pipes:

This might seem like a minor semantic quibble, but the meaning of Allah has profound importance. Consider two alternate ways of translating the opening line of Islam’s basic declaration of faith (Arabic: la ilaha illa-la). One reads “I testify that there is no God but Allah,” and the other “I testify that there is no deity but God.”

The first states that Islam has a distinct Lord, one known as Allah, and implies that Jews and Christians worship a false god. The second states that Allah is the Arabic word for the common monotheistic God and implies a commonality with Jews and Christians.

The first translation is 40 times more common at google.com than the second. Despite this, the latter is the accurate one. Bush was right. Several reasons point to this conclusion.

Scriptural: The Koran itself in several places insists that its God is the same as the God of Judaism and Christianity. The most direct statement is one in which Muslims are admonished to tell Jews and Christians “We believe in that which has been revealed to us and revealed to you; our God and your God is One, and to Him we do submit” (E.H. Palmer translation of Sura 29:46). Of course, the verse can also be rendered “our Allah and your Allah is One” (as it is in the notorious Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation).

Historical: Chronologically, Islam followed after Judaism and Christianity, but the Koran claims Islam actually preceded the other monotheisms. In Islamic doctrine (Sura 3:67), Abraham was the first Muslim. Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God; Muhammad brought it down perfectly. Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details. This outlook implies that all three faiths share the God of Abraham.

Yes they do -- in a sense. Obviously Muhammad portrayed himself as a prophet sent by the God of Moses and Jesus. It is not actually Islamic doctrine that, as Pipes says, "Moses and Jesus introduced mistakes to the Word of God." Their followers did that. The Qur'an, addressing Muhammad and the Muslims, says of the Jews: "Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly?" (2:75). This verse, combined with the fact that the Old and New Testaments do not bear witness to Muhammad as he expected, have led mainstream Muslim theologians to extend the charge of willfully perverting the Scriptures to Christians as well, although the charge is not made against Christians in the Qur'an.

In light of that, it is no small thing that, as Pipes notes, "Islam views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself, correct on essentials but wrong in important details." I think unfortunately that this makes it unlikely that some path to mutual coexistence can be based on the fact that "all three faiths share the God of Abraham." They do, but Islam views the other two not as equal or even potential partners, but as renegade perversions of the true faith of the God of Abraham. No Muslim, therefore, would say he worships the Triune God of Christianity, which the Qur'an rather inaccurately denigrates as worship of God, Jesus, and Mary (5:116). Hardly a promising ground for mutual understanding.

Accordingly, I wrote some time ago that "Muslims themselves vehemently deny that the Allah of the Qur'an is the God of the Bible." By this I did not mean to deny the identity between the deity of Jews and Christians with that of Muslims that is claimed in Qur'an 29:46; rather, I was referring to the rejection by Muslims of the Trinity, which is accepted by almost all Christians, as well as to their classification of Judaism along with Christianity as a renegade perversion of Islam, which is based on the idea that the Bible as we have it has been corrupted. The Qur'an even says that "they indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary" (5:17). The Arabic word used here is "kafara," which is related to "kafir," or unbeliever. Thus traditional Christians are unbelievers (and under Allah's curse, cf. Qur'an 9:30).

Linguistic: Just as Dieu and Gott are the French and German words for God, so is Allah the Arabic equivalent. In part, this identity of meaning can be seen from cognates: In Hebrew, the word for God is Eloh-im, a cognate of Allah. In Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, God is Allaha. In the Maltese language, which is unique because it is Arabic-based but spoken by a predominantly Catholic people, God is Alla.

Further, most Jews and Christians who speak Arabic routinely use the word Allah to refer to God. (Copts, the Christians of Egypt, do not.)

Quite so. Many Arabic interjections that are used by Christians as well as Muslims feature the word "Allah": "Inshallah" (God willing), "Smallah" (in the name of God), "Wallah" (by God), "Allah ma3ak" (God be with you", "Yalla" etc...) Copts, in line with Dr. Pipes' observation, never use these expressions. They replace the word "Allah" with "Rabb" (Lord), hence saying "Insha'arrab", "bismirrab", "Rabbina Ma3aak" etc. -- as if to divorce themselves from the God of Islam. However, Maronites, Melkites, and other Arabic-speaking Christians use the same expressions that Muslims use, although not in reference to the God of Islam.

The Old and New Testaments in Arabic use this word. In the Arabic-language Bible, for instance, Jesus is referred to as the son of Allah. Even translations carried out by Christian missionaries, such as the famous one done in 1865 by Cornelius Van Dyke, refer to Allah, as do missionary discussions.

Pipes draws these conclusions from this evidence:

The God=Allah equation means that, however hostile political relations may be, a common “children of Abraham” bond does exist and its exploration can one day provide a basis for interfaith comity. Jewish-Christian dialogue has made great strides and Jewish-Christian-Muslim trialogue could as well.

But before that can happen, however, Muslims must first recognize the validity of alternate approaches to the one God. That means leaving behind the supremacism, extremism, and violence of the current Islamist phase.

This is a point worth exploring further. In light of the Qur'anic verses I have referred to here and others, I wonder if it would really be possible for Qur'an-believing Muslims to "recognize the validity of alternate approaches to the one God" -- specifically approaches that are condemned as perversions of the true faith in the same Qur'an that seems to assert (in 29:46) this "common 'children of Abraham' bond." On what basis will Muslims be able to act upon 29:46 but not 9:30 and 5:17? In Qur'an 98:6 the "unbelievers" -- using the same word that is used of Christians in 5:17 (kafara, kafaru) are termed the "vilest of creatures." We're all one big happy group of children of Abraham? Not quite.

Also, I think it is worth noting that "supremacism, extremism, and violence" are not solely features of "the current Islamist phase" of Islam, but are constants of Islamic history -- as Dr. Pipes himself suggests when he notes that the Qur'an itself "views Judaism and Christianity as flawed versions of itself." What is that but supremacism? And that supremacism, combined with the jihad ideology that is rooted in the Qur'an and Sunnah (as I detail in Onward Muslim Soldiers) and has been a constant of Islamic history (as Dr. Pipes has ably noted), becomes a recipe for extremism and violence. Will this change as Muslims come to recognize that we are all children of Abraham with a common God? I hope so. But I don't think a reading of the Qur'an justifies this hope.

Lodi Mosque fires imam

But have they fired the ideology that led to his subversive actions and arrest? From the News-Sentinel, with thanks to PRCS:

Leaders of the Lodi Mosque have voted to fire Shabbir Ahmed, the imam who has been arrested on immigration charges and accused of supporting the Taliban.

"He will not return to our mosque," said Muhammed Shoaib, mosque president, who added that the decision by board members to terminate Ahmed was unanimous. They voted on Ahmed's dismissal Sunday night.

Arrested earlier this month on immigration violations, Ahmed acknowledged in court Friday that he made speeches in Pakistan supporting the Taliban in its fight against the United States. He said he regrets those comments now, having come to see Americans' "true value and respect for human life."

PA trying to get Islamic Jihad to hold fire

Either they are just feigning this whole initiative, or they're trying to convince the jihadists to stop attacking for the time being because they are gaining what they want through diplomacy. Is the PA going to convince them to accept a two-state solution or some other form of lasting peaceful coexistence with Israel? Don't hold your breath. That would go against the oft-stated goals of both organizations, and the jihad ideology in general. "PA trying to get Jihad to hold fire," from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

JERUSALEM: The Palestinian Authority is holding “serious dialogue” with the Islamic Jihad movement in a bid to persuade it to halt attacks against Israel, a senior official said yesterday.

“We have been engaged in a serious dialogue with Jihad to put an end to the attacks which go against our national interests,” presidential national security adviser Jibril Rajoub told reporters in Jerusalem.

“The Palestinian Authority is still committed to the truce and we will not accept any violation of the agreement,” he added.

A truce. A hudna. In Islamic law, a temporary period designed to allow the mujahedin to gather strength. Not a peace. Not coexistence.

FBI agent says Palestinian professor was bugged

Al-Arian update from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The government tapped former university professor Sami Al-Arian's phones, planted microphones at his think-tank and intercepted his faxes and computer conversations because they suspected him of terrorism ties, a retired FBI agent testified.

A lot of work to build a case for one man.

'Jihad Jack' pleads not guilty to al-Qaeda link

Jihad Jack Thomas update from AAP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Terror suspect Jack Thomas pleaded not guilty in a Melbourne court today to receiving money from al-Qaeda....

Justice Bernard Teague ordered Thomas, who also faces charges of providing support to al-Qaida and falsifying a passport, to reappear in court on January 30.

He has not entered pleas on the remaining charges.

Iran: President-elect renews allegiance with Imam Khomeini

Anybody still fooled by this guy? From the Islamic Republic News Agency, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Iran's President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his allegiance with the late founder of the Islamic Revolution Imam Khomeini at his mausoleum in southern Tehran Sunday morning.

Accompanied by some members of his publicity office, Ahmadinejad laid a wreath of flower on Imam's tomb just one day after scoring a landslide win in the 9th presidential election.

The grandson of Imam, Hassan Khomeini, felicitated Ahmadinejad on his victory in the presidential race....

Iran's New Puppet President

The indefatigable Elio Bonazzi and Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi expose Iran's sham elections for what they were in FrontPage:

Hardline fundamentalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has swept to power in Iran, defeating his supposed “moderate” opponent Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round of Iran's presidential election on Friday.

The Iranian regime admitted that 7 million less voters turned up to vote in the second round. This is no surprise, since the ruling Mullahs have absolutely no support from the Iranian population. The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public. And while Iranians have been wise to this fact from the very beginning, the Western media continues to accept the lies spun by the Mullahs in Iran.

The details of the second round of “elections” are a depressing picture of where the ruling despots in Iran now stand with their own people. Photos taken by Iranians across Iran and posted on various Iranian websites and blogs, show that polling stations were mostly empty and that 30% of the people who showed up to vote due to having been blackmailed by the regime's forces deposited blank ballots into the boxes in protest. The intimidation was widespread: Iran’s Gestapo threatened civil servants’ jobs, old people's pensions and students’ grades and future university enrolment. The poor and rural people were intimidated by gun-toting guards who rounded them up to the polling stations. Even dead people’s I.D. cards got stamped so they could vote.

Read it all.

Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 3)

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his series of interlocking reflections on what to do in Iraq with these considerations of what it would take actually to win there.

What would "winning the war" mean? Would it mean ensuring a unified state, so that the Kurds would have to give up the possibility of a free Kurdistan? But a free Kurdistan would give other non-Arab Muslim minorities -- such as the Berbers in North Africa -- ideas, just the kind of ideas we want them to get. A free Kurdistan would hearten them, and hearten other non-Arabs, and cause Infidels to cease to use that inaccurate and dangerous term "the Arab world" which seems to hand over vast swaths of the earth's land mass to one particular ethnic group, as if Kurds, Berbers, Jews, Maronites (who are Arabic-using but not Arabs), Copts, Druse, Armenians, and a hundred smaller groups, including what remain of ancient peoples or sects (Mandeans, Zoroastrians, and so on) or more recent arrivals (Circassians who form the palace guard for the kings of Jordan, who cannot trust their own Arabs, just as the palace guard of the Assad family consist of Alawites, and even a Christian (Armenian) contingent, but never ever of real Muslims (who would destroy the Alawite regime, not because it is corrupt, but because it consists of Alawites).

And what else would constitute "winning in Iraq"? Presumably, having an Iraqi regime where Sunni and Shi'a sit down like the lion with the lamb, and all manner of things are well. Why is that a desideratum for American, or any Infidel government's, policy? Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, from our point of view, or a bad thing? It was a good thing. It should have gone on, or at least simmered quietly, forever. And if the Shi'a in Pakistan, intermittently murdered by the circumambient Sunnis, and the Shi'a oppressed by Sunnis in the eastern (Hasa) province of Saudi Arabia, come to feel that they, too, might be inspired by Shi'a power in Iraq, and furthermore, Shi'a in Kuwait and Bahrain have their hearts swell with pride as the o'erweening Sunni get what, after 80 years of lording it over the Iraqi Shi'a, they so richly deserve (and are left with no oil at all, but will have to rely on caravans bringing in oil from outside, on camels supplied by the tribe of the Jabal Shammar), is that a good thing -- from OUR point of view, which is the only point of view that matters, or is it a bad thing?

And what about the "fixing potholes" theory that some in the Administration cling to? You know, if only Iraq can establish a nice stable regime, after a few thousand other Americans die fighting "for Iraq" (not exactly the Battle Green in Lexington, or the rude bridge that arched the flood in Concord, is Ramadi, or Tikrit, or Fallujah), and the military sustains further degradation of the tanks, and the Humvees, and the helicopters, and the planes, and the size and quality of the Reserves, and the National Guard, and the regular army itself as people leave, or are disheartened, and the better potential recruits cannot be recruited, as they might have even two or three years ago.

Saddam Hussein fixed a few potholes in his time. There are no potholes in Saudi Arabia, where the corrupt Al-Saud family, stealing the country's wealth (wealth that neither they, nor the Saudi population, did anything to create, and nothing to deserve), but no one there has any trouble believing in, paying for, engaging in promoting the Jihad -- that is, the spread of Islam worldwide, the deflecting of attention to what Islam teaches and believes about Infidels, and what the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation teaches Infidels about Believers.

Right now, in grim Iran, after the farce of the election, which was followed by the even greater farce of the run-off election, the candidate who was even worse than Rafsanjani, a certain Mr. Ahmadinejad, emerged the winner. By all accounts, he is as fanatical a Muslim as one could wish -- and now that he is in power, will insist that the work on nuclear weapons proceed full speed, a tous azimuths. And Mr. Ahmadinejad won his support as Mayor of Teheran because he was, precisely, a great fixer of potholes, and of everything else. A man who spent his days tirelessly working to make sure that the city ran, taking care of all those little mundane details that big-city mayors must worry about.

And guess what? Mr. Ahmadinejad not only had time for potholes, but he also had time left over in his busy day, and in his fervent brain, for Islam -- not "Wahhabi" Islam (the kind that some people tell us is the only kind that should worry us, including sufferers from Weiss-Schwartz Syndrome), but plain old ordinary Shi'a Islam, the religion of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and his epigones, and of Shah Abbas in the bad old days, which so many charming, and suave people who have come out of Iran, from Ms. Nafisi to Vartan Gregorian, seem not to realize is the real Iran. The Iran of the "Najis" Infidel who cannot even be allowed to go out into the rain (as Jews could not, for if a drop of water landed on a Jew, and then accidentally fell on a Muslim, that Muslim would be "unclean" -- Jews in this century were beaten to death, in rural Iran, for going out when it was raining) is a lot closer to the views of Khomeini than to the Shah and his relatively enlightened, and comparatively benign, regime.

The "pothole" theory won't wash. The Light-Unto-the-Muslims-Project is a farce. The obstinacy with which a few people repeat self-evident nonsense about Islam and about Iraq, simply because they either

1) have not bothered to study Islam or

2) accept the "higher apologetics" and rewriting of history by Bernard Lewis

3) wish to "stand by their man" Mr. Bush, although if the same kind of nonsense about Islam were to be uttered by a Democratic president they would be the first to deride him

4) sensing that the original attack on Iraq was both rational and justified, are fearful that if they admit that this part of the war is wrong and wasteful, the first part will also be called into question, for apparently they are rhetorically and conceptually unable to separate Iraq War #1 from Iraq War #2.

5) have a sentimental belief in "democracy" without understanding the full meaning of that term in the Western world, which goes far beyond mere head-counting, nor how long it took to develop democratic institutions and attitudes, nor in what way Islam not only teaches obedience to a ruler as long as he is a Muslim, that derides the notion that political or any other kind of legitimacy (in Islam, they are all one) can flow from the people rather than from the will of Allah, and that inculcates an attitude of mental submission, of obedience to authority, in every field and in every way, that is inimical to democracy.

Just as Rodney Stark has demonstrated that modern science not only did not develop in Islam, but in the Christian or Judeo-Christian West, not accidentally, but because Islam views Allah as whimsical, rather than as setting the universe going according to laws that could then be discovered by scientific inquiry, we can posit something else that is fairly obvious: democracy is palpably absent everywhere in the Muslim lands except where, as in Lebanon for a time, there was a near-majority of non-Muslims who affected the Muslims, or where Islam had been deliberately and systematically constrained as a political and social force as in Kemalist Turkey, or where both constraints and even attacks on Islam, and the existence of large populations of non-Muslims, at least created the conditions where some kind of democracy might emerge (as in, say, Kazakhstan after Nazarbayev who is, at least, a quasi-enlightened despot in the vein of the late Shah of Iran).

But even if there were to be "democracy" (i.e. elections, head-counting) in Iraq, it would do nothing to help Infidels come to understand the theory and practice of Islam, would do nothing to diminish the two most powerful weapons of Islam -- the money that comes from the oil deposits, and the spread of Islam both through the millions of migrants foolishly, dangerously, rashly, madly, allowed in to Western Europe in the first place, mainly because of the greed for (seemingly) cheap North African labor in France, and Turkish gastarbeiter in Germany. The costs have turned out, especially after all those "family reunions" and those burgeoning families, and then the constant flow of Muslims into both those countries, and elsewhere in Europe, where they have created a situation that is much more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous, physically and morally, for the indigenous Infidels. How will "democracy" in Iraq help prevent the islamization of Europe?

It won't. It is eating up our money, when every dollar spent in Iraq should be devoted to energy projects to take away not the non-existent "oil weapon" (there isn't one, and there never was: the Saudis and all producers will sell whatever oil they can) but rather, the real "money weapon" that is used to pay for mosques, madrasas, and hirelings all over the Western world. It is eating up our military equipment, for a month in the desert ages that equipment more than a year or two elsewhere. It is eating up our men, who are killed, and wounded, in order that one group of Muslims does not kill another group of Muslims, and American lives are sacrificed so that the very fissures within that three-vilayet "country" of Iraq may be narrowed rather than, as we should sensibly wish them to be, widened.
It is eating up the morale of the present soldiers and preventing others from signing up, and without a draft, the citizen-army cannot be treated as it has been treated. Or rather, it can be so treated, and then no one will sign up, or no one very good, and those now in will never re-enlist, and another generation of the very people who are the ones we rely on, the people who make things run, and protect us, will be disheartened and dismayed, and not quite know why -- but know only that the Iraqis are ungrateful, the Iraqis are meretricious and malingerers and not the wonderful loyal allies the Administration's propaganda machine keeps telling us, despite the evidence (they can't shut up every returning soldier, and the more their story conflicts with the truth, the more they will lose support for necessary, and justifiable undertakings in the future.)

It is a farce. Someone has to tell Bush not only that the invasion was justified, the search for weapons justified, the removal of Saddam Hussein justified, but what has come after is completely unrelated, and not only a waste, but will not, cannot, achieve the ends, rightly understood, of what should be defined not as a "war against terror" (basta con these stupidities -- there is a limit), but a war "against the worldwide Jihad." Iraq is the perfect place to exploit the natural fissures, such as they exist, within Islam.
Instead we are spending money (that should be spent on solar and nuclear and every other kind of energy project, and conservation as well), men, materiel, morale.

Every day shows how stupid this policy is. But reality will only set in once the full malevolence of Islam is understood by a sufficient number of people, and once the inability even of "moderate" Muslims to admit to that malevolence in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira is recognized. The refusal to give defectors from Islam a major hearing -- who in Congress will invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali to testify, or Ibn Warraq, or Ali Sina? -- is intolerable.

And if the waste and the farce continue, and if the chance to exploit the Iraqi situation in the right way is lost, who will pay for this stupidity? Americans will still not be enlightened as to the nature of Islam. The islamization of Europe will continue, while the Cassandra-cries go unheard (remember that Cassandra turned out to be right).

"Stay the course"? But the "course" at this point is headed toward that iceberg, rather than into the clear waters of lucidity. "Don't cut and run" -- again, a foolish and cheap schoolboy phrase.
Where are the cunning, intelligent, all-knowing people who helped check, all over the chessboard, the agents and propaganda and military might of Soviet Russia? Do such people still exist, or their modern counterparts, or is Islam, with all those difficult Arabic words, and the necessity of learning about it from the very people who are likely to be Muslims and offer sly apologetics (with those liquid brown eyes, and the zarf-and-finjan (nicely wrought in Morocco, no doubt) coffee ceremony along with the verbs, and the nouns.

With C.I.A. agents at the comical intellectual level of Mr. Scheuer, who was actually for a while in charge of the "Bin Laden desk" (the very title expresses the misunderstanding of what is at stake), with an F.B.I. that takes instruction on Islam from sensitivity trainers helpfully provided by C.A.I.R., with a Secretary of State who keeps prating about what a great religion Islam is, and how much we respect it (she need not tell the truth about Islam; she need only remain silent on the matter -- why this insistence? It is intolerable if she thinks this is clever policy, and even more intolerable if she believes it).

We have had it. Up to here. Do gorla. Au ras bord. Non ne possiamo piu.

Will someone, in Congress, in the Administration, anywhere -- someone who can distinguish Iraq War #1 and Iraq War #2 -- please stand up?

"The Koran says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim"

Ever since I began doing this work publicly my point has been simple and consistent: that the jihad terrorists are working from mainstream traditions and numerous Qur'anic exhortations, and that by means of these traditions and teachings they are able to gain recruits among Muslims worldwide, and hold the sympathy of others whom they do not recruit. This explains why there has been no widespread, sustained, or sincere Muslim outcry against the jihad terrorist enterprise in general.

The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, does not want to face these facts. They think that by speaking about the Islamic roots of jihad violence they will undercut moderate Muslims. But in fact, no reform in Islam can ever take place without an acknowledgment of what needs to be reformed. The near-universal refusal to provide that acknowledgment is just one reason why that reform is virtually certain not to be forthcoming.

Anyway, here is yet more evidence that it is the Qur'an that is inspiring jihad terrorism. "Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber," from Time, with thanks to Effractor:

One day soon, this somber young man plans to offer up a final prayer and then blow himself up along with as many U.S. or Iraqi soldiers as he can reach. Marwan Abu Ubeida says he has been training for months to carry out a suicide mission. He doesn't know when or where he will be ordered to climb into a bomb-laden vehicle or strap on an explosives-filled vest but says he is eager for the moment to come. While he waits, he spends much of his time rehearsing that last prayer. "First I will ask Allah to bless my mission with a high rate of casualties among the Americans," he says, speaking softly in a matter-of-fact monotone, as if dictating a shopping list. "Then I will ask him to purify my soul so I am fit to see him, and I will ask to see my mujahedin brothers who are already with him." He pauses to run the list through his mind again, then resumes: "The most important thing is that he should let me kill many Americans."

At 20, Marwan is already a battle-hardened insurgent, a jihadi foot soldier in Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi's terrorist group, al-Qaeda in Iraq. Like the bulk of insurgents, he is a Sunni Muslim from the former ruling minority community. In his hometown, Fallujah, he is known for his ferociousness in battle and deep religiosity. Marwan asked his commander to consider him for a suicide mission last fall but had to wait until the beginning of April for his name to be put on the list of volunteers. "When he finally agreed," Marwan recalls, "it was the happiest day of my life." There are, he says, scores of names on that list, and it can be months before a volunteer is assigned an operation. But at the current high rate of attacks, Marwan hopes he will be called up soon. "I can't wait," he says, rubbing his thumbs with his fingers in nervous energy. "I am ready to die now."...

Marwan's journey toward suicide murderer began just a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Before the war, he had been one of Fallujah's privileged young men: his father's successful business earned enough--even during the difficult years when the West imposed economic sanctions on Iraq--to provide a good life for Marwan and his six brothers and four sisters. In high school, he was an average student but excelled in Koranic studies at the local mosque....

Like other Iraqis who have joined extremist religious groups during the insurgency, Marwan severed connections with his family when he joined up. He says he will call them once before his suicide mission to say goodbye. Even though one of his brothers fights for another insurgent group and other siblings help the rebels with money and shelter, he says they all believe he has gone too far. "My family are not happy with my choice," he says. "But they know they can't change my path."

For the deeply pious Marwan, his colleagues in Attawhid are now closer to his heart than his family or former friends. "The jihadis are more religious people," he says. "You ask them anything--anything--and they can instantly quote a relevant section from the Koran." Like them, Marwan works Koranic allusions into his speech. He has also embraced the jihadist worldview of one global Islamic state where there is, in Marwan's words, "no alcohol, no music and no Western influences." He concedes that he has not thought deeply about what life might be like in such a state; after all, he doesn't expect to live long enough to experience it. Besides, he says, he fights first for Islam, second to become a "martyr" and win acceptance into heaven, and only third for control of his country. "The first step is to remove the Americans from Iraq," he says. "After we have achieved that, we can work out the other details."

FROM WARRIOR TO "MARTYR" Marwan says waiting is the hardest aspect of a jihadi's transformation into a suicide bomber. Volunteers have to undergo a program to discipline the mind and cleanse the soul. The training, supervised by field commanders and Sunni clerics sympathetic to the insurgency, is mainly psychological and spiritual. Besides the Koran, he says, "I read about the history of jihad, about great martyrs who have gone before me. These things strengthen my will." One popular source of inspiration for suicide bombers is The Lover of Angels, by Abdullah Azzam, one of Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentors, which tells stories of jihadis who died fighting Soviet occupying troops in Afghanistan. And Marwan is listening to taped speeches that address subjects like the rewards that await warriors in heaven. In recent months, jihadist groups have also begun showing recruits lurid videos of successful suicide hits. A U.S. official in Baghdad who studies suicide terrorism says some volunteers even visit the sites of previous bombings for inspiration.

Marwan says would-be "martyrs" may use their waiting time to take care of business--paying off debts, resolving family matters, saying farewells. Some destroy any photographs of themselves; extremist Islamists regard pictures as a sign of vanity and therefore taboo. Others compile lists of the 70 people Islamic tradition says a "martyr" can guarantee a place in paradise. "I haven't got my 70 names yet--I don't think I know that many people," Marwan says, allowing himself a rare smile. Some dig graves for themselves and leave instructions on the way they should be buried--generally with simple headstones. Marwan says he won't need a grave: "If I am lucky, my body will be vaporized. There won't be anything left of me to bury."...

Marwan says the occasional bomber may ask to be chained to the wheel to make sure he doesn't flinch at the last moment. "If you have any little doubt in your mind about your own ability to carry out the mission, you do that to make sure you don't lose your courage," he says. He scoffs at reports that some suicide bombers are intoxicated. "Those who go on these missions know that they are about to see their Creator," he says. "Do you think we would meet Allah in a state of drunkenness or drugged? It is unthinkable."

Toward the end of the cleansing period, a bomber may ask a fellow jihadi, one better versed in religious doctrine, to help with the final spiritual preparation. Marwan says he was asked to mentor a friend intent on martyrdom earlier this year. He expects his final weeks to be a period of euphoria rather than penance. "My friend was happier than I had ever seen him," Marwan says. "He felt he was close to the end of his journey to heaven." (The friend, he says, blew himself up two months ago at a checkpoint manned by Iraqi soldiers near Ramadi, capital of the turbulent Anbar province, and six were killed. "We made a pact that we would meet in heaven," Marwan says.)

"I AM A TERRORIST" Marwan seems certain he is on a "pure" path. Unlike many other insurgents, who reject the terrorist label and call themselves freedom fighters or holy warriors, Marwan embraces it. "Yes, I am a terrorist," he says. "Write that down: I admit I am a terrorist. [The Koran] says it is the duty of Muslims to bring terror to the enemy, so being a terrorist makes me a good Muslim." He quotes lines from the surah known as Al-Anfal, or the Spoils of War: "Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemy of Allah and your enemy."...

That would be Sura 8:60.

"It doesn't matter whether people know what I did," he says. "The only person who matters is Allah--and the only question he will ask me is 'How many infidels did you kill?'"

'My dream was to be a suicide bomber. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews. Yes, even babies'

More peace and tolerance. From the Telegraph, with thanks to Doc Washburn:

It was about midday when a young Palestinian woman from the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza approached an Israeli checkpoint clutching a special permit to visit a doctor on the other side of the border.

The girl had big, brown eyes and her black hair was tied in a ponytail, but it was the strangeness of her gait that attracted the attention of the security officials at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.

That afternoon, on June 21, the 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss, was brought before the press by Israeli intelligence. Her neck and hands were covered with scars caused by a kitchen gas explosion six months earlier. The ugly scars - which had been treated in a hospital in Israel - had probably helped turn her into the perfect would-be huriia (virgin), the ideal martyr, since they would make it difficult for her to find a suitable husband.

The decision to publicise her case was intended to show that a terrorist threat remains despite a lull in the intifada since the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire agreement at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February.

According to the Israeli doctor who attended Wafa at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, she received blood transfusions during her treatment. "I told her, with a laugh, that now she has Jewish blood in her veins," he said, adding sadly that she had "seemed so nice - we got a lovely thank you letter from her family.''

Wafa had been sent on her mission by the Abu Rish Brigade, the small militant faction with links to Fatah. She did not, she said later, regret it, though she stressed that her decision had had nothing to do with her scarring. "My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

Asked whether she had considered the consequences of her planned attack, that it might have now precluded access to Israel for Palestinian patients who meant no harm and needed special medical treatment that could be achieved only here, she answered: "So what?" With a flat look in her eyes, she said: "They pay you the cost of the treatment, don't they?"

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"

Yes, and I remember that the story was trumped-up.

Then she started to cry. ''I don't want my mother to see me like this. After all, I haven't killed anyone … will they have pity on me?'' It is unlikely. Wafa has become one of a very special group of females: the women who have tried - and failed - to die while killing for the Palestinian cause. I recently visited the Israeli jail that holds these "suicide women" near the finest Israeli villas, in the heart of the most fertile area of the country, the Plain of Sharon.

They are here, and still alive, because they changed their minds at the last moment, because they were arrested, or because, like Wafa, they did not succeed. They are kept in a kind of labyrinth, behind seven, or perhaps eight, iron doors and gates, at the end of long corridors to which few people are allowed access, and which are reached after climbing and descending one flight of stairs after another....

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: "Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs]."

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair".

Her fellow prisoner, Kahira Saadi, from Jenin, is one of the jail celebrities. A mother of four, aged 27, she was held responsible for an attack in which three people died and 80 were injured. Zipi Shemesh, five months' pregnant, and her husband, Gad, were among the dead. They had gone to an ultrasound appointment and had left their two daughters, Shoval, seven, and Shahar, three, with a babysitter. They never came back.

Kahira was given three life sentences and another 80 years. She looked pale, sad, anguished. I asked her if the dead tormented her during the night. "No," she said. "Anyway, the actual attacker would have blown himself up even without me. I didn't kill anyone myself, physically."

Who do your children live with? "With my mother-in-law, my husband is in jail, too."

Aren't you sorry you ruined their lives as well as your own? "I did it to defend them. I'm not sorry, we're at war. But perhaps I wouldn't do it again. It was an impulse," Kahira answered balefully.

I think the real reason for what you did was different from the official one. "You're right," she said, "but I'm not going to tell you what the reason was."

You're paying heavily for it. Who comes to see you here? "Nobody came for the first two years, but now my children are beginning to come."

Have you had the courage to tell them you're never going to get out of here? "No, and I trust that God will solve my problem somehow. I tell you again that I didn't physically kill anyone that day."

What did you do? "I helped the attacker to get into Jerusalem. I gave him some flowers to hold in his hands."

When? "I don't remember the exact date, only that it was Mother's Day. That's why I prepared him some flowers."

Then it was February, I told her.

"How can you remember it so well?" she asked.

Because my son was killed on Mother's Day, I said, and I watched as she grew pale and seemed to stagger.

No, it wasn't you, I explained. He was killed in 1998, while your attack was in 2002. But we certainly have an anniversary in common.

At this, Kahira gave me a look that I'll never be able to describe. She didn't utter another word.

Freed hostage said he witnessed killings

More revelations from Douglas Wood, from UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

An Australian freed after 47 days as a hostage in Iraq has spoken on Australian television about the shooting of two fellow detainees in the same room.

Douglas Wood, 63, also told Channel Ten of his efforts to retain his sanity during his captivity by replaying his life, the BBC reported Sunday.

Wood, who was bound and gagged by his captors, heard two Iraqi captives being shot on successive nights in the same room where he was being held and thought: "When is my turn?"

"Jihad..Jihad..Jihad !! Finish with the jewish vermin once and forever !!"

Hot on the heels of our peek inside the fever swamps of the ITS (and they are even more fevered today, but as they are writing material hoping that I will post it here I am not going to oblige), here are some sentiments of peace and tolerance expressed by posters to the Islamic Action Group, a Yahoo Group (thanks to Designnut). They are responding to this news item: Liberating Palestine: Hamas says diplomacy failure, promises to 'liberate' Palestine from Mediterranean to Jordan River.

-- In Islamic_Action_Group@yahoogroups.com, Aeisha Muhammad wrote:

As-Salaamu' Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatu

ALLAHU AKBAR !!

ALLAH BLESS HAMAS AND PEOPLE OF PALESTINE !

The best thing that could happen would be for the PA to be dismantled and for Hamas to take over the affairs of Palestine.

May ALLAH bring down the murderers of Abu Ammar and destroy the PA SO that Hamas may better safeguard Palestine and lead it to full liberation from the jewish Zionist vermin in 'israel'.

Conspiracy paranoia alert: "the murderers of Abu Ammar"? That's Arafat. Who are his murderers? The guys he contracted AIDS from?

LONG LIVE PALESTINE FREE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA !!

Fi AmmanALLAH
from the servant of ALLAH
Shayhka Maulani Aeisha Muhammad

The response to this:

--- jabrginap wrote:

After all the targeted assasinations, with one of the worst being being the sniper in the plane asking Sharon by plane if it was okay to 'take the shot' and then when told yes, he put a missile in Sheikh Yassin's wheelchair outside the mosque. It is like Azzam said, "there is no discussion, there is no dialogue, there is jihad and there is your rifle". The shaheed motto remains "until victory or martyrdom, it is a jihad" because jihad was written on the hearts of the faithful by Allah himself.

Azzam, of course, was one of the founders of Al-Qaeda. Yassin was the wheelchair-bound mass murderer who led Hamas until the incident referred to here.

The original poster replied:

To: Islamic_Action_Group@yahoogroups.com From: "Aeisha Muhammad"

Subject: Re: [Islamic_Action_Group] Re: Hamas: sees diplomacy failure, promises to 'liberate' Palestine from Mediterranean to Jordan River

My sentiments exactly

ALLAHU AKBAR !!

Jihad..Jihad..Jihad !! Finish with the jewish vermin
once and forever !!

Top Zarqawi aide killed in US attack

Another one down. "Top Zarqawi aide ‘killed’ in US attack," from DPA, with thanks to Eschwapp:

AMMAN — A senior member of Iraq’s Al Qaeda branch was killed recently in a US crackdown on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Qaim near the Syrian border, a Jordanian newspaper reported yesterday.

Khalid Suleiman Darwish, better known as Abu Alghadiya, was among those killed in the operation, the daily Alghad quoted “well- informed sources” as saying.

Abu Alghadiya, a Syrian dentist married to a Jordanian woman, was described by Arab media as the ‘number two’ in Iraq’s Al Qaeda network and tipped to succeed its leader Abu Musab Al Zarqawi....

According to the Jordanian paper, Abu Alghadiya and Al Zarqawi were among the founders of the ‘Syria Warriors’ group in Afghanistan in late 1999.

They later moved to Iraq, where they founded the “Monotheism and Jihad” faction before declaring allegiance to Osama bin Laden and joining Al Qaeda terrorist network, the report said.

Fitzgerald: Countering the Jihad

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald on how to find a solution to our current problems:

"When I ask her what "solution" there might be to prevent the European collapse of which she speaks, Ms. Fallaci flares up like a lit match. "How do you dare to ask me for a solution?" --- from a recent interview

The word "solution" is the wrong word. Had the reporter asked, or had Fallaci replied, that "what could be done to limit the damage, to contain or reverse the power of Muslims and the Jihad worldwide" then a coherent answer might have been offered, by Fallaci or by someone else.

The "containment of Communism" worked. Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and before that in Eastern and Central Europe, and is now coming undone in China. Why? It collapsed because a sufficient number of people realized it was a farce and a failure, a failure in the very area -- the delivery of material wellbeing to the masses -- where it had most insistently promised it would be a success.

Who created the conditions for that failure to be perceived? The United States, and with the United States, other Western powers that countered Soviet propaganda and produced propaganda of their own, that did everything they could to check Soviet power once they came to their senses in the late 1940s (a little late for those countries already suffering Stalin's presence, or that of his local agents).
The Marshall Plan. NATO. Radio Free Liberty. Radio Free Europe. The Berlin Airlift. The suppression of Communist rebels in Greece. The Korean War. The money that went to non-Communist political parties all over Europe. The money that went to support newspapers and publishing houses all over Europe. The assistance or encouragement of various revolts inside the Soviet Union -- the "Forest Brotherhood" for example (the "Leshiye"). The bases everywhere. The anti-Communist propaganda. Decades of it, and trillions spent. And you know what? It worked. A group of people within the Soviet system came to some conclusions of their own about the moral and economic failures of Communism.

This can be done, more slowly, more deliberately, with Islam, and the Jihad that is central to Islam. The Infidel lands and peoples must first learn about Islam -- not from Muslims, or for that matter from non-Muslim propagandists, some of them hirelings, others ideologically wedded to Islam perhaps because it is now the most obvious vehicle of expressing one's hatred of, and alienation from, the Western world and, especially, the United States. They must thoroughly understand the texts. And then they must learn about Muslim conquest of non-Muslim peoples, and how those peoples were, in time and space, treated. And they must learn the kinds of things that Muslim apologists -- including those who are the most effective of all, the smooth-tongued "moderates" who, while seeming to denounce this or that terrorist act, will immediately be defensive about Islam itself, try to convince unwary Infidels that "Islam" has "nothing to do" with this, whether it is bombs going off, or the murder of apostates and others, or the mistreatment of women. Recently, on The Connection, all three of the "guests" -- one Hussein Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador, and the still-clueless-about-Islam Nicholas Kristof, and someone formerly in the State Department -- were quite insistent that the Pakistani lady, Ms. Bibi, who was gang-raped, suffered from people whose acts of course "had nothing to do with Islam." That's right, nothing: not the texts, not the attitudes those texts engender -- Muslims pervaded with Islam but whose actions "had nothing to do with Islam".

Here are some basic principles for that policy of containing Islam:

1) Recognition that the presence of large numbers of Muslims is a security threat and one which Infidels need not inflict on themselves. All over Western Europe, it is dawning on people, or rather has already dawned and they are furious that the ruling elites are pretending such a problem does not exist, that the lives of the indigenous Infidels, and of non-Muslim immigrants (Chinese, Indians, Vietnamese, and so on), are made far more unpleasant, expensive (the huge costs of monitoring Muslim groups, protecting likely targets, investigating and prosecuting and imprisoning those found to be actively planning or engaged in terrorist acts), and physically dangerous (Geert Wilders, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others must now go around with half-a-dozen bodyguards apiece; non-Muslims have found that whole areas of their countries are no-go for non-Muslims) due to the rapidly increasing numbers of Muslims among them.

2) Recognition that the oil wealth that has provided Arab and Muslim OPEC members with nearly $10 trillion in undeserved revenues since 1973 is what finances the world-wide Jihad. It pays for weapons. It pays for weapons projects. It pays for mosques, for madrasas, for propaganda. It pays for the vast army of hirelings, all over the Western world, who have for too long been allowed to make propaganda for the Saudis and others -- hard propaganda, and soft. These include ex-diplomats, ex-intelligence agents, journalists and producers of sham books, academics (who may benefit from Arab and Muslim money in their very own "Muslim-Christian Centers" or simply from a nice King Abdul Aziz Chair in thisandthat), and of course businessmen eager for contracts. Think of how, during the debate over whether to sell AWACS to Saudi Arabia back in 1980-81, all sorts of American corporations doing business there, from United Technologies to Whitney, rushed to paint Saudi Arabia as a true-blue friend of the West --when it was then, just as much as it is now, a place full of anti-Infidel venom, taught from the earliest schooldays, and infecting every part of Saudi life. A few remarkable people manage to fight their way out of this nonsense, but only a very few -- and policy for and by Infidels cannot be made on the basis of an exceptional and nearly imperceptible handful.

Every attempt must be made to diminish Saudi and other Muslim oil-state revenues. Every other kind of energy source must be encouraged and subsidized. In wartime, one does not rely on the free market to produce a Manhattan Project, or for a bunch of entrepreneurs to set up shop at Los Alamos. The government enters the picture. The government should enter this picture, and devote a few hundred billion dollars -- the sums now being squandered, or contemplated being squandered, on keeping Iraq together.

There is the little matter as well of whether the natural world will survive, and in what fashion - you know, global warming and all that? And as it happens, the most important thing that must be done for our environment, and our mental health, is the same thing that must be done to limit the power of Islam -- diminish the use of fossil fuels. It should not be beyond the wit of those who are alarmed about the world-wide threats to the environment, or about the world-wide threat of Jihad, to ally themselves with one another, to make common cause.

3) Diminishing the oil wealth is not enough. All Infidel aid to Muslim countries, all transfers of wealth that have been based on a misunderstanding, and the belief that "Poverty" is the problem or at least, if Muslims are made richer (ideally, just like Muslims in Saudi Arabia) they will calm down, and turn to other things – all this must stop. Not only is there no evidence for it, but all the evidence suggests the exact contrary. Money in Muslim hands will inevitably damage Infidels. "Poverty" is not the problem; the ideology of Islam is the problem. It would be far better to create a situation in which all those poorer Muslim states and people -- Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinians" -- should not receive any American or other Infidel funds. Let them go, hat or explosives in hand, to the rich Arabs, and demand that they support their less fortunate brethren in the name of Arab and Muslim solidarity. Either the money will be forthcoming, which will mean the Saudis and others will have less to spend on Da'wa and encouragement of Muslims in Infidel lands by building mosques and madrasas, but will now go to paying for bread and infrastructure in Cairo or Amman, or the money will not be forthcoming, in which case intra-Muslim hatreds based on the resentment and envy of the poor Arabs and Muslims for the rich ones, will develop. We should do everything we can, at every international gathering, to put a spotlight on Saudi, U.A.E., and Kuwaiti revenues, and on the real, as opposed to exaggerated, size of their populations. We need not let anyone, least of all fellow Arabs, just how much money those other Arabs -- who are despised as more primitive even if richer -- possess. "Class warfare" in the Muslim world? You bet.

4) Make it impossible for the Arabs and Muslims to acquire major weaponry. Any WMD anywhere in the Muslim world, however seemingly friendly or benign the regime, cannot be tolerated. It is a threat to all Infidels. Make it much more difficult, if not entirely impossible, and certainly much more expensive, for Arabs and Muslims to buy the fruits of Western technology, or to obtain access to Western education. They should no longer believe they can buy whatever they want from the very Infidels they despise and whose lands they intend, however long it takes, to islamize. They have no real sympathy for Infidels -- how could they, given what is written in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira? It is only to the extent that a particular Muslim does not fully subscribe to Islam -- i.e., is a "bad" Muslim -- that he may have some scintilla of real, rather than feigned, friendliness for the Infidel West.

A barrel of Saudi oil that now costs $1 to lift sells for $50. Fine. The next time Saudis wish to get medical care at a Western hospital, let them be charged accordingly -- by government fiat, let all those who come from OPEC states be forced to pay special prices that reflect their own prices. In other words, try to figure out how the Mass. General, for example, could bill a Saudi patient not the same amount that a non-Saudi is billed, but 50 times that rate? Or if this cannot be done, then the American (and other Western) governments should have special "security taxes" imposed on all Muslim visitors, so that every time a Saudi goes off to Europe or America (both regarded as large shopping malls, fun fairs, and brothels) let a gigantic entry fee be imposed.

5) Let the rich Arabs and Muslims know that their property in the West is not permanently safe, and that it may be seized -- as the property of German nationals was seized by the American government in World War II. Many rich Saudis have acquired illiquid real estate holdings, not always in the Prince-Bandar manner (the estate in Virginia, the Aspen ski house with views, the Plantagenet hunting-lodge), but a good many have. The Al-Saud also owns a lot of other kinds of real estate. Hard to get rid of that quickly, and to pay for the anti-Jihad war, the Americans would be perfectly justified in seizing that property, and so would other Infidel countries threatened by the Saudi money that pours into the mosques that are built, and also maintained, by direct or indirect Saudi funding, and that of other Arabs. This has to stop, and so many of the obvious things that could be done, or at least threatened, are not being done, have not even been discussed.

6) Counter-Jihad: as the Americans during the Cold War paid for Encounter magazine, or for special publishing houses that produced emigre Russian literature (Editions de la Seine, for example), and subsidized Die Monat and other publications, they can do the same today.

Where is the American money that will subsidize publication of various studies of Islam by the greatest scholars of the past, who did not mince words? Who will subsidize mass printing and distribution of books by Henri Lammens, or Snouck Hurgronje, or W.R.W. Gairdner, or K. S. Lal, or Bat Y'eor, or Zwemer or Muir or a hundred others? Who will establish, with secret funds, broadcasting stations where apostates from Islam, defectors from Islam, can tell the stories of why they left Islam, and tell those stories not only in English, but in Farsi, or in Urdu, or even in Arabic? And if the government simply cannot do this (out of a crazy, and self-defeating fear), even by presenting these speakers as figures of note, who deserve a hearing, and not as anti-Jihad propaganda, then what large foundations, what discerning rich, will step into the breach, if for no other reason than to an ensure that their own children have some kind of future?

7) Identify those populations whom the Muslim supporters of Da'wa have themselves identified as particularly vulnerable to being "turned" into agents of Islam, into those who will sign up for the Army of Islam, which -- at this point, after all that has happened -- is the only way one can properly view someone who now converts to Islam. Ten or twenty years ago, such conversion might possibly have seemed bizarre, but not necessarily a declaration of war on Infidels and their society. But that was then. And this is now. And we now know, or are aware, or are dimly aware, that there is something about Islam that our leaders are not telling us, that The New Duranty Times is not telling us, that PBS is definitely not telling us. Large numbers of people are beginning to get the idea that there is something about Islam itself that explains, not only terrorism, nor the mistreatment of women, nor the inability of Muslim societies to encourage scientific inquiry, or much in the way of artistic expression (official Islam bans music, painting of living creatures, sculpture; this makes Zayd and Amr very dull boys indeed).
These populations -- such as prisoners, or immigrant populations-- targeted by Muslims for conversion -- need to be targeted as well by those who regard Islam as a menace, and wish to inhibit its growth. Counter-Da'wa must take place everywhere.

8) Wherever there are natural fissures within Islam, or wherever such fissures can be created -- as by removing Western aid, and forcing Egypt, Jordan et al to go hat in hand to the rich Arabs of the Gulf, which can only increase intra-Arab tensions (think back to Nasser's hatred of the Saudis, and of how that played out in the early 1960s, with that proxy war in Yemen between left-wing Nasserites and monarchists backed by Saudi Arabia) -- let them widen. Do nothing to narrow them.

Iraq is the best place, the very best place, to allow the resentments of non-Arab Muslims at the Arab supremacist ideology (which is implicit in Islam, and sometimes explicit), an ideology which was expressed in the mass murder, by Arabs, of the Kurds in Iraq, a mass murder that no one in the Arab League or anywhere in the Arab Press thought to denounce, or even to mention. And a free Kurdistan would be a permanent unsettling presence -- unsettling to Iran, to Syria, to Iraq itself, and to Turkey, a country which now needs us far more than we, during the Cold War, needed it. And especially now that it has dawned on the Turks that they will not be admitted to the E.U., and if they wish to thank anyone for that rejection, they should thank the Arabs, the Arabs who bomb, the Arabs who threaten, the Arabs within Europe -- magrhebins for the most part -- who have given Islam such a bad name. And let Turkish resentment be directed not at a non-existent "Christian" Europe, but at fellow Muslims -- the already-despised Arabs. From our point of view, and from that of secular Turks who look with horror on the backsliding into Islam, any animus that can be carefully channeled or directed toward the Arabs is also a way of weakening Islam, in Turkey, and without.

And Iraq is, of course, the country that bestraddles the fault-line of Shi'a and Sunni. Let those tectonic plates move about, and let Shi'a from elsewhere who have been persecuted by Sunnis (from Pakistan to eastern Saudi Arabia) take a sympathetic interest in the Shi'as. Might it even be that the sinister members of Hezbollah would find their Shi'a identity causing them to look a bit more hostilely at Sunnis in and out of Lebanon, and the Sunnis, in turn, regarding them not as fellow Muslims but as threatening Shi'a?
Ask yourself this: was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing, or a bad thing, from the Infidel point of view? You know the answer.

There is much more one could add.

But the point is made. Fallaci has her points. She is brave. She is outspoken. She has correctly and furiously identified the full horror both of Islam and of the islamization of Europe. She recoils from the idiocy of the age, that counsels appeasement and practices denial.

But La Fallaci also has a defect. She has identified the problem, but cannot stop to think exactly what is to be done, what can be done. She is sometimes criticized for self-dramatization, or "protagonismo." She puts herself as the passionate heroine of her own drama. It's okay. On her it looks good. But nonetheless, after the passion and the fury, one has to sit down and think: What Is To Be Done? And if that is not done, if all she can offer is a dramatic allusion to Seneca because she cannot think what could, quite reasonably, be done -- and be done not least because her own example shows what one person can accomplish (all three of her books are all over Italy, and all three have had a great impact, though her local allusions, and her insistence on translating her own book into English and French, have limited their appeal outside Italy, in countries she is not nearly as celebrated a figure).

Sit down. Think what you would do to counter the various instruments of Jihad. And to whom would you appeal for support? And in what words would you wish to couch this counter-Jihad?

"As Muslims, our allegiance is only to Allah (SWT) and His messenger and the Muslim Ummah (community)"

Yamin Zakaria at Al-Jazeerah (not the Qatari TV station) takes issue with the recent knighthood of the Muslim Council of Britain's Iqbal Sacranie -- and with the very idea that a Muslim can have allegiance to a non-Muslim state. Sacranie and MCB spokesman Inayat Bunglawala should refute this article using Islamic texts -- if they can -- if they don't want young Muslims in Britain to be swayed by it. But 10 to 1 they just ignore it.

The problem is not so much that he is saying that Allah's law supersedes human law, but that the content of that law is so much in opposition with Western norms and values. How long will Britain and other Western countries survive without facing up to that opposition?

"Knights and Lords of the 'Muslim Council of Britain' in Service of Whom?" from Al-Jazeerah (thanks to Nicolei):

“Although those with narrow minded view point may seek to rebel in France, and I think a very tiny number of school girls have still defied the ban but the vast majority have obeyed it...” (Inayat Bunglawala – Secretary, Media Committee of MCB)

These are the words of a leading member of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), who are supposed to be the voice of the Muslim community in the UK. In reality, the MCB was setup by the British government and (one might question whether) the government contributes substantial funding towards it.

Only someone who is Islamically-illiterate or a belligerent enemy would scorn Muslims for striving to uphold Islamic commandments (Sharia laws) as “narrow-minded” or “rebellious”. Had the likes of Kilroy-Silk, Richard LittleJohn, Melanie Phillips or Polly Toynbee uttered those words, it would have been understandable; and expected because they have said much worse about Islam and Muslims. But, how can such hateful anti-Islamic rhetoric emanate from the spokesman of the MCB, Inayat Bunglawala.

Even someone with an elementary education in Islam would know that countless verses of the Holy Quran and numerous Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet (SAW)), confirm that rewards of heaven (paradise) in the Hereafter for those who abide by the Sharia laws; especially when one is striving to fulfil them under hardship. We are talking about something as fundamental and well-established as Khimar (Hijab, Islamic scarf) that is worn by the Muslim women all over the world from the inception of Islam. If the MCB claims to be a voice for Muslims at the very least one would expect its prominent members to defend the basic core values of Islam, in the face of an attack by the non-Muslims and even remaining relatively silent or neutral is unacceptable.

However, to the contrary, the courageous sisters in France were mocked by the MCB ‘man’ (Inayat Bunglawala) instead of coming to their defence! A clear sign of treachery and cowardice! The MCB to date has not reprimanded ‘him’ nor have they officially voiced their opposition to the despicable words uttered by Inayat Bunglawala in the same public forum in which he spoke, for all to observe. Therefore, ‘he’ (Inayat Bunglawala) must be either a belligerent enemy of Islam like those newspaper ‘columnists’ and/or Islamically-illiterate.

Now you get the classic spin, as many would claim that words of Inayat Bunglawala were expressed in ‘his’ personal capacity and nothing to do with the MCB as an organisation. But surely, even the personal opinions of a leading member of the organisation cannot run contrary to the core values of the organisation. Just like a Rabbi cannot occupy a post within the leadership of an Islamic organisation! Either the Rabbi is not genuine or the organisation is not Islamic in nature.

Any Muslim passed the age of puberty knows that any order to commit a sin (Haram) is invalid, and should be disobeyed even it comes from an Imam, let alone an infidel. Even many non-Muslims view our sisters in France for wearing the Khimar, in defiance of the French government, with admiration instead of scorning them as “narrow minded”. So, why the MCB allows this ‘man’ (Inayat Bunglawala) to utter such outrageous words with impunity that are deeply offensive to the Muslims and contrary to the basic teaching of Islam?...

Obeying the “Law of the Land” or the Islamic Sharia?

‘Mufti’ Inayat invoked a principle in support of his claim that the Muslim women in France are obliged to obey the French law, therefore they should not wear the Khimar as prescribed by the Quran; otherwise it is a sign of rebellion and constitutes being a “narrow minded” person. Inayat Bunglawala stated that: “Even if the law of the land contradicts the Sharia then you still have to obey the law of the land or you get out of the land, go some where else where you are able to live by the Sharia.”

According to this form of reasoning, if the French government ordered the women to wear a bikini in schools, the Muslims women should also obey the “law-of-the-land”. Likewise, if the government forced the recognition of gay marriages on mosques, then that too should be obeyed under the same principle; and according to Inayat Bunglawala’s argument it would be ‘Islamic’. Oh really? I am sure by now most Muslims, or even the non-Muslim readers, can see the sheer idiocy of this sort of argument. Something emanating from a non-Islamic source by definition cannot be Islamic, especially when the two positions are in contradiction.

There is no such principle within Islam that says you have to obey any laws other than what Allah (SWT) has revealed. It is outrageous to claim that the “law-of-the-land” supersedes the Sharia laws, if so then what value and authority does the Sharia laws have? Who then has primacy, the Creator or the created? You cannot make the servant the master over his Lord. Common sense and logic tells us that our Lord could not have ordered us to obey Him and then ordered us to disobey him if the “law of the land” contradicts it? One cannot obey and disobey the same authority simultaneously. To legitimise obedience to anyone or anything else, other than Allah (SWT), is a clear act of major Shirk (polytheism) and Kufr (disbelief) which takes ! one out of the fold of Islam.

Living under the authority of the non-Muslims, we are permitted to ‘obey’ (observe) and disobey their laws depending upon the circumstances, but the precise explanation for the possible scenarios is as follows:

a) If the authority commands us to commit an act that is explicitly forbidden or to abstain from an Islamic obligation, then we are obliged to give total disobedience and offer maximum resistance within our capabilities; that is the basic principle. However, due to the implication in terms of facing duress from the authority, for example prison sentences, individuals will be permitted (not obliged) to obey the rules. But for those who strive against the evil, even up to martyrdom, will be rewarded. They are praise-worthy and most definitely not "narrow minded".

b) There are laws that have been enacted by the non-Islamic authority which could also have been enacted within the Islamic state, such as collection of taxes, we are permitted to observe these laws, if we are able to, out of respect, and maintaining harmony and to prevent harm from falling upon the Muslim community as a whole and harming the cause of Islamic propagation (Dawa). However, note that we are permitted to observe these laws from the Sharia, but it is not mandatory, unless the above-mentioned reasons are applicable.

c) There are laws that have permitted actions that are not sanctioned by Islam; we are not permitted to commit these acts, as for example engaging in gambling, drinking, fornication etc. The principle of obeying the, “law-of-the-land”, would permit those actions of major sins that are explicitly forbidden by the Islamic texts. Because even observing non-mandatory laws display a form of obedience to the “law-of-the-land”.

d) Finally, those laws that consanguine with the Sharia, as an example the prohibition to cause nuisance to your neighbours. We observe these laws out of the Sharia obligations not because we should obey the “law-of-the-land” but because obedience is only to Allah (SWT) and to claim that we should obey other than Allah (SWT) is a clear act of Shirk (polytheism)!

Allegiance

As Muslims, our allegiance is only to Allah (SWT) and His messenger and the Muslim Ummah (community). This is something expected from any community, Jews, Christians, atheists, agnostics, etc each would observe allegiance to their own community. So expecting the MCB to show its allegiance towards the Muslims is not only natural but demanded by the Sharia very clearly.

The obvious implication is that we are prohibited from fighting against Muslims in alliance with the non-Muslims. For those who fought under the American flag in the first Gulf war committed a clear act of Kufr and apostasy. May Allah (SWT) give them their just reward in this life and the hereafter. Similarly those Muslims joining up to fight fellow Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq have committed similar acts of highest treachery, Kufr and apostasy.

Read it all. As with Zarqawi's recent letter justifying the killing of Muslims in his operations, this is a detailed Islamic argument. Those who profess Islamic moderation should refute it if they can, and if they really wish their views to prevail in the Islamic community. But again and again they don't do this -- now why is that?

70 British Muslims join Iraq fighters

More from the Whose Side Are You On Department, from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Nicolei:

ABOUT 70 young Muslim men have left Britain to join the insurgents who are fighting coalition troops in Iraq, senior security sources have revealed.

At least three have been killed in combat, including one whose role in an Iraq suicide bombing in February was disclosed by police only last week.

The growing problem of militants from Britain travelling to Iraq has been highlighted by Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, in recent briefings to Tony Blair.

The MI5 boss warned the prime minister that would-be suicide bombers and other fighters who want to kill British and American troops were using “a number of routes” to get to Iraq from Britain. Most have travelled to Damascus in Syria before being smuggled over the border to meet rebel leaders.

Senior police sources say that they are trying to unravel a British-based network recruiting “martyrs” for the Islamic “holy war” in Iraq. The operation emerged following the arrest last week of a 40-year-old man who is alleged to have shared a house in Manchester with Idris Bazis, a 41-year-old French Algerian who blew himself up during a terrorist attack in Iraq four months ago....

The rebel commander, who used the name Abu Ahmad, said that another Briton, called Ammar and also 22, had been killed during clashes between Al-Qaeda and American troops around the time of the Falluja offensive in April last year. Ammar had travelled to Iraq with his brother Yassr, 18, shortly after the fall of Baghdad in March 2003. “They could not wait to go out and fight and kept on asking when they would go into battle,” the commander said.

He said that Al-Qaeda had “branches, supporters and financiers” in Britain as well as in France, Spain and Germany.

Islamic Jihad: we'll strike Tel Aviv

"Islamic Jihad Challenges Israel Amid Growing Anarchy," from Israel National News, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Islamic Jihad terror leaders declared they will end the "calm" and strike Tel Aviv if Israel tries to capture or kill them. Meanwhile, Arabs continued shooting each other in Jenin.

Israel earlier this week arrested 50 Islamic Jihad terrorists, including several who were not "ticking bombs," following a continued escalation in terrorism which killed an IDF soldier and a civilian. Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, quoted in an Arab newspaper in Lebanon, warned Israel that if goes after terrorist leaders, the diplomatic process will end immediately.

Abu Udai, a leading terrorist of the Jenin branch of Fatah party's military arm, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, threatened that "suicide bombers will shake the heart of Israel and Tel Aviv" if Israel does not stop arresting terrorists.

Indonesia: Schooled For Jihad

Noor Huda Ismail investigates the jihadists in Indonesia, including Abu Bakar Baasyir (Bashir), whom we have discussed many times here. Why do officials allow him to teach a course on Islam in the prison? Is that not simply creating a new contingent of jihadists? It indicates, of course, that their ideology doesn't differ from his. From the Washington Post (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

It is visiting hour at Jakarta's Cipinang Prison and its most famous inmate, the Muslim preacher Abubakar Baasyir, sits on a wooden bench surrounded by a dozen acolytes, assistants and lawyers. Several prisoners attend to him, including a confessed terrorist who has become the cleric's servant and coordinates a team of six to wash his clothes and cook his meals without pay. Prison officials allow Baasyir to teach a class on Islam to fellow inmates four times a week; about 100 prisoners attend each session....

Baasyir is holding court in prison instead of his home or office because Indonesian prosecutors have accused him of being the emir of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. In a 65-page indictment, they alleged that he was involved in "planning and/or encouraging other people to commit terrorism" including the 2003 bombing of the J. W. Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, where 12 people were killed, and the 2002 bombing of a resort in Bali, where 202 people were killed. A court cleared Baasyir in the Marriott attack and found him guilty of approving of (but not of ordering) the Bali bombings....

But for me, Baasyir's case poses a different question. That's because he was a co-founder of the Islamic boarding school, Al Mukmin Ngruki, where I spent six years studying in sweltering classrooms. While I chose a career in journalism, many of my fellow students made a different choice. Dozens of Ngruki's alumni have been accused of taking part in a wave of terrorist attacks against Westerners in Indonesia. Security analysts and police investigators believe that the link is no coincidence. Sydney Jones of the International Crisis Group has called my alma mater an "Ivy League" for Jemaah Islamiyah recruits.

All of which makes me wonder: Why did so many of my fellow students end up choosing terrorism while I ended up writing about them?

To begin to answer that question, I decided to meet Abubakar Baasyir in jail. I contacted Hasyim, his soft-spoken liaison man, whose cell phone is constantly on. "Please come in," he said when I arrived. Using the word for teacher, he added, "Ustadz is ready."

After 10 minutes, the white bearded cleric entered. In his mid-sixties, he appeared in a white shirt and worn eyeglasses; a white box cap was perched on his head. Abdul Jabar, a JI member who admitted to blowing up an explosives-laden van at the house of the Philippine ambassador in 2000, accompanied him.

Baasyir, who proclaims himself an admirer of Osama bin Laden but still denies that he is a terrorist leader, said that he is just a victim of "the infidel Bush's America." Then he quoted a verse from the Koran: "The infidels will never stop fighting us until we follow their way." I know that verse by heart. We learned it in school....

Read it all.

"Darth Spencer, Master of the Dark Side"

This image comes to you from the passworded, Muslim-only forums of the Islamic Thinkers Society, the outfit that trampled on the flag on video and then wished painful torment from Allah on me when I posted the video -- which is tantamount to asking that someone fulfill Allah's will in this regard.

You can see that they have called this image "Darth Fagget." Don't these huckleberries know that I am neither "Darth Fagget" nor "Darth Spencer," but Freakin' Batman?

The ITS is feeling the heat. Here is a note from another place, from the Administrator over there:

One of the brothers from I.T.S. was interviewed by the F.B.I. the day after the article on NY Times was published. The conversation was recorded on audio and will be available shortly once we find out the legality of it. The main concern of the F.B.I. was about the video "Muslim Massacres" that aired on public television. The F.B.I. were concerned as to what the motive was behind putting this video up was. They were implying that we were using this video to incite people and "recruit" for jihad. What these F.B.I. agents did not realize was that in the beginning of the video, there is a disclaimer clearly stating that this video is not published to incite anyone but rather to bring awareness as to what's happening around the world. They mention that NOW the I.T.S. have sparked interest in the F.B.I. and CAIR also stated that I.T.S. are under tight watch by the F.B.I. So the battle has taken a new front. There are various things that are happening within the community which are playing along the agenda of the F.B.I. There are three elements to this whole agenda. They are the Media, F.B.I. and the Muslim Community. Things are getting realy ugly here. However, this was bound to happen . We shall see where the eeman [faith] stands in the Muslim community...

And here are some gems from the accompanying thread, "Spencer's True form." The Darth Spencer photo was posted by one "Rayat Al Islam" (Standard of Islam), who has a headband in his avatar that says KILL JEWS. Some comments that followed (I have changed their order so as to end with the finale I thought most fitting):

"Here is the one who is Attacking our brothers in ITS, may allah (swt) protect them"

Read more about the filthy DOG:
http://wwww.jihadwatch.org/spencer/

May Allah mahis his efforts vain.
May Allah's curse be upon him. Ameen.

Don't be a girly man, grow a beard

May Allah (swt) give him the punishment he deserves.

Who said don't be a girly man, grow a beard? Ok, finally something to laugh at today.

SubhanAllah [Glory to Allah] he really looks Like a ignorant stupid geeky Kafir

But of course! That's because I am "a ignorant stupid geeky Kafir." A ignorant stupid geeky Kafir with easy access to your secret forums.

Muslim Hard-Liners Cheer Iran Vote Outcome

Was anyone really fooled by this sham election? From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

The leader of a hard-line Islamic group, however, praised the outcome.

"I'm glad and happy to know Iran's result," said Irfan Awwas, a leader of Majelis Mujahiddin Indonesia.

The group's founder, Abu Bakar Bashir, is jailed for his role in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

He said Iranians apparently believe Rafsanjani is "more fit to manage international relations, especially with Western countries, but not to lead the country."

Clerics led by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have true power in Iran and are able to overrule elected officials. But reformers, who lost parliament in elections last year, had been hoping to retain some hand in government.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also criticized the election.

"For the Iranian people to have a fully free choice about their country's future, they should be able to vote for candidates who hold the full range of political views, not just candidates selected for them," Straw said.

But it's all America's fault, of course:

Pakistani Muslim scholar Komaruddin Hidayat attributed the hard-liner's victory to anger over U.S. foreign policy.

"America has put Islam in a corner," Hidayat said. "America attacked Iraq based on false reasoning just as it did in Afghanistan. This has given conservatives the chance to gain power in some Islamic countries."

How then did they gain power in Iran, decades before America entered Iraq or Afghanistan?

Show me the money!

I was just sent a link to a silly discussion board on which this was written about me:

And Professors like THIS ONE, get alot of Money from the Goverment to write all of this Nonsense in his books.

Hang it all, I don't seem to have received my check from the "Goverment" lately. My Zionist check hasn't arrived either. In reality, Jihad Watch doesn't have anything approaching the budget we would need in order to do everything we would like to do to inform the public about the global jihad threat.

You mean, some people do this not for the money, but because they just think it's right? They'll defend human rights and equality of dignity for free? And I'm one of them? Dagnabbit, I missed the gravy train!

Lodi Imam Admits Giving Speeches Urging Pakistanis to Fight Americans

Ice cream jihad update from News10, with thanks to Twostellas:

The spiritual leader of the Lodi mosque who was arrested in a sweep earlier this month admitted to the FBI that when he was in Pakistan he gave speeches to Muslims urging them to fight Americans in Afghanistan in the months following the September 11 attacks.

However, in his immigration hearing on Friday, Shabbir Ahmed told a judge that "it was a requirement of all imams. If you don't people turn against you. They sort of force you to say something."

Ahmed, 39, a citizen of Pakistan, is fighting to stay in the U.S. after he being arrested two weeks ago in a sweep that also netted two men accused of having ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Ahmed was a student and then a teacher at the Jamia Farooqia, an Islamic university in Pakistan, during the 1990s. He came to the United States in January 2002 after he was recruited to be the imam at the Lodi mosque.

Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 2)

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald continues his reflections on what to do in Iraq with this exploration of the prospects for Iraqi nationalism, on which so many place such high hopes:

There are hardly any people in Iraq who think of themselves first as Iraqis, though every single one of those who does has apparently spoken at length to high American officials.

Iraq was spatchcocked together out of three quite different Ottoman vilayets: Mosul (predominately Kurd before the Arabs had a chance to arabize it), Baghdad (where a Sunni elite, and a Jewish merchant and professional class, existed when the British entered in 1920 -- and guess which group subsequently disappeared?), and Basra, which the India Office insisted be included, because it was seen as a potential breadbasket to supply the forces of the Raj.

In the 80 years since that happened, since Gertrude Bell noted the Shi'a unwillingness to be ruled by Sunnis, noted the mutual dislike of Kurd and Arab, what has happened? Have wonderful things happened that have made Kurds happy with Iraq, and created in them a sense of "nationalism"? Not at all. 182,000 Kurds were massacred by the Arabs under Saddam Hussein, and not a single Arab, including the opponents of Saddam Hussein within, and all the Arabs without, objected -- not a single syllable of protest came. After the fact, a handful of Westernized, sophisticated, and altogether unrepresentative people from Iraq -- a handful so tiny I can only offer one name, that of Kanan Makiya -- seemed to deplore the Arab massacre (for Saddam Hussein's orders were gleefully carried out, and enthusiastically supported, by all kinds of Arabs).

Are the Kurds likely, after this experience, to feel a new "nationalism"? All the evidence goes the other way. The same day as the ballyhooed election, when Shi'a trooped off to do what Al-Sistani told them to do, and the Sunnis stayed away, and the Kurds voted, those same Kurds also held a referendum on independence. It was not reported in the United States -- a reference here and there, mention by Peter Galbraith, and that's about it. And in that referendum 98% of the Kurds voted for independence. What does that tell us about the possibilities for the growth of "Iraqi nationalism"?

And the Shi'a? They now may prate about Iraq, and why not? They will rule that new Iraq. They can afford, now, to talk about Iraq, and "Iraqis." Iraq is theirs, if it holds together. They are in the catbird seat, and are ready to dole out to the Sunnis just a little of what was, over the last 80 years (and the percentage of Shi'a in the population has grown -- just as Muslims have far larger families than Infidels, in Iraq as in Lebanon, the Shi'a are simply outbreeding the Sunnis), doled out to them when the Sunnis were in control.

And the Sunnis? They only want an Iraq they can rule, or at the very least, an Iraq where they will not be left without any oil revenues (and the oilfields are in two places -- the Kurdish or formerly Kurdish lands in the north, near Mosul and Kirkuk, and in the south, among the Shi'a). So in a sense the Sunnis must pretend to like the idea of Iraq because, should it split up, they are the ones who will be left with nothing. But this is not real "nationalism." There is no Iraqi nationalism, whatever a handful of nice plausible bloggers from Iraq would have us believe, or would like to believe themselves.

As returning soldiers can tell you, those who worked closely with people in Iraq, those soldiers quickly came to refer to those people as "Kurds and Iraqis," so different were the Kurds in their attitude toward Americans (who are seen as allies, not enemies, not least because while the Arab identity reinforces Islam, the Kurdish identity offers an alternative to Islam, and undercuts the otherwise totalitarian hold of Islam). And what's more, the soldiers -- the discerning ones, the ones who take in their experience and make sense of it -- quickly realized that the Iraqi contractors and others were not out for Iraq, but demonstrated a fantastic "selfishness" (that is the word I have heard from soldiers), interested only in their own well-being, and after that, in that of their family, and after that, in their tribe, and that was the extent of their loyalty and interest. But even if that somehow were to go beyond the family and tribe to the ethnic or sectarian group, it is impossible to believe that a Kurd or a Shi'a or a Sunni Arab will work for something called "Iraq" and fight for "Iraq" (oh, that won't prevent someone from telling the Americans what he knows they want to here -- they want the Americans to stay, to fight for them, to lavish even more aid and of course, more military equipment on them -- of course they will offer the appropriate jabber about "Iraq").

There is no way to build real "nationalism" in Iraq. Instead, we should ruthlessly exploit the absence of such an identity, and take advantage -- by doing nothing to prevent -- of those natural fissures that stand permanently in the way of a stable, strong nation-state. It won't happen. Why fight it, when allowing Iraq's vilayets to re-emerge is in our interest, and not only in Iraq, but as a way to encourage fissures, and problems for Muslim countries, elsewhere.
We have to stop dreaming about the essential rationality and goodness of the whole wide world, and start calculating just a little bit the way we did in the Cold War, and in World War II. Or have we all become permanently stupid, unable to cast the necessary cold eye on men and events, and world-historical trends that can be used, or misused, in order to weaken and demoralize those who wish us only ill.

The ignis fatuus of a politically and morally healthy Iraqi nation-state, where Kurd and Arab, Sunni and Shi'a, all somehow get along in Rodney King-plea fashion, is being pursued at intolerable cost. It may not seem like a large cost, as Victor Davis Hanson keeps attempting to assure us by comparing it with the losses in World War II. But World War II made sense. The losses led to gains.
The losses in Iraq are in pursuit of a policy that does not make geopolitical sense. It is precisely because Islam, not "Wahhabi" Islam but Islam, is a world-wide problem, and that we must work to diminish all the weapons and instruments of Jihad, that we need to get out of Iraq and let nature take its course there. As long as major weaponry is kept out of Muslim hands (and Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons must never be repeated, and somehow must be undone), and Infidels stop all Muslim migration and oppose every demand by Muslims for changes in the political and social arrangements in Infidel lands, and work to make their own countries Islam-hostile rather than falling all over themselves to "integrate" their Muslim populations -- an impossibility for almost all Muslims, except those who jettison Islam altogether, and they no longer count as Muslims) which will merely provide the linguistic and cultural know-how to better infiltrate, and plausibly conduct Da'wa, among those same Infidels who pay for those lessons in Western languages, and how to pick up Infidel girls, and suchlike absurdities. What do we want -- an army of clever Tariq Ramadans, or do we prefer to have our Muslim propagandists a little less suave, a little more foreign-looking, a little easier to detect?

The danger is that the folly in Iraq will keep the American government from beginning to get a glimmer that it has no stake in this "Light Unto the Muslim Nations" Project, but does have a stake in creating the conditions -- okay, here goes, verbatim, for the five hundredth time -- where Muslims themselves can realize that the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of Muslim countries and peoples (a recognition that of course the $10 trillion that has gone to OPEC countries since 1973 manages to delay, or prevent) are directly attributable not to the hated Infidel, but to Islam itself.

Something like that may be happening to some people (but not enough) in Iran. It doesn't matter -- we still have to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity. That is a thousand times more important than "staying the course" or not "cutting and running" in Iraq. What are we, schoolboys in a schoolyard, showing we're not chicken, or readers of history, students of geopolitics, observers of the real, as opposed to the imaginary brave-new-world rhetoric about "democracy being on the march" and "our brave Iraqi friends" and all the rest of it.

Spare us, please. If you want to continue to fool yourselves, do it. But don't expect people to sign up for the National Guard or Reserves. Don't expect people to be furious that $300 billion has already been committed -- and what would sums like that do for nuclear and solar energy, to put Saudi Arabia back in the position it so richly deserves?

As more and more people learn about Islam, they will be less inclined to accept the nonsense about it from those who, out of ignorance, or fear of what to do next or how to handle it (this is what many call "denial"). The disaffection of people in Europe for their remote leaders who presumed to tell them what to do is obvious. The same thing may happen here. If one wishes to retain support for a very difficult, and varied, and essentially endless policy of confronting the Jihad in all of its instruments (that means counter-Da'wa, that means in Europe contemplating the necessity, as the Czechs once did, of mass expulsions) then the wrong policies must be jettisoned, not clung to, as soon as their wrongness has become evident.

It is evident. Don't cling out of wounded pride to a policy that costs lives and money and equipment and morale and attention. Don't.

British pilot held in Mexico over link with September 11

Yes, of course he is a Methodist....From The Telegraph, with thanks to Daryl:

A Briton who described himself as a wandering pilot has been detained by Mexican authorities and could be linked to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York, officials have said.

Amer Haykel, 45, identified as a British citizen of Lebanese descent, was arrested on Monday at the volunteer fire station of Todos Santos, on the Pacific coast about 35 miles north-west of Cabo San Lucas.

Mexico's federal attorney general's office said US authorities linked Haykel "to extremist groups believed to be involved with September 11 attacks in New York". It did not say if he faced any charges or if he was believed to be involved in any terrorist actions. Haykel told acquaintances that he was a pilot wandering the world. He seemed like "a straightforward person", said Gabriel Garcia, of the Cabo San Lucas fire station.

Al-Jazeera to document how easy it is to enter the US illegally

And no doubt some of the folks back home will be taking notes. "Al-Jazeera to look at open U.S. border," from WND, with thanks to Twostellas:

The Arab TV news network criticized by the new Iraqi government and others for its anti-American bias and willingness to carry the messages of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, is headed for the U.S.-Mexico border to document how easy it is to enter America illegally.

Al-Jazeera has contacted Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox to try to arrange interviews. Simcox, who rejected the request for cooperation with the TV network, says al-Jazeera, seen by millions throughout the Arab world and elsewhere, is producing an hour-long documentary news special on lack of security at the U.S. southern border.

Al-Jazeera reporter Naisser Hssaini mentioned the increase in apprehensions of illegal aliens known as OTMs – other than Mexicans. These foreigners increasingly include Arabs, Muslims and others from the Middle East. The reporter also mentioned his familiarity with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement police of catching and releasing OTMS – particularly those not specifically known to be on any terrorist watch list.

"The group has been denied requests for interviews by Minuteman Civil Defense Corps organizers but they still insist on filming the groups’ activities along with the rest of the media during a July 4th weekend mission near Arivaca, Arizona," said Simcox.

Simcox has contacted the offices of Arizona's two Republican U.S. senators – John McCain and Jon Kyl – to invite them to do interviews with al Jazeera, "so perhaps they can explain to the viewers of this news outlet just how secure America's borders really are."

"The offices of the Arizona members of the United States House of Representatives will also be contacted to alert them to the presence and the intent by the al-Jazeera news crew to film the lack of security along the U.S. border with Mexico," said Simcox. "The office of the Department of Homeland Security will also be notified. The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps also wonders just what DHS would tell al-Jazeera about the condition of our border security."

Italy Judge Orders Arrest of 13 CIA Agents

From the Whose Side Are You On Department, via AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

ROME (AP) -- An Italian judge on Friday ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts - a rare public objection to the practice by a close American ally.

The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture.

The arrest warrants were announced Friday by the Milan prosecutor's office, which has called the disappearance a kidnapping and a blow to a terrorism investigation in Italy. The office said the imam was believed to belong to an Islamic terrorist group.

The 13 are accused of seizing Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, on a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, and sending him to Egypt, where he reportedly was tortured, Milan prosecutor Manlio Claudio Minale said in a statement.

The U.S. Embassy in Rome and the CIA in Washington declined to comment....

Germano Dottori, a political analyst at the Center for Strategic Studies in Rome, said it is not unusual for intelligence agencies to have squabbles with allied countries but that he could not recall prosecutors directly involved in investigating or apprehending agents involved.

"At some point the Americans will begin to think they can't trust the Italians," Dottori said.

Yep.

Al-Qaida finds safe haven in Iran

An intriguing story from NBC News, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Somewhere north of Tehran, living perhaps in villas near the town of Chalous on the Caspian Sea coast, are between 20 and 25 of al-Qaida’s former leaders, along with two of Osama bin Laden’s sons.

Men such as Saif al-Adel, the former military commander of al-Qaida, and Suleiman Abu Ghaith, the bespectacled bin Laden spokesman, are not in hiding but rather in the care — or custody — of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“They are under virtual house arrest,” not able to do much of anything, said one senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

How they got there and what will happen to them is one of the more intriguing stories of the war on terror, one that is filled with secret movements, stolen communications and a failed attempt at a prisoner exchange involving Iranian dissidents.

“We believe that they're holding members of al-Qaida's management council,” Fran Townsend, President Bush’s counterterrorism czar, said of Iran.

In an interview with Tom Brokaw two weeks ago, she added: “And we have encouraged and suggested that they ought to try them, they ought to admit freely that they're there — which they have not done — that they're holding them. Or they ought to return them to their countries of origin, which they've also been unwilling to do.”

Read it all.

Iraq: Right-wing Christians ambush police patrol -- oh, wait...

Iraqi jihad update. "Gunmen ambush Iraq police patrol," from the BBC, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Gunmen have ambushed a police patrol near the Iraqi city of Ramadi, killing eight officers, police said.

About 20 insurgents attacked the police officers as they patrolled a main road on the outskirts of the city, said a local police chief.

US echoes jihadist kidnapping alert for Malaysia

"US echoes Australian warning against travel to Malaysia," from AFP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The United States backed a warning from Australia advising against travelling to Malaysia's Borneo coast, saying it was also concerned that terrorists planned to kidnap foreigners there.

The Malaysian Government criticised Wednesday's Australian travel warning on the east coast of Sabah state, saying that tourist destinations there are safe and that Canberra had failed to consult Malaysia over the announcement.

But the US embassy here noted that several kidnappings and piracy incidents had already occurred in the area this year, perpetrated by criminals and the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf group.

"There are indications of continued planning of kidnappings, including of foreigners, in eastern Sabah's coastal areas and offshore islands," it said in a statement which reiterated an ongoing US State Department warning.

Following the trail of death: how foreigners flock to join holy war

Why do they make their initial contact in a mosque? Don't the mosque leaders, aware of the Qur'an's peaceful teachings, turn them away? Why aren't American policymakers taking note of the implications of this fact? From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

IN A garden café on the airport road into Damascus clusters of young men gather to drink coffee, smoke shisha and hear some awe-inspiring accounts of death and glory that will lead many on a journey to certain death in the battle raging across the border in Iraq....

“It’s an individual decision. Once you’ve decided, you go to a mosque to make the initial contact. Then you are sent to a private home and from there for a week’s intensive training inside Syria,” she said. According to former fighters who spoke to The Times in Damascus, volunteers are given a crash course in using Kalashnikov rifles, firing rocket-propelled grenades and the use of remote detonators. The training takes place at secret camps in the Syrian desert, near the Iraqi border. Some attacks are even planned in advance in Damascus and Aleppo. Once the team is ready, a guide leads them across the rugged border into Iraq where they are taken to a safe house....

Over the past few weeks US Marines have carried out a series of offensives in the western Iraqi province of Anbar to try to smash the Euphrates supply line, yet most of the towns along the river valley remain in rebel hands. The main border town of al-Qaim is even nicknamed the “jihad superbowl” by US forces.

Morning Curse

Going through this morning's email, I just came upon this:

curse be on christians and jew .oh muslims they r not ur friends but 2 each other.anyone who befiends them is one of their rank

Nothing like a good curse to go with my morning coffee! And "befiends" is good, even if inadvertent. The writer, of course, is referring to Qur'an 5:51: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk."

When was the last time you heard Jews or Christians pronouncing curses on Muslims or anyone else? Just wondering.

Jihadists coming from Africa to Iraq

"Terrorists in Iraq seen from Africa," from UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Military officials say close to a quarter of foreign fighters captured in Iraq come from northern Africa, validating fears that ungoverned swaths of the continent are serving as both a pipeline and safe haven for Islamist radicals.

According to a June 17 statement from a U.S. military official, a significant number of the Iraqi recruits are said to have joined Abu Musab Zarqawi's al Qaeda in Iraq network. Zarqawi is the Jordanian militant believed responsible for many attacks that have left hundreds of Iraqis dead in past months.

"The potential does exist for [African] individuals or groups to go to Iraq and either conduct operations or receive some of the training," said Maj. Gen. Thomas Csrnko, head of U.S. special operations command in Europe (EUCOM), whose security oversight includes North and West Africa.

While a stream of African jihadists continue to provide manpower and financial support, Gen. Csrnko said many veterans could return to northern Africa to use insurgent tactics developed in Iraq, from bomb-making to strategic planning, against their governments....

Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement on its Web site congratulating the mujahedeen "who are fighting the converters in Mauritania."

Revolution without bullets or ballots

From AsiaTimes (thanks to Lek) comes this profile of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir group, one of the leading global exponents of the ideological jihad:

KARACHI - From the shores of the Caspian Sea to the Bay of Bengal, there are violent reactionaries in the Muslim world who will kill and get killed, but beyond these fanatics there exists a real hardcore silently swaying the hearts and minds of many in the Muslim world.

Their religion is not obvious from their demeanor or the cut of their clothes, yet it is embedded in the very core of their hearts, and is the driving force behind all their actions.

They are an overwhelming emerging force, and even though they have been widely banned, they don't believe in retaliation. They have made a hub in Pakistan, where they outnumber many large religious parties, yet they remain difficult to pinpoint as they are political, but have been forced underground. They are the largest single movement in the Islamic world, the Liberation Party - Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT).

In in the mid-1990s, a large conference was held in London, where the topic was the revival of a caliphate in the Muslim world for the "implementation of pure Islamic doctrine", as is the goal of the HT. The conference was attended by delegates from around the world, and a key question was to determine an ideal place for the Islamic revolution. Many agreed on Pakistan, a land of valiant Muslim tribes that have traditionally responded enthusiastically to Islamic issues. And strategically, the country is well situated to embrace the Asian sub-continent and Central Asia - where initially the caliphate will be created.

Subsequently, hundreds of HT members, British but of Pakistani origin, many of them students at the London School of Economics and other centers of excellence, packed their bags and departed for Pakistan. By 2000, the HT had established itself in all urban centers of the country, but within three years it was banned. All police stations were given strict instructions to round up any person who claimed an association with the HT.

Hundreds of HT members were rounded up, and may reports of torture emerged. Of those produced in court, the only charges that were made to stick were those related to being a member of the HT.

This correspondent has spoken to senior Pakistani officials on the reason for the HT being banned, but none of them appears to have a clue - especially as the HT does not espouse violence or militancy.

HT members have even been encouraged by the authorities to change the name of the organization, as most other banned outfits do so that they can carry on with their activities, but the HT has refused to do so.

Pakistan, especially as a leading ally in the US "war on terror", has been urged by international intelligence agencies to continue cracking down on the HT. President General Pervez Musharraf has visited the United Kingdom and publicly advised parents to beware of the HT and keep their children away from its influence.

There follows an interview with HT's Naveed Butt. Read it all.

Ahmadiya mosque set ablaze in Bangladesh, two others attacked

The Muslims in Bangladesh who did this consider the Ahmadiyas heretics, and thus justifiably to be killed. Not a few would-be Muslim reformers in Bangladesh and elsewhere suspect this would be their fate also, and thus keep silent. From DPA via M&C, with thanks to Twostellas:

Dhaka - Suspected Islamic militants on Friday burned down a mosque and carried out bomb attacks on two other places of worship of the minority Ahmadiya sect in eastern Bangladesh, officials said.

Witnesses said the Ahmadiya mosque was razed to the ground after it was set ablaze by activists of a local anti-Ahmadiya group which wants the sect to be officially declared non-Moslem.

At least three people were injured in the fire which had quickly engulfed the mosque in the bordering town of Brahmanbaria, about 110 kilometres east of the capital Dhaka....

A rescue worker said there were a few people inside the mosque when the arson attack took place.

Residents said fire-bomb attacks were carried out on two other Ahmadiya mosques in the town but no casualties from these incidents were reported....

Extremist Sunni groups want the government to declare the Ahmadiyas non-Moslems because of religious differences on the status of Islam's prophet Mohammed.

Most Ahmadiya religious publications are banned in Bangladesh, an Ahmadiya leader said.

Spencer on the John Batchelor Show tonight

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer will be on the John Batchelor Show tonight at 11:20 PM EDT.

For convenience's sake, here is the infamous flag-trampling video that led to the death threats, which we are set to discuss.

Kidnap and decapitation manual found in Baptist hideout -- oh, wait...

Yes, I know it's the same joke over and over. Just in case you hadn't noticed, I am trying to make a point. Anyway, it wasn't a Baptist hideout, of course, it was an Islamic jihadist hideout. But it could just as well have been Baptists, right? Right? They're secretly sharpening their knives even now. Or is it polishing their stones? What's that? This was a jihad manual written by Muslims? Well, they're enraged over the American occupation, doncha know. If we hadn't perpetrated the outrages at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, why, they would all be florists by now.

"Iraq: Kidnap and Decapitation Manual Found in Hideout," from AKI, with thanks to Louise:

Baghdad, 23 June (AKI) - US Marines have found manuals on taking hostages and decapitation during a raid on a guerrilla hideout in the Iraqi village of Karabla, near the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border. The Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that in the hideaway the troops also found several hostages who were being held there by Islamic militants. The hiding place was being used as a centre for the interrogation and torture of hostages, and contained electrodes and other instruments of torture.

The manuals found were used as Jihad (Holy War) handbooks. The first was titled: "How to choose the best hostage", the second covered decapitation and was called: "Rules for cutting off the heads of infidels", and the third manual, "principles of the philosophy of the Jihad", was more theoretical.

Islamic Jihad leaders running scared: "God has ordered us to take care against the plans of the Zionist enemy"

See: a posture of strength works. These guys don't want to be the next Yassin. Their work is disrupted, for which all decent people can rejoice. "Jihad chiefs avoid rally after Israel death threat," from Reuters, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Islamic Jihad activists marched on Friday, vowing not to be cowed by Israeli death threats, but group leaders wary of assassination by airborne missiles avoided the rally.

Israel said on Wednesday it had resumed a "targeted killing" policy against leaders of Islamic Jihad, underlining how far a ceasefire with the Palestinians has frayed since a February summit that revived hopes of Middle East peace.

Islamic Jihad chose Beit Lahiya for its usual Friday rally. Around 1,000 faithful turned up to condemn Israel's decision and pledge retaliation. "Blood for blood and a shelling for a shelling!" they chanted.

But faction chiefs and masked gunmen who normally join such rallies were absent this time. Even the group's main spokesman Khaled al-Batsh remained in a car some distance from the rally.

A Jihad leaflet distributed to marchers said: "We urge our mujahideen to take maximum precautions to foil any chance for the occupation and its planes to eliminate us."

Batsh told Reuters: "The enemy is flying dozens of drones in our skies. Certainly we must be more careful. God has ordered us to take care against the plans of the Zionist enemy."

Christian leader urges more violence -- oh, wait...

What's that? Hamas isn't a right-wing Christian group? It's a Muslim group? Oh, well, then, they are reacting to illegal occupation and oppression. Give them a state! What's that? They celebrate the murder of innocents on buses and in restaurants? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe? "Hamas leader urges more violence," from UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A Hamas leader has urged supporters to redouble efforts to "liberate" Palestine because diplomacy has failed, an Israeli newspaper's Web site, Ynet, says.

"All of Palestine, from the river to the sea, will be liberated by the mujahedin (martyrs) and their rifles, not by pointless diplomatic meetings," the leader, Nizar Rian, said Thursday in Gaza.

Ynet, the online site of Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot, said Hamas has warned that the temporary calm is falling apart, and the Islamic Jihad and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have echoed the statement. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad have been involved in recent attacks on Israel, and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades reportedly dispatched the female suicide bomber who was caught, ostensibly on her way to an Israeli hospital for treatment.

Fitzgerald: What to do in Iraq (part 1)

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald begins a series of reflections on what to do in Iraq now. There will be some unavoidable overlap in the material in each section, as each will provide a look at the problem from different but interlocking perspectives. Here is part 1:

It has apparently become Holy Writ that the well-being of Iraq (defined by whom?), or the well-being of "Iraqis" (defined as whom?), or the well-being of Muslims everywhere who must be saved from the consequences of their own Lords of Misrule, their own inshallah-fatalism and love of luxury and idleness that explains their economic disarray (so much more fun to pass the time sitting with hubble-bubble pipes, watching Al-Jazeera, and becoming indignant at those terrible Infidels with their billions in foreign aid that is obviously part of their diabolical colonialism or neo-colonialism or post-colonial colonialism (choose 1) – it has apparently become universally accepted dogma that all this is in the interest of Infidels.

This is one of those unexamined propositions that does not stand up.
The best way to deal with the world of Islam, the Muslims who are in dar al-Islam and those who have managed to settle in the Lands of the Infidels, is not to make them comfortable, not to transfer even further wealth -- beyond the hundreds of billions transferred every year because of a grim accident of geology, money which in turn is used to fund various instruments of the Jihad, including mosques, madrasas, propaganda of every kind, bribes and the allure of business contracts, and so on.

If one believes that Islam represents a permanent menace to the wellbeing of Infidels and to their civilizations, such as they are, with all their faults and stupidities big and little, then one must not be fooled into thinking that either "poverty" (what nonsense: the most sinister and threatening Muslim countries are those like Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. and Iran; the least threatening, the impoverished Mali and Mauritania) or "absence of democracy" is what will do the trick. Many of those so-called "reformers," just like the North African lady who recently published a "daring" account of a muslima's sexual life (i.e., more or less an autobiography), may recognize that their own ruling classes are corrupt and depraved. But then on quite a few matters they immediately demonstrate that defensiveness about Islam that is such a feature of even the most "moderate" and seemingly "reasonable" of Muslims, whose mask comes off the minute Islam is seen to be criticized by Infidels in the mildest of ways. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, for example, in undermining the regime of Mubarak and Son, no longer collaborates with the American Copts -- no, he appears to be collaborating more with the Muslim Brotherhood. And of course Ibrahim's views on Israel, his complete inability to see the claim of Jews to their own homeland, with defensible borders, and their legal, historic, and moral claim to all of the West Bank and to Gaza, is something beyond his capacity. He simply cannot get his mind around it-- that is, he remains, for all of his "reform," neither a vocal supporter of complete equality for the Copts (and perhaps a little apology for their treatment, in their own land, by Arabs who conquered, and subjugated them -- no, that is simply an impossibility in Muslim terms), nor someone who is prepared to end the relentless Arab Jihad against the Infidel sovereign state of Israel.

Islam is the problem. The Administration prates about "democracy being on the march in the Middle East" (it isn't) and then tells us, and asks us to take it on faith that somehow, in some way, "democracy in Iraq" (which would mean an end to Kurdish aspirations for independence, which should in fact be supported, and if carried out, would inevitably lead to Shi'a rule over Sunnis) will lead to a new country, a New Iraq where people think of themselves, magically, as Iraqis (oh, some do - perhaps as many as 5% on a good day) rather than as Kurds or Arabs, and among the Arabs, as Sunni Arabs or Shi'a Arabs. And that New Iraq, in turn, in defiance of Iraq's entire modern history, will become a "Light Unto the Muslim Nations." Nonsense on stilts.

But there are others, outside the Administration, who do not buy this. And what do they say? Some recognize that there is a problem with Islam, but they still insist on a modifying adjective: not Islam, but "Wahhabi" Islam, or "Salafist" Islam or "extremist" Islam. Again, nonsense on stilts.

And they tell us that because there is this "good Islam" and these "good Muslims" whom we must under no circumstances alienate, it is important not to seem to be troubled by Islam itself, to try to weaken Islam itself or at least the hold it possesses over so many of its adherents, for otherwise there is "no hope." But "no hope" of what? Infidels cannot possibly continue to be confused by the idea that "moderate" Muslims (never adequately defined, or rather, when they are properly defined in a way that causes them to be no threat to Infidels, they simply disappear, do not exist except in infinitesimal numbers). It is important for Infidels to get things straight about Islam. The promotion of the idea that "moderate Muslims are the solution" muddies the waters, obscures what should be clear, and holds out a forlorn hope which can be an excuse for further inaction. This is true especially in Europe, where the indigenous Infidels need to be much more informed, and thus much more alarmed, than they are, with their dreams of "integration" of Muslims, and their dreamy belief in those same "moderates" that hardly exist, or if they exist nonetheless mislead about the nature of Islam and the prospects for change, or if they do not mislead, can at any time metamorphose into "immoderate" Muslims -- prompted perhaps by personal difficulties that no Infidel is likely to discern or be able to prevent.

It is only once Islam as an ideology is understood, when its tenets are understood, when the example of Muhammad (and the life of Muhammad, in every detail) is understood, when the history of Muslim conquest and subjugation of Infidels is understood (without the myth of Andalusia, without the exaggerations about the "great achievements" of Islamic culture that, looked at closely, become those mainly of transmission, of borrowing, and of relying on the fructifying presence of considerable numbers of Jews and Christians during the first few centuries after the initial Muslim conquest.

Then we will get somewhere, and the nonsense now coming out of those in the Administration who wish to continue the folly in Iraq, when Iraq presents the perfect place to exploit the two natural fissures within Islam: the ethnic (the resentment of non-Arab Muslim for the supremacist Arab Muslims, which in Iraq has been expressed in the mass murder of Kurds by Arabs, and the overwhelming desire of Kurds for an independent state, which they deserve, and which would serve Infidel interests) and the sectarian (the growing resentment that Shi'a feel for Sunnis, not only in Iraq, but in Pakistan, in the eastern oil-bearing province of Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in Bahrain, and of course in Iran itself, a Shi'a state that can be expected to aid fellow Shi'a while Sunnis, in turn, can be expected to aid fellow Sunnis).

Iraq presents a splendid opportunity. Let us not mess it up by continuing to remain there. Every single division within Islam should be exploited, and can be by simply leaving the place and its largely unpleasant and irremediably hostile people (yes, I know about the very nice pro-American bloggers in Iraq, all five or six of them, out of 25 million people. They do not move me nearly as much as do the American soldiers whose lives have been disrupted, or changed utterly when they are wounded, or ended forever).

We want not to "stay the course" if the "course" itself is based on a faulty understanding of Islam. We want to "change course" if by so doing we can achieve our real aims -- which are to contain Islam, to buy time in order to let other Infidels come to comprehend, despite the vast army of Arab hirelings and Muslim apologists (or rather, apologists for Islam, many of whom are non-Muslims) abroad in the lands of the Infidels, and to help create the conditions in which, I will repeat for the hundredth time, the political, economic, social, and intellectual failures of the Muslim lands and peoples, over a very wide area, and for a very long time, can be seen to be directly related to the tenets, to the attitudes, to the atmospherics of Islam itself, or that Islam naturally promotes.

Will no one in Congress stand up and relate the desire to end the misallocation of resources -- of men, money, materiel, military morale, and attention -- not to the goals of appeasers and pacifists, but to those who want us out precisely because the Jihad is a menace, and the menace is world-wide, and the menace will not be mitigated in the slightest by creating, over years and years, a preposterous Light Unto the Muslim Nations in the Land Between the Two Rivers?

Will no one in the military, or in the Pentagon spring for a ticket for J. B. Kelly, or Bat Ye'or, or both of them to come to the Pentagon and explain exactly why Bernard Lewis and his acolytes should not be taken as the last word on Grand Strategy in Iraq or, for that matter, anywhere else in the Muslim world, or in dealing with Muslims in Europe? Not enough money in the budget?

Here, we'll take up a collection. Those of us -- the growing numbers – who are appalled by the idiocy and the waste now on display in Iraq, and the failure to recognize the real opportunity for demoralizing, splitting, and containing Islam that Iraq presents, will turn our pockets inside out, if only such people can be given a hearing.

Right-wing Christians kill 17 in Baghdad -- oh, wait...

No, it wasn't really right-wing Christians. It was that other religious group -- you know, the one that presents a much smaller threat. Iraqi jihad update, "Car bombings kill at least 17 in Baghdad: Onslaught follows deadly blasts that already rocked Iraqi capital," from CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four car bombs exploded Thursday in a north-central neighborhood of Baghdad, killing at least 17 people and wounding as many as 60 others, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said.

A suicide attack near an old mall in the Karada area killed seven civilians and wounded 10 others, the defense ministry said, while the Iraqi police put the death toll at 12 civilians and three police officers, with 50 wounded.

Three police officers and seven civilians died in a second suicide blast targeting an Iraqi police patrol near a gas station, the ministry said. Ten civilians were wounded.

Car bombs also went off near two Shiite Muslim mosques -- Albu Jumaa and Abdul Rasool Ali. The bomb near Albu Jumaa mosque was parked on the street and likely was remotely detonated.

A team of explosives experts defused a fifth bomb near the Mubarak mosque.

The violence followed five car bombings Wednesday night in the capital, including three nearly simultaneous blasts that killed 18 people in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northwestern Baghdad, police said.

Zarqawi Says US Bombing Killed Al-Rashoud

"He responded to God’s call and was seeking his paradise and wanted glory for his religion." From Arab News, with thanks to Eschwapp:

RIYADH/JEDDAH, 24 June 2005 — A statement posted on the Internet by the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, said yesterday that Abdullah Al-Rashoud, one of the most wanted men on a Saudi list of 26 terrorists, had been killed in US airstrikes on the Iraqi town of Qaim near the Syrian border....

Abdullah Muhammad Rashid Al-Rashoud, 37, had been No. 24 on the list of the 26 most wanted terror leaders put out by the Kingdom two years ago and was one of only three militants on the list still at large.

The web posting, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed, said he slipped into Iraq in April. “He entered Iraq a month and a half ago as an immigrant crossing the border to Al-Fayafi and Al-Qaffar to Al-Qaim to participate in the battles there. He responded to God’s call and was seeking his paradise and wanted glory for his religion,” the statement said. It did not mention the date he was killed but said that it was due to the aerial bombings of the city.

“When the Crusaders could not enter the area, the only thing they could do was bombard the Mujahedeen with warplanes,” it said. “Our sheikh (Al-Rashoud) got what he wished” — martyrdom....

Al-Rashoud was one of the religious leaders of the terrorists in the Kingdom. He issued statements through the Internet calling for young men to join him and his fellow terrorists in fighting jihad.

Top Taliban commanders surrounded

Dadullah and Brader -- no Omar (yet). From UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

U.S. and Afghan forces have surrounded at least two senior Taliban commanders after three days of intense fighting in southern Afghanistan.

More than 100 Taliban fighters have been killed in one of the biggest offensives in two years, the BBC reported Thursday.

Those surrounded are believed to include Mullah Dadullah and Mullah Brader -- both of whom are said to be close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Hundreds of Afghan troops backed by U.S.-led coalition forces took part in the clashes in Zabul province that began Tuesday when rebels opened fire with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades....

A Taliban spokesman denied that any of their men had been killed.

Yes, and the American troops are nowhere near Baghdad!

Jihadist suspects held in Amsterdam and London

"Terror suspects held in Amsterdam and London" -- no doubt those dastardly Christian Reconstructionists up to their dirty work again. What's that? Islamic jihadists? Oh, well, then they're just reacting to American injustice. Set them free! From the Dutch Expatica, with thanks to Dutch Cares:

AMSTERDAM — A 22-year-old man has been arrested in Amsterdam as part of the investigation into a suspected Muslim terror group in the Netherlands.

The suspect was armed with a loaded machine pistol, Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner told Parliament on Thursday.

Donner said the man of Moroccan ancestry has been of interest to the police since November 2004, the month filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated in Amsterdam.

He is suspected of being a member of the Hofstadgroep, described by the police as a terrorist organisation.

The suspect was sitting in a car with two women aged 21 and 26. Both of them were also detained and are suspected of involvement in a terrorist organisation, the minister said.

Apart from the machine pistol — a mini machine gun — police also found two filled ammunition clips, a silencer and a box with 14 rounds of ammunition...

The arrests in Amsterdam, Donner said, were connected to the detention of a 32-year-old Dutchman by police in London on Wednesday.

This older man was arrested at the request of the Dutch authorities. He is wanted for questioning in relation to the investigation into the Hofstadgroep.

Several young Muslim men are in custody in the Netherlands on charges of belonging to the suspected terror group and planning attacks in the Netherlands...

While the Dutch authorities have declined to talk about the suspicions against him, Scotland Yard in London has revealed the man is suspected of recruiting people for terrorist activities. He is also suspected of involvement with firearms and falsification of documents.

Spencer: Ending the Saudi Double Game

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage today on our two-faced friends, the Saudis:

When American soldiers raided jihadist hideouts in northeastern Iraq this week, they found a number of foreign passports, including two from Saudi Arabia. Several weeks ago the Syrians arrested 300 Saudis before they could cross into Iraq and join the jihad against America. These are just two more bits of evidence that loyalties continue to be divided in Saudi Arabia — underscoring the urgency of the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005, which was introduced in the Senate recently by Senator Arlen Specter. The Saudis have been playing a double game since 9/11, maintaining their alliance with the U.S. while aiding the jihad worldwide; now Specter and the bill’s other sponsors are trying to put a stop to the duplicity.

This Act is intended to “halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure full Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents, and for other purposes.” It calls on the Saudis to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of 2001, which directs all nations to “refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts,” as well as to take “the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts” and “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts.” It cites a 2002 report by the Council on Foreign Relations that notes that “for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda, and for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye to this problem.” A June 2004 CFR report lamented that “since September 11, 2001, we know of not a single Saudi donor of funds to terrorist groups who has been publicly punished.”

The bill — S. 1171 — notes not only that the Saudis are financing terrorist groups, but that they are also aggressively spreading the jihad ideology that fuels terrorism. And they’re doing so right in the United States. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), through its subsidiary the North American Islamic Trust, owns over 300 mosques in the United States. The Accountability Act cites the January 28, 2005 report from Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, which revealed that what is being taught in those mosques: “material promoting hatred, intolerance, and violence within United States mosques and Islamic centers.” What’s more, “these publications are often official publications of a Saudi ministry or distributed by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C.” One tract featured in the report tells Muslims: “Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, leave them, never rely on them for support, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law.” A high school textbook makes it absolutely clear where such teaching leads: “To be true Muslims, we must prepare and be ready for jihad in Allah’s way. It is the duty of the citizen and the government. The military education is glued to faith and its meaning, and the duty to follow it.”

It is not surprising that such sentiments should be found in material coming from the Saudis. As late as November 2003, the Islamic Affairs Department (IAD) of the Saudi embassy in Washington featured this statement on its website: “The Muslims are required to raise the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of Allah supreme in this world, to remove all forms of injustice and oppression, and to defend the Muslims. If Muslims do not take up the sword, the evil tyrants of this earth will be able to continue oppressing the weak and [the] helpless…”

Such a violent and expansionist program is not solely the province of Saudi Wahhabis. The Pakistani Islamic leader Syed Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979), who was not a Wahhabi, declared that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, he said, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.” Likewise the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), also a non-Wahhabi, declared: “Islam cannot accept any mixing with Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers]. Either Islam will remain, or Jahiliyyah; no half-half situation is possible…. The foremost duty of Islam is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man, with the intention of raising human beings to that high position which Allah has chosen for him.”

Nevertheless, the Saudis are the foremost and most moneyed exponents of such ideas around the globe today. In a 2002 interview with Al-Jazeera, Saudi Sheikh Mohsin Al-‘Awaji, praised Osama bin Laden as “a man of honor, a man who abstains [from the pleasures] of this world, a brave man, and a man who believes in his principles and makes sacrifices [for them].” Indeed, “the Saudi people love every Jihad warrior, every fighter, and every man of honor, whether in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Kashmir, or southern Sudan.” Another Saudi Sheikh, Dr. Muhammad Al-Khasif, added: “There are dozens, even millions, who lift up their eyes to Osama bin Laden as a savior.” A June 2004 poll found that almost half of the Saudis polled viewed Osama bin Laden positively.

And these people have money: the Accountability Act cites a September 2003 New York Times report noting that “at least 50 percent of the current operating budget of Hamas comes from ‘people in Saudi Arabia,’” as well as a July 2003 Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) report stating that “Saudi-sponsored organizations have funneled over $4,000,000,000 to finance the Palestinian intifada that began in September 2000.” MEMRI has done outstanding work rendering this material and much more into English — much of the information in this article comes from MEMRI reports. But few seem to have taken heed in official Washington.

And that is true despite the fact that the Saudis have not been particularly reliable allies in the war on terror. The Accountability Act refers to a July 2003 report from a joint committee of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives, quoting “various United States Government personnel who complained that the Saudis refused to cooperate in the investigation of Osama bin Laden and his network both before and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” Nor was that the first time: the Saudis also refused to cooperate with U.S. investigators after the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, where nineteen American Air Force personnel were killed. Also, the Accountability Act notes that “Saudi Arabia denied United States officials access to several suspects in the custody of the Government of Saudi Arabia, including a Saudi Arabian citizen in detention for months who had knowledge of extensive plans to inject poison gas in the New York City subway system.”

Not only have they declined to cooperate: they have maligned Americans efforts at the official level. A December 2004 report in the Saudi government organ Al-Watan issued the outrageous and libelous charge that “secret European military intelligence reports indicate the transformation of the American humanitarian mission in Iraq into a profitable trade in the American markets through the practice of American physicians extracting human organs from the dead and wounded, before they are put to death, for sale to medical centers in America.”

Meanwhile, jihadist sentiment, fueled by the most outlandish conspiracy-theory paranoia, permeates Saudi society. An Egyptian historian, Dr. Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz, asserted on Saudi TV in May that the United States brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11 at the behest of the World Council of Churches, which was enacting the Vatican’s plan to eradicate Islam and Christianize the world. The show’s host swallowed this farrago whole and lobbed the professor softballs such as: “Why is America hostile to Islam, although we never had and never will have the same conflict with them we had with Europe?”

Just before the Saudis’ February 2005 international counter-terrorism conference, to which they claimed to invite representatives of all the countries that had suffered terrorist attacks but conspicuously omitted Israel, the Saudi poet Mash’al Al-Harithi, read on Saudi television a poem claiming that Osama bin Laden was “sent by the Jews.” Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, as well as Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Ambassador to Great Britain, both ascribed the June 2004 al-Qaeda attacks within the Kingdom to that all-purpose bogeyman, the “Zionists.” In August 2004 the Religious Affairs Department of the Saudi armed forces published an article stating that “the majority of revolutions, coups d’etat, and wars which have occurred in the world [in the past], those that are occurring, and those that will occur, are almost entirely the handiwork of the Jews. They [the Jews] turned to [these methods] in order to implement the injunctions of the fabricated Torah, the Talmud, and the ‘Protocols [of the Elders of Zion’], all of which command the destruction of all non-Jews in order to achieve their goal — namely, world domination.”

With this rhetoric goes religious persecution. Jews aren’t even allowed into Saudi Arabia, but Christians are — as long as they do not bring with them any physical evidence of their faith (Bibles, crosses) and do not observe it while in the Kingdom. Early this month the Saudi religious police, the Muttawa, arrested eight Christians from India, confiscating their Bibles and religious objects. They beat one of these men, Chittirical John Thomas, in front of his five-year-old son. Forty Pakistani Christians were arrested in April 2005. A Muttawa spokesman explained: “These people tried to spread the poison and their beliefs to others, by means of distributing pamphlets and [missionary] publications.” A month before that, an Indian Christian, Samkutty Varghese, was arrested and held incommunicado in Riyadh. He had a Bible in his bag. Emad Alaabadi, a Saudi citizen who converted from Islam to Christianity, was arrested in December 2004 and has likely been tortured.

In September 2004, the State Department added Saudi Arabia to its list of the most religiously intolerant nations in the world. But this didn’t stop the Spring 2005 crackdown on Christians in the Kingdom; nor did it lead to more calls for accountability from Washington. In April 2005, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz described U.S.-Saudi relations as “excellent.” He praised “the good relations and the will of cooperation between the two countries to serve Saudi interest first of all.”

Indeed, both countries seem intent on serving Saudi interests first of all. That’s the problem. But the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2005 could change all that. It calls upon the Saudis to take genuine anti-terror steps, including to cooperate openly and fully with American anti-terror efforts; to close all “charities, schools, or other organizations or institutions” both inside and outside the Kingdom that aid in terrorism anywhere around the world, “including by means of providing support for the families of individuals who have committed acts of terrorism.” And it calls for sanctions to punish noncompliance. Such measures are the only way that Saudi Arabia could today become a genuine ally of the United States. Senator Specter and the other senators who sponsored this bill are to be commended — and every American should hope that their efforts bear fruit.

Afghans say closing in on senior Taliban commanders

We've heard this before. Our forces seem to be closing in on Mullah Omar or even Bin Laden himself, only to have them elude capture. From Reuters:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan and U.S. forces surrounded an area in Afghanistan on Thursday where senior commanders of elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar were thought to be hiding, Afghan security officials said.

The operation, backed by U.S. helicopter gunships, followed a big U.S.-backed offensive that killed more than 100 militants in the same region of the border between Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul provinces in the past three days, the officials said.

Those holed up in the Dai Chopan area included Mullah Dadullah, a member of the Taliban's 10-man leadership council headed by Omar, and Mullah Brother, another commander thought close to the Taliban leader, the Defence Ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ishaq Paiman identified the others as Mullah Abdul Hakim, Mullah Abdul Hanan and Mullah Abdul Basir. Mullah is a title for a Muslim cleric used by many top Taliban members.

Maybe that's because they ARE clerics AND terrorists at the same time. Is anybody in government connecting the dots? Porter? Rummy? Anyone?

Saudi terror suspect said killed in Iraq

From the Miami Herald:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - One of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted suspected terrorists was killed by a U.S. airstrike in northwestern Iraq, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq said, and two car bombs outside Shiite mosques in central Baghdad killed 15 and wounded 28 Thursday, police said.

The latest violence followed a series of car bombs late Wednesday, including four that exploded within minutes of one another. At least 23 people were killed in western Baghdad's Shula neighborhood and a nearby suburb.

The Web statement said Abdullah Mohammed Rashid al-Roshoud was killed in fighting near Qaim, on the border with Syria. It was signed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most notorious terrorist leader in Iraq.

The statement did not say when al-Roshoud was killed, but U.S. forces have launched a series of offensives near Qaim in past weeks against militants coming across the border.

Al-Roshoud slipped into Iraq in April, according to the posting, the authenticity of which could not be confirmed.

The Saudi militant and a group of mujahedeen "killed some of the Crusaders until the enemies of God had to withdraw."

"When the Crusaders could not enter the area, the only thing they could do was bombard the mujahedeen with warplanes," it said. "Our sheik (al-Roshoud) got what he wished" - martyrdom.

Al-Roshoud had been No. 24 on a list of the 26 most-wanted terrorist leaders put out by Saudi Arabia two years ago and was one of only three militants on the list still at large. He was one of the main theologians for al-Qaida's network in Saudi Arabia, calling for a holy war against the Saudi royal family and Western interests in the Persian Gulf...

Ecuador: Drug ring suspected of funding Hizbullah

Small business as cover for Hizbullah in Ecuador. From AP via the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Two Stellas.

Police broke up an international cocaine ring led by a Lebanese restaurant owner suspected of raising money for Hezbollah.

Ecuadorean authorities declined to elaborate Tuesday on the group's alleged links to terrorist activities "until further investigation."

But an internal police report obtained by The Associated Press said preliminary evidence "confirms the relationship between this organization and the terrorist movement Hezbollah." The document said the gang sent "up to 70 percent of its profits to the Islamic group."

Authorities detected the operation in September. The group smuggled cocaine principally to Europe and Asia in shipments valued at US$1 million each, the report said.

Anti-narcotics police on Tuesday presented a lineup of the alleged Lebanese ringleader, Rady Zaiter, and five other male suspects from Lebanon, Nigeria, Algiers and Turkey, in addition to an Ecuadorean woman.

The Ecuadorean investigation led to related arrests of 19 people in Brazil and the United States, the report said.

According to the report, Zaiter "had organized a large narcoterrorist infrastructure," using his Arab food restaurant in northern Quito as a front...

Malaysia says has dismantled Islamic terror cells

From Reuters, with thanks to Jefffrey Imm.

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia declared victory on Tuesday in its internal campaign against Southeast Asia's most feared Islamic militant group, but said there was room for improved U.S. cooperation in the global war on terror.

"We have dismantled the JI basic structure," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak told Reuters, referring to Jemaah Islamiah, a group blamed for a series of attacks in neighbouring Indonesia, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

"But we cannot be too complacent," he added.

"There could be certain cells (that re-establish themselves) later on if we don't monitor the situation carefully."

Malaysia is viewed as having effectively used skills it acquired in ending a bitter communist insurgency in the 1960s against Islamic militancy, but some of its most wanted militants fled to Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Malaysians Azahari Husin, a bomb-making expert, and Noordin M. Top, another JI member, are thought by Indonesian police to be planning another attack there. Police suspect Azahari made the bombs used in Bali and in the suicide bombing of a Jakarta hotel.

"We would like them arrested as soon as possible," Najib said in an interview in his parliamentary office.

"When we started to pursue them, or when they realised they were being pursued, they ran away to Indonesia. We have given the Indonesians as much information as we know about them but the actual interdiction of these people must be done by Indonesia."

Australia and the United States recently issued warnings to their citizens in Indonesia, saying intelligence suggested that terrorists were in the advanced stages of planning attacks...

Mexico Detains Man Thought Tied to Terror

From AP:

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico - A Lebanese-born man detained this week on Mexico's Baja California peninsula is believed linked to extremist organizations with ties to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Mexican prosecutors said.

Amer Haykel told acquaintances he was a pilot who was wandering the world on a tight budget. He seemed like "a straightforward person," said Gabriel Garcia of the Cabo San Lucas fire station, where Haykel had sought shelter for several days.

Mexico's federal attorney general's office said late Tuesday that U.S. authorities linked the Lebanese-born British citizen "to extremist groups believed to be involved with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in New York."

It did not say if he faced any charges or if he was believed to be personally involved in any terrorist actions...

Haykel was arrested on Monday at the volunteer fire station of Todos Santos, a small town on the Pacific coast about 35 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas that is known as a haven for U.S. expatriates...

Officials have long expressed concerns that terrorists might use Mexico or Central America to stage an attack on the United States...

Last week, Pakistani Arif Ali Durrani, 55, was arrested in the beach resort of Rosarito, across the border from San Diego.

A former U.S. resident, Durrani was handed over to U.S. officials, who charged him with illegally exporting parts used to cool fighter jet engines. Durrani has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Durrani served five years in prison for selling missile parts to Iran in the 1980s...

Saudi police kill two suspected terrorists accused of killing security officer

From CBS News with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security forces on Tuesday killed two suspected terrorists accused of fatally shooting a senior security official outside his home, the government said.

The suspects were killed in a shootout in the Red Sea city of Jiddah, the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying. Three policemen were wounded in the exchange.

On Saturday, gunmen killed Lt. Col. Mubarak al-Sawwat as he was leaving his home in the holy city of Mecca. The Interior Ministry blamed the killing on the ``deviant bunch'' a Saudi euphemism for the al-Qaida terror group...

Israel: Suicide bomber caught with explosives in her underwear

From the Irish Independent, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

A WOMAN on a suicide bombing mission was caught at an Israeli checkpoint with 20lbs of high explosives hidden in her underwear...

Security officials working at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, said they became suspicious of al-Biss because her gait was strange.

Fearing she might be a suicide bomber, they isolated her and ordered her to strip. The images taken from a security camera showed her removing her black head scarf and gown. As she continued, the explosives were shown sewn into her underwear. It is possible she tried to detonate the device as she stripped only for the bomb to malfunction. Army sappers took away the device and blew it up safely.

Residents of Gaza are only allowed through the Erez checkpoint subject to strict rules. Al-Biss was being allowed through to receive treatment at an Israeli hospital after she was disfigured at her refugee camp home when a gas canister exploded on a fire while she was cooking.

Colonel Avi Levy, a senior Israeli army commander, said extremists were "cynically exploiting" Israel's humanitarian gesture.

During her television interview, which lasted more than an hour, al-Biss appeared confident and defiant but became shaky.

"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she began. But she became tearful and began to contradict herself. At one point she denied she wanted to carry out an attack. When she denied any involvement in a suicide bombing, her minders intervened.

It seems she meant to target the Israeli Beersheba hospital where she was to receive treatment for her burns.

Who are the foreign fighters in Iraq?

An NBC News analysis finds 55 percent hail from Saudi Arabia. From NBC News, with thanks to Two Stellas. Lisa Myers reports.

An NBC News analysis of hundreds of foreign fighters who died in Iraq over the last two years reveals that a majority came from the same country as most of the 9/11 hijackers — Saudi Arabia.

Among the suicide bombers was Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a one-time medical student and son of a Saudi diplomat. In December 2004, he climbed into a truck in Mosul and blew himself up.

On an Internet video, another Saudi says goodbye to his mother, then drives an ambulance full of explosives into a building.

They are among more than 400 militants from 21 countries whose deaths were celebrated on Islamic Web sites over the last two years.

"By far the nationality that comes up over and over again is Saudi Arabia," says Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism expert.

The NBC News analysis of Web site postings found that 55 percent of foreign insurgents came from Saudi Arabia, 13 percent from Syria, 9 percent from North Africa and 3 percent from Europe.

Of these one has been traced to Britain.

The U.S. military also says Saudi Arabia and Syria are the leading sources of insurgents. An Army official provided a list of the top 10 countries to NBC News but would not release the numbers of foreign fighters from each. The top 10, alphabetically, are: Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

"You have some from poor families, some jobless," says Kohlmann. "You also have individuals that come from wealthy families, that come from a life of privilege and substance and material goods and material wealth."...

Jordan Islamists want Hamas leaders back

From UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

Jordan's Islamic legislators have asked King Abdullah to allow Hamas leaders who were evicted six years ago to return to Jordan, a legislator said Wednesday.

Azzam Honeidi, head of the Islamic bloc in Parliament, told UPI that the 17 legislators made the request at a meeting with the Jordanian monarch Tuesday night.

He said the Islamic legislators raised the issue on the grounds that Hamas is a strong political movement in the Palestinian territories, with influence in the Arab and Islamic world.

Honeidi said the bloc pointed out to the king that "even the United States and Europe started establishing contacts with Hamas in view of its wide popular base among the Palestinians."

The legislators also argued that the evicted Hamas leaders held Jordanian nationality and according to the constitution no Jordanian should be expelled from the country...

Jordan expelled Hamas leaders, including Politburo chief Khaled Meshaal, in 1999. It later agreed to allow the return of those who held Jordanian nationality on condition they quit their positions in the movement and stopped any political or media activity.

Al-Qaida Announces Iraqi Suicide Squad

From AP, with thanks to EPG.

CAIRO, Egypt - Iraq's most feared terror group said Tuesday that it has formed a unit of potential suicide attackers who are exclusively Iraqis, an apparent bid to deflect criticism that most suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners.

Al-Qaida in Iraq announced the unit in an Internet posting signed by Abu Maysara al-Iraqi, the group's purported spokesman. The statement could not be authenticated, but it appeared on an Islamic Web site known for carrying messages from militant groups.

"In response to God's decree, and the heavy insistence of the (Iraqi) brothers and their longing for paradise, the Ansar platoon from the land of Iraq has been formed," the posting said.

"Dozens hurried to register their names to meet their God," the posting said. It told of one Iraqi youth who had rebuked his leader for failing to give him a suicide assignment, telling him he would complain to God on the Day of Judgment because "you prevented me from meeting my God."

The U.S. military has said foreign fighters are a small percentage — perhaps one in 10 — of the insurgents fighting the U.S. presence in Iraq. They do a disproportionate amount of killing, however, in part because they are more likely to carry out suicide bombings.

U.S. and other analysts say the foreign fighters are primarily Islamic militants waging what they regard as jihad or holy war, while the much larger homegrown, mostly Sunni Arab, insurgency has tended to be motivated more by political grievance and factional rivalry...

Afghans say 64 Taliban killed in heavy fighting

From Reuters:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan and U.S. troops backed by warplanes blasted Taliban hideouts for a second day on Wednesday, killing scores of militants in some of the bloodiest fighting in years, officials said.

Kandahar's deputy police chief, General Salim Khan, leading about 400 police troops, said by satellite telephone from the scene that at least 64 Taliban fighters had been killed since Tuesday and 30 captured.

Two Afghan soldiers died and six U.S. soldiers were wounded in the operation where Kandahar, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces meet, aimed at checking a surge in violence ahead of Sept. 18 parliamentary elections, Afghan and U.S. officials said.

"This is the heaviest bombing and fighting I have seen since the fall of the Taliban," Khan said, referring to the overthrow of the Taliban government in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces.

Hundreds of people have died in a surge in militant violence in recent months, raising concerns about the elections, the next big step in Afghanistan's difficult path to stability...

WMD Jitters

From CNN, "'High risk' of WMD attack in decade," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

WASHINGTON -- The chance of an attack with a weapon of mass destruction somewhere in the world in the next 10 years runs as high as 70 percent, arms experts have predicted in a U.S. survey.

Most of the more than 80 experts surveyed in the report released on Tuesday believed one or two new countries will acquire nuclear weapons in the next five years, with two to five countries joining the nuclear club during the next decade.

The survey, commissioned by U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar, also showed that four out of five people said their country was not spending enough on non-proliferation efforts.

The most likely scenario for a nuclear attack would be for terrorists to use a weapon they made themselves with material acquired on the black market, the survey said.

"The results underscore the need to improve security around tactical nuclear weapons and nuclear material in Russia and expand our ability to detect transfer of weapons or materials from rogue states to terrorist organizations," said a summary of a report outlining the survey results...

And from the New Duranty Times, "U.S. Borders Vulnerable, Witnesses Say," with thanks to EPG.

WASHINGTON - The federal government's efforts to prevent terrorists from smuggling a nuclear weapon into the United States are so poorly managed and reliant on ineffective equipment that the nation remains extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic attack, scientists and a government auditor warned a House committee on Tuesday.

The assessment, coming nearly four years after the September 2001 attacks and after the investment of about $800 million by the United States government, prompted expressions of frustration and disappointment from lawmakers...

Four federal departments - Homeland Security, Defense, Energy and State - are involved in a global campaign to try to prevent the illicit acquisition, movement and use of radioactive materials, which includes efforts to prevent theft of nuclear materials from former Soviet stockpiles and inspecting cargo containers on arrival from around the world.

Dirty bombs, crude devices that widely spread low levels of radiation, are relatively easy to detect. But highly enriched uranium, a crucial ingredient in a nuclear bomb, could easily be shielded with less than a quarter-inch of lead, making it "very likely to escape detection by passive radiation monitors" now installed at ports and border stations, Benn Tannenbaum, a physicist and senior program associate at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, testified at Tuesday's hearing.

The monitors are unable to distinguish between naturally occurring radiation from everyday items like ceramic tile and dangerous material like enriched uranium...

Israel revives militants assassination policy

While alleged PIJ representative Sami Al-Arian is tried in Florida, Israel deals with them on the ground in Gaza. From Reuters:

JERUSALEM - Israel said on Wednesday it had resumed an assassination policy against some Palestinian militants and could mount air strikes with the risk of civilian casualties to ensure its Gaza pullout does not come under fire.

The Israeli threats, prompted by a flareup of Islamic Jihad militant attacks on Jewish settlers in Gaza, underscored the deterioration of a four-month-old ceasefire and followed an acrimonious Israeli-Palestinian summit.

Israel shelved "targeted killings" of militants in February as part of a truce deal. But resurgent violence has raised the specter of disruption to Israel's planned August withdrawal from Gaza and dimmed hopes for "road map" peace talks afterwards.

Word that the assassination policy had been dusted off came with Israeli confirmation of a failed missile strike on Tuesday while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were holding tense talks in Jerusalem.

"There was an attempt in Gaza to intercept an (Islamic Jihad) activist yesterday. It was unsuccessful," Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said. "An opportunity presented itself. Any means to neutralize the organization are relevant and possible."

Islamic Jihad has resumed mortar bomb and rocket salvoes against Jewish settlements in Gaza in what it calls retaliation for continued Israeli raids to capture wanted militants.

"The attempt yesterday to kill an Islamic Jihad leader in Gaza signaled the resumption of the targeted killing policy," an Israeli security source told Reuters...

Kaufman: CAIRing for Sami Al-Arian

Joe Kaufman asks some tough questions of Ahmed Bedier, the Communications Director for Florida CAIR, concerning Sami Al-Arian and reports to us in FrontPage, with thanks to EPG.

Ahmed Bedier, the Communications Director for the Florida Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Florida) and the Director of CAIR’s Tampa office, was being featured in a panel discussion on U.S. security and civil liberties in Miami, so we hopped in the car and headed south. The speakers’ panel, which took place June 18, 2005, was being sponsored by the League of Women Voters. Besides Bedier, the event included a Florida State Representative, someone from Homeland Security, an ACLU rep and a Haitian advocate.

Each participant took his/her turn at the podium to speak. You could tell, by the reactions from the crowd to the various speakers, where the audience’s sympathies lied. While Bedier, the ACLU rep and the Hatian advocate received much applause, the State Representative got a couple polite laughs and the Homeland Security agent found mostly cordial silence. This was basically a CAIR-skewed audience.

Bedier’s speech was a rail against the Patriot Act. He stated, “The editors of Esquire Magazine recently wrote, ‘If there’s one thing that always comes out of a terrible tragedy, it’s really dumb legislation.’” He said that “Muslims in America have been made the scapegoats in the witch-hunt that ensued [after 9/11].” He blamed September 11th on the U.S. government. He stated, “The bottom line is the Patriot Act is not working. And to simply give the power to renew it – it’s not the tools. The tools are you have to have better intelligence. The people that failed on 9/11 was the government.”

After the speeches, it was announced that the panel was going to take questions. I didn’t waste a moment; I quickly made my way to the mike up front.

KAUFMAN: “This question is for Ahmed Bedier from CAIR. When the media looks for a quote concerning Sami Al-Arian, they go to you. My question is, how did you become the spokesperson for the leader of the North American faction of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the co-founders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? And if [Al-Arian] is found guilty in the trial he is in right now in Tampa – where you’re from – will you, if he is found guilty, will you then still like this man and support him?

Bedier then proceeds to bob, weave and duck the question. Read it all.

No Progress at Israel-Palestinian Summit

From AP via ABC News:

JERUSALEM — The first Palestinian-Israeli summit in four months failed to propel peace prospects forward or solidify a shaky truce, leaving main issues unresolved and both sides disappointed.

The meeting Tuesday started with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon scolding Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas for an upsurge in Palestinian violence. The chilly atmosphere never warmed.

The summit was supposed to kick off an effort to work together to ensure Israel's withdrawal from Gaza this summer proceeds smoothly and peacefully. But the frosty meeting itself raised doubts as to whether the leaders can work together on the pullout, much less on further peace moves.

The sticking points illuminated in the Debka file are:

1. United Egyptian-Palestinian Front

The Israeli prime minister was presented with a solid Palestinian-Egyptian front. The Palestinians refused to cooperate in the Israeli pull-out as long as Israel did not surrender to Egypt’s demands for its deployment on the Philadelphi border strip...

2. Egypt wants a naval base in N. Sinai’s El Arish

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the Egyptians have upped their price for collaborating in Israel’s disengagement from Gaza: now they want a naval base for missile boats in el Arish on the Mediterranean shore of northern Sinai. This would contravene the 1979 Egyptian Israeli peace treaty, as would their earlier demands for armored personnel carriers (instead of tanks), military helicopters and anti-tank missile emplacements to be posted along their border with southern Israel.

3. Palestinians want rehabilitation while keeping refugee status

The Palestinians have also laid down conditions for accepting the rehousing program offered Gaza refugees by Middle East Quartet coordinator James Wolfensohn at a cost of $3 bn in international funds. They insist on keeping their refugee status and assistance from UNRWA even after they are resettled. The point of this is that it would perpetuate the Palestinian refugee problem as a permanent political lever.

4. The Palestinians want more land – now

The Abbas team told Sharon that the removal of four Jewish communities from the northern West Bank this August is not enough; Israel military bases must also be withdrawn. In the current stage of violent mayhem in the northern West Bank, Israel cannot afford to relinquish its military presence opposite its main population and industrial heartland. The Palestinians however insist on full sovereignty over the northern West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip. By this device, they would acquire extra territory twice the area of Gaza without give-and-take peace talks.

5. Fresh European-Palestinian campaign against defense barrier

Abbas has ordered Palestinian FM Nasser al-Kidwe to sit down with an EU official and draw up international campaign number 2 against Israel’s security barrier. It would begin after Israel completes its pull-backs and feature a new complaint to the International Court at the Hague.

Israeli army continues cracking down on Islamic Jihad

From Xinhuanet:

RAMALLAH -- The Israeli army and security forces continued on Wednesday their crack down on members and militants of the Islamic Jihad movement in the West Bank.

An Islamic Jihad militant in the city of Tulkarem in the West Bank said that the clashes took place between Israeli soldiers and militants of his group as an Israeli army force raided the village of Qufer Raie at pre-dawn Wednesday.

He said that an Israeli force arrested a number of Islamic Jihad militants Tuesday evening as they were besieged by the force in an abandoned house in the city.

"The group managed to survive from the siege and pulled back from the area where the Israeli force followed them and clashed with them," the Jihad militant clarified...

US strategy in Iraq: Is it working?

An interesting analytical piece from the Christian Science Monitor:

The US military strategy in Iraq has been consistent for months now: Use aggressive military operations to disrupt the flow of foreign fighters entering the country and the insurgent support lines that run along the Euphrates River west to the Syrian border. Simultaneously, the US is training Iraqi troops to fill the security vacuum that persists in the center and north of the country. By any metric of tactical military success, it's working, say analysts. US forces have strung together victory after victory. Marine and Army operations from Najaf in the south to Fallujah in the heart of the Sunni triangle and on to Mosul in the north have ended with thousands of insurgents killed and captured and tons of enemy munitions destroyed with minimal US casualties.

This is what Vice President Dick Cheney probably had in mind when he told "Larry King Live" last week that the insurgency is in its "last throes."

But if another measure of success is used - a reduction in the number and lethality of insurgent attacks - the US and the new Iraqi government are failing. In the past two days, for example, US Marines and Army soldiers carried out Operations Spear and Dagger (designed to disrupt insurgent capabilities between Baghdad and Syria). At the same time, separate suicide attacks killed 20 policemen in the Kurdish city of Arbil and 23 people in a Baghdad restaurant popular with policemen, while insurgents overran a police station in southern Baghdad, killing eight officers.

The gap between tactical victories on the one hand, and few tangible improvements in the overall Iraqi security situation on the other, is creating a widening disagreement over whether the US is winning or losing the war in Iraq.

Read it all.

Vines: US may begin drawdown after Iraqi elections

From the Pakistan Tribune, "4 Day Operation Ended in Western Iraq"

U.S. and Iraqi forces have ended a four-day operation, Spear, aimed at clearing insurgent bases and training camps in western Iraq.

Military officials say forces killed some 50 fighters and discovered more than a dozen car bombs in and around the town of Karabilah during the campaign.

U.S. officials also say a roadside bomb killed an American soldier in a separate incident in western Iraq.

Meantime, a top U.S. military commander, General John Vines, says some U.S. forces may begin leaving the country after elections scheduled for later this year.

Pakistanis assure Afghans of support on security

From Reuters:

KABUL - Pakistan has assured Afghanistan of its support and cooperation in the war on terror after angry words between the neighbours over accusations Pakistan is not doing enough to stop Taliban violence.

The assurance comes as fears mount that Taliban fighters launching attacks from Pakistan will disrupt a September parliamentary election in Afghanistan.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday following a 15-minute conversation between the Pakistani leader and President George W. Bush.

"President Musharraf assured President Karzai of Pakistan's continued support and cooperation in the fight against terrorism," the Afghan government said in a release on Wednesday.

"Pakistan condemned the menace in all its forms and manifestations," the Pakistani government said.

The presidents, both important U.S. allies in its war on terror, agreed to strengthen security cooperation, their governments said.

Afghan accusations that Taliban and other militants can launch attacks from the safety of Pakistan have been an irritant in relations since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

Insurgents have launched a wave of attacks in Afghanistan in recent months and hundreds of people, including militants, government and U.S. troops and civilians, have been killed in clashes, ambushes and blasts.

Vincent: Baffled in Basra

Steven Vincent writes an interesting article on the situation in Basra in National Review Online:

...Basra's police force isn't the only example of the social and psychological dysfunctionalities that plague this city of 1.5 million residents. Even as brave and dedicated people here begin to reconstruct their lives in the face of daunting problems — terrorism, a lack of investment funds, corruption, and a political process dominated by incompetent religious parties — others seem just as determined to, well, totally screw things up.

Take "Emergency 115." Recently, the city, with British assistance, instituted a "911"-style system for residents to dial in case of need. Humanely enough, the Brits designed 115 with a provision that allows Basrans to contact help even if they lack SIM cards in their mobile phones. (Land-lines are few and unreliable, so people live by their cells, which require the constant purchase of expensive "scratch" cards to replenish their minutes.) "We created 115 so the call is free," a British officer who supervises the program told me.

Gang atfa gley, Robert Burns might say. For a certain segment of Basra's population discovered the hilarity of making bogus emergency calls. To add to the fun, they remove their SIM cards and remain on the line for hours, tying up the system and preventing people with real crises from getting assistance. According to the British officer, "Only about 5 percent of people contacting 115 call actually need help."...

Then there's garbage: Basra is choking in it, from shredded plastic bags ensnared on coils of barbed wire to archipelagos of rotting offal floating in the city's canals. A few months back, the Brits — yes, them again — initiated a program that would pay trash collectors to cart waste material to a landfill in the desert. The plan seemed to work: Contractors brought truckloads of trash to the site, earning dinars in return. But the city seemed no cleaner. As the Brits soon discovered, contractors were loading up their vehicles with garbage from already-existing piles, located on the edge of town or smoldering in the city center. By the time the British rejiggered the program to compel contractors to direct their attention to city streets, the funding for the project disappeared, a victim of canceled plans, bureaucratic reorientation, or — more likely, locals say — theft...

"Liberation brought us freedom of the press," an Iraqi journalist once told me. "And as long as you don't probe into matters like civic corruption, organized crime, or the religious parties, you're free not to be killed."

And that's the way it is. For every step responsible Basrans move forward — a gradually improving security situation, glimmers of economic development, some political leaders who are beginning to understand they must provide benefits for their constituents — irresponsible, ignorant, and frequently violent elements drag the city backwards. A race, or competition, exists between the forces of enlightened synergy and progress and traumatized entropy and decay. Basra teeters between the two, its future up in the air. And with Basra, so goes the rest of Iraq.

New U.S. Ambassador 'Horrified' By Iraq Violence

From Radio Free Europe:

Baghdad -- The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said today he is horrified at the level of violence wracking the country, and that Islamic extremists and former members of Saddam Hussein's outlawed Ba'ath Party are trying to start a civil war in Iraq.

Khalilzad said after meeting in Baghdad with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that Iraq must prevail.

"Foreign terrorists and hard-line Ba'athists want Iraq to descend into civil war. Foreign terrorists are using the Iraqi people as cannon fodder. They care nothing about Iraq or the Iraqis. Their goal is the domination of the Islamic world and the promotion of global conflict," Khalilzad was quoted by RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq as saying. "Hard-line Ba'athists who commit crimes against the Iraqi people are working to foster an all-out civil war in the hope of either restoring dictatorship and their control of Iraq, or taking the country down with them. They will fail."

He continued: "I am horrified by the daily suffering of the Iraqi people. The terrorists attack ordinary people, teachers, doctors, newly trained police and others who are assisting the people of Iraq."

He added further: "I will support the efforts of the Iraqis to develop a unifying vision, a national compact. This vision should be enshrined in an enlightened and sound constitution that embraces democracy, pluralism and individual rights. The process must be inclusive. For Iraq to achieve its full potential, no community or sector should be marginalized."...

UK: Manchester arrest 'connected to Iraq suicide attacks'

From the UK TimesOnline:

The housemate of a man who allegedly travelled to Iraq to carry out a suicide bomb attack has been arrested in Manchester, police said.

The 40-year-old man was arrested under the Terrorism Act after a dawn raid in the Moss Side area of the city. It is believed that another man who lived at the same address blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq in February.

The men, who are believed to be North African, have been described as "associates" rather than relatives. The intelligence which led to this morning's arrest is thought to have come from security forces in Iraq....

Last week's raids were the fourth such sweep since December looking for evidence of a co-ordinated operation to recruit young men to travel to Iraq and fight in the insurgency.

According to Michael Evans, Defence Editor of The Times, although there is no evidence to link this morning's arrest to those that have taken place recently across Europe, it is certainly a sign that authorities fear that illicit recruitment is active in the UK.

Anti-Syrian Critic Killed in Lebanon Blast

From AP via The Guardian:

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A bomb Tuesday killed a politician who was a harsh critic of Syria's power in Lebanon, police said, the second slaying of an anti-Syrian figure this month.

The explosion that killed former Communist Party chief George Hawi as he rode in his car came two days after elections that gave the anti-Syrian opposition a majority in Lebanon's parliament, breaking the hold of Damascus' allies.

Opposition figures quickly accused Syrian agents and their allies in the Lebanese security services in Hawi's assassination, as they did in the June 2 slaying of opposition journalist Samir Kassir and the Feb. 14 killing of former prime minister Rafik Hariri...

``Yes, it's the Lebanese security system - the remnants - the tutelage,'' Farouk Dahrouj, another former Communist Party leader, said on New TV. ``Tutelage'' is a reference to Syria's influence in Lebanon.

Walid Jumblatt, a leader of the opposition coalition that won the elections, which ended with a fourth and final round on Sunday, implicitly accused Lebanon's pro-Syrian president and the security agencies he heads. Jumblatt said the agencies must be ``completely purged'' before security is restored.

The bomb that killed Hawi was detonated by remote control, similar to the one that killed Kassir in his car nearly three weeks ago, Justice Minister Khaled Kabbani said, touring the blast site...

Hawi, a Greek Orthodox Christian, frequently spoke out against Syrian intelligence and interference in Lebanese affairs.

He was a prominent leader during the 1975-90 civil war, and his followers fought alongside Muslim and Palestinian militias against right-wing Christians and also battled Israeli forces. But in recent years, Hawi espoused Christian-Muslim dialogue...

Syria filled Lebanon's security and intelligence agencies with its allies to help implement its control for nearly three decades. Although Syria withdrew its military in April and some Lebanese security chiefs have been replaced, many pro-Syrians remain in place. The opposition also says Syrian intelligence agents continue to operate directly in Lebanon.

Illegal immigrants accessed nuclear weapons facility

"But Department of Energy report says nothing was compromised." And we aren't told where these illegal immigrants were from, or why they might have been wanting to use false documents to get into the site. No doubt these were not jihadists but just undocumented Irishmen on a prank, so this is a story about lax security: what is to prevent jihadists from doing this? Sure, now security is tighter. It was supposed to be tight to begin with. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sixteen illegal immigrants gained access last year to one of the most sensitive weapons sites in the country, according to a report issued Monday by the Department of Energy's inspector general.

The inspector general's investigation found the illegal immigrants were construction workers on jobs at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Knoxville, Tennessee.

The workers used "false documents" and "gained access to the ... site on multiple occasions," the report said.

The report details how the workers, apparently using fake green cards, were able to obtain access badges.

"This situation represented a potentially serious access control and security problem," the report said.

According to the report, the inquiry brought field agents to the plant who found "official use only" documents "lying unprotected in a construction trailer, which was accessed by the foreign construction workers."

The National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons facilities for the Energy Department, said in the report no evidence was found that the workers had access to any of those documents.

The inspector general, Gregory Friedman, also found that although security was compromised, access controls at the plant have since been tightened.

And he found no evidence that classified or sensitive information was compromised.

Spain arrests more terror suspects

Madrid bombing jihad update from UPI, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MADRID -- Spanish authorities arrested five more suspects connected with last year's Madrid train bombing that killed 191 people, documents disclosed Monday show.

One of the suspects was charged with belonging to a terror organization while the others were accused of merely collaborating with terrorists, El Mundo reported in its online edition.

The five were also among the 16 Islamic terror suspects arrested last week. The other 11 arrested are suspected to have ties to alleged Iraqi terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Turkish Court: Life sentence for Islamic terrorist

Turkey says "Welcome back" to Metin Kaplan. From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

A court found an Islamic terrorist guilty of planning to crash an airplane into the mausoleum of Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and sentenced him to life in prison.

The Istanbul court convicted Metin Kaplan of charges of attempting "to overturn the constitutional order", a charge that amounts to treason, and sentenced him to life with no possibility for parole.

Kaplan, who has said that he opposes the Turkish secular state but denies planning any terrorist acts, will appeal the ruling, his lawyer Husnu Tuna said Monday.

Kaplan lived in Cologne, Germany, until he was extradited to Turkey in October 2004. His group, the Caliphate State, calls for the overthrow of Turkey's secular government and its replacement with an Islamic state. The group has been outlawed in Germany and Turkey.

Thailand: Muslim official arrested after running checkpoint in pickup

Maybe he was just on the way to fertilize his garden. Yeah, that's it. Thai jihad update, from Bangkok's The Nation, with thanks to Twostellas:

Police arrested a local Muslim official in Narathiwat on Sunday night following a high-speed chase after the man ran a checkpoint. In the pickup, the officers discovered a large amount of fertiliser that could be used to make bombs.

Meanwhile, three men were fatally shot in a grocery store in Yala’s Yaha district by armed intruders. One man died at the scene and the two others at hospital. In a separate incident, two men on a motorcycle shot and injured a Muslim man in a drive-by shooting in Yala’s Raman district.

The driver of the pickup in Narathiwat, Somchai Arwae, maintained his innocence. He was held for further questioning.

Police said the Muslim man was found to be carrying 11 bags of fertiliser concentrate weighing a total of 220 kilograms. Suspicions arose over the intended use of the chemicals after the man ran a police checkpoint in Muang district. During a subsequent search of Somchai’s house, police located another 33 bags of similar highly concentrated fertiliser. Each bag weighed 20kg, investigators said.

She believes "in death and Allah"

Remember: one of the "hate speech" charges against Oriana Fallaci is that she said: "Islam is a pond....The pond does not love life: It loves death." So where did this would-be suicide bomber get the idea that it was appropriate to express belief in "death and Allah"? Did she learn Islam from Fallaci? Or...is Fallaci right? "Female bomber says attack was aimed at youth," from the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

A female suicide bomber who planned to blow up at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba on Monday, the same hospital where she received treatment for burns in the past, was caught at the Erez terminal crossing wearing explosives stitched to her underwear.

Security forces were alerted when the biometric screener located at the terminal crossing, revealed that Wafa Samir Ibrahim Bas,21, of the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, was wearing explosives.

Security forces immediately shut down the crossing and Bas was ordered to strip inside a concrete enclosure. During the process she attempted several times to detonate the explosives but failed. Arguing during the procedure with the soldiers who issued orders over a loudspeaker, she eventually shed the explosives which were later blown up by a robot. Officials estimate that the bomb contained ten kilograms of explosives.

Hours later in a Channel One interview at the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon, Bas, an Al Quds Open University student, at first declared that she intended to kill as many Israelis as possible. "I love Allah, I love the land of Palestine and I am a member of the Al Aksa Brigades," she said.

She said she wanted to kill up to 40 or 50 people - as many young people as possible. When asked why specifically young people, she said it was in retaliation for the death of Muhammad Dura. Dura was an 11-year-old Palestinian boy killed at the start of the Initifada, four and a half years ago in the Karni/Netzarim road.

Of course, the whole Muhammad al-Dura brouhaha seems as if it was based on fiction.

She also said her motives for carrying out the attack were because the Koran had been torn up in the Megiddo prison.

Later however, she admitted that she had been taken advantage of by the Al Aksa Brigades and was a victim. Asked if she intended to blow up at Soroka, she said "no, we have hospitals, I was to blow up in a crowded area."

As the reality sank in she said "yesterday I was free, I was a bird flying in the sky." She claimed that her dispatchers told her their own children were unable to carry out the attack because they were too young. When asked why her dispatchers themselves didn't carry out the attack, she replied that she didn't know.

Breaking down and crying, she asked for her mother's forgiveness. "I am sorry mother, forgive me, I should have listened to you," she said.She also said she hoped Israeli judges would have pity and not sentence her too harshly.

When asked if she would launch attacks if allowed to return, she said she may consider it and that she believes "in death and Allah."

The jailer tossed a Qur'an on the bed! Case dismissed!

Qur'an abuse jihad alert: these lawyers are actually asking that their case be dismissed because of...Qur'an abuse. It was...tossed on a bed. This is outstandingly frivolous, and frivolous attempts to head off justice are nothing new for lawyers, but if this succeeds, we might as well turn out the lights in America. "Lawyers for 2 in 'dirty bomb' terror case allege misconduct at jail," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MIAMI -- Attorneys for two terrorism suspects tied to an alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb suspect are asking for the dismissal of a federal indictment against them based on a jailer's mishandling of a Quran and intimidating jail cell searches that removed handwritten papers in Arabic.

The defense claims the seizures from the cells of Adhan Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi in May and June amount to government misconduct and an unconstitutional intrusion on trial preparation.

Jailers also disrespectfully tossed Hassoun's Quran on his bunk and left 8,000 pages of trial papers in disarray, his attorney Kenneth Swartz said in motions filed Friday.

Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and U.S. citizen, face possible life prison sentences on charges of plotting to fund and support Islamic jihad through murder and kidnappings abroad, including Bosnia, Chechnya and Somalia.

``By depriving the defendants of the confidentiality of their own case-related notes, the government has destroyed any possible confidence that their case can be prepared with privacy,'' the men's attorneys wrote.

The defense also is asking for an order to either release the men from solitary confinement or on house arrest. Alicia Valle, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said Monday that prosecutors would respond in writing, but both motions said the federal trial attorney opposed them.

Messages left at the downtown jail where the men are detained by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons were not immediately returned. The defense said the warden responded to a March request by Hassoun for a change in jail conditions by saying he was a ``security threat.''

The Federal Detention Center has held other inmates deemed administrative risks, notably drug kingpins, in solitary for years despite defense protests.

On the Quran, a jail officer took a piece of paper with Arabic writing, but Hassoun explained that he had copied an excerpt from the holy book and showed him the matching text. The officer returned the paper and tossed the Quran on the bed.

``Even the U.S. military has said that's not the kind of treatment you give a holy book, so I guess FDC hasn't come to that conclusion,'' Swartz said Monday.

Afghans hold Pakistanis for plot to kill U.S. envoy

Pakistani duplicity update from Reuters, with thanks to Fanabba:

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan security forces have arrested three Pakistanis for allegedly planning to assassinate the U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan government official said on Monday.

The Pakistanis, who were suspected of being linked to a Pakistani Islamic militant group, were arrested in the eastern province of Laghman on Saturday, the day before Khalilzad made a visit there, said the official, who did not want to be identified.

"They admitted they were there to try to get Khalilzad," he said....

The Afghan official said the three men were caught in the Laghman's Charkhakan district with two AK-47 rifles and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher....

The official said it was unclear to which militant group the men belonged. "But we are pretty sure they are linked to a Pakistani militant group, the Taliban or al Qaeda," he said.

Khalilzad, has been outspoken in his criticism of Pakistan in recent days, despite its status as a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

In an interview with Afghan television on Friday, he said there was a good chance Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was hiding in Pakistan and accused Islamabad of failing to act against fugitive Taliban leaders, charges Pakistan called "irresponsible."

Pakistan: Terror Camps Scatter, Persist

More on Pakistani duplicity from the LA Times, with thanks to Andrew Bostom:

WASHINGTON — U.S. counter-terrorism authorities say that the detention of a Lodi, Calif.-based group of Pakistani men this month underscores a serious problem: the Islamabad government's failure to dismantle hundreds of jihadist training camps.

Long before the FBI arrested Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, and accused the son of attending one of the camps, law enforcement and intelligence officials were watching the Pakistan-based training sites with increasing anxiety.

Technically, they say, the Pakistani government was probably right when it declared this month that the younger Hayat could not have received training at a "jihadist" camp near Rawalpindi since that is the home to Pakistan's military and its feared intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.

But that's because the Pakistani officials were referring to the "old" kind of Al Qaeda camp shown endlessly on TV, in which masked jihadists run around in broad daylight, detonating explosives, firing automatic weapons and practicing kidnappings, these officials say.

Since the post-Sept. 11 military strikes on Al Qaeda strongholds in Pakistan's tribal territories, the jihadist training effort has scattered and gone underground, where it is much harder to detect and destroy, U.S. and Pakistani officials said in interviews.

Instead of large and visible camps, would-be terrorists are being recruited, radicalized and trained in a vast system of smaller, under-the-radar jihadist sites.

And the effort is no longer overseen by senior Al Qaeda operatives as it was in Afghanistan, but by at least three of Pakistan's largest militant groups, which are fueled by a shared radical fundamentalist Islamic ideology. The militant groups have long maintained close ties to Osama bin Laden and his global terrorist network, according to those officials and several unpublicized U.S. government reports.

The groups themselves — Harkat-ul-Mujahedin, or HuM; Jaish-e-Mohammed; and Lashkar-e-Taiba — have officially been banned in Pakistan since 2002 and have been formally designated as terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. That has prompted occasional crackdowns by Islamabad, but the groups merely change their names and occasionally their leadership and resume operations, authorities say.

Tiny minority of extremists update:

The groups wield tremendous political influence, are well-funded and are said to have tens of thousands of fanatical followers, including a small but unknown number of Americans who have entered the system after first enrolling at Pakistan-based Islamic schools, or madrasas. U.S. officials also accuse them of complicity in many of the terrorist attacks against American and allied interests in Pakistan and other assaults in the disputed Kashmir region.

Many U.S. officials say it's not surprising that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hasn't cracked down harder on the militant groups and what they describe as their increasingly extensive training activities.

For years, the ISI itself has worked closely with the groups in training Pakistan's own network of militants to fight ongoing conflicts in Kashmir and elsewhere, and to protect the country's interests in neighboring Afghanistan. The militant groups also derive tremendous influence from their affiliations with increasingly powerful fundamentalist political parties in Pakistan...

"We once knew who the enemy was and what groups were the enemy. And it's become much more difficult to discern that now," said Bruce Hoffman, a chairman of the Rand Corp. and a counter-terrorism consultant to the U.S. government.

With all respect, Mr. Hoffman, I am not convinced that you ever knew who the enemy was. You just thought you did. Studying the pedigrees of various jihadist groups and sniffing each carefully for ties to al-Qaida is a fruitless diversion. It's really not that complicated. The foe is an ideology that is held by untold numbers of individuals, many of whom coalesce from time to time into various groups, which can disappear as easily as they arose. The ideology is the thing, but I know it is beneath the notice of most of those at State and in the Administration.

FBI warns of possible threat to power plants

More empty threats? Probably. The problem is that years can go by that are utterly filled with empty threats, and then the jihadists can strike again. Remember the interval between the 1993 WTC attack and the one in 2001. From the Stamford Advocate, with thanks to A Friend:

The FBI has alerted police about vague, unverified reports of a possible plan to attack power plants and electric grids around New York City this month, according to a confidential FBI memo.

The memo, written by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and read by The Advocate, warns of a written threat from a single source that New York-area power plants will be attacked this month.

The memo stresses that federal authorities have not corroborated the threat. The memo includes a composite sketch of a Middle Eastern man who may be trying to enter the United States this month to participate in the attack....

The police officers said the department receives regular warnings from federal authorities. But this memo is unusual because it names a person and includes a sketch, they said.

Bull said sketches are becoming more common in FBI memos to police.

The memo does not say how a power plant would be attacked. The written threat mentions the possibility of "great news in June," according to the memo.

Police and power company officials have paid more attention to electric power plants since August 2003, when a malfunction at Midwestern power grids caused a blackout across eight states, including Connecticut, and much of Canada.

Al-Qaeda, if my memory serves me well, claimed credit for that, too.

University of Arkansas student arrested on suspicion of jihadist activity

"FBI Takes U Of A Student Into Custody On Terrorism Suspicion," from the HometownChannel.com, with thanks to A Friend:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A University of Arkansas graduate student was taken into custody by the FBI on Friday after agents received reports that he could be involved in a terrorist organization.

Agents arrested Arwah Jaber after receiving an anonymous tip that he was flying back to his homeland of Palestine to join an organization that supports terrorist activities.

According to an FBI affidavit, Jaber sent one of his professors an e-mail saying he was taking a job with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. The group is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

UK: Railway jihad?

Maybe, maybe not. Not the work of "yobs," say the British police. And I know of one group within Britain that has declared war against it, and that is the jihadists. "Railway signals damage was sabotage," from EDP24, with thanks to A Friend:

Police investigating the cutting of railway signals between London and Norwich said tonight that it was a carefully planned pre-meditated act and not the work of young vandals.

Thousands of passengers were affected by the damage today and late Thursday night.

More than 20 trains were cancelled while services between Liverpool Street and Norwich ran hourly with delays of up to 45 minutes on the mainline and 30 minutes on local services.

Engineers, working throughout the early hours to pinpoint the cause of the signal failure, discovered it was a precise act of sabotage and not the work of yobs.

The saboteur cut train signalling and fibre optic cables at two points near Newton Flotman, south of Norwich, and went to great efforts to throw investigators off the scent.

CIA 'knows Bin Laden whereabouts'?

This is a remarkable statement from Goss; if OBL isn't hauled in reasonably soon, it can only make him look bad -- unless his real intent is to call attention to Pakistan's double game, which can only be to the good. "CIA 'knows Bin Laden whereabouts,'" from the BBC, with thanks to Granny Weatherwax:

The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency has said he has an "excellent idea" where Osama Bin Laden is hiding.

But CIA director Porter Goss did not say when the world's most wanted man would be caught, nor his location.

He told Time magazine there were "weak links" in the US-led war on terror. His remarks follow recent US criticism of Pakistan's role in hunting suspects.

Bin Laden, wanted for the 9/11 attacks, is believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida said angry at Sudan for passing data to US

From the Who's Side Are You On Department, via London's Al-Sharq al-Awsat, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

LONDON, June 18, 2005 (Al-Sharq al-Awsat) -- Fundamentalists in London say that the unprecedented attack on the Sudanese government by Ayman al-Zawahri, the number one ally of the leader of Al-Qaida Organization Osama bin Ladin, in his new tape that was broadcast by the Qatari satellite channel Al-Jazeera yesterday (June 17) was due to Khartoum's handing over to Washington of files on Al-Qaida's leaderships.

Hani al-Subaie the director of Al-Maqrizi Research Centre in London told Al-Sharq al-Awsat "Khartoum has turned over files with photographs for most of the leaderships of Al-Qaida and the Egyptian Jihad" who used to live in the Sudanese capital until they broke off and left Sudan in 1995....

Ayman al-Zawahri, the number two man in Al-Qaida Organization criticized "the American visualization of reforms" and attacked, according to the tape, the Sudanese, Saudi and Egyptian governments according to what the channel cited.

Lawyer: FBI officials clueless about terrorism

I suspect that this is true in large part because of politically correct niceties that make it impossible for the Fibbies to speak openly and honestly about the true causes and goals of Islamic terrorism. By starting with the unsupportable but also never-to-be-questioned dogma that contemporary terrorism has nothing to do with Islam, they doom themselves to getting lost in a forest of false assumptions and misplaced priorities.

"In Letter to Senators, Lawyer Criticizes Top F.B.I. Officials," from the New Duranty Times, with thanks to Seymour Paine:

WASHINGTON, June 19 - A lawyer who interviewed a number of top current and former counterterrorism officials at the F.B.I. in connection with a lawsuit against the bureau has written to three senators saying that the officials lacked a detailed understanding of terrorism and were promoted to top jobs despite having little experience in the field.

In a 15-page letter, the lawyer, Stephen M. Kohn, wrote that the F.B.I.'s top counterterrorism officials said in sworn depositions that they did not know the relationship between Al Qaeda and Jamal Islamia, a South Asia offshoot of the terror network. Nor were they aware of the linkage between Osama bin Laden and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a spiritual adviser to Mr. bin Laden with whom he had been closely associated since the 1980's.

These guys should be reading Jihad Watch. I would wager that the average regular reader of this site knows more about what the jihad terrorists are doing around the world and why than the Fibbies, at least as they're portrayed here. The last time I talked to one -- about the death threats I recently received -- he was courteous and interested, but utterly uninformed about jihad terrorism.

Mr. Kohn said that F.B.I. Director Robert S. Mueller III, in his deposition, seemed unsure of Mr. bin Laden's relationship to Sheik Rahman, who is better known as the blind sheik and was convicted in 1996 on terrorism charges. Asked if he was aware of their relationship, Mr. Mueller is quoted in Mr. Kohn's letter as saying he was not.

Mr. Kohn's June 17 letter was written to two Republicans, Senators Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, and one Democrat, Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, each of whom has long had an interest in F.B.I. matters. Mr. Kohn said in the letter that he was disclosing the information from the depositions at Mr. Grassley's request.

"Since 9/11 and up to today, the F.B.I. has been led by managers without counterterrorism experience or background especially in Middle Eastern terrorism, and their testimony under oath is that they are learning about counterterrorism on the job," Mr. Kohn wrote.

Mr. Kohn's complaints, although clearly advocacy statements by a lawyer pressing his client's legal claims, are likely to be taken more seriously because they are similar to the findings of recent reports by recent independent review panels, which have criticized the bureau's progress in correcting the flaws exposed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Latest Al-Zawahiri Video on Al-Jazeera: "Reform and Expelling the Invaders from the Lands of Islam will Only be Accomplished by Fighting for the Sake of Allah"

From MEMRI:

On Friday June 17, 2005, Al-Jazeera TV released a tape of an address by Al-Qa'ida deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. The following are excerpts from the speech by Al-Zawahiri aired by Al-Jazeera:

Al-Zawahiri: "True reform is based on three principles:

"The first principle is the rule of Shari'a[Islamic law], because Shari'a, which was given by God, protects the believers' interests, freedom, honor, and pride, and protects what is sacred to them. The Islamic nation will not accept any other law, after it has suffered from the anti-Islamic trends forcefully imposed on it.

"The second principle of reform is the freedom of the lands of Islam. No reform is conceivable while our countries are occupied by the Crusader forces, which are spread throughout our countries. No reform is conceivable while the Crusader forces are stationed in our countries [where they] enjoy support, supplies, and storage facilities, and go forth from our countries to attack our brothers and sisters in other Islamic countries. No reform is conceivable while our governments are controlled by the American embassies, which stick their noses into all our affairs.

"The third principle of reform is the Muslim nation's freedom to run its own affairs. This [principle of] reform will only be realized in two ways. First, freedom of the independent religious judicial system, the implementation of its rulings, and the guaranteeing of its honor, authority, and strength. Second, the freedom and the right of the Islamic nation to implement the principle of 'promoting virtue and preventing vice.'

"I would also like to stress that the expulsion of the invading Crusader and Jews from the lands of Islam will not be accomplished merely through demonstrations and hoarse throats in the streets. Reform and expelling the invaders from the lands of Islam will only be accomplished by fighting for the sake of Allah.

"Allah said: 'Fight them until all strife ceases and religion is professed for the pleasure of Allah alone.' He also said: 'Fight them, and Allah will punish them at your hands and will humiliate them, and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers.'

"I salute my brothers, the lions of Islam, who are on the holy front of Islam around Jerusalem. I call upon them in the name of Allah not to abandon their Jihad, not to throw down their weapons, not to believe the counsel of the collaborators, not to forget the lessons of history, not to trust the secularists who have sold Palestine cheaply, and not to be drawn into the secular game of elections in accordance with a secular constitution."...

How U.S. could be beat

EMP Threat. Something more to worry about from the G2 Bulletin (subscription only).

Joining Sen. John Kyl, who warned of how an electromagnetic pulse attack threatens U.S. survival, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, chairman of the House Projection Forces Subcommittee, says an EMP attack – even by an underfunded, unsophisticated terrorist group – has the potential to cripple U.S. society.

"Today we are very much concerned ... about asymmetric weapons," said Bartlett. "We are a big, powerful country. Nobody can contend with us shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face. So all of our potential adversaries are looking for what we refer to as asymmetric weapons. That is a weapon that overcomes our superior capabilities. There is no asymmetric weapon that has anywhere near the potential of EMP."
EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field.

"These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light," said Dr. Lowell Wood, acting chairman of the commission appo9inted by Congress to study the threat. "For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico."

The commission, in its work over a period of several years, found that EMP is one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold American society seriously at risk and that might also result in the defeat of U.S. military forces.

"The electromagnetic field pulses produced by weapons designed and deployed with the intent to produce EMP have a high likelihood of damaging electrical power systems, electronics and information systems upon which any reasonably advanced society, most specifically including our own, depend vitally," Wood said. "Their effects on systems and infrastructures dependent on electricity and electronics could be sufficiently ruinous as to qualify as catastrophic to the American nation."

The commission concluded in its report to Congress earlier this year: "EMP is one of a small number of threats that may hold at risk the continued existence of today's U.S. civil society.''

"The number of U.S. adversaries capable of EMP attack is greater than during the Cold War," said Bartlett. "We may look back with some fondness on the Cold War. We then had only one potential adversary. We knew him quite well."

Bartlett pointed out that Iran has tested launching of a Scud missile from a surface vessel, "a launch mode that could support a national or transnational EMP attack against the United States."

"Iran has conducted tests with its Shahab-3 missile that have been described as failures by the Western media because the missiles did not complete their ballistic trajectories, but were deliberately exploded at high altitude," he said. "This, of course, would be exactly what you would want to do if you were going to use an EMP weapon. Iran described these tests as successful. We said they were a failure because they blew up in flight. They described them as successful. Of course, they would be, if Iran's intent was practicing for an EMP attack."...

Baghdad diner bombed; U.S. troops press offensive

From Reuters:

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber who walked into a Baghdad restaurant popular with police outside the Green Zone government compound killed 23 people on Sunday, the bloodiest attack in the capital for six weeks.

The al Qaeda group in Iraq led by Jordanian Abu Musab al- Zarqawi claimed the bombing as U.S. and Iraqi troops scoured towns close to the Syrian border that they believe serve as staging posts for foreign fighters coming into the country.

The bomb went off around lunchtime just a few hundred meters (yards) from where Iraq's parliament was meeting inside the fortified Green Zone, once Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound. Zarqawi and his Iraqi Sunni Arab allies have declared war on the new Shi'ite-led, U.S.-backed government.

Not for more than a month, since U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Operation Lightning, a crackdown on insurgent bomb factories and other rebel activity in the city, has an attack caused so much bloodshed in central Baghdad.

The one-room, street-front restaurant was devastated, with scarcely a stick of blood-spattered furniture intact. Human remains lay on the sidewalk. Police said seven of the 23 dead were police. A further 36 people were wounded...

Yemeni appeal court acquits 11 of terror charges

Yemen continues to be a jihad playground. From DPA, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

SANA - A Yemeni appeal court on Saturday confirmed a lower court verdict acquitting 11 Islamic militants of plotting terror attacks and upheld convictions against five of them for forging travel documents.

Presiding judge of the Sana Court of Appeals Saeed al-Qataa ordered the immediate release of the 11 defendants, saying the five men convicted of falsifying documents had served enough jail periods in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

The defendants, standing behind bars, and their relatives in the courtroom shouted “Allahu-Akbar” (God is Great) as the judge pronounced the verdict. Six of the defendants had been handed over to Yemen by Saudi Arabia.

The men, aged between 24 and 35, had originally been charged with forming an armed group to carry out attacks in Yemen and abroad. Other charges included forging documents, possession of weapons and explosives.

A state security court cleared the 11 suspects of terror charges on March 21. Defence lawyers have argued that the case was based on weak charges...

Rice rejects Hamas contact

From the Washington Times:

JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday rejected calls for U.S. engagement with the militant Palestinian group Hamas and urged Palestinians not to vote for the group's candidates in upcoming parliamentary elections.

"I frankly don't think that it is the dream of mothers and fathers around the world that their children will be suicide bombers," she said. "I don't think it is the dream of people around the world that their children will have no future but one of violence."

Miss Rice, may we refer you to Palestinian Media Watch, where you will find both the ideological justification and the celebration by many Palestinian parents over those very acts. The vows of Palestinian mothers to sacrifice their children for Islam are regular fare in the Palestinian media.

The parliamentary elections, which had been scheduled for July, were postponed indefinitely earlier this month.

Miss Rice, on her second visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories since assuming office in January, said after a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Washington will only deal with nationally elected officials.

"There is an elected president and a government with which we are dealing," she said at a press conference with Mr. Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "We are the government of the United States. This is the government of the Palestinian people."

The secretary's comments came after Hamas members disclosed Thursday that they had had regular contacts with European Union diplomats. Although EU officials in Brussels denied the contacts, they noted that dealing with Hamas may be hard to avoid since the group has won control of dozens of West Bank and Gaza towns in recent municipal elections.

Both the Unites States and the EU insist they still view Hamas as a terrorist organization...

But for how long?

Iran Moderate Says Hard-Liners Rigged Election

Here's an interesting development in Iran's election, from the New Duranty Times, but regardless of the protests, it looks like there will be a run-off between two hardliners, the Mayor of Tehran and Rafsanjani.

TEHRAN - The race for the presidency in Iran was thrown into turmoil on Saturday when the third-place finisher accused conservative hard-liners of rigging the election and cutting him out of the runoff vote next week, which will be between a former president and the conservative mayor of Tehran.

The accusation of voting irregularities came from Mehdi Karroubi, a cleric and former speaker of Parliament known as a conciliator, who said he would continue to press his case publicly unless the country's supreme religious leader ordered an independent investigation.

It was a bold move in a country that does not generally tolerate such forms of public dissent, and it threw an element of confusion and uncertainty into the race just as the authorities were finalizing the election results, planning for the runoff and pointing to the outcome as a validation of this country's religion-based system of government.

The Interior Ministry issued final figures Saturday night, saying the former two-term president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would face off against the hard-line mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a runoff it said would probably be held next Friday. It was unclear what, if any, effect the accusations of fraud would have on the planned vote.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's strong showing came as a shock to the political establishment here. He had hovered at the back of the field of candidates in pre-election opinion surveys and his political base was said to be limited to the capital city. An element of the bizarre in the events on Saturday came as Mr. Ahmadinejad announced that he would be in the runoff hours before the ministry issued its own results.

The government did not immediately respond to the charges of vote tampering, but the cloud had been hanging over the race since the early morning hours when the Interior Ministry found its results being publicly contradicted on state television by the Guardian Council, the panel controlled by hard-line clerics that has the ultimate say over all government actions and often clashes with the reform-controlled elected government. The council has, for example, the power to unilaterally reject the outcome of the election.

Initially, the Interior Ministry had Mr. Rafsanjani first, Mr. Karroubi, the former speaker of the Parliament, in second, and Mr. Ahmadinejad third. Half an hour later the Guardian Council, which is not supposed to be involved in counting ballots, said Mr. Ahmadinejad was in first place.

Apparently hoping to head off an embarrassing public split, the departing president, Mohammad Khatami, visited the site where the ballots were being counted in the morning and offered words of assurance.

"All our efforts have been to hold a healthy election and to protect peoples votes," Mr. Khatami said in comments broadcast on national news. "I have come here to thank officials at the Interior Ministry and to make sure votes are being counted very carefully. If anyone has made any other comments, it is not right."...

Iraqis Found in Torture House Tell of Brutality of Insurgents

From the New Duranty Times:

KARABILA, Iraq - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.

The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.

The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.

In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.

"They kill somebody every day," said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people."

From the house on Saturday, there could be heard sounds of fighting from the large-scale offensive to eliminate strongholds of insurgents, many of whom stream across Iraq's porous border with Syria.

As the marines walked through the house - a squat one-story building of sand-colored brick - the broken black window glass crunched under their boots. Light poured in, revealing walls and ceiling shredded by shrapnel from the blast they had set off to break in through a wall. Latex gloves were strewn on the floor. A kerosene lantern lay on its side, shattered.

The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."

Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up...

Algerian who fabricated details of al-Qaida plot to bomb US cities sent to prison

"War is deceit," said Muhammad. "Algerian who fabricated details of al-Qaida plot sent to prison," from AP, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

INDIANAPOLIS – An Algerian man who lied about an al-Qaida plot to bomb five U.S. cities in an attempt to avoid deportation was sentenced Friday to a year in prison.

Ahmed Allali, 37, had pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements for telling federal investigators he knew members of the al-Qaida terrorist network and had lived overseas with them in the late 1990s.

In addition to sentencing Allali to a year in prison, federal Judge Larry J. McKinney also imposed 3 years of supervised release following his release from prison.

Allali lied to members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force when he told them he traveled into the United States in 1998 with al-Qaida members, prosecutors said.

The Algerian national, who was living in Indianapolis, also claimed that an al-Qaida cell was planning to detonate bombs in five major U.S. cities in early 2005.

Late last year, Allali acknowledged he knew no one associated with al-Qaida and had fabricated the story in an attempt to avoid deportation, authorities said....

Authorities have said the investigation tied up hundreds of agents nationwide, diverting resources from other terrorist leads.

“False reports drain already overburdened public safety agencies as well as create undue alarm at a time in this country where there is legitimate concern,” Brooks said.

UK Cleric's hate message finds place in website

A cleric, eh? No, it isn't those pesky Methodists again, it's none other than Omar Bakri, who has been notably quiet of late. "UK Cleric's hate massage finds place in website," from the Hindustan Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad called the Tottenham mullah, despite watch on him by anti-terror units, has reportedly again called on Muslims to kill the non-believers. He is said to have appeared on an Islamic website urging supporters to rise up and support a holy war.

Bakri was shown in front of a cheering crowd, demanding supporters seek out non- Muslims-Kafirs-and kill them. He also, according to a media report, appeared to suggest the US embassy should be stormed. He was quoted saying, "We're going to incite people to do jihad, incite people to hate the new pharaoh (President Bush). Why not do more? Maybe take over the Embassy."...

Bakri, a former asylum seeker who lives with his family of eight, is already under investigation by Scotland Yard for similar speeches.

Leading Egyptian Government Daily Al-Akhbar: "Al-Zarqawi is an American Agent"

Yes, and Osama has a plush office in Foggy Bottom. From MEMRI:

In a June 15, 2005 editorial titled "All the Evidence Proves that Al-Zarqawi is an American Agent," a leading Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar's states that Al-Zarqawi is working for the U.S. and is massacring Iraqis in an effort to extend the occupation in Iraq. The following are excerpts from the article:

"All the evidence proves that Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi is working for America, because his victims are Iraqis and not [members of] the coalition forces under the command of the American occupation forces in Iraq. Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi's official title is 'leader of Al-Qa'ida's faction in Iraq.' Osama bin Laden is the commander of the Al-Qa'ida organization, and this proves that [Al-Zarqawi's commander,] bin Laden, has [also] been an American agent ever since he operated against the USSR forces in Afghanistan in favor of the Americans!

"Let's read the statement issued two days ago on behalf of Al-Zarqawi in Iraq after he killed and wounded dozens of people from among the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, by means of booby-trapped cars in a number of cities in Iraq!

"Raising a few questions is unavoidable in order to clarify the situation and [to understand] who this Al-Zarqawi with Jordanian nationality is.

"One of the questions is: which of the two should Al-Zarqawi oppose - the American occupation army and the foreign coalition forces, or the Iraqi military and police forces?! The statement issued by Al-Zarqawi and his organization says that they struck and killed dozens of [members of] the Interior Ministry and Iraqi army forces, whereas there was no mention of Al-Zarqawi targeting the American occupation forces and the coalition forces of the various nationalities. [In fact,] the statement did not even mention the occupation army in Iraq!"

"Another question [to be raised] is whether the world is so naive as to believe the American statements, which claim that Washington has allocated $25 million for Al-Zarqawi's arrest or for information leading to his arrest. [After all,] why arrest Al-Zarqawi and allocate all these millions while he is working for America?

"In addition, why is Al-Zarqawi massacring innocent Iraqi citizens and
[members of] the Iraqi National Guard, the Iraqi army and the Iraqi Interior Ministry? Al-Zarqawi undeniably aims to harm the Iraqi people and members of the Iraqi forces, who undergo training to protect [their] homeland in the future. This massacre of the Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people is meant to strengthen the American occupation of the region [that is known to be] the main route to Central Asia, formerly under USSR control, [and that is] rich in oil wells, and surrounds Iran and the Caspian Sea..."

You just can't parody this sort of thing.

Saudi Expert: Al-Qaida Plans 'Catastrophic' Attack

Refreshingly straight talk from a Saudi terrorism expert. From NewsMax, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Al-Qaida is far from being neutralized and is planning its next "catastrophic" attack, according to a top expert on the terrorist organization.

Dr. Saad al-Faqih, who heads the Saudi opposition group Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, was asked in an interview in London if there is any credence to reports of al-Qaida's "demise." His response was chilling:

"Nobody knows how al-Qaida really works. Consider, for instance, that the time lapse between the Africa embassy bombings and 9/11 was more than three years. Therefore the fact that no major attack has taken place since 9/11 is not altogether very surprising.

"Al-Qaida is an extremely resilient organization and it will most likely surprise everybody by how, when and where it executes its next catastrophic attack."

Asked when a weapons of mass destruction attack is likely to take place, Dr. al-Faqih said: "It could happen at any time."...

"But of course al-Qaida is an ideology and its potency cannot be reduced to the number of men in its ranks," he cautioned.

"Moreover, the invasion and occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaida a huge boost and the Saudi government has indirectly admitted that at least 2,500 Saudis are fighting in Iraq."...

"A classified interior ministry report claims that at least 200 have
returned and are currently plotting attacks inside the Kingdom.

"An attack on the royals will likely be carried out by returnees from Iraq."...

"Al-Qaida has lost ground militarily, politically and ideologically.

Ideologically? Really?

Attacking civilians proved to be a major blunder and it remains to be seen whether they can fully recover from it.

He is most likely referring only to Muslim civilians within Saudi Arabia.

"Also, by attacking the security forces they lost a lot of sympathy inside these organizations."

The feeling in Saudi society today is no longer particularly sympathetic toward al-Qaida, according to al-Faqih.

Tiny minority of extremists update:

"The situation was very different two or three years ago, when ordinary people were willing to give the jihadis shelter and other forms of support."

Al-Faqih also predicted that 'al-Qaida in Iraq' leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would likely be killed soon - and said that ordinary Saudis view their government's support for the occupation of Iraq as "treason."

Zawahri says change in Arab world possible only through jihad

At last, details of the latest chart-topper, featuring more railing against "Crusaders" and Jews, from Zawahri. From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CAIRO, JUNE 17 (AP) Al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, released a new video, aired on Al-Jazeera television today, denouncing the U.S. Concept of reform and saying armed jihad is the only way to bring change in the Arab world.

The message _ al-Zawahri's first video since February _ appeared to be an attempt by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida to coopt the rising wave of reform movements in the Middle East....

``The removal of the Crusader and Jewish invaders from the Islamic countries won't occur only by peaceful demonstrations,'' he said in a brief clip aired on the pan-Arab network. ``Reform and expelling the invaders from the countries of Islam won't happen except through fighting for God's sake.'' Instead, he outlined what he called a true program for reform _ based on the rule of Islamic law and the end of U.S. And Western domination.

``We cannot imagine any reform while our countries are occupied by the Crusader forces,'' he said. ``We cannot imagine any reform while our governments are being ruled from the American embassies in our countries.'' He said the Islamic world must be allowed to run its own affairs with ``the freedom of a legitimate and independent judiciary'' and the power to ``propagate virtue and prevent vice'' _ an injunction to implement Islamic law.

Questions, Bitterness and Exile for Queens Girl in Terror Case

It's understandable that the government would not want to present its side of the case. But it just allows the New Duranty Times to print victimization speculation like this story. Perhaps some attention should be paid to the possibilities of disclosing enough to answer legitimate questions without compromising ongoing investigations. (Thanks to SusanP for the link.)

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Slumped at the edge of the bed she would have to share with four relatives that night, the 16-year-old girl from Queens looked stunned.

The sisters, their mother and a brother are back in Bangladesh.
On the hot, dusty road from the airport, she had watched rickshaws surge past women sweeping the streets, bone-thin in their bright saris. Now, in a language she barely understood, unfamiliar aunts and uncles lamented her fate: to be forced to leave the United States, her home since kindergarten, because the F.B.I. had mysteriously identified her as a potential suicide bomber.

"I feel like I'm on a different planet," the girl, Tashnuba Hayder, said. "It just hit me. How everything happened - it's like, 'Oh, my God.' "

The story of how it happened - how Tashnuba, the pious, headstrong daughter of Muslim immigrants living in a neighborhood of tidy lawns and American flags, was labeled an imminent threat to national security - is still shrouded in government secrecy. After nearly seven weeks in detention, she was released in May on the condition that she leave the country immediately. Only immigration charges were brought against her and another 16-year-old New York girl, who was detained and released. Federal officials will not discuss the matter.

But as the first terror investigation in the United States known to involve minors, the case reveals how deeply concerned the government is that a teenager might become a terrorist, and the lengths to which federal agents will go if they get even a whiff of that possibility. And it has drawn widespread attention, stoking the debate over the right balance between government vigilance and the protection of individual freedoms.

It is not known what prompted the authorities to investigate Tashnuba, who says the accusations are false. But in a series of interviews - her first - she said the government had apparently discovered her visits to an Internet chat room where she took notes on sermons by a charismatic Islamic cleric in London, a sheik who has long been accused of encouraging suicide bombings.

An F.B.I. agent, posing as a youth counselor, first confronted Tashnuba in her bedroom, going through her school papers and questioning everything from her views on jihad to her posterless walls, she said. Sent to a center for delinquents in Pennsylvania, Tashnuba said she was interrogated without a lawyer or parent present, about her beliefs and those of her friends, mainly American girls she had met at city mosques.

As suicide bombings mount overseas, with teenage girls among the perpetrators, there is no doubt that the government's intelligence efforts are spurred by legitimate fears. The agent leading this investigation was a Muslim woman born in Britain who has voiced strong concern about radical clerics' influence on young immigrants there. And in Tashnuba, who wore a veil and talks of an ideal Islamic state, she met unsettling opinions and teenage defiance.

But Tashnuba says that she opposes suicide bombing, that her interest in the cleric was casual, and that the government treated her like a criminal simply for exercising the freedoms of speech and religion that America had taught her.

As she tells it, F.B.I. agents tried to twist mundane details of her life to fit the profile of a terrorist recruit, and when they could not make a case, covered their tracks by getting her out of the country. In fact, the court order of "voluntary departure" that let her leave requires a finding that the person is not deportable for endangering national security.

Tashnuba said she believed she was singled out precisely because she is a noncitizen - allowing investigators to invoke immigration law, bypassing the familiar limits of criminal and juvenile proceedings.

"That gave them the green light to get me out of my family," Tashnuba said during her long journey with her mother and siblings to this teeming city where she was born.

This account is, in large part, her version of events. Some of it is supported by documents and other interviews, but it cannot all be corroborated because a court has sealed the case record at the F.B.I.'s request and barred participants from disclosing government information. The government has declined repeated requests to present its side.

Four held in London anti-terror swoop

Four misunderstanders of Islam apprehended in London. From the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Police arrested four men for suspected terrorism offences in a series of co-ordinated armed raids in north London early today.

Detectives, acting on intelligence, raided two houses in Barnet and another in Finchley in the early hours and arrested two men.

Anti-terrorist officers ambushed a vehicle in Barnet High Road and arrested the driver and a passenger. The road was closed off this morning while officers checked the car, and searches were continuing at the three addresses.

The men were held in the early hours of this morning under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act. They are being questioned at a central London police station over suspected links to Islamic terrorism.

The making of a terrorist

An illuminating piece from the Asia Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

KARACHI - Two and a half years ago, Pakistan's most-wanted person, Asif Ramzi, was found dead, along with five others, following an explosion in a bombing-making factory in Korangi, a satellite district of the southern port city of Karachi.

Ramzi was wanted in connection with the killing of Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl and the June 2002 bombing of the US consulate in
Karachi.

This incident alerted the security agencies of both the US and Pakistan to the emergence of Korangi, as well as neighboring Landhi, as a new breeding ground for the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, and consequently a new target in the "war on terror". The Landhi-Korangi area already had notoriety as a "no-go area".

The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi is the militant offshoot of the banned Sunni sectarian group Sepah-i-Sahabah, which although not directly affiliated with al-Qaeda, its members have a kinship, as many of them trained together in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban in that country...

Read it all.

Kashmiri rebel confirms Pakistani spy agency help

Rashid Ahmed update from Reuters, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's main spy agency gave military training to Kashmiri rebels battling security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, a separatist leader has revealed for the first time.

While India has long accused Pakistan of training and arming the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies, this is the first confirmation by a separatist leader in the troubled Himalayan region. It comes at a time of unprecedented peace steps by the two nuclear-armed powers.

The Kashmir dispute has been at the heart of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan, and tens of thousands of people have been killed in the rebellion against Indian rule in its part of the Muslim-majority region.

The revelation of help for the rebels from Pakistan's Inter-Service
Intelligence (ISI) agency comes in a new book by Amanullah Khan, chief of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF).

"We had a gentleman's agreement, an oral sort of agreement. I was given the idea that the ISI was all for the independence of Kashmir," Khan told Reuters on Friday, referring to the beginning of ISI help for his group.

He said he was given the impression that Pakistan's then military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, also supported the notion of independence for Kashmir...

Lodi Muslims divided by arrests of imams

An intriguing article on the ice cream jihad fallout among Muslims in Lodi. Note the position of CAIR, and the altogether positive prospect of Muslims planning to protest against it. "Muslim community: division and reflection," from the Record, with thanks to Thomas:

LODI -- The local Muslim community has tried hard this week to mask its divisions.

Those internal struggles may soon reappear in a public way. On Friday, Lodi Muslim Mosque board member Nick Qayyum said he and many others plan to protest at the Sacramento office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations for its part in standing by two local spiritual leaders arrested on immigration violations -- Mohammad Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed.

The two imams, as well as Khan's teenage son, were detained as federal officials investigated two other men suspected of having ties to terrorists. Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, were arrested Sunday on charges of lying to investigators.

Qayyum said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, shouldn't be defending the two imams, who he thinks have tried to take control of the local Islamic community. The imams have been controversial in part because they came to Lodi from Pakistan.

Khan also spearheads efforts to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, where some Muslims hope to create a religious school. Lodi Muslim Mosque board members have sued over those plans, accusing Farooqia supporters with deception and fraud.

More than 3,000 Muslims from Pakistan live in the Lodi area. The community has been divided in part over the Farooqia center, but also over whether the community should be led by outsiders or those who grew up in area.

Qayyum said that Khan and Ahmed "divided our families -- brothers against brothers, sisters against sisters. If (CAIR) is going to go out to support these people, we're going to protest. We're going to try to get 400 to 500 people to go to the office in Sacramento. That's not a joke, either.

"As far as I'm concerned, (Khan and Ahmed) hijacked our religion and tried to hijack us."...

It's interesting that with all this religion-hijacking talk we have heard since 9/11, this is the first instance I can remember of rank-and-file Muslims in America actually doing something about it. Please refresh my memory if I am overlooking something.

The Business of Terror

Rachel Ehrenfeld writes on the charitable jihad in Frontpage, with thanks to EPG:

On May 11, 2005, Muhamed Mubayyid was arrested and charged in Boston's District Court for filing false tax returns on behalf of Care International, for which he acted as treasurer. Mubayyid was also the Customer Services manager of the company known as Ptech, a privately owned technology company based in Quincy, Massachusetts. Ptech, which recently changed its name to GoAgile, developed a software, also called Ptech, that was used primarily to develop enterprise blueprints that held every important functional, operational, and technical detail of a given enterprise.

Mubayyid is only the latest of Ptech's top investors and managers to run afoul with the law. Mubayyid personifies the interlinks of the complex infrastructure, which were established by al-Qaeda and other Islamist organizations in the US.

But Mubayyid was not arrested for his connection with al-Qaeda. Rather, was charged for making false statements and conspiring to defraud the US by misrepresenting Care's activities, which involved "the solicitation and expenditure of funds to support and promote the mujahideen and jihad, including the distribution of pro-jihad publications."...

Read it all.

Afghan Minister Says al-Qaida Regroups

Why haven't they given up? Does the State Department know? Do they have any idea of the elements of the jihad ideology that motivates them? Do they know why the Karzai government has hewed so closely to the Islamic law that it was supposed to represent freedom from? From AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network is regrouping and preparing to bring Iraq-style bloodshed to Afghanistan, the defense minister said Friday, warning his country may face intense violence ahead of key legislative elections this fall.

Recent intelligence indicates the terror organization slipped about half a dozen Arab agents into Afghanistan over the past three weeks, including two who detonated themselves in suicide bombings against a packed mosque and a convoy of U.S. troops, Defense Minister Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press.

"It looks like there has been a regrouping of al-Qaida and they may have changed their tactics not only to concentrate on Iraq but also on Afghanistan," Wardak said in an interview over tea at his wood-paneled office next to the heavily guarded presidential compound.

"We do believe that we will have three months of very tough times," Wardak said. "The enemies of this nation will do everything they can to disrupt the (Sept. 18 parliamentary) elections."...

"As we get closer to the elections, they are likely to intensify their efforts to ... derail the elections," said Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who has been tapped by President Bush to be the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq.

Referring to the infiltration of Arab fighters for al-Qaida, Wardak said: "We have gotten reports here and there that they have entered - at least half a dozen of them. The last report is that they came in just close to the time of the mosque attack."...

Authorities recovered the head of the mosque attacker and said he appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent. Wardak said initial indications are that the second suicide attacker also was Arab.

Al-Jazeera to air video of al-Qaida's Zawahiri

A new tape surfaces from our old friend the doctor. From Xinhuanet:

CAIRO - Al-Jazeera TV channel said Friday that it will air a new videotape from al-Qaida's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri Friday evening.

In the tape which the channel aired an excerpt, the terror network's deputy leader appeared in a traditional gown wearing a white turban, and a rifle was propped up by his side.

He slammed the United States for its reforms in the Mideast region, and also criticized pro-Western states of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The channel stopped short of specifying how it obtained the tape, which was not dated.

Excerpts of the video will be aired at 9:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT), the Qatar-based satellite channel said.

Zawahiri, al-Qaida's leader Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, appeared in a footage aired by the channel last November, calling for continuing fight against the United States "till the last hour."...

Stay tuned...

'Operation Spear' Launched in Iraq

An effort to clean up the Iraqi Syrian border region. From AP via Fox News:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military launched a major combat operation Friday, sending 1,000 Marines and Iraqi soldiers to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters in a volatile western province straddling Syria.

Operation Spear started in the pre-dawn hours in Anbar province to hunt for insurgents and foreign fighters, the military said. The area, which straddles the Syrian border, is where U.S. forces said it killed about 40 militants in airstrikes in Karabilah on June 11.

The operation came one day after Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston called the Syrian border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the influx of foreign fighters to Iraq. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile border with Iraq.

The Marines have lost 11 men and two sailors over the past week in separate incidents around Anbar.

Elsewhere, a car bomber rammed into an Iraqi army convoy in northern Iraq early Friday, injuring at least seven people — three soldiers, three civilians and one policeman, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said. The blast came on the heels of a car bomb on Baghdad's airport road Thursday that killed at least eight police officers and wounded 25 more...

Calif. Terror Suspects Indicted

California, Pennsylvania and Arkansas in the news this morning. Lodi case update from AP via Fox News:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A father and son were indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges they lied to authorities investigating links to Pakistani terrorist training camps connected to Al Qaeda.

Hamid Hayat, 22, was accused of lying to the FBI earlier this month when he said he did not attend a terrorism camp in Pakistan in 2003 and 2004, prosecutors said.

His father, Umer Hayat, 47, was charged with lying to investigators when he denied that his son had attended such camps. The FBI said the elder Hayat later admitted to flying his son to Pakistan and paying for the camp, which was run by the friend of a relative.

The indictment said the younger Hayat falsely told authorities he was not involved with a terrorist organization, he never attended a terrorist camp and he had never received any weapons training at such a camp.

In an affidavit, the FBI said Hamid Hayat attended a terror camp for about six months before returning to the U.S. intending to wage attacks. They said they found no immediate threat or terrorist activity.

Defense lawyer Wazhma Mojaddidi said Thursday that Hamid Hayat "has most definitely never attended a terrorist training camp."...

Members of the 2,000-member Pakistani community there have said they have been harassed by authorities, and on Thursday two groups said they would file complaints.

In other developments, a 68-year-old Pennsylvania man who told undercover federal agents he had "no loyalty for America" was indicted Thursday on a single count of attempting to support Al Qaeda by allegedly trying to build a bomb and sell it to the terrorist group or its affiliates.

If convicted, Ronald Allen Grecula, of Bangor, Pa., could face up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

In Arkansas, a graduate student who allegedly told a professor that he was leaving to fight in a Palestinian holy war was in federal custody Thursday. Federal agents arrested Arwah J. Jaber on a criminal complaint accusing him of knowingly attempting to provide support to a foreign terrorist organization.

According to Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin (subscription only), terrorist organizations like Hamas provide start up money for small cash and carry businesses in Mexico and then use those businesses for money laundering. Small businesses in small towns seem to be a recurring theme, like the ice cream vendor in Lodi. We are also seeing large mosques being built in small towns in America like this one in Gallup NM. (Hat tip to Billy Don Burns)

U.S. closes its Nigerian embassy on security threat

From Reuters:

LAGOS - The United States closed its Nigerian embassy in Abuja and consulate in Lagos on Friday due to a "security incident" which is being investigated by Nigerian police, an embassy spokesman said.

A diplomatic source said intelligence indicated that foreign militants posed a specific threat to the U.S. presence in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter which was named by Osama bin Laden as a candidate for "liberation."

"The embassy is reacting to a security incident and we thought it prudent to close," said an embassy spokesman, adding that he had no information on the nature of the incident.

Nigerian police were acting on information provided by the United States and the results of their investigation would be made public, the spokesman said.

The diplomatic source said the embassy had received information from foreign Islamic militant channels on a specific threat to the Lagos consulate.

"This is not a Nigerian source and there is not necessarily Nigerian participation, but we can't be sure of that," the source said.

Britain also closed its Nigerian High Commission office in Lagos due to a "security reason," a spokesman said.

Nigeria's population of 140 million people are divided roughly evenly between Muslims and Christians and the country has a long history of religious bloodshed...

Jihad Paid For Studies, Feds Say

Sure, they blew up a few people, but they put this guy through school. What capital fellows! More on the Al-Arian case from the Tampa Tribune, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA - As an international student, job options were severely limited for Sammeeh Hammoudeh. Immigration law severely restricts off-campus work. Before enrolling, he had to show University of South Florida officials that he had enough money to cover his studies and living expenses.

But jurors in the terror support trial of Hammoudeh, former USF professor Sami Al-Arian and two other defendants heard testimony Tuesday that Hammoudeh taught at a private school and worked at a think tank.

Such work, even done voluntarily, wouldn't be allowed, testified David Austell, USF's director for international student services.

``In no case can the student work off campus without authorization'' from immigration officials, Austell said.

Prosecutors say he was on another payroll, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's, and that Al- Arian brought him here to help launder its money.

His defense attorney denies that and says Hammoudeh organized charity for needy children in Palestine....

Other records indicate the Islamic Community of Tampa, the formal name of Al-Arian's mosque, contributed nearly $36,000 in 1996 to cover Hammoudeh's education expenses while he pursued a master's degree in religious studies.

Meanwhile, retired FBI agent Edith ``Eddie'' Tuttle testified about a 1995 search of Al-Arian's home. Through Tuttle, prosecutors introduced dozens of new exhibits including videotapes, Al-Arian's personal telephone book, financial records and a 1993 Islamic Jihad calendar.

Defense attorney William Moffitt asked whether political material was seized during the search.

``I remember seizing items that said `Islamic Jihad' if you deem that political,'' she said.

Moffitt seems to be banking on the prosecution not knowing, or being afraid to say, that the jihad is an inherently political concept. From the beginning Muhammad waged jihads to extend the political parameters of Islam, and that idea is very much alive today.

Witness describes bus bombing in professor's terrorism trial

Today's Al-Arian update features Sami finally getting the chance to savor the fruit of his labors up close. (Not, of course, that he had anything to do with this sort of thing. He was just raising money for schools and orphanages, you know, and that "Death to America! Death to Israel!" business was just fiery rhetoric. He's a fiery soul, all right.) From AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA, Fla. -- Kesari Ruza said that at first she didn't know exactly what happened to the bus that day in 1995, but it was immediately clear that something terrible had happened to her friend, Alisa Flatow, a fellow American student who was studying in Israel.

Ruza, testifying Thursday in the federal terrorism conspiracy trial of fired university professor Sami Al-Arian, described how she, along with Flatow, of New Jersey, and another American student, boarded a bus heading for a beach resort on the Gaza Strip on April 9, 1995. Sitting next to Flatow right behind the driver, she dozed off along the way and was jolted awake by chaos.

At the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom, a suicide bomber drove a van loaded with explosives into the bus. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group Al-Arian is accused of supporting, later claimed responsibility.

"I remember hearing some kind of sound that woke me up," testified Ruza, now a New York City attorney. "As soon as I woke up, Alisa's head kind of fell toward me. ... Her eyes were rolled back in her head and her hands were sort of curled in."

The 20-year-old Flatow suffered a severe head injury and died the next day at a Jerusalem hospital. Seven other people also perished and 40 were injured.

The trial of Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer engineering professor, and three other defendants on charges that they raised money in America and supported the mission of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad took an emotional turn at the end of its second week with the testimony of Ruza and a tearful Stephen Flatow, who told of rushing to Israel to find his brain-dead daughter being kept alive by a respirator.

Jurors, some of whom have nodded off during mostly mundane testimony so far in the trial, intently listened to the witnesses and watched a 10-minute amateur video shot at the scene of the bus bombing. The images show gun-toting Israeli soldiers watching over a chaotic scene of wounded people on the ground outside the bus with blown-out windows. Flatow, wearing a long denim skirt and white T-shirt, is visible on the ground getting medical care.

"There was blood everywhere," Ruza testified in a clear, steady voice. "There was blood on us, blood on our bags."

Prosecutors are attempting to link Al-Arian and the other defendants to such attacks by the PIJ, a State Department-listed terrorist organization blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The men deny any connection to the PIJ and say they are being persecuted for their unpopular pro-Palestinian beliefs.

Outside the courthouse Thursday, Al-Arian attorney William Moffitt repeated his contention that his client had nothing to do with the bombing, directly or indirectly.

"I've always said it's not Mr. Al-Arian's fault, and nothing that happened in the courtroom today changes that," Moffitt said.

Sure. He just raised money for them. He thought they were going to use it to open a candy store.

Prosecutors allege the men used an Islamic academic think tank, a Palestinian charity and an Islamic school founded by Al-Arian as fundraising fronts for the PIJ.

The government's case is anchored to a decade of wiretapped telephone calls and faxes beginning in late 1993 or early 1994, as well as letters, financial records, pamphlets, photos, video tapes and other evidence seized in searches.

Pakistan Information Minister "is a mujahid and played a great role in jihad."

An update on the Pakistani jihadist who is now a member of the government, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed. "Rashid had Jihad links: Ex-ISI man," from the Times of India, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

ISLAMABAD: Former ISI (Inter-State Intelligence) functionary Khawaja Khalid has corroborated Yasin Malik and Mirza Aslam Baig’s assertions that Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed ran militant training camps near Islamabad from 1989 to 1991.

"Sheikh Rashid is a mujahid and played a great role in jihad. I would like to meet him and ask him why he is denying his involvement in training mujahideen. I had personally visited Rashid’s camp," he said.

The Daily Times also quoted Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, the acting president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), as confirming that Rashid ran a militant camp in Fateh Jang, near Rawalpindi. He said that in 1991 the then premier Nawaz Sharif had ordered the camp’s closure.

He added: "Why do you want me to dig out skeletons from the closet? If I do that, no one in the ruling PML will come out smelling like a rose."

Top Zarqawi aide captured in Iraq's Mosul: US

And come to think of it, we haven't heard a peep out of Zarqawi for while. (Of course, we heard nothing from OBL for a long time too, and then he popped up again.) From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) - A top aide to Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been captured in Iraq's northern city of Mosul, the US military revealed.

Mohammed Khalaf Shakar, also known as Abu Talha, is "Zarqawi's most trusted operations agent in all of Iraq," a military statement said Thursday.

"This is a major defeat for the Al-Qaeda's terrorist organisation in Iraq. Zarqawi's leader in Mosul is out of business," said US Air Force Brigadier General Donald Alston.

According to the military statement, he surrendered to US and Iraqi forces on Tuesday without a fight in "a quiet neighbourhood in Mosul" after they were led to his whereabouts by "multiple intelligence sources."

"According to former Talha associates, Talha never stayed more than one night at any one residence," the statement added.

Alston, the new top military spokesman, told reporters in Baghdad: "Numerous reports indicated he wore a suicide vest 24 hours a day and stated he would never surrender. Instead Talha gave up without a fight."

Iraqi authorities said recently they had captured one of Abu Talha's most trusted aides and his financial manager, Motleq Mahmud Motleq Abdullah, also known as Abu Raed, in Mosul on May 28.

They had also announced the arrest of another Zarqawi aide in Mosul known as Mullah Mehdi.

Abu Talha is accused of masterminding some of the deadliest attacks against US and Iraqi forces in Mosul. Iraq's third-largest city, it has been a major front for the insurgency since November.

"Talha fell like so many others fall, and that is through a combination of factors that ultimately catch up to him," Alston said.

"In his case like so many others along the way, civilians helped us get closer to him."

A positive sign.

Saudi Arabia Exempt From Nuke Inspections

From AP, with thanks to Big Sleep.

VIENNA, Austria - Board members of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency approved a deal Thursday that exempts Saudi Arabia from nuclear inspections, despite serious misgivings about the arrangement in an era of heightened proliferation fears.

Although the Saudis resisted Western pressure to compromise and allow some form of monitoring, the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency had no choice but to allow it to sign on to the agreement.

Called the small quantities protocol, the deal allows countries whose nuclear equipment or activities are thought to be below a minimum threshold to submit a declaration instead of undergoing inspection.

There is little concern the Saudis are trying to make nuclear arms, but diplomats accredited to the meeting said Riyadh's resistance to inspections - and any new deals limiting the IAEA's powers to investigate - were disconcerting at a time of increased fears countries or terrorists might be interested in acquiring such weapons.

With the deal approved, delegates focused on a report on Iran, to be presented later Thursday to the closed board meeting and given ahead of delivery to The Associated Press.

It says Iran has acknowledged working with small amounts of plutonium, a possible nuclear arms component, for years longer than it had originally admitted and receiving sensitive technology that can be used as part of a weapons program earlier than it initially said it did....

The Saudis insist they have no plans to develop nuclear arms - and no facilities or nuclear stocks that warrant inspection.

As such, they qualify for the protocol, which has been implemented by 75 nations, most of them small and in politically stable parts of the world and which puts the onus on the nations to truthfully report that they have nothing to inspect.

But the timing of the deal for the Saudis comes amid persistent tensions in the Middle East and concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions. It also coincides with an agency push to tighten or rescind the protocol, as suggested in a confidential IAEA document prepared for the board and also made available to AP on Tuesday.

While the Saudi government insists it has no interest in nuclear arms, in the past two decades it has been linked to prewar Iraq's nuclear program and to the Pakistani nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan. It also has expressed interest in Pakistani missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Saudi officials reportedly discussed pursuing the nuclear option as a deterrent in the volatile Middle East....

Iranian voters waver in poor Tehran suburb

We may have a bit of a race in Iran's election. The latest from World News Online:

TEHRAN: Mariam is undecided who she will choose in Iran's presidential race but the 27-year-old from the Iranian capital's poor southern suburbs is sure of one thing: she will not vote for former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"The root of all this unemployment and the current economic problems is Rafsanjani," the civil servant said, wandering down a south Tehran street festooned with posters for the seven candidates standing in today's polls.

The campaign began almost as a one-horse race, but after more than two weeks of campaigning that ended yesterday, Rafsanjani's lead has sharply eroded and his chances of securing the 50 percent vote needed for a first-round win seem slim.

The race is the tightest in Iran's history with reformist Mostafa Moin and conservative Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who both ran vigorous campaigns, in second and third place according to opinion polls, although polls have been unreliable in the past.

Moin is described by MEMRI being initially disqualified:

As in the past, the Guardian Council gave no explanation for its disqualification of most of the reformist candidates. The most prominent of these candidates was Mustafa Mo'in, the former Higher Education minister in the Khatami government, who had been ousted by the conservative Seventh Majlis. Mo'in's disqualification was protested by reformist and conservative political circles alike. Prominent reformist groups announced that they would boycott the elections, and violent riots by Tehran University students broke out.

In light of these developments, Iranian Leader 'Ali Khamenei immediately ordered the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualification of Mo'in and of another reformist candidate, Vice President Mohsen Mehralizadeh. The Guardian Council then announced that these two reformists were on the approved list, in accordance with Khamenei's order. Mo'in announced that he would reconsider his candidacy in light of the Guardian Council's actions, but ultimately declared his candidacy, and harshly criticized the Guardian Council, calling its conduct "anti-constitutional."

Maybe this Mo'in is a true reformer, but then, Rafsanjani described himself that way once too...Back to the original article:

In south Tehran, several of those questioned backed Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative hopefuls credited with sprucing up the down-at-heel area.

"I support Ahmedinejad because of what he has done to the city. If you look at the city, you can see the changes," said 37-year-old trader Ali Salehi.

Ahmedinejad is described by MEMRI as expressing "more extreme conservative views than the other [conservative candidates]. Also according to MEMRI "A poll by the official Iranian News Agency (IRNA) among 45,834 voters throughout Iran asked "Whom will you vote for?"; 27.1% of respondents said Rafsanjani, 18.9% said Mo'in, and 16.5% said Qalibaf...Qalibaf was until recently Iran's police chief" and is also identified as a conservative.

Paris court convicts three aides to shoebomber Reid

Convicted, yes, but sentenced to "slap on the wrist" prison terms. From Reuters:

PARIS - A top French court jailed three men for terrorist conspiracy on Thursday after finding them guilty of helping "shoebomber" Richard Reid, who narrowly failed to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Atlantic.

The court found they had helped Reid during his stay in Paris ahead of his abortive attempt to destroy a Paris-Miami American Airlines flight mid-Atlantic in December 2001 with a bomb hidden inside one of his shoes.

Jacqueline Rebeyrotte, presiding judge at the main Paris criminal court, sentenced Ghulam Rama to five years in prison and expulsion from France once his sentence was served.

Rama, 67, a Pakistani with joint British nationality, has already spent three years in jail awaiting trial. It was not immediately clear if he would appeal.

His co-accused, Frenchmen Hakim Mokhfi and Hassan El Cheguer, both aged 31, were each jailed for four years, one year suspended. The court ordered them released as they have been in preventive detention since June 2002.

All three men had pleaded not guilty.

During the trial, the court heard that according to French intelligence, Rama had used trips to Britain, New York, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia between 2001 and 2002 as cover while he organized terrorist attacks.

A French probe on Reid's activities in France revealed he had used a Paris cyber cafe to contact Pakistan, a trail that led them to Rama, president of the Straight Path Muslim charity.

Rama told police he saw Mokhfi and Cheguer with Reid. His lawyer said before the trial began that Rama was sick and confused when police first asked him if he recognized a photograph of Reid...

Mexican authorities to deport Pakistani to U.S. on suspected ties to arms sales

But don't be concerned: it has nothing to do with terrorism. From AP, with thanks to EPG:

Mexico plans to deport a Pakistani to the United States to face questions regarding arms trafficking, Mexican authorities said Wednesday.

The Pakistani, who has not been identified by name, was detained Sunday along with three Afghans and a Syrian in the Tijuana area, across the border from San Diego, two Mexican government officials said on customary condition of anonymity.

All five were in the process of being deported to the United States on Wednesday for being in Mexico illegally, the officials said. It appeared the detainees arrived from the United States....

Mexican authorities said they had no evidence the Pakistani or other migrants had any connection to terrorist organizations.

Kashmir jihad to continue

Syed Salahuddin is here playing the role that Hamas has up to now been playing in Israel: both have been acting as hardline jihadists who will accept no negotiation. But if it looks as if India will start to give in to the jihadist demands at the negotiating table, as the EU is now cozying up to Hamas, then expect Salahuddin to change his tune.

"Kashmir Hurriyat leaders ask Pakistan's Muttahida Jihad Council to soften stand," from Pakistan's Jang via M & C News, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Lahore: It has been learnt that the visiting delegation of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference [APHC] held a meeting with Muttahida Jihad Council chief Salahuddin during which they asked him to soften his stand on the Kashmir issue.

According to sources, the APHC leaders conveyed a message of the government to Salahuddin to soften his stand on the Kashmir issue so that a solution to the conflict could be found. In response, Salahuddin said that the council would not soften its stand on the Kashmir issue nor would it become part of any conspiracy. It would continue jihad and ask the APHC leaders not to become part of any conspiracy to divide Kashmir. In the past, India has proved that it wants to complicate the problem and it has not yet shown any flexibility in its position.

Another Thai Buddhist beheaded

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks..." (Qur'an 47:4). "Thai Buddhist beheaded in south," from the BBC, with thanks to Susan:

The situation is tense in Thailand's southern provinces A Buddhist man has been found beheaded in the majority Muslim province of Pattani in southern Thailand.

A note found next to the man's head claimed the murder was carried out in response to last week's arrest of a prominent Muslim student leader.

It was the fifth decapitation in a conflict that has claimed more than 700 lives in the past 18 months.

The note next to the severed head of retired teacher Kamol Chuneth carried a message obviously intended for police.

The note said that the authorities had arrested the wrong man.

Canada: Al-Qaida Cache Discovered

More on the infamous Khadr family of Canada from CFRA, "RCMP Uncovers al-Qaida Cache: Report," with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

The RCMP believe they have uncovered information on the whereabouts of al-Qaida members and planned attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan.

The cache of documents was discovered after searching the possessions of a member of the Khadr family.

A report says the information is contained in a laptop, dozens of D-V-D's and in the pages of diaries, all seized when Zaynab Khadr arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto in February.

Khadr is the eldest daughter of a family that has admitted to close ties with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

More details from Canada's National Post, with thanks to Jen. Of course, we all know that families of terrorists do not exist in real life.

...A search of [Zaynab Khadr's] computer also unearthed files of Arabic songs that include Osama bin Laden's voice and video clips of terrorists in action or making speeches, all of which are "cause for concern and require further investigation," according to the officer, Sergeant Konrad Shourie.

But the Mounties cannot yet return Ms. Khadr's laptop computer, the audiotapes or even her Arabic diary before the legal deadline, which passed last month, because they need more time to copy the information and analyze it.

A forensic analysis of the computer's data, for instance, will take "several more months," the affidavit says, and a psychological analysis of Ms. Khadr based on her diary could take even longer.

Ms. Khadr and her brother Abdullah are under RCMP investigation for participating in the activities of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization of which their deceased father, Ahmed, was reputedly a high-ranking financier. They have not been charged.

Their younger brother, Omar, is detained at Guantanamo Bay after allegedly killing a U.S. medic in a firefight in Afghanistan. Abdurahman Khadr, another brother who claims to have attended al-Qaeda training camps, has publicly renounced the jihadist sympathies of his family...

Pak minister set up terror camps for jihadis

Kashmir update from the Times of India, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

When terrorism was at its peak in the Valley, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed set up terrorist camps in Pakistan where around 3,500 jihadis were trained in guerrilla warfare.

This astonishing revelation has come from Kashmiri separatist leader and JKLF chairman Yasin Malik. According to Daily Times , Malik has said that Rashid actively supported the armed struggle in Kashmir by setting up training camps. Rashid trained around 3,500 jihadis in guerrilla warfare around that time, Malik has said.

Malik was talking to the audience in an exhibition of 1.5 million signatures by Kashmiris demanding their involvement in the dialogue process in Islamabad. The exhibition showed thousands of pictures of Kashmiri people participating in Malik's signature campaign.

"Sheikh Rashid has played a great role for Kashmir's liberation. He used to support the frontline Jihadis, but very few people know about his contributions," Daily Times quoted Malik as saying...

Although Malik praised Rashid for his contribution to the armed struggle, the minister refused to comment when journalists approached him.

Assailants in Indonesian province linked to Al Qaeda: police

From the Khaleej Times, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

JAKARTA - Authorities have accused assailants involved in a recent armed attack on a police post in Indonesia’s eastern province of Maluku of having links with Al Qaeda, an official said on Tuesday.

Maluku Police Chief Brigadier General Aditya Warman said the evidence came from the capture and interrogation of several suspects involved in the recent attack on a Mobile Brigade (Brimob) post that left five policemen dead.

“We are continuing to investigate them as they are indeed linked to Al Qaeda,” Aditya Warman was quoted as saying by the state-run news agency Antara after a meeting with local religious figures and political party leaders.

Those questioned by police were allegedly part of a network responsible for a series of violent incidents in the provincial capital of Ambon, 2,340 kilometres northeast of Jakarta, that included the assassination of a reverend and a number of bombings, the police chief said.

“I have long stated that the incidents were the work of well trained people, and I was right,” Aditya said. “They are civilians with extraordinary capabilities.”

Aditya requested during the meeting that religious figures help police deal with the incidents, and said the masterminds behind the violence came from outside Maluku province.

“But they also use local people in carrying out their missions. They have relations with a number of terrorists currently wanted by the security authorities, like Dr Azahari,” Aditya said, referring to the most-wanted Malaysian fugitive accused of links to the worst terrorist attacks on foreigners in recent years...

Cleric Denies Jihadist Training for Calif. Man

Update on the Lodi case from AP via Fox News:

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A white-bearded cleric, tutor to hundreds of Islamic students at a Pakistani seminary near the capital, on Tuesday branded FBI allegations that his 22-year-old grandson received jihadist training while attending the school a "pack of lies."

Qari Saeed-ur Rehman, leader of the Jamia Islamia madrassah in Rawalpindi, said his grandson Hamid Hayat and son-in-law Umer Hayat, 47, were wrongfully arrested in California last week, and he dismissed suggestions they were linked to an al-Qaida cell.

"Hamid Hayat never received religious education at my madrassah. There is no terrorist camp here. We reject such FBI allegations," Rehman, a supporter of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, told The Associated Press in an interview at the school, which lies inside a grand mosque in a teeming commercial district of the city -- also home to the headquarters of Pakistan's army.

"All allegations leveled against them by the FBI are a pack of lies," he said.

An FBI spokeswoman in Sacramento, Calif., said the agency stood by the allegations it made in court documents.

"Time will tell what we come up with," spokeswoman Marcie Soligo said. "That's his opinion and that's fine. We stick by what was in the affidavit."...

Oh, Mr. Bergen, call your office. You may want to interview Mr. Rehman. His views and yours mesh perfectly.

Spain Makes Terror Arrests

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

MADRID, Spain — Police arrested 16 Islamic terror suspects in raids in several cities, including 11 men accused of having ties to Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's group Al Qaeda in Iraq and recruiting people for attacks there, officials said Wednesday.

The 11 were part of a support group for a Syrian-based recruitment network for attacks on U.S. and allied forces, and some of them had said they themselves wanted to become "martyrs for Islam" and were awaiting orders to do so, the Interior Ministry said. It did not specify how Spanish authorities learned of these alleged intentions.

Most of the 11 are Moroccan and practically all of them sold drugs and committed robberies to finance the network, the ministry said. They were arrested as part of an investigation that began in 2004.

The other five detainees were described as suspects in last year's train bombing in Madrid.

Some 500 Spanish police took part in raids in Barcelona, Valencia, the southern Andalusia region, and Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the northern coast of Morocco...

It said the apparent leader of the Spanish group's recruitment activities was a 28-year-old Moroccan named Samir Tahtah, arrested near Barcelona. He coordinated communications with overseas leaders of the network and the sending of recruits to Iraq for terrorist attacks, the statement said...

Chemical Security Upgrades Are Urged

Homeland Official to Tell Senate Panel Of Change in Administration Policy. From the Washington Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

For the first time, the Bush administration is endorsing mandatory requirements for heightened security at chemical plants, many of which homeland defense experts consider highly vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attack.

The change in policy is one of the first enunciated by new Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who is conducting a top-to-bottom review of the two-year-old department's priorities and organizational chart.

Until this week, administration officials had embraced the chemical industry's proposals for voluntary security precautions, though they had warned that the day might arrive when industry foot-dragging would compel a crackdown.

The new Bush administration stance is outlined in testimony to be delivered today by Robert Stephan, recently named the Homeland Security Department's undersecretary for intelligence and infrastructure, at a Senate hearing. A transcript was made available by Senate staff members.

"I can report on his behalf that Secretary Chertoff has concluded that . . . the existing patchwork of authorities does not permit us to regulate the industry effectively," Stephan is to tell the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "While most companies have been eager to cooperate with the department, it has become clear the entirely voluntary efforts of these companies alone will not sufficiently address security for the entire sector."

U.S. officials say that an attack on some chemical plants in and near large cities, including a number in northern New Jersey, could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths if a resulting chemical cloud were spread by wind. Attacks on any of scores of other sites could result in thousands or tens of thousands of casualties, they said...

Spencer: The Global Jihad: Made in the U.S.A.?

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer discusses some prevailing winds in today's FrontPage:

Holland and France have rejected the EU Constitution, and word is getting out that the main reason they did was out of concern for the growing Muslim presence in those countries, which threatens to remake those societies into Islamic states before this century is out — and which the proposed Constitution did nothing to address. But the European votes have given PC establishment analysts just another pretext to claim that today’s global jihad is really all our fault. James Carroll opined recently in the Boston Globe that “among the factors leading to the French and Dutch rejections of the European constitution last week, none looms more ominously than the nightmare of antagonism between ‘the West’ and Islam. Many Europeans fear a rising tide of green, both within the continent and from outside it. Where once communists threatened, now Muslims do. A new wall is being built.”

Carroll is not original in this. This was a much-retailed thesis as long ago as 1999, when Abdus Sattar Ghazali, a Pakistani journalist who has served as Assistant Editor for the Pakistani daily Dawn and editor-in-chief of Kuwait TV’s English News, wrote that “the demise of the Cold War involving the USA and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990s left military strategists in the West searching for a new enemy.” Ghazali saw it as part of a conscious and long-range strategy: “To borrow [from] Richard Conder, author of the Munchurian [sic] Candidate: ‘Now that the communists have been put to sleep, we are going to have to invent another terrible threat.’ Former US Secretary of Defence, McNamara, in his 1989 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, stated that defense spending could safely be cut in half over five years. For the Pentagon it was a simple choice: either find new enemies or cut defense spending. Topping the list of potential bogeymen were the Yellow Peril, the alleged threat to US economic security emanating from the East Asia, and the so-called Green Peril (green representing Islam). The Pentagon selected ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and ‘rogue states’ as the new bogeymen.”

When Ghazali wrote that in 1999, a year had passed since the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. It had been five years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Other notorious incidents of Islamic terror were even farther back in the past: the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, the hijacking of TWA flight 847 and the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, and so on. Ghazali conceded that radical Islam “has not been invented by Western politicians” — in the face of all the facts, how could he not? But he adds that even though politicians didn’t invent it, radical Islam “is being used by them.” Used for what? Ghazali concludes that “instead of reducing the military apparatus in the West to a symbolic vestige or getting rid of it altogether and thinking about ‘security’ completely afresh, new threats are being invented to serve the old purpose. This is our main problem, not an Islamic fundamentalist threat which, in any case, could only be dealt with by political and economic means.”

Carroll sees this trumped-up war heating up today: “Given escalations of the war in Iraq together with widely reported instances of Koran-denigration by US interrogators, such trends in Europe make the global war on terror seem expressly a war against Islam. The ‘clash of civilizations’ seems closer at hand than ever.”

Notice how 9/11 doesn't enter into this calculus. For Carroll it is as if the war in Iraq and ‘instances of Koran-denigration’ were just acts of unprovoked aggression by the West. Then he schoolmarmishly tells us that in order “to make sense of this dangerous condition, it can help to recall some of the forgotten or misremembered history that prepared for it, from the remote origins of the conflict to its manifestations in the not so distant past.” When did this dangerous and unprovoked demonization of Muslims begin? Why, with the Crusades, of course.

“As the story is usually told in Europe and America,” Carroll tells us, “the problem began when a jihad-driven army of ‘infidel’ Saracens, having brutalized Christians in the ‘Holy Land,’ threatened ‘Christendom’ itself with conquests right into the heart of present-day France. Charles Martel is the hero of primal European romances because he defeated the Muslim army near Tours in 733. But for Martel, Edward Gibbon wrote, ‘the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford.’” Carroll’s words here connote fable: “as the story is usually told in Europe and America…” He seems to be trying to get away with suggesting it didn’t really happen this way, although he doesn’t come out and say that. And why not? Because the historical record shows that it did happen that way. But Carroll downplays the idea that “across subsequent centuries, in the European memory, Islam posed the great threat to the emerging Christian order.” In fact, he says, “Lombards, Normans, Vikings, forces from the Slavic east, and violent contests among Christians themselves all wreaked havoc in Europe, even in Martel’s time.”

Lombards, Normans, Vikings, threats to the emerging Christian order? In fact, all were already Christian or soon Christianized. The jihad threat was perceived as greater because it was greater: it would have entailed the utter destruction of Christian society, or, as Carroll puts it with sneer quotes, ‘Christendom,’ and its replacement with Sharia. The Lombards, Normans, and Vikings never threatened to do anything remotely approaching that. The Islamic threat may have been “one among many” militarily, but not culturally or religiously.

But Carroll is sure that those dastardly European Christians, in their quest to demonize “The Other,” imagined it all: the Islamic threat “was defined as transcendent only with the later Crusades, when Latin Christian armies set out to rescue that ‘Holy Land’ and roll back Islamic conquests. The crusading impulse presumed a demonizing of Saracens that was justified neither by the threat they actually posed nor by their treatment of Christians in Palestine.” So now we have it: Martel was fighting a phantom army. Gibbon was being hysterical. But what if Martel had lost at Tours? Where would the jihad armies have stopped? How much of Europe would they have had to occupy and subjugate for Carroll to acknowledge that the threat from them was genuine?

And as for the treatment of Christians in Palestine in the decades just before the First Crusade, I discuss it at some length in my forthcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (coming August 8 from Regnery). What was life like for the Christians in Palestine in the years leading up to the Crusades? Let's see: In 1004, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, Abu ‘Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim (985-1021) turned violently against the faith of his Christian mother and uncles (two of whom were Patriarchs) and ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. He moved against the Jews with similar ferocity. Over the next ten years thirty thousand churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives. In 1009, al-Hakim commanded that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem be destroyed, along with several other churches (including the Church of the Resurrection). The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rebuilt by the Byzantines in the seventh century after the Persians burned an earlier version, marks the traditional site of Christ’s burial. Al-Hakim piled on other humiliating decrees, culminating in the order that Christians and Jews accept Islam or leave his dominions.

He ultimately relaxed these decrees, and in 1027 the Byzantines were allowed to rebuild the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Nevertheless, Christians were in a precarious position and pilgrims remained under threat. In 1056, the Muslims expelled three hundred Christians from Jerusalem and forbade European Christians from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. When the Seljuk Turks swept down from Central Asia, they enforced a new Islamic rigor, making life difficult for both native Christians and pilgrims (whose pilgrimages they blocked). After they crushed the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 and took the Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes prisoner, all of Asia Minor was open to them — and their advance was virtually unstoppable. In 1076, they conquered Syria; in 1077, Jerusalem. The Seljuk Emir Atsiz bin Uwaq promised not to harm the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but once his men had entered the city, they murdered 3,000 people. But I guess Carroll would say they all committed suicide.

Carroll’s coup de grace is meant to fill his readers with foreboding about the contemporary situation: “Europe’s initiating ‘holy war’ with Islam…was based on flawed intelligence, propaganda, and threat exaggeration.” If Carroll had filmed Ridley Scott’s recent dhimmi Crusades flop, Kingdom of Heaven, he would have cast George W. Bush as the evil Crusader Guy of Lusignan. He ascribes “the political fanaticism that has lately seized the Arab Islamic religious imagination (exemplified in Osama bin Laden)” to “a defensive fending off of assault from ‘the West’ than in anything intrinsic to Islam.” Yet acceptance of his thesis here depends on the reader’s ignorance of the 450 years of jihadist aggression that preceded the Crusades and obliterated the Christian cultures of the Middle East and North Africa -- and which today’s jihadists consider to be the direct antecedent of their own efforts. Against what were the initial conquerors of Syria, Egypt, Constantinople, Spain and all the rest defending? What is the significance of the fact that today’s jihad terrorists hold to the same ideological and religious imperatives? You won’t get the answers from James Carroll.

Carroll concludes that “this conflict has its origins more in ‘the West’ than in the House of Islam. The image of Muslims as prone to violence by virtue of their religion was mainly constructed across centuries by Europeans seeking to bolster their own purposes, a habit of politicized paranoia that is masterfully continued by freaked-out leaders of post-9/11 America.” I doubt if Carroll has read a page of the Qur’an, or knows that Qur’anic verses such as 9:5 and 9:29 and many others are not just isolated, ignored religious texts, but have become the basis for an elaborate legal superstructure mandating warfare against unbelievers and endorsed by all the major schools of Sunni jurisprudence.

Carroll’s ignorance and distortions are in service of his larger project of casting Western defenders against the jihadist threat as the real enemy in this present conflict. If there weren’t so many people in government who believe as he does, he would be beneath notice. In Holland and France there are significant numbers that seem to know better, but the elites are going to take a long time to catch up.

Al-Arian's network emerging

Today's Al-Arian update: "Prosecutors work to tie together Al-Arian and co-defendants," from AP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Federal prosecutors continued today the methodical task of tying together the characters in what they say was a conspiracy operating from Tampa to support and raise money for Palestinian terrorists.

Nafeesah Abdurrashid, a former employee of the Islamic school founded by fired University of South Florida professor Sami-Al-Arian, testified that Al-Arian co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh once taught at the school, as did close associates Ramadan Abdullah Shallah and Mazan Al-Najjar.

Shallah, former director of the Palestinian think tank founded by Al-Arian at USF, left Tampa in 1995 and emerged later as the commander of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Damascus, Syria. Al-Najjar, who is Al-Arian's brother-in-law, was jailed for 3{ years based on secret evidence and deported in 2002.

Al-Arian and Hammoudeh are among the four defendants standing trial in federal court accused of providing material support to terrorists. Shallah and Al-Najjar are among five others named in the 53-count indictment who have not been arrested.

Prosecutors say the think tank, World & Islam Studies Enterprise, known as WISE, the school and a Palestinian charity founded by Al-Arian were fundraising fronts in the United States for the PIJ, a State Department-listed terrorist organization blamed for more than 100 deaths in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The defendants deny any connection to the PIJ and say they are being persecuted for their unpopular pro-Palestinian beliefs.

If that were true, most of today's pundits and Hollywood stars would be standing trial today.

"There will be no dialogue with the Jews and Christians other than the sound of bullets, blood and fire"

From Reuters, "Iraq's al Qaeda warns against talks with govt-Web"

DUBAI - Iraq's al Qaeda vowed to kill anyone negotiating with the U.S.-backed Iraqi government in a Web statement on Tuesday, a sign the group was worried about possible divisions among its Sunni Muslim allies.

The group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was responding to what it said were reports that tribal leaders in Iraq's third-largest city Mosul, the scene of frequent outbreaks of guerrilla violence, were seeking talks.

"Liars claim that the sheikhs of tribes in Mosul plan to hand over mujahideen (holy fighters) and assist the crusaders and apostates, and we do not know which tribes or sheikhs they speak of," the Sunni Muslim group said.

"We will impose God's punishment on anyone who stands by the crusaders or becomes their ally or supports them. The righteous swords are unsheathed and hunger for blood," it said in a statement posted on an Islamist Web site.

The Iraqi government said on Sunday some rebels had approached it looking for peace terms but gave no details of who had made contact.

Zarqawi issued a similar warning in an audio tape attributed to him in April, referring to reports that U.S. and Iraqi officials had offered to negotiate with some militants...

The Shi'ite-led Iraqi government has often said it is willing to talk to rebels who stop fighting.

"We reiterate that there will be no dialogue with the Jews and Christians other than the sound of bullets, blood and fire," Al Qaeda Organization for Holy War in Iraq said in a separate Web statement.

Bin Laden, Omar are well, Taliban commander says

From Reuters:

ISLAMABAD - Osama bin Laden is in good health, a Taliban commander said, dismissing speculation the fugitive al Qaeda leader was sick.

The commander, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, also said Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was well and in direct command of Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

"All praise to Allah, he is all right," Usmani told Pakistan's GEO, a private television station, when asked about bin Laden in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

Asked about reports bin Laden was sick, he said: "No, no, he is all right. There is no problem."

The private television station did not say where or when the interview was conducted. Usmani, who is on a 10-member Taliban leadership council and has been identified by the government as a top rebel commander, has in the past met reporters.

In the interview, his face was partly concealed by a black turban. An assault rifle was propped up at his side.

There has been speculation about the health of bin Laden, the architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, who has been reported to be suffering from a kidney ailment.

Usmani declined to comment when asked about bin Laden's whereabouts. He said Taliban leader Omar was also well.

"He is still our commander and we are still getting instructions from him," he said of Omar. "Rumours of his illness have been spread by our enemies."

Asked if he could be sure the instructions were from Omar, Usmani said: "I can listen to his voice ... I am sure he is alive." He did not elaborate...

Wood is Free!

The Iraqi military gets the credit. From Reuters, "Australian PM says hostage Wood freed in Iraq," with thanks to 3rdtimelucky.

CANBERRA - Australian hostage Douglas Wood was freed from his Iraqi captors on Wednesday after being held for six weeks, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said.

"Mr Wood was recovered a short while ago in Baghdad in a military operation which I'm told was conducted by Iraqi forces, in cooperation in a general way with force elements from the United States," Howard told the Australian parliament.

Howard said Wood was now safe and well under the protection of Australian troops in Baghdad.

Wood, a 63-year-old engineer married to an American woman, has been held hostage since early May, when a two-minute video of him was delivered to news agencies.

Iraqi militants had warned Australia to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq or they would kill Wood...

Ohio: Mall Bomb Plot Suspect Wants Statements Barred

From AP via Fox News with thanks to Catherine.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Somali immigrant accused of conspiring to help terrorists blow up a shopping mall is asking that his statements to investigators — including what he knew about a member of Al Qaeda — be barred from his trial.

Attorney Mahir T. Sherif said Nuradin Abdi was arrested without grounds and pressured to answer investigators' questions. On June 1, he asked a federal judge to bar the statements, which are sealed.

Agents told Abdi last November they were arresting him for violating immigration laws, but did not specify which laws and did not show him a warrant until three days later, Sherif said. Agents used his statements to build a case against him, Sherif said.

"It was a warrantless arrest to start with, and after keeping him for three days and questioning him for three days, they used his own statements to go get a warrant," Sherif said Monday.

Uh oh, if this were a "Law and Order" episode, Jack McCoy's case would be in trouble...

In a statement filed with the request to bar his statements, Abdi said he believed if he cooperated with agents and gave them information about Iyman Faris, he would be allowed to go home. Faris has pleaded guilty to helping terrorists.

Fred Alverson, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office here, said prosecutors will file a response by July 1.

Abdi, 33, has pleaded innocent to charges of conspiring to aid terrorists and lying to gain political asylum in the United States as a refugee. Prosecutors accuse him of obtaining travel documents in 1999 by telling officials he planned to visit Germany and Saudi Arabia when he actually went to a military-style training camp for terrorists in Ethiopia.

If convicted, he could get up to 80 years. His trial is scheduled for Sept. 19...

Iraq: Suicide Bombing at Bank, Attacks on Police, More Bodies Found

From the Washington Post, "Suicide Bombing in Iraq Kills At Least 20"

BAGHDAD - A man wearing an explosive belt blew himself up Tuesday outside a bank in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said, killing at least 20 bystanders and wounding 83, many of them women and children, in the deadliest single suicide bombing in Iraq in more than a month.

In Kenaan, a town between Kirkuk and Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed five Iraqi soldiers at a road checkpoint and a mortar attack left the town's police station in flames, the Associated Press reported.

And in restive Anbar province, west of Baghdad, police found 24 bodies dumped in two separate areas in Habbaniya.

Kirkuk's police chief, Maj. Gen. Torhan Yousif, said the bomber was carrying more than 100 pounds of explosives when he joined a line of people waiting in line at the government-run Rafidain Bank to pick up their paychecks. The explosion killed and wounded civilians, police, and employees of local political parties, as well as severely damaging the bank and surrounding shops.

"The street was full of blood of the wounded and killed, and all the shops closed because people were afraid of more attacks," Nawzad Omar, 50, said afterward at a local hospital...

A recent succession of grisly discoveries by Iraqi authorities continued on Monday when police discovered 17 bodies 80 miles west of Baghdad and another seven near Hit, about 95 miles northwest of the capital. None were immediately identified.

Four of the 17 dead found by Iraqi soldiers had been beheaded, according to Abdul Munim Ahmed, a physician at a hospital in nearby Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.

In Hit, the head of the local hospital, Ahmed Jarrallah, said two of the seven bodies discovered there were women, and both had been beheaded. A statement posted at a mosque in Hit asserted that the seven had been killed by members of Ansar al-Sunna, one of the most violent insurgent groups in Iraq. The statement called the victims "traitors" who had "been helping the occupier fight the holy warriors" by working as private contractors who supplied cement...

Update from AP:

...Security forces captured a reported key member of Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group who is accused of building and selling cars used by bombers, the Iraqi government said Tuesday.

He was identified as Jassim Hazan Hamadi al-Bazi, also known as Abu Ahmed, and was arrested June 7, the government said. It added that he was part of an Al Qaeda cell run by a man identified as Hussayn Ibrahim...

"I defy anyone to bring me one verse in the Quran that advocates violence"

Too bad this fellow isn't offering a reward, but no matter how many Qur'an quotes advocating violence against non-Muslims or "apostates" we send him, something tells me Mr. Kadhim won't believe his lyin' eyes. From SF Gate, "Finding my Religion," with thanks to Nicolei.

Abbas Kadhim grew up in Najaf, the Shiite holy city in Iraq where violent clashes broke out a year ago between U.S. military forces and followers of radical Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He fled to this country in 1992 after participating in the popular uprising against Saddam Hussein. Now a U.S. citizen, he writes a blog on religion and politics in the Middle East titled "Calling It Like It Is." I spoke with Kadhim, who teaches Islamic ethics and Koranic studies at Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union, about the role of Islam in shaping the country's direction.

Q: You teach students in the United States about Islamic ethics and the Quran. How well do you think Americans understand Islam today?

I would say that the average American is more informed about Islam now than prior to 9/11. Before 9/11, most Americans were either completely ignorant or misinformed. But there's been a lot of learning since then.

Still, what would you say are the biggest misconceptions?

Many Americans still think of Islam and terrorism as one and the same thing. This is a big problem. I mean, there are 1.7 billion Muslims in the world. If all of them are terrorists, the world is doomed, right? There are a certain number of Muslims who are taking their violent agenda and giving it a mask that is Islamic, but this is not what Islam is. I defy anyone to bring me one verse in the Quran that advocates violence. The Quran talks about fighting and other things, but always in self-defense, and even the verses that mention fighting say that peace is the way to go...

What do you think is going to happen in Iraq? Do you think the country will eventually stabilize itself?

Yes. Iraqis have done very well in handling themselves with adversity. They have gotten their country back much faster than was planned. The original plans were to have a military ruler of Iraq for five years. Iraqis got a government within a year and a half. People are already being sent to jail for corruption and theft. Terrorists are being captured. So Iraqis, if they are left to their own devices, they will do very well. And if there is any trouble, I think it will be because of the interference of people who are trying to pass a different agenda.

What role do you think Islam should play in building the new Iraq?

More than 95 percent of Iraqis are Muslim. These aren't just Muslims; they are practicing Muslims. In a population with that kind of majority, the religion has to be factored in future plans. It's important to remember that whatever small success has occurred in Iraq so far has been the result of people using Islam as a positive force. The elections were not an American idea; they were the idea of [leading cleric] Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, who insisted on them. He also has been using his leverage to denounce violence. After the collapse of the regime, there was a wave of looting, and it was the mosques that called for people to return what was looted, and the majority of the things were brought back to the mosque. The mosque has been the only institution in Iraq really functioning in a positive way.

What about the fear that Iraq will become a theocracy, like Iran? Are you concerned about that?

This is not going to happen. Iran is a monolithic society with more than 80 percent who are Shiite Muslims. In Iraq, you have 65 percent of Iraqis who are Shiite. Even if you ignore the secular elements who don't want a theocracy, you've got head Shiite scholars saying they don't want it, either. The thing is, right now, if you push Islam outside, the entire enterprise will fail, guaranteed. Then you will give the terrorists a good reason to use [violence in] the name of Islam. Every time you exclude a group, you are giving them no choice but to engage in violence...

Yeah, yeah. Nothing is wrong with Islam and so anything that ever goes wrong, like terrorist violence for example, is never the fault of Islamic teaching. NEVER.

Iraq: Policeman turns suicide bomber

From AFP, with thanks to Skeet Street.

A former Iraqi police commando blew himself up in a failed attempt to assassinate the leader of the anti-insurgent Wolf Brigade, killing three policemen, the Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, said.

The bomber walked into the unit's headquarters in Baghdad on Saturday and detonated a belt hidden under his police uniform.

A patriotic song broadcast regularly on Iraqi television says members of the brigade "disarm bombs with their teeth".

Mr Jabr said the bomber was trying to kill the brigade's leader, Major-General Mohammed Qureishi. General Qureishi, popularly known as Abu Walid, is well-known in Iraq as the host of a TV show on which accused insurgents confess their crimes.

He and the bulk of the Wolf Brigade are Shiite Muslims, and leaders of the country's Sunni Muslim minority have accused the brigade of conducting kidnappings and summary executions during a continuing security crackdown known as Operation Lightning.

Mr Jabr echoed recent statements by Iraqi officials, calling Operation Lightning a huge success that had greatly reduced car bombings and other such attacks in and around Baghdad since it began a fortnight ago. During a surge of insurgent attacks last month a dozen or more bombs were exploding in Baghdad every day, Mr Jabr said, pointing to a diagram that tracked the trend. "Now we have one car bomb or two per day."

Mr Jabr said 36 terrorism suspects had been killed in gunfights during the operation and 1318 arrested.

Website Hacked & Obliterated

Could be Cyber-Terror. "Joy Junction Web Site Hacked And Obliterated, Shelter Director Suspects Terrorist Activity" From ANS with thanks to Nicolei.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Long time Albuquerque resident Jeremy Reynalds is best known for his work with Joy Junction, the shelter for homeless families he founded in 1986 and continues to direct.

However, there’s another side of Reynalds that is not quite as well known – as a terrorist hunter.

For almost the last three years Reynalds has investigating and writing about a number of Islamic terrorist web sites, many of which are hosted by American Internet Service Providers...

Earlier this year Reynalds was also the subject of a death threat by radical jihadis.

Now Joy Junction’s web site has been hacked by individuals so proficient that the entire account has been wiped off the computer server on which it was housed.

“The simple fact is that these guys are not happy when I write articles exposing their hateful agenda,” he said. “Who else could it have been?”

“Our web host will launch an investigation on their own,” Reynalds added. “But ...these were not script kiddies (amateur hackers), they were pros. And they likely did not leave behind much for us to work with.”

Reynalds said while he cannot definitively say it was a terror attack against Joy Junction’s web site, he has a message for those individuals whom he dubbed “radical jihadi thugs” who engage in cyber crimes.

“You have picked the wrong person to try and intimidate,” Reynalds said. “Death threats and web site hacking just further serve to strengthen my resolve to fight terrorism.”

Cutthroat! Terror plan for Citigroup

Details of a plan targeting New York's financial institutions from the New York Daily News, with thanks to T.

A terrorism plot that sparked last summer's Orange Alert envisioned turning the Citigroup Center into "cutthroat shrapnel," according to a report yesterday.

In reconnaissance plans, accused terrorist Dhiren Barot, currently jailed in Britain, called the building a glass house whose panels could be turned into "a potential flying piece of cutthroat shrapnel," according to a CBS News report.

Barot carefully cased the landmark tower on Lexington Ave. and E. 53rd St. down to the smallest detail - even describing how the toilets could be used as a place to assemble a bomb.

"The documents were very detailed," NYPD Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne told the Daily News. "They included, for example, how many seats there were around the conference table in the board room of the New York Stock Exchange [which he also scouted]. The level of detail showed they had engaged in serious reconnaissance."

Barot, 33, whose alleged Al Qaeda alias was Abu Eisa Al Hindi, checked out financial centers in Newark and Washington in addition to Citigroup and the Stock Exchange. A 50-page printout from his computer obtained by CBS revealed he was very thorough...

With Eye on Terrorists, US Trains With West African Forces

Our military is making an effort to stem the tide of jihadists flowing out of Africa into Iraq and elsewhere. From CNS News, with thanks to Nicolei.

Nairobi, Kenya - United States Marines and Special Forces are in West Africa for counter-terrorism training with 3,000 African troops amid concerns that terrorists have regrouped in the region.

The U.S. European Command (EUCOM) initiated the joint military training, known as Operation Flintlock, which began last week.

The joint training comes in wake of a recent attack by Algeria's Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) against a Mauritanian military post. The assault left 15 Mauritanian troops and nine terrorists dead.

The attack is believed to be the first by the al-Qaeda-linked group outside its Algerian homeland.

Intelligence reports say the group and another, the Moroccan Combat Group, are attempting to establish a foothold in the region.

The GSPC is believed to have spent about $7 million, which it obtained in ransom for releasing 17 European tourists kidnapped in 2003, on surface-to-air missiles, heavy machine-guns and mortars.

Reports said the group also bought satellite-positioning equipment to enable it to conceal weapons in buried caches in the Sahara Desert, and later return to access them.

Operation Flintlock aims to help countries in the region reduce weapons smuggling and stop extremists finding havens around the Sahara, EUCOM's Major Holly Silkman told reporters in Senegal...

EUCOM's officials said about 25 percent of the nearly 400 foreign fighters captured in Iraq were from Africa...

Novak: Yemen’s Reformers Verses the Pact of Evil

Jane Novak writes about jihad and corruption in Yemen in World Press:

In the remote country of Yemen, a determined and heroic democracy movement battles an alliance of Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein’s generals, and a corrupt regime that wields all the tools of the state. The terrorists are operating on the proceeds from gunrunning and oil sales. The reformers are operating on pure determination.

Throughout Yemeni security forces, military, businesses, and public institutions, an interlinked web of corruption and brutality is stealing Yemen’s resources and attacking any Yemeni who opposes it. And the majority do oppose. All the natural enemies of the jihadis are under attack in Yemen: reformers, democrats, journalists, socialists, pluralists, Shiites, Sunnis, anti-corruption advocates, human rights workers, and more. As forces unite against them, the Yemeni people unite for democracy.

In 2003, Al Qaeda praised Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh as the only Arab leader not beholden to the West. It’s clear why. Saleh has refused to freeze 143 United Nations identified terrorist affiliated bank accounts in Yemen. Some of the millions in those accounts may be proceeds from weapons sales, narcoterrorism, and oil sales. One person who might be able to provide details is Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, Saleh’s half brother, prominent military commander, and reputed Al Qaeda loyalist.

Wherever there is a conflict in the region, the jihadi side seems to be armed by the Yemeni weapons pipeline, reportedly controlled by top military officials. Yemen has sold tanks and missiles to the genocidal Sudanese government. Yemen provides weapons to Eritrean and Somali terrorists, according to the Eritrean Center for Strategic Studies. “Its no secret” that weapons smuggling to Palestinian insurgents is sanctioned by the Yemeni government, an Israeli intelligence official said. The Saudis say they catch Yemeni arms dealers “hourly.”

There’s a lot of missing oil and missing oil revenue in Yemen. Parliamentary member Ali Ashal notes the official sale price for Yemeni oil is $22 a barrel, but it is sold on the market at $45 a barrel. The Canadian corporation Nexen takes nearly half of all its Yemeni oil production as royalties. It’s a sweet deal, but not for the Yemeni people. Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world. The word corruption is a rather benign term to describe the rape of the Yemeni economy by its top officials...

Read it all.

Spencer: Oriana Fallaci: Muslim Target

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer on the Fallaci case at FrontPage this morning:

Oriana Fallaci is 75 years old. The renowned Italian journalist lives in hiding because of death threats she received after the publication in 2001 of her book The Rage and the Pride. She is dying of cancer. And now she is going to go on trial for “defaming Islam.”

The complaint comes from Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, who was never charged with defaming Christianity after he referred to a crucifix as a “miniature cadaver” during his 2003 efforts to have depictions of Christ on the Cross removed from Italian schools.[1] He has amassed a reputation as something of a crank after demanding that Christians deny aspects of their faith that offended his Islamic sensibilities: he has called for the destruction of Giovanni da Modena’s fresco The Last Judgment in the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio in Bologna, Italy, because that priceless expression of Medieval Christianity depicts the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in hell.[2] And in the mother of all frivolous lawsuits, Smith in February 2004 he brought suit against Pope John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for offending Islam by expressing in various writings their opinion, utterly unremarkable from two Christian leaders, that Christianity is unique and superior to other religions, including Islam.[3]

His new suit against Fallaci is hardly less frivolous, but Smith was able to find a judge willing to play along. Judge Armando Grasso of the Italian city of Bergamo ruled in a preliminary hearing that Fallaci’s latest book, La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason), contained eighteen statements “unequivocally offensive to Islam and Muslims,” and that therefore she must be tried.[4] He was working from a list compiled by Smith, who complained that Fallaci has “propagated hate against Islam and Muslims, distorting real historical facts and inventing others, lying, offending, and defaming Muslims around the world.”[5] Smith exulted at Grasso’s decision: “It is the first time a judge has ordered a trial for defamation of the Islamic faith. But this isn’t just about defamation. We would also like (the court) to recognize that this is an incitement to religious hatred.”[6]

Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli was unhappy with Grasso’s decision. “In Europe,” he declared, “we are seeing the birth of a movement that is looking to silence those who don’t follow a single mindset, within which it is forbidden to speak ill of Islam….In Fallaci’s book there is very strong criticism but not defamation.”[7]

The trial will need to employ a battery of historians: several of Fallaci’s offending eighteen statements are simply assertions of historical fact. If they were false, Smith might have a case, although he would do better in a free society to provide documentation of their falsehood than to run to the courts to silence Fallaci. Of course, Islamic groups in the West have not hesitated to object to true characterizations of Islam when they find them inconvenient: last March the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) waged a successful campaign to have National Review remove from sale by its book service a “virulently Islamophobic” book, The Life and Religion of Mohammed by J. L. Menezes. CAIR objected to the book’s unfavorable depiction of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a licentious and bloodthirsty warrior. However, during the entire campaign CAIR wisely never asserted that anything the book said was actually false — and it wasn’t.[8] The point of their campaign, like Smith’s, may have been to silence voices that dare to point out the role that Islam has played in the rise of modern-day global terrorism. But Smith has gone beyond CAIR in claiming that Fallaci is “distorting real historical facts and inventing others,” and “lying.” One good result of her trial would be the establishment in court that Fallaci was telling the truth all along.

It is useful to go through Fallaci’s eighteen outrages, as specified in Smith’s complaint, in order to see just how devious and devoid of substance Smith’s suit is:

1. Fallaci asserts that when jihad warriors occupied the Abbey of Montecassino in Italy in 883, “the Muslims amused themselves by sacrificing each night the virginity of a nun. Do you know where? On the altar of the cathedral.”[9] I have been unable to find historical corroboration of this without unduly delaying the completion of this article; Fallaci, who is not a historian, does not footnote her work. It is, however, well established that the invading jihadists sacked and burned the Abbey, killing its abbot, St. Bertarius.

Would they have stopped short of raping nuns and defiling the cathedral altar? Islamic law suggests otherwise. The Qur’an permits Muslim men to have intercourse with their wives and their slave girls: “Forbidden to you are ... married women, except those whom you own as slaves” (Sura 4:23-24). The slave girls are understood to be the wives of men slain in battle by the warriors of jihad. The Islamic legal manual ‘Umdat al-Salik, which carries the endorsement of Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, stipulates: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled.”[10] Why? So that they are free to become the concubines of their captors.

The Prophet Muhammad originated such legislation. After one successful battle, he told his men, “Go and take any slave girl.” He took one for himself also. One well-attested Islamic tradition records that “the Prophet had suddenly attacked Bani Mustaliq without warning while they were heedless and their cattle were being watered at the places of water. Their fighting men were killed and their women and children were taken as captives; the Prophet got Juwairiya on that day.”[11] Juwairiya bint Harith became the Prophet’s seventh wife.

After his notorious massacre of the Jewish Qurayzah tribe, he did it again. According to his earliest biographer, Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad “went out to the market of Medina (which is still its market today) and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for [the men of Banu Qurayza] and struck off their heads in those trenches as they were brought out to him in batches.” After killing “600 or 700 in all, though some put the figure as high as 800 or 900,” the Prophet of Islam took a woman whom he had just widowed, Rayhana bint Amr, as another concubine.[12] There is no tradition recording the consent of either Juwairiya or Rayhana.

According to a generally accepted Islamic tradition, when Muhammad’s men emerged victorious in another battle, they presented him with an ethical question: “We took women captives, and we wanted to do ‘azl [coitus interruptus] with them.” Muhammad told them: “It is better that you should not do it, for Allah has written whom He is going to create till the Day of Resurrection.’”[13] When Muhammad said “it is better that you should not do it,” he was referring to coitus interruptus, not to raping their captives. He took that for granted.

There is abundant evidence that Muslims behaved this way even when nuns were involved. When jihadists captured Thessalonica in 904, just over twenty years after sacking Montecassino, an eyewitness recorded that “nuns, petrified with fear, with their hair disheveled, tried to escape, and ended up by the thousands in the hands of the barbarians, who killed the older ones, and sent the younger and more attractive ones into captivity and dishonor… The Saracens also massacred the unfortunate people who had sought refuge inside churches.”[14] And when the children and spiritual heirs of those jihadists streamed into Constantinople on May 29, 1453, historian Steven Runciman notes that “some of the younger nuns preferred martyrdom to dishonour and flung themselves to death down well-shafts.”[15] It is unclear whether these sisters had been reading dastardly Islamophobic propaganda or the life of the Prophet.

As for Fallaci’s assertion about altars, Runciman suggests that such things happened in churches in fallen Constantinople, noting primly that “there were scenes of ribaldry in the churches.”[16]

2. I do not know Fallaci’s source for her assertion that in Constantinople in 1453 the Muslims “decapitated even newborns. And extinguished candles with their little heads.” Runciman does note that the Muslim conqueror Mehmet was hardly a strong advocate of children’s rights: “Mehmet was said himself to have sent four hundred Greek children as a gift to each of the three leading Moslem potentates of the time, the Sultan of Egypt, the King of Tunis and the King of Grenada.”[17] Or is Smith offended not at the idea that Mehmet would have killed children, even newborn babies? According to Runciman, the conquerors “slew everyone that they met in the streets, men, women and children without discrimination.”[18] Or is Smith’s problem with Fallaci’s statement the idea that the Muslims would have treated the corpses in so barbarous a fashion? In that case, he should sue not Fallaci, but the Muslim scholars and spokesmen who justified the mutilation of corpses in Fallujah in 2004.[19]

3. Fallaci aroused Smith’s ire also by asserting that “in a woman the Qur’an sees above all a womb to give birth.” Yet the Qur’an does liken a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223). The Prophet Muhammad added that “if a woman spends the night deserting her husband’s bed (does not sleep with him), then the angels send their curses on her till she comes back (to her husband),” and “The right a husband acquires over the wife is that she should not keep herself away from him [even] if they were on the back of a camel and he desired her and tried to take her.”[20] Hardly ringing endorsements of the equality of dignity of women with men.

4. Fallaci declares: “In the dream that the sons of Allah have been nurturing for years, the dream of blowing up Giotto’s Tower or the Tower of Pisa or the cupola of St. Peter’s or the Eiffel Tower or Westminster Abbey or the cathedral of Cologne and so on...” This element of Smith’s complaint seems predicated on the world forgetting that 9/11 ever happened. Smith evidently is banking on Italian officials also forgetting the numerous jihad terrorists who have been arrested in Europe — notably the Algerian jihadists who were arrested in February before they could carry out their plan to blow up the Eiffel Tower.[21]

5. “Halal butchery is barbarous,” opines Fallaci, and criticizes Jewish butchery laws in the same breath. If such opinions are to be designated “hate speech,” I expect PETA activists will soon be rounded up and jailed.

6. In France, says Fallaci, “Islamic racism, that is the hatred of the infidel-dogs, reigns supreme and is never put on trial, never punished. Where the Muslims declare openly: ‘We must take advantage of the democratic space that France offers us, we must exploit democracy, that is, make use of it to occupy territory.’ Where not a few of them add: ‘In Europe the Nazi position was not understood. Or not by all. It was judged a vehicle of homicidal folly, when actually Hitler was a great man.’”

Why, what Muslim would have said such a thing in France? Hmm. Maybe Rabah Zehani, who in Lyon pelted his Jewish neighbors with a stone while shouting, “Dirty Jew, Hitler didn’t finish the job”? Or the Muslim schoolchildren who scrawled “Death to the Jews” on their school walls outside Paris?[22]

7. Fallaci: Muslims think that “biology is a shameless science because it is occupied with the human body and sex.” Here again Smith seems to have difficulty with the challenges that will come from living in a free society. Charges like this have been leveled against Christianity for years, and no one has brought any lawsuits.

8. Fallaci: “We will have to resign ourselves to the yoke of a creed that...instead of love spreads hatred and instead of liberty slavery.” Here again, Smith’s complaint founders on the facts. The Qur’an tells Muslims not to love their enemies, but to be “merciful to one another” and “ruthless to the unbelievers” (48:29). The notorious and now-disbanded jihadist group in England, Al-Muhajiroun, in March 2004 held a seminar entitled “The obligation of inciting religious hatred.”[23] Or as a young Muslim recently wrote to me: “I hate you for the sake of Allaah and I make du’a [i.e., I pray] for your destruction.”[24]

And slavery? Practiced today only in Muslim countries (notably Sudan and Mauritania), where it is justified on Islamic grounds (it is taken for granted in the Qur’an).

9. Fallaci complains of “a Right and a Left . . . that (in Italy) are both on the side of the enemy (Islam).” Is Smith’s problem with this that Islam is characterized as the enemy? That characterization originated with jihad warriors such as Osama bin Laden, who declared war against the West in the 1990s, not with Fallaci.

10. Fallaci: “The demands of the Islamics with regard to school curricula mean that in literature classes ‘we will not be allowed to include for example The Divine Comedy...nor the Canticle of Creatures nor the Sacred Hymns of Alessandra Manzoni...” Coming from a man who has demanded the destruction of Modena’s fresco in Bologna, this is a curious element of the complaint.

11. Fallaci disdains “...the uncouth wailing of the muezzin...” Apparently now even matters of taste are to be subject to the Thought Police.

12. Fallaci: Over the last twenty years terrorists have killed six thousand people “to the glory of the Qur’an. In obedience to its verses.” Does Smith know that Osama bin Laden praised Allah for the Verse of the Sword (Qur’an 9:5) in a 2003 sermon?[25] Or that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has published a detailed defense of his actions, based on the Qur’an and Islamic tradition?[26] Or that jihadists are making recruits around the world among Muslims by appealing to the Qur’an and presenting themselves as the exponents of “pure Islam”?[27]

13. Fallaci: “Our Jesus of Nazareth . . . they put him in their Danna where he eats like Trimalchio, drinks like a drunkard, screws like a sexual maniac.” “Danna,” or jannah, is Islamic Paradise, where the food, drink, and women are indeed plentiful (cf. Qur’an 13:35, 44:54, 47:15, etc.). As Jesus is considered a prophet of Islam, he would indeed be considered to be in Paradise. Fallaci’s description of that Paradise is pejorative but undeniably accurate.

14. Fallaci: “The revolting, reactionary, obtuse, feudal Right is found today only in Islam. It is Islam.” Although Smith objects to this, he doesn’t seem to have said anything about Hani Ramadan, the Muslim scholar who defended stoning adulterers in a Paris magazine.[28]

15. Fallaci decries “the mutilation that the Muslims force on little girls to prevent them, once they are grown...from enjoying the sexual act. It is a female castration that the Muslims practice in twenty-eight countries of Islamic Africa and because of which two million persons die each year from sepsis or loss of blood...” Would Smith have us believe that Fallaci invented this? When Norway’s Parliament, faced with ever-increasing evidence of the practice among Muslim immigrants, just this week introduced legislation to make examinations for female genital mutilation mandatory?[29]

16. Fallaci: Italians, resigned to their Islamization and thoroughly secularized, “are not offended when Islamic immigrants urinate on their monuments or soil the sacristies of their churches or toss their crucifixes out the window of a hospital.” They won’t be able to toss them out of schools — Adel Smith has made sure of that. But does this sort of thing happen? Certainly — and Italians do indeed meet it passively. One school in Rome last year even scrapped its annual Christmas play in favor of “Little Red Riding Hood” in order to avoid offending Muslims.[30] The better to eat you with, indeed.

17. Fallaci: “Islam is a pond. And a pond is a trough of stagnant water...it is never purified...it is easily polluted, like a watering hole for livestock of little value. The pond does not love life: It loves death...” Perhaps Smith should direct his complaint to Maulana Inyadullah of al-Qaeda, who bragged shortly after 9/11: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.”[31]

18. Fallaci: “Despite the massacres through which the sons of Allah have bloodied us and bloodied themselves for over thirty years, the war that Islam has declared against the West...is a cultural war...they kill us in order to bend us. To intimidate us...Their goal is not to fill cemeteries. Not to destroy our skyscrapers...It is to destroy our soul, our ideas. Our feelings and our dreams. It is to subjugate the West once again.”

Smith doubtless hopes that we have never heard of the Saudi Sheikh Muhammad bin Abd Al-Rahman Al-‘Arifi, Imam of the King Fahd Defense Academy, who declared recently: “We will control the land of the Vatican; we will control Rome and introduce Islam in it. Yes, the Christians, who carve crosses on the breasts of the Muslims…will yet pay us the Jiziya [poll tax paid by non-Muslims under Muslim rule], in humiliation, or they will convert to Islam…”[32] Smith is betting that most Westerners will never hear of the influential Sheikh Yusef Al-Qaradawi, who has been praised as a reformist by dhimmi academic John Esposito.[33] Qaradawi has written that “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice…I maintain that the conquest this time will not be by the sword but by preaching and ideology…”[34]

Fallaci remains defiant: “This trial is not against me. Nor is it a trial brought by a judge in search of publicity. It is a trial aimed at creating a Precedent, the Fallaci Case. I will not deign to honor them with my presence. This lawsuit is unacceptable, unpardonable. To distort a person’s thought, pick at a word here and another there, sew it all together with little dots, is illegitimate. Illicit. Illegal. Criminal. Contrary to every moral and intellectual decency. For shame!”[35]

During a speech in Washington in 2002, Fallaci said: “The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come.” The suit against her is just one hint of that terrible denouement.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch; author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: Islamic Law and Non-Muslims (Prometheus). His latest book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery), will be available August 8.

Notes:

[1] “Italian Judge Bans Crucifix From School,” Associated Press, October 27, 2003.

[2] “Paper: Italian Church Attack Plotted,” Associated Press, June 23, 2002.

[3] “Muslim Activist Sues Pope, Cardinal,” Associated Press, February 29, 2004.

[4] “Fallaci To Go On Trial For Defaming Islam,” AGI, May 24, 2005.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Italian Author To Face Charges Of Defaming Islam,” Reuters, May 25, 2005.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Robert Spencer, “CAIR’s War on National Review, FrontPageMagazine.com, March 30, 2005.

[9] Translations of the material in the complaint by Chris Newman, “The 18 things you can't say about Muslims in Italy,” Dagger In Hand, May 26, 2005. http://cmnewman.blogspot.com/2005/05/18-things-you-cant-say-about-muslims.html.

[10] Nuh Ha Mim Keller, editor and translator, Reliance of the Traveller (‘Umdat al-Salik), Amana Publications, 1994, o9.13.

[11] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 3, book 46, no. 717.

[12] Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, A. Guillaume, translator, Oxford University Press, 1955, p. 464.

[13] Sahih Bukhari, vol. 5, book 59, no. 459.

[14] O. Tafrali, Thessalonique – Des Origines au XVI Siecle, pp. 151-154, as quoted in Andrew G. Bostom, “Jihad Killings of POWs and Non-Combatants,” FrontPageMagazine.com, September 9, 2004.

[15] Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople 1453, Cambridge University Press, 1965, p. 147.

[16] Runciman, p. 148.

[17] Runciman, p. 151.

[18] Runciman, p. 145.

[19] See Jeff Jacoby, “Mutilation of victims and Muslim law,” Boston Globe, June 13, 2004.

[20] Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, Ihya' ulum al-din (Cairo, n.d.), 4:747. Cited in Hamdun Dagher, The Position of Women in Islam, Light of Life, 1997.
[21] “Officials: Militants Targeted Eiffel Tower,” Associated Press, February 16, 2005.

[22] “Holocaust Lessons Meet Muslim Rebuff in France,” Reuters, January 20, 2005.

[23] “The obligation of inciting religious hatred,” Dhimmi Watch, March 15, 2004.

[24] “we make dua Allah allows your blood to spill over our hands," Jihad Watch, May 31, 2005.

[25] Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “Bin Laden’s Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice,” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 476, March 5, 2003.

[26] “Zarqawi Statement May 20, 2005 Part 1,” Jihad Unspun, May 26, 2005.

[27] “Fears as young Muslims ‘opt out,’” BBC, March 7, 2004.

[28] “Swiss Court Reinstates Muslim Teacher To His Job,” IslamOnline, April 4, 2004.

[29] “Doctors warn against child exam,” Aftenposten, June 3, 2005.

[30] “Furor Over Scrapping of Christmas Play,” Reuters, December 9, 2004.

[31] David Brooks, “Among the Bourgeoisophobes: Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel,” The Weekly Standard, April 15, 2002.

[32] Steven Stalinsky, “The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy,” FrontPageMagazine.com, April 14, 2005.

[33] John L. Esposito, “Practice and Theory,” Boston Review, April/May 2003.

[34] Stalinsky, “The Next Pope and Islamic Prophecy.”

[35] “Fallaci: ‘Processo non contro di me,” Tgcom, May 27, 2005. Translation by Chris Newman, “Oriana’s trial date set,” Dagger In Hand, June 3, 2005. http://cmnewman.blogspot.com/2005/06/orianas-trial-date-set-in-case-you.html.

Islamic jihadist tries to blow up Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi

Jihad in India update from The Pioneer, "IGI intact; hats off to alert cop," with thanks to Fanabba:

An alert head constable of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) saved the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport on Sunday night from being blown apart after he intercepted and checked a truck carrying 10.5 kg of white explosive substance suspected to be sodium azide or potassium chlorate. He also seized highly potent 69 detonators of "8 strength", which are used for triggering high-intensity blasts and 15 metres of cordex wire.

Explosive experts, who examined the substance, said that the explosive could be converted into a highly lethal combination by mixing it with diesel. The same combination was used with telling effect in 1997 when Abdul Karim Tunda, the commander of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) had caused 27 blasts.

Intelligence sources maintained that the consignment seized from the premises of IGI airport was part of the conspiracy to bomb the airport after the twin blasts in Satyam and Liberty cinema halls.

The driver of truck No HR-55-B-1208, Noor Kamal, has been arrested for carrying explosive materials into the highly protected area under Sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Explosive Substances Act.

Sources at the IGI airport said Noor Kamal, a resident of Ramgarh town in Alwar district in Rajasthan, was being interrogated by joint teams of intelligence agencies. Though he tried to mislead the interrogators by claiming that he was going to the hill on the north side of the runway No 10-28.

His preliminary interrogation has revealed that he was handed over the consignment by a local conduit of LeT. It appears that Noor Kamal was trained to make bombs by mixing the explosive substance with diesel and then attach it with the cordex wire and detonator to trigger blasts.

Retired FBI Agent: Al-Arian Not An 'Asset'

The whole world is waiting for the Michael Jackson verdict, but there is a trial going on in Tampa that might turn out to have more world-historical significance. An Al-Arian Update from the Tampa Tribune, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

TAMPA - A retired FBI agent testified Monday that he gave up on efforts to turn Sami Al- Arian into an ``asset'' in 1992 after determining the University of South Florida professor wasn't being truthful.

Manny Perez and a fellow agent first interviewed Al-Arian as the first Gulf War approached in 1991. FBI headquarters requested it, Perez said.

Al-Arian said he opposed violence as a solution to problems in the Middle East, Perez said.

``We asked if he was a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and he told us he was not,'' Perez said....

Perez, who retired in 2000, testified that he met with Al- Arian four more times in person, including once at Al-Arian's attorney's office, and had one telephone conversation in 1992. The professor ended the call by asking if he was under investigation and, upon hearing he was not, requesting not to be contacted anymore.

He said FBI headquarters requested the contact at least twice and that he was told to ask about Bashir Nafi, a man who came to visit Al-Arian and worked with his think tank, the World and Islam Studies Enterprise. The indictment identifies Nafi as an Islamic Jihad founder and a fellow board member.

Al-Arian told him Nafi was not a part of the Islamic Jihad, Perez said.

How would he know?

Defense attorney William Moffitt asked Perez whether he thought Al-Arian could be used as an asset, a person who provides information to the FBI. That was part of the plan, Perez said, but ``by the third interview I was convinced ... that Mr. Al-Arian was an active member of the [Palestinian Islamic Jihad],'' Perez said under cross examination.

"The Radical-Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security"

In a world in which a US diplomatic official can assert that "the events of September 11 have brought into sharper focus the importance of recognizing and respecting religious diversity in America and around the world," one of the chief problems we face is the near-universal unwillingness to face squarely what we are really up against and what we must do about it.

9/11 was not about religious diversity. It was about jihad terrorism. The threat that jihadists present today, not just to the United States, but to Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Israel, Nigeria, and other states all across the world will not be solved by "respecting religious diversity." It will be solved by speaking forthrightly about the nature of the challenge we face and working to find positive solutions. Ignoring the true nature and source of the problem will only postpone the crisis, and make its ultimate resolution more difficult.

As I have stated many times, what we are facing can only be understood by a close study of the concept of jihad. The jihad ideology is rooted in the Qur'an and Islamic tradition. The longer we postpone confronting that fact, the worse the problem will grow.

That's one reason why I am honored to be part of the panel for a forthcoming Symposium, ""The Radical-Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security." This is a Dinner/Symposium sponsored by the People's Truth Forum, to be held on September 21. The People's Truth Forum's "primary objective is to heighten public awareness with respect to matters of national security" -- and the more Symposia like this one that can be held, the better informed and more aware the public will be.

Warmly invited are those patriotic Americans who share PTF's concerns for the future of our nation - especially those interested in learning more about Islamic terrorism and the threat it poses to future generations.

I urge you to attend this important event, which promises to be one of the few places in modern-day America where you will be able to hear the truth about what we're up against. Reservation information here.

The unquestioned lockstep orthodoxy (and willful blindness) at State

A U.S. citizen currently residing in India, N.S. Rajaram, has kindly allowed us to reprint a most revealing exchange he had with the editor of "Span" magazine, a publication of the U.S. Consulate in Mumbai, India. Even though the exchange took place in 2002, it is still relevant today, and not just for Mumbai: the attitudes that Lea Terhune expresses here are today part of the unquestioned orthodoxy that prevails at State and in the media (both Left and Right). Until this dogma is shattered, as it deserves to be, the US will continue to be more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than it needs to be.

The exchange began with the publication in Span of an article entitled, "Koran: An Open Book: Thoughts on the secularism of Islam," by S.A. Abbasi. This article is an open apologetic for Islam. It begins:

One June evening years back, in a Thiruvananthapuram restaurant, a stranger walked up to my table, voiced the Muslim greeting “as-salaam-o-alaikum” (peace be on you) and sat down in an empty chair opposite me.

I was surprised and asked the stranger, “Do you happen to know who I am?” “No,” he said, “I haven’t known you.” “Then how did you make out I am a Muslim?”

The stranger—clean-shaven above the upper lip and sporting a thick beard below the lower one—smiled. “It is not difficult to tell a Muslim among the strangers,” he said, “a Muslim has certain dignity and grace about him that sets him apart.”

Just then his coffee came which he sipped in silence as I sipped my tea. I recalled the words of Bernard Lewis, the acclaimed scholar of Islam: “There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations.”

I decided against disappointing my interlocutor by telling him that I wasn’t a practicing Muslim. The “dignity and grace” he had seen at that moment on my face was perhaps an illusion created by the fading light of a Kerala summer.

But, I believe he wasn’t entirely wrong in his generalization. Anyone who goes through a regulated life, with a strong sense of humility and concern for others—tenets which all major religions of the world emphasize—does acquire certain natural dignity and grace. It may be more noticeable with Muslims because Islamic practices demand day-to-day regulation of life and frequent reiteration that only God is almighty and divine, that all humans are created equal and that no one has hierarchical superiority over any other human being in the eyes of God.

Rajaram wrote to U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, who is now evidently one of the Administration's leading architects of Iraq policy.

Subject: Misuse of US Government publication SPAN for justifying Jihad

Your Excellency:

I am a United States citizen currently residing in India in connection with research relating to ancient civilizations. I am deeply concerned by the appearance of the article “KORAN: An Open Book” by S. A. Abbasi in the July/August issue of the US Embassy publication SPAN. The article is misleading and at the same time violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution separating Church and State. I have enclosed copy of the article for your reference.

The article in question tries to justify Jihad as a defensive war, which is highly misleading to say the least. According to the authoritative Dictionary of Islam, Jihad is: “The duty of religious war (which all commentators agree is a duty extending to all time) is laid down in the following verses, and it is remarkable that all the verses occur in the al-Madinah Surahs, being those given after Muhammad had established himself as a paramount ruler, and was in a position to dictate terms to his enemies.”

It is therefore a travesty of truth to represent Jihad as a defensive campaign, while its real goal is to extend the rule of Islam. Jihad can never be accepted as a legitimate instrument of policy. More fundamentally, I believe that such an article has no place in a US Government publication. It violates the First Amendment to the US Constitution separating religion and the State.

Yours sincerely,
N.S. Rajaram

The response:

August 26, 2002

Dear Mr. Rajaram:

The Ambassador’s Office has forwarded your letter of August 16 to me. We thank you for expressing your concern about Professor Abbasi’s article “Koran: An Open Book,” which appeared in the July/August 2002 issue of SPAN. The point of the article was not to justify or defend jihad, but to clarify some misconceptions about Islam, as you may see if you go over it more carefully. “The Koranic message about violence, unambiguously prohibits aggression, even coercion, is loud, clear and very consistent. The Koran unambiguously prohibits aggression and violence,” Professor Abbasi writes. As the professor also notes, religious war is not something that originated with Islam. It appears in Hinduism and other religions, including Christianity and it has doubtless gone on from time immemorial. Professor Abbasi’s aim is to show the flaws in the thinking of the proponents of Jihad. We believe and still believe, that his comments are a balanced endeavor to put certain Islamic beliefs in perspective. We have had very positive responses to this article, some of which have come from members of conservative Hindu groups.

SPAN is a magazine that reflects all aspects of American society and culture, including its religious diversity. That diversity includes Muslims along with Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Jews. The events of September 11 have brought into sharper focus the importance of recognizing and respecting religious diversity in America and around the world.

Sincerely,
Lea Terhune, Editor

Did you catch the distortions about the Qur'an? And this: "The events of September 11 have brought into sharper focus the importance of recognizing and respecting religious diversity in America and around the world"?

Did you realize that the lesson of 9/11 was that we must respect religious diversity? That the planes crashing into the Towers was just a cry for help, a frustrated expression of the need for respect for diversity? The implication is, then, that if we just respect diversity, the trouble will go away. But will Muslims respect it?

Anyway, Rajaram was having none of this PC nonsense from Terhune:

Dear Ms. Terhune:

Thank you for your letter of August 26, 2002 responding to my comments on the article “Koran: An Open Book,” (SPAN July/August 2002). You are right in pointing out: “The events of September 11 have brought into sharper focus the importance of recognizing and respecting religious diversity in America and around the world.” But the “events of September 11” would not have taken place but for the fact such spirit is largely lacking in major segments of the Islamic world. The message of well-intentioned individuals like Professor Abbasi should be addressed mainly to these segments and not to you and me or the readers of SPAN.

Such articles should also be more truthful and not try to dilute the evil of Jihad by suggesting that other religions, including Hinduism have indulged in religious warfare. This is supported neither by scripture nor history— other than the misrepresentation of the Gita that Professor Abbasi invokes. He should then explain why the Zoroastrians of Iran had to flee soon after the Islamic conquests and seek refuge in Hindu India. Can we also ignore Koranic injunctions like: “… kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them, and lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert,… let them go their way.” (Koran, IX 5,6) No coercion, no violence?

Such sophistry, that other religions have also pursued religious wars in the past begs the issue by diverting attention from the present to the past. The fact is that religious war (Jihad) is the stated policy of Islamic groups as well as of countries like Pakistan today. This cannot be deflected as Hitler did to the Bishop of Osnabruch: “I am only doing what the Church has done for 1500 years, only more effectively.”

The need of the hour is reform in Islam, not apologetics calling for better understanding on the part of the victims of Islamic violence. And this is what we should be encouraging and which the SPAN article by Professor Abbasi fails to do. I may use our correspondence in my writings for the purpose.

Sincerely,
N.S. Rajaram

Indeed. The irony of the PC straitjacket about Islam that media outlets Left and Right wear today is that they wear it because they think that by doing so they're helping moderate Muslims. In fact, they're quashing whatever slim hopes those moderates ever may have had of being heard, by denying the fundamental premise of reform: that there is anything in Islam that actually needs to be fixed.

To his second message, Rajaram received no reply.

Middle East votes for jihad

Tiny minority of extremists update. "The Mideast casts its votes for extremists," from the New York Daily News, with thanks to EPG:

Winds of Democratic change are blowing through the Middle East - and sending shivers through the White House.

Fed up with corruption and determined to oust governments seen as U.S. lackeys, newly minted voters in key Arab countries have propelled card-carrying terrorists and Islamic extremists into positions of power.

• In Gaza, the militant Hamas organization won 77 out of 118 seats in recent local elections.

• In Lebanon's first vote free of Syrian domination, the Iranian-backed Islamic militant group Hezbollah swept the polls in the southern part of the country.

• In Egypt, the radical and often violent Muslim Brotherhood has shifted tactics and started infiltrating the pro-democracy drive trying to oust longtime President Hosni Mubarak - a key American ally.

"The key point here is that democracy in the Middle East is about anti-Americanism right now," said David Phillips of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In Beirut, Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Naboulsi said they know all they need to know about democracy.

"We don't need America to teach us," he said. "The turnout [at the recent election] was bigger than the elections four years ago. People wanted to say, 'Look, we're against American interference in our affairs, we're against the American project and we will stand with the resistance.'"

The Hamas and Hezbollah victories place President Bush in a tough spot. On one hand, he has championed democracy as a cure-all for this troubled region. On the other, he adamantly refuses to deal with terrorists.

"The problem [for Bush] is that these elections aren't skewing public opinion, they're reflecting public opinion, which is decidedly against American policies in the region," said Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution.

I told you so -- over two years ago. This isn't because of American actions or alleged crimes. This is because of the region's attachment to Islam and Sharia.

At National Review today they're saying that Iraqis are "skeptical about a U.S. withdrawal, but they see the American route appears to be leading to independence. And they know the jihadist route is one too horrible to contemplate." But the votes say otherwise.

Jerusalem: Bags of explosives awaited suicide bombers

An Abbas-Will-Bring-Peace-In-Our-Time Update, from WND, with thanks to EPG:

JERUSALEM – Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists left two bags filled with explosives in a suburb outside Jerusalem, and attempted several times to infiltrate the city to collect the explosives and carry out a large-scale suicide bombing, security sources told WND.

The revelation follows recent comments by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the era of suicide bombings is over.

Israeli forces recently arrested an Islamic Jihad terrorist responsible for orchestrating a suicide attack that killed five Israelis outside a Tel Aviv nightclub Feb. 25. Upon interrogation, the operative detailed a pending suicide operation in Jerusalem to be carried out by terrorists from the central West Bank, security sources said.

The information led to the arrests two weeks ago of five Islamic Jihad members, including Iyyad Ahmad Hussein Fawajra, 27, a resident of Bethlehem who tried to lead two potential suicide bombers to Ramot, a Jerusalem neighborhood, to carry out a suicide bombing on a bus or at a coffee shop.

Afghan blast wounds 4 U.S. military members

Afghan jihad update. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

(CNN) -- An explosion in southern Afghanistan has wounded four members of the U.S. military on patrol near the city of Kandahar, a coalition spokeswoman said.

A roadside bomb was used in the blast on Monday morning, according to Col. James Yonts with Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan.

The bomb hit a provisional reconstruction team (PRT), a group of 40 to 80 civilians and military specialists who help in rebuilding projects or provide security for aid workers.

Because the jihadists don't want to see Afghanistan rebuilt.

Kashmir bomb kills 13, wounds 100

Jihad in Kashmir update. From CNN, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

SRINAGAR, India-controlled Kashmir (CNN) -- At least 13 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded after a bomb exploded in the bustling city of Pulwama in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police sources said.

A car or truck bomb exploded near a school and a post office around 11:45 a.m. (0615 GMT), police said, damaging the school and at least 16 shops in the vicinity, as well as a number of vehicles.

Police used tear gas to disperse crowds of townspeople who were angered by the bombing in the town, which lies about 40 kilometers (24.8 miles) south of Srinagar....

Reformist Egyptian Writer Critiques Islamist Education and Propaganda

A sign of hope in Egypt? We'll see if Al-Qimni is arrested or otherwise persecuted. From MEMRI, with thanks to Sr Soph:

In the wake of the recent wave of terrorist bombings in Egypt, the reformist Egyptian writer Sayyid Al-Qimni published an essay in the weekly Roz Al-Yousuf in which he argues that the responsibility for terrorism in Egypt lies not just with the terrorists themselves but also with those who create a cultural atmosphere conducive to terrorism. Thus, in Al-Qimni’s opinion, the fight against terrorism requires combating extremist trends among Muslim clerics and in the Arab media.

At the end of his essay, Al-Qimni presents a famous episode in early Muslim history to support his argument. When 'Ali Ibn Abi Talib became caliph in 656 A.D., he was opposed by a number of the Prophet Muhammad’s closest companions, including Muhammad’s wife ‘Aisha. In the first intra-Muslim fighting (fitna) in history, these opponents met ‘Ali at what is known as the Battle of the Camel, in December 656 A.D. Although killing animals in war is generally forbidden in Muslim law, and despite the aura of sanctity attached to 'Aisha, Muslim tradition relates that ‘Ali ordered his followers to bring down the camel on which ‘Aisha rode, as he considered this necessary in order to win the battle for the caliphate. Al-Qimni uses this episode to urge Egyptians to oppose those who threaten society, even if they speak in the name of religion: (1)

A Barrier Separates the Muslim's Mind from the Real World, Making Him Lose the Capacity to Distinguish Good from Evil

"This suicide bomber was not a lone drop-out from society. He was certainly part of a cell... Nonetheless, it is now possible that an isolated individual can carry out a bombing, as indeed occurred when an [Egyptian] citizen stabbed a tourist who was kissing his [own] wife one week prior to the recent explosion. It is taught in the schools, on television, in the mosques, and within the family that this secene [of a husband kissing his wife], which touches the hearts of people all over the world, and makes them overflow with feelings and humanity - is ugly, promiscuous, and immodest. Thus, the terrorist act of that citizen was merely a result of what we planted in him. He was unable to resist the generator of hate and repugnance within him, so he stabbed the couple with a switchblade...

"The generator of hatred, revulsion, and cruelty is like a generator of energy; it explodes if internal pressure rises. That is what happens to the poor Muslim when he is exposed to the enormous pressure of the religious people in our country, which is far greater than that to which people of other religions in the world are exposed. While for the Christian it is enough to make the sign of the cross, which only takes one second, the Muslim is required to be a mechanical instrument, performing the same action every day. He is required to go to the mosque five times a day, and is required to constantly read the Koran, and to force himself to weep if he cannot weep, and to spend an entire work day in the mosque. No one can make him work so long as he is reading the Koran and reciting endless supplications and devotions. [Such recitations] accompany his every motion and position, from the moment he gets up at dawn to the moment he retires to the conjugal bed...

"There is a barrier separating the [Muslim's] mind from the real world around him, so that he falls into a state of constant hallucination and, as a result, loses the capacity to distinguish between good and evil. He only recognizes the value of halal and haram [i.e., permissible vs. prohibited] according to the Islamic point of view. Muslims are burdened with many repressive restrictions... Freedom of thought and expression are fenced in by Islamic restrictions ..."

Oh, Sayyid, you Islamophobe.

Read it all.

Mexico's blind eye to al-Qaida activity

More on the jihadist entryway into the US that is Mexico, from WND, with thanks to EPG:

Al-Qaida "communities," like the one busted in Lodi, Calif., have direct ties to other networks in Mexico and Central America, where jihadi terrorists are not viewed as a local threat, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

"South of the Rio Grande Valley there exists a dire situation," said an intelligence researcher who took part in an academic meeting in west Canada.

Intelligence sources and researchers agree there is hardly any effective cooperation between the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence establishment of Mexico's President Vicente Fox.

Mexican agencies charged with intelligence and counter-terrorism, such as the Office of Coordination of the Presidency and the Center for Research on National Security, CISEN, do little more than offer half-hearted monitoring of militant Islamic activity, say G2 Bulletin sources.

Mexico is facing a national crisis in dealing with drug lords who are killing elected officials, police chiefs and innocent civilians. Officials there have little interest and fewer resources to devote to law enforcement and intelligence activities that threaten the U.S., not Mexico.

As WND reported last week, Islam is on the move in Mexico and throughout Latin America, making dramatic gains in converting the native population, increasing immigration, establishing businesses and charities and attracting attention from U.S. government officials who have asked their neighbors to the south to keep an eye on foreign Muslim groups.

While Mexico has pledged to monitor these activities on behalf of the U.S., those familiar with the recruitment practices and the Mexican government's oversight say the U.S. has reasons for concern.

US Forces Attack Militias in Syrian Border Region of Iraq

The Iraq region bordering Syria is becoming increasingly lawless. It is coming under the control of Sunni Islamist militias, just as Basra is being controlled by Shi'ite Islamist militias. Here is an illustration of just how out of control large parts of Iraq are becoming: "U.S. Airstrikes Kill About 40 Insurgents," from AP, with thanks to Skeet Street.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. fighter planes equipped with precision-guided missiles launched airstrikes on an Iraqi town near the Syrian border Saturday, killing about 40 insurgents who were stopping and searching civilian cars, the military said.

Seven missiles were fired at heavily armed insurgents near Karabilah, close to the volatile town of Qaim, the Marines said in a statement.

The insurgents were armed with AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers and had "set up a barricade on a main road to the city and were threatening Iraqi civilians," the military said.

U.S. warplanes backed by helicopters started the airstrikes at 11:40 a.m. and ended them at 4 p.m. "once all the targets were destroyed," the military said. About 40 insurgents were killed. The Marines suffered no casualties.

"The coalition aircraft and fighter jets and attack helicopters from the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing attacked the insurgent compound and surrounding area targeting the armed men," the statement said. "There are no reports of civilian casualties or collateral damage."

It was unclear whether any foreign fighters were among the slain insurgents. The region is known as a haven for Islamic extremists crossing in and out of Iraq across the Syrian border to attack U.S. and Iraqi security forces.

The U.S. military launched two major counterinsurgent offensives in the area last month that killed an estimated 140 militants.

Since Thursday, insurgent attacks in Iraq's volatile Anbar province have claimed the lives of seven Marines. The bodies of 21 slain Iraqi men, some beheaded and most shot in the head, were found Friday in three separate locations near Qaim...

Egyptian Historian on Saudi Iqra TV: The Vatican's Mission of Destroying Islam was Delegated to the U.S. – Which Carried Out 9/11 on Assignment by the World Council of Churches

Osama bin Laden meets Jack Chick: the Vatican got the US to stage 9/11 in order to control the world! A beyond-parody article from MEMRI, with thanks to all who sent this in:

The following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian historian Professor Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz, which aired on Saudi Iqra TV [1] on May 26, 2005. [To view this clip from MEMRI TV visit http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=708]

Abd Al-Aziz: "The decision to impose one religion over the entire world was made in the Second Vatican Council in 1965."

Host: "Huh?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. A long time ago."

Host: "They decided to Christianize the world?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. The decisions of the 1965 Vatican Council included, first of all, absolving the Jews of the blood of Christ. This decision is well known and was the basis for the recognition of the occupying Zionist entity - Israel. The second decision was to eradicate the left in the eighties. I believe we've all witnessed this. The third decision was to eradicate Islam, so that the world would be Christianized by the third millennium."

Host: "Why is America hostile to Islam, although we never had and never will have the same conflict with them we had with Europe?"

Abd Al-Aziz: "Well, do you remember what we just said about the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and about Christianizing the world? It was agreed upon and pre-arranged. John Paul II prepared a five-year plan, on the eve of the third millennium, Christianize the world. His address in 1995 was based on the assumption that by the year 2000, the entire world would be Christianized. Since the plan was not accomplished, the World Council of Churches assigned this mission to the US in January 2001, since the US is the world's unrivaled military power. They named the decade between 2001-2010 "the age of eradicating evil" – "evil" referring to Islam and Muslims.

"The Crusader war is ongoing, because it has been a religious war since the dawn of Islam. Later, colonialism, missionaries, and Christianization were introduced. The Crusader war is ongoing. The Inquisition courts exist to this day. As I told you, the pope who was appointed a few days ago, headed the Inquisition Court, which is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

And they call Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz a "historian." Note the projection: it is the jihad that is ongoing, while a Crusade is inconceivable today -- but that doesn't stop these fevered paranoid fantasies.

"When in January 2001, the World Council of Churches delegated this mission to the US - what did the US do? It fabricated the show of… is it September 9 or 11?"

Host: "11. Please explain this to me."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes, of course…"

Host: "You mean to say that the World Council of Churches delegated the mission of Christianizing of the world to the US."

Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. And how could the US win legitimacy for this without anyone saying that they are perpetrating massacres and waging a Crusader war? It fabricated the 9/11 show. I call it a fabrication because much has been written on this. We are also to blame. Why do we accept a single perspective? Countless books were written, some of which were even translated into Arabic, like Thierry Meyssan's 9/11 – The Appalling Fraud [2] and Pentagate. "Pentagate" like Watergate… He brings documents to prove that the method used in destroying the three (sic) towers was "controlled demolition.

Thanks, Professor, but I'm due back on the planet Earth now.

PA releases Islamic Jihad fighters

What's that you say? That Abbas is going to bring lasting peace? From Al-Jazeera, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

Khalid Al-Batsh, a prominent Islamic Jihad leader, said the movement had reached an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a recent meeting in Gaza on releasing nine Islamic Jihad activists detained in a Palestinian prison in Jericho....

The nine Islamic Jihad activists were detained in the wake of a bombing operation in a Tel Aviv nightclub on 25 February, in which five Israeli soldiers were killed.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic Jihad resistance group.

Family turmoil over 'suicide bomb' women

An update on this story from the BBC, with thanks to Kaosktrl:

"I got him a job in the bank, but he has destroyed my house, my family, my life," says Sher Baloch, crying bitterly. He is talking of Gul Hasan, the alleged member of the outlawed Sunni extremist Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group sentenced to death on 45 counts last Saturday in connection with attacks on Shia mosques.

The police said last week that two of Mr Baloch's daughters - Saba and Arifa - had been arrested on suspicion of training to be suicide bombers.

The two sisters were last known to have visited Gul Hasan - their mother's brother - shortly before they disappeared with Gul Hasan's family in June last year.

"I wish Gul Hasan was dead," says Mr Baloch.

'Good Muslims'

The resentment in Mr Baloch's house is almost tangible. Every now and then, you can hear the mother burst out crying - her wails interspersed with expletives in Baloch.

They are all directed at her brother Gul Hasan, whom everyone in the household says is a man of extreme sectarian views.

It is not easy to get Mr Baloch to sit in one place and recount his ordeal. He is highly agitated and occasionally bursts into tears. He finally settles down, looking resigned.

"I never thought my daughters would be discussed in public, all over the country," says Mr Baloch, a devout orthodox Muslim with six sons and seven daughters.

Besides a few chairs, the only other noticeable thing in his sparsely furnished sitting room is a pile of religious books.

"All my children are practising Muslims," he says. "But they are good Muslims, model citizens, not terrorists."

The world is still waiting for a clear explanation of the distinction between those two groups -- that is, a clear delineation of what would make a good Muslim eschew suicide bombing and other acts of violence. This is a particularly acute question in light of the fact that so many Islamic scholars take for granted that such acts are justified.

Egyptian convicted in Sadat killing to run for president

This candidacy may provide a clear indication of just how popular jihadists are in Egypt. From DPA and Reuters via Khaleej Times, with thanks to Skeetstreet:

CAIRO — An Islamist convicted in the assassination of Egyptian pr