Cyberspace as a combat zone: The phenomenon of Electronic Jihad

Cyberspace is indeed a combat zone, in many ways, and an arena of the jihad, as we have noted here many times. Here is a useful overview from E. Alshech in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to all who sent this in):

Alongside military jihad, which has been gaining momentum and extracting an ever growing price from many countries around the globe, Islamists have been developing a new form of warfare, termed "electronic jihad," which is waged on the Internet. This new form of jihad was launched in recent years and is still in its early stages of development. However, as this paper will show, Islamists are fully aware of its destructive potential, and persistently strive to realize this potential.

Electronic jihad is a phenomenon whereby mujahideen use the Internet to wage economic and ideological warfare against their enemies. Unlike other hackers, those engaged in electronic jihad are united by a common strategy and ideology which are still in a process of formation.

This paper aims to present the phenomenon of electronic jihad and to characterize some of its more recent developments. It lays out the basic ideology and motivations of its perpetrators, describes, as far as possible, its various operational strategies, and assesses the short and long-term dangers posed by this relatively new phenomenon. The paper focuses on electronic jihad waged by organized Islamist groups that mobilize large numbers of hackers around the world to attack servers and Web sites owned by those whom they regard as their enemies.

Organized Electronic Jihad

In the past few years Islamist Web sites have provided ample evidence that Islamist hackers do not operate as isolated individuals, but carry out coordinated attacks against Web sites belonging to those whom they regard as their enemies. As evident from numerous postings on the Islamist Web sites, many of these coordinated attacks are organized by groups devoted to electronic jihad. Six prominent groups of this sort have emerged on the Internet over the past few years: Hackboy, Ansar Al-Jihad LilJihad Al-Electroni, Munazamat Fursan Al-Jihad Al-Electroni, Majmu'at Al-Jihad Al-Electroni, Majma' Al-Haker Al-Muslim, and Inhiyar AlDolar. All these groups, with the exception of Munazamat Fursan Al-Jihad and Inhiyar alDolar, have Web sites of their own through which they recruit volunteers to take part in electronic attacks, maintain contacts with others who engage in electronic jihad, coordinate their attacks, and enable their members to chat with one another anonymously.

The Majmu'at Al-Jihad Al-Electroni Web site, for example, includes the following sections: a document explaining the nature of electronic jihad, a section devoted to electronic jihad strategy, a technical section on software used for electronic attacks, a section describing previous attacks and their results, and various appeals to Muslims, mujahideen, and hackers worldwide.

A more recent indication of the increasingly organized nature of electronic jihad is an initiative launched January 3, 2007 on Islamist Web sites: mujahideen operating on the Internet (and in the media in general) were invited to sign a special pact called "Hilf Al-Muhajirin" (Pact of the Immigrants). In it, they agree "to stand united under the banner of the Muhajirun Brigades in order to promote [cyber-warfare]," and "to pledge allegiance to the leader [of the Muhajirun Brigades]." They vow to "obey [the leader] in [all tasks], pleasant or unpleasant, not to contest [his] leadership, to exert every conceivable effort in [waging] media jihad...[and to persist] in attacking those websites which do harm to Islam and to the Muslims..."

This initiative clearly indicates that the Islamist hackers no longer regard themselves as loosely connected individual activists, but as dedicated soldiers who are bound by a pact and committed to a joint ideological mission.

There is much, much more. Read it all.

Professor at Kent State University running Jihad web site

"Are You Prepared for Jihad?" IN THE NAME OF OBL. 2007: THE YEAR OF ISLAMIC VICTORY!" "OBL" -- you know who that is. Talk of "Crusaders" and praise for suicide bombers. Run by a Kent State prof.

"Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," by Mike S. Adams (thanks to all who sent this in):

Yesterday afternoon, I logged on to the "Global War" blog (global-war.bloghi.com) of Associate Professor Julio Pino – a Muslim convert who teaches at Kent State University. The heading for the site used to read "The Worldwide Web of Jihad: Daily News from the Most Dangerous Muslim in America." Now it reads "Are You Prepared for Jihad?" IN THE NAME OF OBL. 2007: THE YEAR OF ISLAMIC VICTORY!"

Hardly able to believe what I was reading, I called Pino at his office in Ohio around 4 p.m. According to his secretary, he had not been at work that day (he only has office hours two days of the week). He was drawing a paycheck from the people of the State of Ohio while trying to launch a Jihad against people like me. In fact, just five minutes before I called he posted an entry under the title "Crusaders Can’t Take Anymore in Afghanistan!"

Pino began his morning of not going into his office at Kent State by penning a post under the title “Frightened British Crusaders Rush More Troops to Occupied Afghanistan.” Using terms like “occupation” and “Crusaders” it isn’t really necessary to read these posts in order to ascertain who this employee of the State of Ohio is rooting for in the War on Terror.

But, just in case you were curious about the purpose of this site, it is provided in the upper right corner: "We are a jihadist news service, and provide battle dispatches, training manuals, and jihad videos to our brothers worldwide. All we want is to get Allah’s pleasure. We will write ‘Jihad’ across our foreheads, and the stars. The angels will carry our message throughout the world."

There is also an "Oath of Freedom" in the upper right corner: "We were born free. We will live freely and when death comes to us, we will die freely. Jihad is changing all that can be changed; freeing ourselves through our own efforts; and the conviction that truth will prevail, inshallah."

Under the entry "Sister Detonates Herself to Eliminate Shia Traitors" there is a description of a female suicide bomber who recently killed 41 people. Just in case you wondered how the host of the site feels about the suicide bomber, the next line tells you: "Now she lies on the Golden Couch of Paradise."

UPDATE: More on Pino here.

Taliban beheads US "spy," carves message into his forehead

The use of the word "hypocrite" indicates that they regard this U.S. "spy" as akin to the "hypocrites" of Muhammad's day, who supposedly pretended to be Muslims while plotting against Muhammad. The Qur'an frequently rails against them. So this is another indication of how the jihadists see this present conflict in religious terms, while the learned Western analysts do their best to deny that religion has anything to do with the real causes of jihad terrorism or Islamic supremacism.

"Militants behead 'US spy', carve grisly message," from AFP, with thanks to JE:

PAKISTANI Taliban militants decapitated an Afghan accused of spying for US forces and scrawled the word "hypocrite" across his forehead, tribal officials said today.

The man's remains were found in a sack by the side of the road in the town of Jandola in the troubled South Waziristan tribal region, in the fifth such killing in Pakistan this year, the officials said.

A note in Urdu was pinned to the bag identifying the man as Akhtar Usman, an Afghan, and saying his death “is a result of spying for Americans” across the border in Afghanistan, the officials said.

Local authorities brought the body to their office in Jandola and placed it outside to be formally identified.

Militants last week cut off the hands and feet of a suspected spy in neighbouring North Waziristan. On February 6 the bullet-riddled bodies of two more were found in the same area, while another was killed around February 1.

Now why would these "militants" have done such a thing? Might it have been because of this? "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter." -- Qur'an 5:33.

Fitzgerald: Cat's out of the bag

Those at the Emory Wheel are reduced to this transparent nonsense of Taqiyya and Tu Quoque. How else can they proceed? They know what is in the texts. They know what states, societies, families suffused with Islam are taught. They know the tenets. They know the attitudes. They are well used to the atmospherics. They just don't know how to handle those Infidels who also know those texts, those teachings, those attitudes, those atmospherics.

And there is nothing they can do to stop more and more Infidels, as they pick up their newspapers or turn on the evening news, from realizing how much of it is about this or that local manifestation of the worldwide and permanent Jihad -- which can only get worse, and examples of which will only proliferate. Those Infidels will find out, slowly and then more rapidly, in greater and greater numbers, about Islam. There is nothing Islamic apologists can do about this, try as they will to lie, or to hide, or to distract with irrelevancies, or by appeals to Western "guilt" and false claims of victimization. Islam itself, as the vehicle for Arab imperialism, is the most successful imperialist project in history, the force which caused whole peoples to jettison and ignore, or despise, their own histories, pre-Islamic or non-Islamic. In light of that, the raising of idiotic claims of "racism" will not forever prevent Infidels, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and all others, everywhere and not just here in this country, from finding out about Islam.

It's too late. Cat's out of the bag. The Qur'an is just a click away (www.quranbrowser.com). And so are the Hadith. And so is the Sira -- or you can read the texts about Muhammad, the Muslim texts, the texts of Qur'an and Hadith and Muslim Sira, and Muslim commentators and historians, with connective tissue and organizing principle supplied by Robert Spencer.

There is nothing these people can do about all that, except what they have been doing all along: "three Abrahamic faiths," "one of world's great religions," "hijacked" or "perverted" by "extremists," or adducing in support of this preposterousness a handful of Qur'anic phrases: "there is no compulsion in religion" (which does not mean what an Infidel who reads only those words would naturally take it to mean), and 5.32 but not 5.33 (Bush does it, Blair does it, even semi-educated fleas do it). Or if not the Qur'an, then one of the inauthentic Hadiths from one of the unauthoritative collections: Karen Armstrong loves the one about Muhammad returning from the "Lesser Jihad" of war to the "Greater Jihad" of domestic life, without recognizing that the hadith in question is not widely accepted as authentic. Why, I can write the Mosque-Outreach script for Infidels myself, and so can you, dear reader, and so can any man.

Here’s a case study, based on the posts of a Muslim who dropped by Jihad Watch a few days ago. He asked:

My questions to you are: Do you personally know any Muslims? Do you have any Muslim friends? Do you know about the Muslim experience in the post 9/11 America? Have you ever visited a Mosque? Have you ever been to an inter-faith event (e.g. poetry recital)? Have you ever read the Holy Qur'an or any of the other Islamic spiritual texts such as the works of Jalaluddin Rumi or al-Ghazali, Rabia al-Adawiyyah, Muhammad Iqbal, etc.?

The questions are misplaced. Many of the readers at this site have visited those Mosque Outreach exercises in Taqiyya-and-Tu-Quoque. Many have read the Qur'an, and have read and reread it, keeping in mind several things:

1) About 20% of it makes no sense, even to Muslims who know classical Arabic. See Christoph Luxenberg for one attempt to solve that matter of philology.

2) The internal contradictions in the Qur'an are resolved through the doctrine of "naskh" or "abrogation," so that, as in the systems of common law, where the doctrine of stare decisis ordinarily holds but later decisions, when different, cancel the effect of earlier ones (e.g., Plessy v. Ferguson is not valid after Brown v. Bd. of Education).

3) The doctrine of "naskh" allows the so-called Meccan suras, the softer ones, which were presumably the product of a time when Muhammad still felt the need for support and had not yet become as harsh toward Infidels as he became once he had taken control in Medina (Yathrib), to be cancelled or overruled or overturned by the much harsher so-called "Medinan" suras.

4) While there are more than 150 Jihad verses in the Qur'an -- though only 27 appearances of the word "qitaal" or combat, the most dangerous ones, such as those contained within Sura 9, are among the very last “revealed,” and hence possess great authority.

5) In English or French, as Western scholars of Islam familiar with the original texts have noted, the Qur'an's verses are far less harsh than they are in the Arabic. Many of the words involving the treatment to be meted out to Unbelievers, that is Infidels or non-Muslims, are of this kind.

6) The official Muslim groups tend to distribute the translations that are much milder than the real thing. Even those used by Muslims, such as that of Yusuf Ali, do not always adequately convey the real meaning. But that can be found usually in the notes, and it is important for Infidels to read those Muslim annotations.

7) The Qur'an by itself does not yield up its full meaning, and the Sunnah, that is the customs and practice of Muslims of the time, of Muhammad and the Companions, is the true interpretive aid, the essential means by which obscure meanings are teased out. That is why Muslims so often refer to "Qur'an and Sunnah."

8) Islam is a collectivist faith that does not admit of free exercise of conscience. That is, it will not permit -- often on pain of death -- individuals from deciding for themselves that they wish to leave Islam, sometimes for another faith, sometimes for no faith at all. That Islam does this makes it akin to other totalitarian belief-systems that do not tolerate anyone leaving that closed system. In a sense, a Muslim who leaves Islam is treated as a deserter from the army of Islam, just as someone who is persuaded to become a Muslim, even without any real understanding and with very incomplete (often deliberately withheld) knowledge, merely by reciting the single verse of the Shehada, is regarded as a recruit to the army of Islam, someone who has been signed up, rather than someone who has been carefully taught in order to save his individual soul.

9) Yes, not only have many of those posting here visited mosques during those phony Outreach Programs, but we have made it a point to attend those utterly phony presentations of Islam, in which none of the real questions -- about how Islam divides the world uncompromisingly between Believer and Infidel, and territorially between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb -- ever come up. And of course there is never a discussion of Muhammad, that is of the killings of Abu Afak and Asma bint Marwan, the decapitation of the bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, the attack on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis, the tale of little Aisha, and so much else.

It makes no sense whatsoever, given the smooth taqiyya-and-kitman-and-tu-quoque so well-practiced and presented, for Infidels to attend any Muslim event without having thoroughly prepared themselves by learning about Islam, by reading the immutable texts of Islam, by talking to those who have grown up in Islam and left it, or those who, as Infidels, grew up in lands dominated by Islam -- such as Hindus from Bali or Bangladesh, Christians from Egypt or Iraq or Pakistan, Jews from Yemen or Egypt or Syria, Zoroastrians, what few are left, who have escaped from Iran, and so on. One can expect only apologetics from Muslims -- that is what our experience, individual and collective, demonstrates again and again. One can only take so much nonsense and lies, before even the most naive start to have things begin to make sense. They figure the whole thing out.

You offer, instead of honesty, a list of all kinds of irrelevancies. Jihad Watch is a pedagogic site. It is a site devoted to presenting all kinds of material about Islamic behavior and Islamic doctrine, and showing their connection. And it is also devoted to revealing the ways in which Infidels, in and out of the West, do or do not exhibit the traditional behavior of dhimmis -- that is, the non-Muslims under Islam who were allowed to stay alive, and even to practice, within severe limits, their non-Muslim religions, but who were subject to a host of economic, political, legal, and social disabilities that together amounted to a permanent condition of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity.

In conclusion, a few questions, in turn, for you.

Have you ever compared the treatment, meted out over the past 1350 years, in all the lands conquered by Islam, toward the indigenous non-Muslims, with the way in which Muslims have been received and allowed to settle deep behind what they themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines?

Have you ever given the slightest thought to the possibility that the belief-system of Islam, with its Total Regulation of Life and Complete Explanation of the Universe, was essentially akin to a totalitarian doctrine?

Have you ever wondered about, or gone to hear, or read the books of, the many brilliant and articulate apostates from Islam, including but not limited to, Ibn Warraq (Why I Am Not a Muslim), Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ali Sina (whose site www.faithfreedom.org relentlessly offers arguments against Islam from those who finally left it, and in so doing found intellectual and moral peace), Anwar Shaikh (who has described Islam as a vehicle for Arab supremacism in "Islam the Arab National Religion"), and many others, the most impressive people born into Islam, thoughtful, articulate, coherent -- and being joined by other thoughtful, articulate, sensible people who through no fault of their own were born into Islam.

Eventually some Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims may be able to slough off Islam as an ideology through a re-embrace of what could be seen as an original identity: that they were merely the descendants of Hindus, or in some cases Buddhists, who were forcibly converted to avoid either death or the onerousness of the dhimmi condition. Similarly, in the case of some North African "Arabs," they may recognize themselves as the descendants of the indigenous Berbers -- so many of whom, under the cultural and linguistic imperialism of the Arabs, were so arabised as to become “Arabs” themselves. And they not only became “Arabs,” but in turn to oppress the rights of those Berbers who still, steadfastly, have managed to resist the very arabisation that the ancestors of the “Arabs-from-Berbers” did not. Similarly, given how educated and intelligent Iranians are, including some who once worked to overthrow the Shah, they will come to see the use to which Islam is naturally put, the damage it has brought to Iran. This can be made to frame the incipient anti-Islam sentiments of many Iranians in national terms, see the primitive desert Arabs as having brought the “false gift” of Islam to the superior civilization of Persia. Discussion of what misery the Arab “gift” of Islam has brought to Iran, and a recognition by Iranian Muslims that they are the descendants of Zoroastrians whose last adherents are now so oppressed in Iran, might be one point of purchase to undo or at least limit the appeal of Islam. Have you given that Arab supremacism for which Islam is a vehicle any thought yourself?

And you ask, who has read the Qur’an? You should have asked: Who has read the Qur’an, the Hadith, and the Sira, should you not? In turn, one might ask: Have you read the Bible? Have you gone to a church merely to observe Christian worship? What do you know about the field of comparative religion? And would you allow other Muslims, your siblings or your children, to freely visit churches and synagogues and Hindu temples, and to read the holy scriptures of other faiths, and even to study those faiths formally, as many non-Muslims study Islam and the history of Islam? Would that be something you think should be encouraged for Muslims, both in Dar al-Islam, and in the Lands of the Infidels?

Tell us all about it.

Fitzgerald: Is anyone else getting bored?

A reader asks, "Is anyone else getting bored with Iraq and Islam?"

I am. I am getting bored, quite bored, with Iraq and Islam. In fact, I've long been bored silly with the whole business of Iraq and Islam. It is not terribly interesting in itself, except as a case study offering a rich variety of different kinds of willful ignorance, sentimentalism, and avoidance of the obvious -- as well as of sheer stupidity in so many different, and differently unappealing, forms. It must have been the same for all kinds of people who encountered similar phenomena, although perhaps it was not boring for Winston Churchill to have to again and again say the obvious things (or obvious now) about Adolf Hitler, about the Storm Troopers, about Nationalsozialismus, and about how Mein Kampf was meant seriously and should not be dismissed.

Or it may not have been similarly boring for all those who wrote about Japanese militarism and emperor-worship, that is Kodo, in Japan beginning in the 1920s, with the full menace already clear to some by 1930: one Western student of the subject laid it all out, and even predicted the exact places the Japanese would attack.

And don't you think the members of Giustizia e Liberta would have preferred to do other things in southern France then have to worry about being picked off by the secret police of Il Granitico, with those endless harangues matched only by the crazed speeches of Hitler? Imagine having to watch those speeches, or having to read anything written by either one, or having to solemnly study, for example, the kind of thing Kremlinologists used to have to study: what went on at the First Party Congress in Minsk, and what Comrade Lenin wrote about Renegade Kautsky, and when Comrade Stalin first started airbrushing that wrecker Bukharin out of those photographs of the Soviet leadership.

Who in his right mind could stand it then? Who in his right mind can stand it now?

And why would we want to follow, day by day, what general or admiral in the Japanese Imperial War Office is in, or out, or on his way up, or on his way down, and the ideological origins of Emperor-worship and bushido-cults and all the rest, when one would much rather, if one were reporting on Japan in those days, write about the cherry-tree ceremony, or Murasaki Shikibu, or possibly that nice exhibit of wazikashi blades in the Japanese War Ministry's museum?

We're all bored, just as bored, even more bored, than you are with Islam, and Jihad, and with having to listen to solemn parsing of speeches by Bin Laden, or Ahmadinejad, or Mahathir Mohammed, or with having to analyze some promise made by Hosni Mubarak or Pervez Musharraf or Mahmoud Abbas. Why should primitive peoples with primitive belief-systems take up our time? Because they can. Because they must. Because the Western world made a big mistake, over the past four decades, and now it is paying for it. And the Western world will, if something is not done, pay much more for that big mistake of letting into its midst, at the moment of maximum sentimentality and softness in the collective Western brain, people who do not and cannot wish that Western world, its legal and political institutions, well.

And politics, just writing about anything involving large numbers of people -- so that one writes, actually writes and can't quite believe it, such phrases as "the Iraqis" or "the Arabs" or "the French" or "the Israelis" or "the Hindus." One writes, and then still has to look at oneself in the mirror to keep from cutting oneself when shaving. One simply has to agree to the rules of the public game, in an age of the degradation of the democratic dogma. What else can one do? No one in the world could be as bored with Islam as I am, not even you, given my natural bent and interests and hierarchy of values. But it has to be discussed, until enough people understand what the whole thing is all about, and by helping them make sense, they can be helped to come to their senses.

"The Ayatollah Sistani is an Islamist bent on establishing a theocracy not far removed from that found in Iran"

Of course, readers of Jihad Watch have known this since at least April 17, 2004, when I wrote here that "we used to hear all the time that Sistani was a moderate. But it should be clear to everyone now that he wants Sharia in Iraq, and, in accordance with Sharia principles, will not side with infidels against a fellow Muslim."

"Mugged By Reality," by Hugh Hewitt (thanks to Andrew Bostom):

John Agresto's memoir of his service in Iraq as senior advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education came out this week. He'll join me in the third hour today.

It is a very personal book, full of regret and sober observations on the mistakes made throughout the post-invasion period. There is plenty of blunt talk as well. Example:

We insisted that the Ayatollah Sistani was surely a "moderate" and a friend to civil and religious liberty despite all the hard evidence to the contrary. Let me repeat my previous observations and predictions: The Ayatollah Sistani is an Islamist bent on establishing a theocracy not far removed from that found in Iran. He is an open anti-Semite and a not-too-subtle anti-Christian. he threw his support behind democratic elections because they were the handy vehicles for imposing religious authority all over Iraq. Nor is he the only one, or even the worst, only the most prominent. Yet while I believe the evidence is as clear here as it is in the case of Chalabi, we only see what we want to see,, not what's visible. In our religious lives, Hope may well be a virtue -- but in foreign policy it is more often a sin, a temptation to willful blindness.

Yes, the willful blindness is everywhere, isn't it, Mr. Hewitt?

See also these other Jihad Watch posts:

Fitzgerald: Sistani for Nobel? No thanks

Sistani funnels money to Iran

Sistani: "Sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible"

Jaafari: Sistani wants Islamic law in Iraq

And there are more where those came from.

Also, Andrew Bostom's article, "Is Paul Bremer 'Unclean'?," dates from February 20, 2004.

Russian FM: Hamas promises end of attacks against Israel

Bridge for Sale! From AP:

The supreme leader of Hamas has promised that the group will end missile attacks and other violence against Israel, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday.

"Hamas should use its authority to stop violence including missile attacks against Israel," Lavrov said at a news conference after his meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

Vague language, complete with the use of the passive voice to mask just who would be taking those steps:

"We received confirmation that such steps will be taken," Lavrov said.

However, Mashaal said at a separate news conference that the group is not ready to recognize Israel.

Renouncing violence and recognizing Israel are both key demands of international peace negotiators.

And the usual, deliberately vague pledge:

"First of all, Israel has to end its occupation of Palestinian territory and put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people," Mashaal said when asked about the recognition issue. "When Israel does that, the Palestinian people will make their position clear."

In remarks before his morning meeting with Mashaal, Lavrov called for international support for the power-sharing arrangement between Hamas and Fatah and for lifting an international financial aid blockade against the Palestinian Authority.

However, the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers, which includes Russia, has said recognizing Israel is a key condition for resuming aid. It was not immediately clear if Russia's expression of support for the Hamas-Fatah power-sharing agreement meant it was stepping back from the Quartet demands.

Former Georgia imam sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison for financial support of Hamas

Mohamed Shorbagi Update. "Muslim leader sentenced for backing Hamas," from AP:

ROME, Ga. (AP) -- The former Imam of a Rome Muslim congregation has been sentenced to more than seven and a half years in prison for providing monetary support to the terrorist organization Hamas.

U.S. District Judge Harole Murphy sentenced 42-year-old Mohamed Shorbagi today in Rome.

Federal prosecutors said Shorbagi had sought donations from his mosque that were sent to the Palestianinan terrorist group. They also said he provided logistics for them by creating media materials that ultimately were distributed oversesas.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kim Dammers suggested that his sentence be reduced from 15 years in prison because of Shorbagi's help in testifying for the government in other terrorism-related trials.

After the sentencing, Shorbagi shook hands with about a dozen friends and family members who were gathered at the court before he was taken away.

At the sentencing, Shobagi said he realized that some of his actions were wrong, which was why he decided to cooperate with the government.

He pleaded guility in August to a charge of providing material support to Hamas.

He is a citizen of the Palestian territories but is in the United State legally. He says he has been in America for 22 years.

No Sharia in Minnesota

Jihad Watch reader Greg writes from Minneapolis with an update about the Sharia Cab Controversy:

I attended the MAC hearing today about increasing refusal-of-service penalties for cab drivers. It was very well attended, especially by the Somali cabbies (must have been 100 of them). Also present were the NCAA, a Teamsters Union representative, Northwest Airlines, the vistor bureau, a couple of imams, a number of blind people with their dogs and a whole lot of media.

After about 2 1/2 hours there was a break. A couple of cabbies took the opportunity to pray, and chose an interesting location for that activity.

As you can see.

Indian train blast: Jihad groups suspected

However, no group has claimed responsibility. "Indo-Pak peace train hit by terror; 67 dead," from NewsLocale:

Terror struck the Samjhauta Express early Monday morning when a bomb blast ripped apart the peace train causing the death of at least 67 people and injuring many others. The attack involved two crude bombs and occurred near the Indian city of Panipat.

The train links New Delhi with Lahore and was restarted in 2004 as a mark of peace between the two warring neighbors. It is not clear how this will affect the peace process, but one fact was significant. This is the first terror attack to target innocent citizens of both countries.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf called the attack wanton and vowed that it would only strengthen the peace process rather than derail it. "Such wanton acts of terrorism will only serve to further strengthen our resolve to attain the mutually desire objective of sustainable peace," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the culprits would be brought to book. The finger of suspicion is being pointed at Islamic terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, although no group has claimed responsibility.

Taliban 'knew of Cheney visit'

How did they find out? Probably through contact with people who work with the Americans -- in other words, this is likely another indication of the fact that there is no firewall within Muslim communities between jihadists and peaceful Muslims. Jihadists have never been expelled from Islamic communities, but rather move freely within them. And so things like this are virtually impossible to prevent.

An update on this story from AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

Islamabad - A suicide attack at an Afghan air base where US vice-president Dick Cheney was staying shows that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have penetrated local intelligence agencies, analysts and officials said.

The blast early on Tuesday at Bagram air base near Kabul also highlights the increasing sophistication of the extremist outfits as they prepare for a feared spring offensive against Western troops, they said.

[...]

"This shows how much the militants have penetrated the intelligence of the Afghan security forces. It is a most shocking attack," retired Pakistani general turned analyst Talat Masood told AFP.

Visit unannounced

Cheney's visits to Pakistan and Afghanistan were unannounced and shrouded in even tighter secrecy than when US President George W Bush travelled to the two countries in March 2006.

[...]

A senior Pakistani counter-terrorism official said the "sophisticated" attack "indicates the militants' preparedness and the quality of their intelligence collection in the run-up to the so-called spring offensive".

He added: "They must have had information (a) few days before that the US vice-president would be in town and stay at Bagram. This is not something you can plan with 12 hours notice."

Rage at the Emory Wheel

On February 16 I sent this letter to the Emory Wheel, the newspaper of Emory University, in response to a letter they had printed protesting an advertisement from our Terrorism Awareness Program at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

The Emory Wheel printed it a few days later, whereupon I wrote here: "I predict right now that none of the responses will deal with the fact that this letter is made up largely of quotations from Islamic sources, except possibly to claim (falsely) that these sources are "marginal" and that no Muslims pay attention to them. However, while the claim will be made that my quotations are 'cherry-picked,' 'out of context,' and so on, no actual documentary evidence will be offered that the schools of Islamic jurisprudence do not actually teach warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. No such evidence can be offered, because they do teach this." I might have added that I would almost certainly be personally attacked as a "hatemonger."

Anyway, as if on cue, no less than four authors, Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem, have collaborated to defame me and Jihad Watch in The Wheel: "The Wheel Prints Hate Against Islam," in the Emory Wheel (thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Marisol Seibold):

What is the difference between the Internet hate site jihadwatch.com and the Wheel? Not much, if you read Robert Spencer's commentary on the Wheel's decision to run an advertisement equating jihad with bigotry against non-Muslims, women and homosexuals ("A Bestselling Author Offers a Different Definition of Jihad," Feb. 20).

Jihad Watch is in favor of freedom of conscience, equality of rights before the law, and other elements of Western societies that are contravened by Sharia. If that makes it a "hate site," then the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights are hate literature.

It is apparent that Muslims, including Emory's sizable Muslim community, have become the new "other" - a scapegoat for terrorism, war, cavities and whatever other ills currently plague society.

What other community could be compared to Mussolini's black shirts or the Nazis with impunity on the pages of a major university newspaper? Were the same things said about Zionists, the paper would understandably baulk about running such material. Evidently it is acceptable, however, to print such work attacking Muslims.

Who compared Muslims to Fascists or Nazis? Read my letter. It wasn't I, yet this sizable writing team is only discussing my letter. The writing committee, I suspect, is setting up a straw man, which is easier to knock down than what I actually wrote.

When talking about Spencer, for example, the Wheel demurred from printing the entire title of his book, The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion. As is evident from that title, Spencer has no academic background in Islam, but is rather a polemicist whose expertise is in Islamophobia.

I'd welcome any evidence -- from today's world, not tendentious and politicized historical accounts -- that any other religion is more intolerant than Islam. Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem can send it to me here, at director@jihadwatch.org.

Spencer's specious arguments and David Horowitz's original ad use cherry-picked quotes without any context to stigmatize a community, which comprises nearly one-fifth of our world population.

This sentence makes me feel like a prophet, but anyway, I wrote in my letter about the teachings of Islam, which are a matter of record. Anyone who wishes to discover what they are can do so. The fact that the teachings of Islam mandate warfare against unbelievers does not mean that all Muslims are pursuing or will ever pursue this warfare, any more than all Catholics will ever forgo contraception. That is why it does not follow from the fact that "a community, which comprises nearly one-fifth of our world population" is stigmatized. If Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem renounce these teachings and begin to work to convince other Muslims to do so, I will not only not stigmatize them, but I will congratulate them.

When the Wheel first ran Horowitz's ad, we believed that the paper's staff simply prioritized revenue before civic duty. However, running Spencer's editorial suggests a more active agenda to malign Islam and hurt the Emory Muslim community. To see the kind of hate Spencer spawns and which the Wheel facilitates, one need not go further than the comments section of the newspaper's website. Like-minded bigots across the country congratulate Spencer for exposing "barbaric" Islam, while another claims Islam is not "religion, but a mental illness." Is this the kind of discourse with which we wish to define Emory?

For both the Wheel's record as well as Mr. Spencer's, we'd like to say that we are Muslims, and being maligned by the Wheel is unacceptable. It is our very Islamic beliefs that command us not to threaten or transgress against our fellow man, but rather to be productive members of both the Emory and greater human communities. No Muslim at Emory is proud of Al-Qaeda, but at the same time we can distinguish between the religion and those who exploit it for political motives. This kind of exploitation is not relegated just to terrorists, but is also used by Islamophobes like Spencer - and now the Wheel - to erroneously smear every Muslim....

I have never in my life said or written anything about what "every Muslim" believes or does. To do so would be asinine, but of course to characterize me as having done so is part of how Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem evidently hope to compel people of good will not to pay attention to what I am saying.

In my prediction I said that "no actual documentary evidence will be offered that the schools of Islamic jurisprudence do not actually teach warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. No such evidence can be offered, because they do teach this." And indeed, Sharefa Aria, Ridwan Khan, Huma Mirza and Aneel Naeem do not offer any such evidence. They can't.

Nor does Ammara Abbasi in another letter in the Wheel, "Jihad Isn't Just Warfare" (thanks again to Marisol). After indulging in some familiar tu-quoque arguments, Abbasi says:

And for those interested in one point of view, by all means go to Jihad Watch's website. Unfortunately, Robert Spencer's earnest attempts to make his points are marred by his sensationalist approach. Spencer's words inevitably dehumanize and ostracize Muslims in what should be a respectful dialogue.

In fact, I'm all for a respectful dialogue. I have invited numerous Islamic scholars to a respectful dialogue, including Ahmed Afzaal, Omid Safi, Akbar Ahmed, Jamal Badawi, and Carl Ernst. All have either declined or never quite gotten around to getting back to me. There have been others also. If I am really the ignorant hatemongering flamethrower of myth, one of these guys ought to agree to debate me, mop the floor with me and show me up before the world, no? But I will be happy to engage in a respectful dialogue with Ammara Abbasi. I can be reached, again, at director@jihadwatch.org.

Chicago cousins were seeking "training in jihad"

Chicago Jihad Update. "Cousins sought `training in Jihad,' prosecutors say," by Jeff Coen in the Chicago Tribune, via the KRT Wire, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:

CHICAGO - Two Chicago-area cousins linked to a terrorism conspiracy last week traveled to Egypt in 2004 and planned to head to Pakistan for military training, federal prosecutors told a judge Monday.

Zubair A. Ahmed, 27, and Khaleel Ahmed, 26, were seeking "training in Jihad," prosecutors said during a detention hearing on whether Khaleel Ahmed should be kept in custody as he is transferred to Ohio to face the charges.

The trip was not a vacation as the Ahmeds have maintained, Assistant U.S. Attorney Vickie Peters said.

"It was intended as the first stop of a trip that would land him on the battlefield of Iraq fighting U.S. servicemen," Peters told U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown.

Pakistan: More polio cases if resistance continues; Islamic clerics say those who die of polio are 'martyrs'

An update on this story. "More polio cases if resistance continues: NIH, WHO," from the Daily Times, with thanks to Twostellas:

ISLAMABAD: The National Institute of Health (NIH) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) fear that more polio cases will crop up in the Bajaur and Malakand agencies since workers are denied access to children amid threats by Taliban-backed clerics, Daily Times learnt on Monday.

A senior official at the NIH said that health authorities had confirmed yet another polio case in the Nowshera. He said that the polio victim was originally from the Bajaur Agency. In addition, the Health Ministry has also reported three more confirmed polio cases in urban and rural Sindh.

The clerics, including Tehreek Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi (TNSM) leader Maulana Fazlullah and his supporters in the Malakand Agency, have been ‘warning’ people during sermons in mosques or through illegal FM radio stations not to administer polio drops to their children since it was against religious norms and brought infertility. Maulana Fazlullah is the son-in-law of Maulana Sufi Muhammad, ex-chief of the TNSM.

To complete the polio immunisation drive, the WHO and the Ministry of Health are contemplating enlisting the help of the district/tehsil and union council nazims, political and religious leaders, public representatives and tribal elders, sources said.

Some religious leaders in the Bajaur and Malakand agencies are telling the people not to get their children vaccinated since the practice is un-Islamic, and that those that die of polio would be considered martyrs.

Hizballah building new line of defense in anticipation of resumption of war with Israel

"The state of Hezbollah is already in existence in south Lebanon."

"Hezbollah land grab heralds war," by Nicholas Blanford for the Times via The Australian, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

HEZBOLLAH, the militant Shia organisation, is building a new line of defences just north of the UN-patrolled zone in south Lebanon ahead of a potential resumption of war with Israel. The military build-up, only six months after the last Lebanon-Israel conflict, is being conducted in valleys and hillsides guarded by uniformed Hezbollah fighters in the rugged mountains north of the Litani river - the limit of the 12,000-strong UN Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil).

Christian and Druze-owned land is being bought for cash by a Shia businessman.

Hezbollah's opponents believe the goal is to create a Shia-populated belt spanning the northern bank of the Litani, allowing the Lebanese group to operate away from prying eyes.

"The state of Hezbollah is already in existence in south Lebanon," the Druze leader and arch Hezbollah critic Walid Jumblatt said.

Since the end of the month-long clash last northern summer, Unifil's strength has increased sixfold, with reinforcements from European countries such as France, Italy and Spain.

An additional 20,000 Lebanese troops have flooded the area, making it impossible for Hezbollah to resurrect its military presence along the border with Israel.

"There have been no instances of attempts to smuggle weapons into the area," Unifil senior adviser Milos Strugar said.

Instead, Hezbollah's fighters are preparing a new system of fortifications and expanding old positions in the mountains on the northern bank of the Litani.

Residents say the activity has increased lately, and peacekeepers confirm this.

"We can see them building new positions. There's a lot of trucks coming into the area as well," a Unifil officer said.

"Russia will work to end sanctions on Palestinians"

The Russians, of course, don't see the ideological kinship between the Palestinians and the jihadists who are threatening them. But why not?

From AFP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MOSCOW - Russia will push for the lifting of an economic embargo against the Palestinian government, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday during a visit by Hamas political director Khaled Meshaal.

‘We are striving to have the international community support the peace process and make it irrevocable, including helping end the blockade’ against the Palestianian government, Lavrov told journalists.

The so-called Middle East diplomatic Quartet -- Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations -- imposed the sanctions after Hamas took control of the Palestinian government in elections last January and refused to recognize Israel or renounce violence.

Meshaal met Lavrov on the second day of a visit to Moscow aimed at marshalling support to lift the crippling sanctions, and said Russia was the next logical destination after Hamas and rival party Fatah struck a power-sharing agreement in Mecca earlier this month.

‘From the very beginning we wanted to make Moscow the first place we visited after the talks in Mecca in order to consult with you about steps that need to be taken after the Mecca agreement,’ Meshaal said.

Jihad bombing prevented in Moscow

While the Russians continue to pursue short-sighted and ultimately self-defeating aid to Iran -- the same country that is backing the anti-Russian jihadists in Dagestan.

"Terrorist Bombing Prevented in Moscow," from MosNews, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

According to Moscow police security officials prevented a bomb attack in the Russian capital the day before the country celebrated a national holiday last week, the Bloomberg news agency reports.

The Federal Security Service and city police detained a 29-year-old man from Dagestan with a 500-gram explosive device on a trolleybus in northwest Moscow on Feb. 22.

“The device was in a solid cylinder, and filled with buckshot, nails and other pieces of metal,” the police said in an e-mailed statement. The man, identified as Farid Magomedov, was traveling to a metro station and had a remote-controlled detonator in his pocket, police said.

British in Afghanistan: "We do not use the word 'win'"

"Officials say the new tactics are to identify 'Talibs who are sick of fighting' and persuade them to rejoin their tribes and benefit from the human rights laws and state structures being set up in the country." Good luck with that, but it is certain to come up against the objection that such things are "un-Islamic." But that is territory that neither the British nor any other Western powers wishes to venture into.

"Britain switches tactics to undermine the Taliban," by Richard Norton-Taylor in The Guardian, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

Britain has launched a "reconciliation" drive to undermine support for the Taliban after Whitehall strategists concluded that a decisive military victory in Afghanistan cannot be won, the Guardian has learned.

In a significant shift in tactics, senior British officials have stopped talking about winning a war. "We do not use the word 'win'," one said. "We can't kill our way out of this problem."

The admission came as Des Browne, the defence secretary, announced a larger than expected 1,400 increase in British troops deployed in southern Afghanistan, with extra armour, artillery, and aircraft. It brings the total number there to 7,700, more than there are in Iraq.

Officials say the new tactics are to identify "Talibs who are sick of fighting" and persuade them to rejoin their tribes and benefit from the human rights laws and state structures being set up in the country. Captured fighters may also be offered alternatives to incarceration, while more deals will be sought with tribal elders.

They hope increasingly to damage the Taliban without relying on a shooting war, a tactic which has often proved counter-productive in the past, notably when Nato air strikes kill civilians. "We are convinced most people do not support the Taliban and want to take a route through it," said one source. British officials distinguish the Taliban from al-Qaida, describing it as a "more fluid" organisation.

Contrasting the Taliban with al-Qaida, a one said: "Al-Qaida's operations are more sophisticated than the Taliban and al-Qaida is very choosy about who they work with."

An official familiar with British policy on Afghanistan described the difference this way: "The Taliban is not a homogenous group. It is a mixture of characters - criminals, drug dealers, people out of work. There is a wide variety of different people. The Taliban pays them to carry out these attacks so there are ways to tackle the problem, to split off the disillusioned."

Ruined poppy farmers join ranks with the Taleban

Dinesh D'Souza, call your office: these farmers are being radicalized not by the immorality of American culture and the audacity of American writers who criticize the elements of Islam that give rise to violence and Islamic supremacism, but because they are being prevented from growing opium. Anti-drug American cultural conservatives who seek to ally with "traditional Muslims" like these, in accordance with D'Souza's recommendation, would be in for a rude surprise.

By Tim Albone and Claire Billet in the TimesOnline, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

The tractor roared through the field, the plough tearing through the valuable poppy crop as the farmer looked on. A helicopter searched for insurgents and armed police stood watch, their uniforms replaced by robes and turbans to make them less conspicuous.

“The people are unhappy with this eradication campaign; if it goes on they will all join the Taleban,” Dilbar, a poppy farmer in Helmand province, told The Times.

The prospect of such a surge in Taleban numbers is bad news for the 5,000 British troops based in Helmand and 1,400 more heading there after the announcement by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary. The fiercest fighting since the Taleban were overthrown in 2001 came last year, with more than 4,000 people killed, and intelligence reports predict a new offensive this spring.

Poppy eradication is a double-edged sword. Afghanistan provides nine out of every ten grams of heroin sold on the streets of Britain, and officials are determined to stamp out poppy growth. Yet a successful campaign would leave many unemployed as potential recruits for the Taleban.

Afghans, ever the pragmatists, have devised their own solution. “We leave some fields without destroying the poppy so everyone is happy . . . otherwise they will go and support the Taleban,” said Aminullah, 21, a policeman with the eradication force in Helmand.

Spain: A dozen jihadists "infiltrated army base"

Another indication of the fact that there is no firewall within Muslim communities between jihadists and peaceful Muslims. Jihadists have never been expelled from Islamic communities, but rather move freely within them. And so things like this will always happen. "Dozen Islamic militants 'infiltrated army base,'" from Expatica, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

MADRID — A dozen radical Islamists have infiltrated the Spanish army garrison in Madrid's North African enclave of Ceuta, a magazine claimed on Tuesday.

Interviu magazine, citing what it describes as reports from a now-defunct spy unit, said Spanish military intelligence discovered the infiltration.

The unit had been conducting a special review for several years of the army units in Ceuta and Melilla, cities that have large Muslim populations.

The report came as 29 men - including 15 Moroccans - are on trial in Madrid for the 11 March, 2004 train bombings that left 191 dead and more than 1,800 others wounded in the Spanish capital.

The massacre was blamed on Muslim radicals angry with Spain's then-conservative government for backing the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Interviu denounced the "fundamentalist infiltration" found by military intelligence in one Ceuta-based unit that has a "long tradition of native troops and today has a large number of soldiers of the Muslim faith".

In the case of Ceuta, nearly 40 percent of the troops stationed there are Muslims.

Taliban: Cheney target of explosion in Afghanistan

The Taliban continues to reassert its presence in Afghanistan. "Cheney OK after explosion in Afghanistan," by Alisa Tang for AP, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber killed and wounded some two dozen people outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan on Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

The blast happened outside the base at Bagram, north of the capital, Kabul. Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the U.S. Embassy said the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, but NATO said initial reports indicated only three were killed, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn't immediately known. NATO said 27 people were also wounded.

It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.

Associated Press reporters at the scene said they had seen at least eight dead bodies carried in black body bags and wooden coffins from the base area and into the market area, where hundreds of Afghans had gathered to mourn.

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president. "He wasn't near the site of the explosion," Mitchell said. "He was safely within the base at the time of the explosion."

However, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

"We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told AP telephone from an undisclosed location. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."

Mahathir: No such thing as a moderate Muslim

The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dr. Mahathir "Jews rule the world by proxy" Mohamad, says now that Islam is by its very nature moderate, and so the label "moderate Muslim" is simply redundant. He does not address in detail, however, the jihadist intepretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, or show why it is wrong: such a refutation remains the Great White Whale of moderate Muslims.

"No such thing as a moderate Muslim - Dr M," from Bernama, with thanks to Ken and Elisabeth:

(Bernama) -- Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today asked Muslims to do away with false assumptions when declaring themselves as moderate followers of Islam because the religion is indeed moderate.

The former prime minister said Muslims did not need to defend themselves as moderate or liberal Muslims as this gave a picture that were only partial followers of Islamic teachings while others (teachings) were deemed extreme.

"Islam is already a moderate religion...there is no need for us to show that were are more liberal Muslims than others. We are Muslims...period," he said when opening the 45th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Muslim Welfare Organisation of Malaysia (Perkim) here.

Dr Mahathir, who is also Perkim president, said that even if some Muslims were labelled extremists, it was not because of the teachings of Islam but a lack of understanding of them or the religion being manipulated by irresponsible followers.

"There is nothing extreme about Islam if we follow its teachings as contained in the Quran," he said.

Dr Mahathir said the ummah (faithful) and Islamic nations must intensify efforts to dispel the notion held by many of Islam as being extreme, its followers ignorant, poor, do not know how to administer a country and are fond of asking for help from others.

He said that if the negative perception of Islam continued, it would adversely affect efforts to spread the religion as "no one would be interested to join a religion whose followers are seen as losers".

"People will only be attracted when there is a successful track record...as such only when Muslims become successful in all spheres or better than others in them can we successfully carry out effective missionary activities," he said.

According to Dr Mahathir, efforts must also be intensified to give a clear an correct picture that the religion was not an obstacle to progress.

"We must encourage followers who want to be successful and competitive. We should show that Islam does not stand in the way of followers who want to attain great achievements," he said.

Gaza: Synagogues transformed into military base

Yes, Secretary Rice, clearly the Palestinian people want peace. "Plowshares beaten into swords in Gaza: Palestinians: 'Looting and burning' of Jewish holy sites 'was a great joy,'" by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

TEL AVIV – The ruins of two large synagogues in Gush Katif, the evacuated Jewish communities of the Gaza Strip, have been transformed into a military base used by Palestinian groups to fire rockets at Israeli cities and train for attacks against the Jewish state, according to a senior terror leader in Gaza.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, it left in tact 20 synagogues of the Gush Katif Jewish communities following an Israeli Cabinet decision against demolishing the structures.

Immediately after the Israeli evacuation was completed, Palestinians mobs destroyed most of the Gaza synagogues, including two major synagogues in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gush Katif community. In front of international camera crews, the Palestinians ripped off aluminum window frames and metal ceiling fixtures from the Neve Dekalim synagogues, which were situation close to each other in the center of town. Militants flew the Palestinian and Hamas flags from the structures before mobs burned down the synagogues.

Speaking to WND from Gaza, Abu Abir, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees terrorist organization, said the area where the synagogues once stood now is used to fire rockets at Israel.

"We are proud to turn these lands, especially these parts that were for long time the symbol of occupation and injustice, like the synagogue, into a military base and source of fire against the Zionists and the Zionist entity," Abu Abir said.

"The liberated lands of the destroyed ugly and Nazi settlements [Gush Katif] is our property, and we have the right to do whatever we feel is suitable for the struggle against the occupation and for the general interest of the Palestinian people," the Committees leader said.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader: Iran providing instructions in case U.S., Israel strike nuke plants

1938 Alert: "'Devastating response' if Iran nukes attacked: Terrorists say Tehran providing instructions in case U.S., Israel strike atomic facilities," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily.com, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

JERUSALEM – Iran is anticipating a U.S. or Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities and has been providing Palestinian terrorists and other regional allies with contingency plans for attacks against the Jewish state and American regional interests in the event of war, according to Palestinian terrorist leaders.

A senior leader of the Islamic Jihad terror group, which Israel says is backed by Iran, told WND Tehran is expecting to be attacked, but he didn't provide a time frame in which Iran anticipates a strike.

He claimed during any attack his organization has been directed by Iran to "wreak havoc" on Israel with suicide bombings, rocket attacks and "special surprises." He said rocket attacks would be launched from both the Gaza Strip and from the West Bank, which borders Jerusalem.

He threatened his terror group will target American interests in the Middle East whether any purported strike against Tehran is carried out by Israel or the U.S.

"The Zionists and the Americans are coordinated 100 percent. It doesn't matter who attacks Iran, we are planning to hit them both," said the Islamic Jihad leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he said the topic was "very sensitive."

He said overall Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah has been coordinating war plans with Iran, Syria and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Lebanese militia. Shallah resides in Damascus and travels frequently to Tehran.

Shallah, you may recall, is confessed Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian's friend and former colleague at the University of South Florida.

Bill Maher: Islam "was extreme to begin with. Muhammad was a warrior"

I just about dropped my teeth when I saw this clip of Bill Maher agreeing with Ayaan Hirsi Ali that Islam is not a religion of peace and has not been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists, and that Muhammad was not exactly the 7th-century Gandhi of Karen Armstrong's imaginings. It was also good to see Hirsi Ali coolly correct Darrell Issa's PC vaporings about how wonderfully Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted in the Middle East for centuries, but the most striking aspect of this segment is that Maher here casually affirms something that the mainstream media has been denying and laboring to refute for years.

Of course, it is part of the silliness of our culture that a black female ex-Muslim can say things that a white male non-Muslim would never be brought on to say -- is not the truth the same no matter who says it? But it is good that they are finally being said.

And Mr. Maher: if CAIR contacts you with demands for an apology and equal time on your show, I'd be happy to help you prepare. Contact me at director@jihadwatch.org.

Newsweek calls Hirsi Ali a "bombthrower"

From our Unintended Irony Department comes "Only One Side of the Story" by Lorraine Ali in Newsweek, in which Ali serves up a hatchet job on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and calls her a "bombthrower." The real bombs often thrown by those whom Hirsi Ali opposes don't seem to faze Lorraine Ali one bit.

Spencer: Beware the Christian Jihad?

In FrontPage this morning I discuss the new fashion in the mainstream media: exposing the alleged plot to establish a theocracy in the U.S. -- the Christian plot, that is (news links in the original):

A new book that is climbing the New York Times Bestseller List warns Americans of a dedicated minority of religious fanatics who are hijacking a great religion and actively working to destroy the United States Constitution and set up a theocracy in America, in which nonbelievers will be discriminated against or even summarily killed. Nor is their nefarious vision confined to the United States alone: this small but influential and wealthy band of religious zealots is also trying to turn events in the Middle East to their own advantage, so as to advance their religious agenda there also.

Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Muhammad Atta? No, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, and Tim LaHaye. The book in question is Chris Hedges’ American Fascists, which argues that America as we know it is under threat – not from Islamic jihadists, but from a small group of evangelical Christians who are determined to remake the United States as a Christian state. Warning about “Christianism,” a neologism coined to parallel “Islamism,” has become fashionable. Ranging from the merely hysterical to the ranting and paranoid, books sounding the alarms about Christian theocracy are appearing in large numbers. Among the crop published in 2006 alone were, besides Hedges’ book, American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips; The Baptizing of America by James Rudin; Kingdom Coming by Michelle Goldberg; The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege by Damon Linker; Thy Kingdom Come by Randall Balmer; Piety & Politics by Barry Lynn; and Religion Gone Bad by Mel White. Other popular books sound many of the same themes, including The Conservative Soul by homosexual activist and blogger Andrew Sullivan and the atheist apologetics The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.

A general tendency of such books is to equate to varying degrees, often in an off-handed manner suggesting that the equivalence was self-evident, Christian and Muslim “extremists,” “radicals,” or “fundamentalists.” Hedges declared that “the Christian Right and radical Islamists, although locked in a holy war, increasingly mirror each other. They share the same obsessions. They do not tolerate other forms of belief or disbelief. They are at war with artistic and cultural expression. They seek to silence the media. They call for the subjugation of women. They promote severe sexual repression, and they seek to express themselves through violence.” Sure, we’re told, the Islamists are working to impose religious rule on their societies, but so are the Christianists, and the Christianists posed the far more immediate and serious threat. Some even charge that just as the Taliban practiced stonings and beheadings, so would these “Christianists” if they got half a chance.

The threat is imminent. Hedges claims that “those arrayed against American democracy are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security and strength.” He even asserts that “those in the movement often speak about such a moment with gleeful anticipation.” For now – but only for now – the Christian Right is “forced to function within the political system it seeks to destroy.”

If there really is a domestic threat of religious authoritarianism that threatens to destroy the Constitution, this would be a matter of considerable concern. But as the Qur’an says, “Bring your proof, if you be truthful” (2:111; 27:64). Good advice.

In support of his claims that “those arrayed against American democracy are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them to shred the Constitution in the name of national security and strength,” Chris Hedges offers only a single quotation from “right-wing strategist” Howard Phillips, who said in a speech to the Council for National Policy that “it is time to leave the ‘political Titanic’ on which the conservative movement has for too long booked passage” and to “build an ark so that we can and will be ready to renew and restore our nation and our culture when God brings the tides to flood.”

A call to shred the Constitution? Phillips’ words read more plausibly as a call to a conservative movement demoralized by defeat after defeat not to give up, but to develop a new strategy and await a day in which their message will be received more favorably.

The primary focus of the theocracy foes’ fears is a movement arising from Calvinistic circles in the United States, Christian Reconstructionism. According to the anti-theocracy writers, Christian Reconstructionism has insinuated its adherents into the highest levels of government, and want to replace the Constitution with laws mandating the stoning of homosexuals and adulterers. The proof for this comes largely from the writings of the intellectual guiding lights of the Reconstructionist movement, and the chief villains of virtually every piece devoted to exposing its enormities: two American Calvinists, Rousas John Rushdoony (who died in 2001) and his son-in-law, Gary North.

Rushdoony and North may be well cast in this villain’s role, for at least according to some reports they apparently do depart from Christian tradition in calling for capital punishment for crimes such as adultery and homosexuality, as specified in the Book of Leviticus. In a 1998 piece in Reason magazine, Rushdoony is said to defend Biblical punishments for a variety of offenders: “blasphemers, heretics, apostate Christians, people who cursed or struck their parents, females guilty of ‘unchastity before marriage,’ ‘incorrigible’ juvenile delinquents, adulterers, and (probably) telephone psychics.” North is quoted in the same article defending the ancient Biblical punishment of stoning: “Why stoning? There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.”

Foes of theocracy point to statements like this one from the popular Presbyterian minister and writer George Grant: “Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ -- to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion that we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel. And we must never settle for anything less….Thus, Christian politics has as its primary intent the conquest of the land -- of men, families, institutions, bureaucracies, courts, and governments for the Kingdom of Christ. It is to reinstitute the authority of God’s Word as supreme over all judgments, over all legislation, over all declarations, constitutions, and confederations. True Christian political action seeks to rein the passions of men and curb the pattern of digression under God’s rule.”

Strong words. But do statements like these amount to a manifesto to subvert the non-establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution and establish Christian rule in the United States? The “theocrats” themselves deny this. Chris Ortiz of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation explains: “The paranoid secularist reads this portion of Grant and links it with the political activism and lobbying of the Religious Right in order to assemble a frightening monster of religious fascism. But, Grant would likely be the first to argue that there is no theocratic conspiracy….In other words, don’t confuse the rhetoric or ideology of certain radical thinkers with the mass of conservative Christianity.”

Grant is indeed first to argue that there is no theocratic conspiracy, or at least, if there is, that he opposes it. Responding to claims that the passage above is a declaration of intent to destroy the U.S. Constitution, he wrote in an email to me:

1. My body of work demonstrates that I am an ardent defender of the 1st Amendment.

2. I am an opponent of “state churches.”

3. I am an opponent of confusing, blurring, or overlapping the spheres of authority and jurisdictions between church and state and family. […]

The quoted passage is from a long discussion regarding cultural evangelism, not petty partisanship. It is from a discussion of ends, not means. The language is the culmination of a discourse in the realm of eschatological theology, not practical activism….

In a similar vein, Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation declares: “We propose an explicitly Biblical system of thought and action as the exclusive basis for civilization. Only by restoring the Christian Faith and Biblical law as the standard of all of life can Christians hope to re-establish Christian civilizations.” Theocracy? Maybe, but the statement goes on to say: “We believe that the source of godly change is regeneration by the Holy Spirit, not revolution by the violence of man…. No government in any form can make men Christians or truly obedient; this is the work of God’s sovereign grace. Much less should civil government try to impose Biblical law on an unbelieving society. Biblical law cannot be imposed; it must be embraced.”

In fact, much of the evidence that theocracy foes point to in order to establish their point that Christians intend to subvert the U.S. Constitution and replace it with Biblical law is actually evidence only that Christian pastors and leaders have for some years been reasserting the right and duty of Christians to participate in American public life, as over against the radical secularists who contend that any political activity by Christian groups constitutes a violation of the Establishment Clause.

The more conspiracy-minded among the theocracy foes, of course, brush aside such denials. The whole thing is a secret plot, you see – what else would you expect but that the plotters would deny their plotting? After all, according to Chris Hedges, the American values of “compassion, tolerance and belief in justice and equality” are “being dismantled, often with stealth…” There can be no rational response to such paranoia, or any definitive refutation of it, but it is noteworthy to compare these denials to the open statements by Muslim leaders about the Islamic supremacist imperative. For while there is no shortage of Muslim spokesmen who proclaim their rejection of terrorism, those who are pursuing the jihad are generally quite open about their intentions – in stark contrast to the flat denials from the very Christian leaders who are supposed to be leading the push for theocracy.

Before he left Britain one step ahead of law enforcement and returned to his native Lebanon, the jihadist Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad often boasted of his intention to “transform the West into Dar Al-Islam” and establish Islamic law on British soil. “I want to see the black flag of Islam flying over Downing Street,” he said, and his now-disbanded al-Muhajiroun group was dedicated to this goal. The transformation of Britain into an Islamic state could come in two ways, he explained: “if an Islamic state arises and invades,” in which case “we will be its army and its soldiers from within.” But if no such Islamic state arises, Bakri said that Muslims would convert the West to Islam “through ideological invasion...without war and killing.”

Al-Qaeda’s second in command, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, articulated a global vision in the summer of 2006: “War with Israel is not subject to a treaty, cease-fire, Sykes-Picot Treaty agreements, patriotism or disputed borders, but it is jihad for the cause of God until the entire religion is for him only. Jihad seeks the liberation of Palestine, the entire country of Palestine and to liberate every land that used to be a territory of Islam, from Spain to Iraq. The entire world is an open field for us…With the grace of God, we have now returned to the field….Dear Muslim brothers everywhere, today we must target the Jewish and the American interests everywhere.”[1]

Until November 2003, when adverse publicity compelled them to take it down, the Islamic Affairs Department (IAD) of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington carried this statement of Islamic supremacism and belligerency 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…”[2]

In other words, if a country is perceived to be hindering the spread of Islam, Muslims are obliged to wage war against it. The spread of Islam must continue at all costs. There can be no half-measures or peaceful coexistence with unbelievers as equals on an indefinite basis. As the Egyptian jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), whose works are still widely influential among Muslims worldwide, put it in his jihad manifesto Milestones (Ma’alim ‘ala Al-Tariq), which has circulated throughout the world and been published in well over a thousand editions: “Islam cannot accept any mixing with Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers]….Either Islam will remain, or Jahiliyyah: Islam cannot accept or agree to a situation which is half-Islam and half-Jahiliyyah….Command belongs to God, or otherwise to Jahiliyyah; God’s Shari’ah [Islamic law] will prevail, or else people’s desires. ‘And judge between them according to what God has revealed, and do not follow their opinions, and beware of them lest they confuse you in matters which God has revealed’ (Qur’an 5:50)…‘And if they do not respond to you, then know that they are following their own opinions; and who can be more misguided than one who follows his own opinion against the guidance from God? Indeed, God does not guide the wicked people.’ (Qur’an 28:50)….The foremost duty of Islam in this world is to depose Jahiliyyah from the leadership of man, and to take the leadership into its own hands and enforce the particular way of life which is its permanent feature.”[3]

The jihadist website Khilafah.com puts it succinctly: “Islam makes it a duty upon all Muslims to work to change their countries from Dar al-Kufr [the land of unbelief] to Dar al-Islam [the land of Islam]…” It exhorts Muslims to “carry Islam to the world through invitation and jihad.”

Andrew Sullivan, while sounding the alarm about Christian theocrats, concedes that Christian Reconstructionists are “marginal, extremists, and largely disowned by the fundamentalist mainstream.” Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Islamic jihadists, who are active in numerous countries around the world, and whose version of Islam is not being effectively combated by any significant movement of peaceful Muslims anywhere.

Should we turn our attention away from a real threat to an imagined one? That is what Chris Hedges and the other anti-theocracy writers are asking us to do. While fiction has always competed with reality in the public discourse about the Islamic jihad, the Christian theocracy scare books represent projection on a massive scale. Unfortunately, while Chris Hedges leads the hunt for Christian theocrats under our bed, real theocrats continue to advance a violent supremacist agenda worldwide. We ignore or dismiss that at our own risk.

Notes:

[1] “A Video Speech from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri Regarding the Events in Lebanon and Gaza – 7/27/2006,” SITE Institute, July 27, 2006.

[2] Steven Stalinsky, “The ‘Islamic Affairs Department’ of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C.,” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Special Report - No. 23, November 26, 2003.

[3] Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, The Mother Mosque Foundation, n.d., pp. 130-131.

Islam responsible for "almost all" of world's social ills

From Christian News Wire:

Former Sultan Ali El-Shariff comments on Islam and Sudan:

"Today Islam is responsible for almost all of the human sufferings from war, persecution, and poverty, particularly in the country of Sudan.

"Since the 1983 start of the civil war in the southern Sudan more than 4 million people have been displaced, and an estimated over 2 million have been killed because Islam has declared the Holy War (Jihad) (Qur'an 9:5) against the non-Muslim black indigenous people. Islam is responsible for more than 100,000 children either killed or sold as slaves in Muslim homes. Islam is responsible for raping and kidnapping more than 50,000 women during the war (Qur'an 4:3). Islam is responsible for cutting hands and feet of hundreds of innocent people because Islamic laws were applied; bringing shame and infirmity to many families for the rest of their lives. Islam is responsible of abusing millions of women every day through beating, atrocious treatment and emotional deprivation because of the Islamic teaching (Qur'an 4:34).

"It is a shame for any African American to embrace Islam which makes them a participant in these disgraceful acts. It is a shame to embrace Islam to enforce the practice of slavery, abuse of women and children and to humiliate human kind through persecution, poverty and destruction. Unfortunately, Islam always has two faces. The Islamic missionaries always present the peaceful, respectful and the nice face of Islam. The fact is, there is a real violent face of Islam that Muslims in North America try to hide. It is a shame for anyone who embraces Islam without thinking, asking questions or reading about the true face of Islam. Islam is responsible today for the destruction of lives and cultures. Sudan is a vivid example. Why would you want to be a Muslim and participate in their wicked ways?"

Why indeed?

Nashville cabbie: "Hitler was right"

Ibrahim Ahmed Update: "Men Claim Cabbie Praised Hitler Before Attack: Victims Say Driver Claimed 'Hitler Was Right,'" by Laura McPherson for WSMV.com, with thanks to Jennifer:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two college students involved in an alleged attack by an angry cab driver last month testified Monday that his rage came seemingly out of the blue.

Video: Crash Victim Says Cab Driver's Rage Unexpected

They said they weren't arguing or discussing religion, but that the cab driver went on a rant saying, "Hitler was right" and that "white people should be eradicated from the earth.”
Click here to find out more!

The students said they paid their fare, but that the cab driver accelerated and ran over Jeremy Inbus.

Inbus suffered a broken leg and an injured pelvis.

Inbus said he didn’t remember the crash but that he recalled what the cab driver, Ibrahim Ahmed, told him and passenger Andy Wilson while they were in the cab.

“’Hitler did what he did and he was right for doing what he did because,’ the term he used, ‘Jews were responsible for the evil and corruption and the sin in the world. At some point, I believe Jews maybe became white people, and, you know, that’s why Hitler was a good person because he was trying to cleanse the world of these people,’” Inbus testified in court.

Ahmed is charged with attempted murder.

Police said Ahmed was driving Inbus and Wilson to the Vanderbilt area when the conversation turned to religion.

Wilson and Inbus said they told Ahmed to stop the cab once the conversation became heated.

“I just briefly said, ‘If you’re going to live in a country like ours, you’re going to have to learn to tolerate and accept other people’s beliefs and faiths, even if you don’t believe them yourself,’” Wilson testified.

“He(Ahmed) said he had become offended at the remarks the boys made and that made him very angry,” Officer John Pepper testified.

Iranian MPs enraged over test accused of mocking Muhammad

It's not just the Danes anymore. But although the questions below seem to have been understood as mocking, the Hadith contains much information about Muhammad just like the material here. In my book The Truth About Muhammad I quote Muqtedar Khan of the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy: "No religious leader has as much influence on his followers as does Muhammad (Peace be upon him) the last Prophet of Islam…So much so that the words, deeds and silences (that which he saw and did not forbid) of Muhammad became an independent source of Islamic law."

By Robert Tait in The Guardian, with thanks to all who sent this in:

Iranian MPs have demanded an apology from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after teachers were given government-sponsored tests deemed "insulting" to the prophet Muhammad.

Why? Did the Thug-In-Chief write these questions?

The exam - sat by teachers seeking promotion - provoked outrage by posing questions which appeared to degrade Islam's holiest figure by alluding to personal habits and proclivities. Most of the 40 multiple-choice questions have been judged so mocking that Iran's state-controlled media has refrained from publishing them.

One less offensive question, reproduced by local newspapers and websites, lists four choices when asking how Muhammad compared himself with the prophet Joseph. They are: "A) I am more beautiful than Joseph; B) Joseph is more beautiful than me; C) I am cuter than Joseph; D) Joseph is more beautiful than me but I am cuter than him." Others refer to his hair and beard colour.

The national teachers' representative body protested after the test was given to diploma and higher-diploma level teachers in Tehran province. The local education authority admitted the questions were "in bad taste" and withdrew them. An alternative exam is being drawn up for teachers who failed, although the results of those with pass marks have been declared valid.

Some MPs branded the incident a deliberate plot to undermine Iran's Islamic system and likened it to last year's row over Danish cartoons satirising Muhammad, which provoked outrage throughout the Muslim world after they were published in several European newspapers.

"What is the difference between these questions and the caricatures drawn in Denmark against the prophet?" said Emad Afrough, the fundamentalist head of the cultural committee in Iran's parliament.

[...]

Teachers were given 30 hours off classroom duties to study a biography of the prophet by the late Ayatollah Muhammad Tabatabai, a Shia philosopher whose teachings inspired many senior figures in Iran's Islamic revolutionary movement. Its strong focus on personal characteristics - including hygiene, physical appearance and eating habits - was the subject of staffroom gossip and jokes. "Some teachers were even exchanging notes on the book's content in text messages," one teacher told the newspaper Etemade Melli.

Personal questions

The test posed questions on the minutiae of the prophet Muhammad's life, including:

God's prophet never ate food with

a) Two fingers

b) Three fingers

c) Four fingers

d) Five fingers

God's prophet's hair was

a) Black

b) White

c) With the exceptions of a few hairs, predominantly black

d) Whitened at the end of his life

What colour was the prophet's beard?

a) Totally white, even upon his chin

b) Totally black, even over his chin

c) White over the chin and the rest salt and pepper

d) Salt and pepper over the chin and the rest white

On which side did God's prophet sleep?

a) On his back

b) On his chest

b) To the right

d) To the left

Saudi Arabia: 3 French travelers killed in Muslims-only area

They had stopped to rest. "3 French travelers slain in Saudi desert." from AP:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Three French travelers were killed by gunmen Monday in the Saudi Arabian desert when they stopped their car to rest on the side of a road leading to the holy city of Medina in an area restricted to Muslims only.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said it was too early to determine whether the attacks were terror-related. Saudi Arabia has been waging an intense campaign against al-Qaida militants since a wave of suicide attacks on foreigners in the kingdom in 2003.

The travelers were resting on the side of a road about 10 miles north of Medina when gunmen fired at their car, instantly killing two of the men. The third man died later after he was taken to a hospital, and the fourth Frenchman was in serious condition at an area hospital, al-Turki said.

Then AP speaks of "the Prophet Muhammad" in capsule form, with no caveat such as "Muslims believe that...":

The area the group was traveling in is restricted for Muslims only. Non-Muslims are barred from the area around Medina and neighboring Mecca, the holiest cities in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca, where he began spreading the message of Islam, until he fled to Medina. From Medina, he spread Islam until he died and was buried in the city. Muslims perform the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and usually visit Medina as well.

Ahmadinejad: Tomato price hikes an enemy plot

Partly the usual paranoia, and partly deflection of responsibility for failed economic policies. "Tomato price hikes an enemy plot: Iran president," from Reuters:

TEHERAN - Iran’s president said on Sunday the country’s enemies had hatched a range of plots to push the Islamic Republic to give up its disputed nuclear programme, including driving up the price of tomatoes and other food.

Zionists, the Great Satan, or both?

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said such tactics would not work, Iran’s ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Rising prices, particularly the cost of tomatoes which form an important ingredient in Iranian food, have prompted growing public criticism of Ahmadinejad’s government. The president has often dismissed complaints as media exaggeration.

‘In order to harm us, they (enemies) make plots, for instance they come and push tomato prices up in the market. They think we will give up our ideals with their plots,’ Ahmadinejad said in a speech in which he said Iran would not reverse its atomic plans.

The West accuses Iran of seeking atomic bombs and demands Teheran halt sensitive atomic work, a step Teheran has rejected.

The United Nations has slapped restrictions on aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme and Washington has imposed sanctions on two Iranian banks and three firms. Ahmadinejad’s opponents blame price hikes on government spending policies not sanctions.

[...]

In a speech in January presenting the new budget to parliament, he also dismissed comments that tomatoes had risen to 30,000 rials ($3.25) per kg from 12,000 rials, suggesting shoppers should be more discerning about where they bought.

‘Come and buy them from the fresh fruit and vegetable market next door to us. Why are you buying them from expensive places?’ the president, who won over many voters in the 2005 presidential race with his down-to-earth style, told lawmakers.

Some shopkeepers cite the early onset of cold weather for the particularly sharp rise in the price of tomatoes, a reason Ahmadinejad has also cited in the past.

Ahmadinejad swept to power promising to share out Iran’s oil wealth more fairly, but he has been blamed for fuelling inflation by what critics call his profligate spending policies of the country’s windfall earnings from high crude prices.

Ahmadinejad says ‘no brakes’ on Iran nuclear drive

"Going off the rails on a Crazy Train" in Tehran. From AFP:

TEHERAN - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday defied Western threats to impose more sanctions over Iran’s contested nuclear programme, comparing its atomic drive to a ‘train with no brakes’.

Ahmadinejad’s declaration came a day before the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany are to meet to discuss more possible punitive measures against Teheran.

‘Iran has reached the technology to produce nuclear fuel and Iran’s movement on this path is like a train on a one-way track with no room for stopping, reverse gear or braking,’ the president told a gathering of religious leaders.

‘A while ago, we threw away the reverse gear and the brakes of the train and we announced to them that this Iranian train has no reverse gear or braking,’ the ISNA and Fars news agencies quoted him as saying.

The UN Security Council in December imposed limited sanctions against Teheran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons.

A report by the UN atomic watchdog has confirmed that Iran is still continuing with uranium enrichment work in defiance of the UN Security Council, opening the way towards possible further sanctions.

The United States has never ruled out the prospect of military action to halt Iran’s nuclear programme and Vice President Dick Cheney reignited such speculation by saying that ‘all options are still on the table.’

The United States and Israel accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. Teheran denies the charges, insisting its atomic programme is peaceful in nature.

Hmm. A Nuclear Program of Peace?

‘We have prepared ourselves for any situation, even if war happens,’ Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi told the ISNA news agency

He added that Iran was prepared for talks with the United States but without preconditions. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has insisted she would only hold talks if Teheran first agreed to a suspension of enrichment.

‘We have had unofficial meetings with Americans over Afghanistan and Iraq, but they say first Iran should accept US conditions and then the talks take place,’ Mohammadi said.

Ahmadinejad shrugged off the impact of a resolution against Iran, saying such a move would neither hurt the Islamic republic economically and nor affect the progress of the nuclear programme.

‘They think they can hurt us economically. Since they have threatened us and issued a resolution against us we have had record contracts. They cannot do anything,’ Ahmadinejad said.

Huh?

‘Our revolution is going fast towards the summit like a bulldozer. The enemies think they can stop this bulldozer by throwing a few pebbles at it. They then magnify their small pebbles 500 times in psychological warfare’

[...]

In another move that could increase tensions, Iran said on Sunday it had successfully launched its first rocket into space in a possible first step to launching its own satellites.

Rice: Pakistan must control border area

Indeed it must. But will it? In any case, it is good to see the White House at least doing something to call Pakistan to account.

By Terence Hunt for AP:

WASHINGTON - The White House is pressuring Pakistan to crack down on al-Qaida and Taliban operatives in the lawless border area with Afghanistan that President Bush recently said was "wilder than the Wild West."

The move comes amid growing concern in Congress and the administration that terrorist forces are regrouping in the border area and preparing for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Pakistan on Monday for talks with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf on efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. The Bush administration wants Musharraf to be more aggressive in hunting down al-Qaida operatives, and has raised the possibility that Congress could cut aid to Pakistan unless it takes tougher steps.

Cheney praised Pakistan's contribution in the war against terrorism but also "expressed U.S. apprehensions of regrouping of al-Qaida in the tribal areas and called for concerted efforts in countering the threat," Musharraf's office said.

"He expressed serious U.S. concerns on the intelligence being picked up of an impending Taliban and al-Qaida 'spring offensive' against allied forces in Afghanistan," the statement said.

February 26, 1993

On this day fourteen years ago, Islamic jihadists set off a bomb in the World Trade Center, killing six people, wounding 1,000, and causing $500 million in damage.

Over eight years later, Islamic jihadists brought down those same Towers.

One might have been forgiven for thinking, in the interim between February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2001, that the problem of "terrorism" was under control, and that the 1993 strike was a lucky hit that would not be repeated.

These days, likewise, I am frequently asked in radio interviews whether I think there is really a problem with terrorism on American soil, since, after all, there has not been a terrorist attack here since September 11. Well, this has not been for want of trying, as the archives here abundantly illustrate. But what's more, we should note that those who grew complacent between 1993 and 2001 were wrong to do so, and so are those who have grown complacent now.

More "misconceptions" about Islam

In "Removing the ‘cloak’ of religious extremism" for the Common Ground News Service (via Middle East Online), Laura McAleer, a student at Georgetown University, and Hala Ali, a student at South Valley University of Cairo, who together participated in a "Western-Arab intercultural dialogue program," spin some fanciful but familiar tales:

Washington, D.C./Cairo Egypt - In the wake of September 11th, many in the Western world have struggled to correctly identify acts of terrorism and their perpetrators. Often, people reading newspapers and watching television news reach the conclusion that such acts were committed in the name of jihad, the Islamic concept commonly, and incorrectly, defined as "holy war."

Why do they rush to such a conclusion? Could it be because of statements urging "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders"? Of course not. The primary culprit here is -- who else? -- Westerners. Oh, and "others" do it too, which is like saying "In 1933 in Germany a regime came to power consisting of some established German politicians such as Franz von Papen, along with some others."

Many Westerners (and others around the world) equate the two, developing misconceptions about Islam and the Muslim community. This misunderstanding is detrimental to relations between the U.S. and the Arab world, and it can only be mitigated by recognising the distinct definitions of both terrorism and jihad.

The U.S. State Department, according to the official National Strategy for Combating Terrorism policy document, defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents," usually intended to influence an audience. It is an act condemned by all religions that aims to shake the stability of major world powers and seeks to undermine their capabilities and threaten their futures.

The events of September 11th clearly fit this description. However, the fact that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were committed by a group of people acting in the name of Islam has lead to a great deal of prejudice toward the Muslim community in the United States and around the world. This is evidenced by a March 2006 Washington Post-ABC News Poll, which reported that 33% of Americans believe Islam condones violence against non-Muslims (up from 14% in 2002). Even Americans who said they understood Islam and were more likely to see the religion overall as peaceful and respectful were no less likely to say it harbours harmful extremists, and they were also no less likely to have prejudiced feelings against Muslims.

You see that the 33% of Americans who believe that Islam condones violence against non-Muslims do not understand Islam, while those who see it as peaceful "understand it." Unfortunately, McAleer and Ali do not explain how such passages as Qur'an 9:5, 9:29, 47:4, as well as ahadith such as Sahih Muslim 4294, and innumerable other similar passages, can be understood in a way that does not somehow condone violence.

Also, does the Islamic world harbor "harmful extremists"? Even if they have "hijacked" the religion, isn't that self-evident with every day's headlines?

What is the definition of jihad that Muslims feel is accurate and want the Western world to understand?

The best way to get the Western world to understand this would be to live it out, and to rein in those who commit violent acts in the name of jihad.

The word "jihad" is derived from an Arabic root (J H D) that means to make good use of your virtues, good nature, and God's gifts to help please yourself and others. More specifically, one could say that to practice jihad is to make every effort to worship and obey God, to gain knowledge, to advise others how to be good and true believers in God, and to work hard to spread peace, freedom, love, and tolerance. Moreover, the word "Islam" is derived from the Arabic word "saalam", which means peace.

Actually no, it is not derived from "saalam"; rather, both Islam and salam are derived from the same SLM root. And "Islam," of course, means "submission."

The events of 9/11 and terrorism acts committed since then cannot, when the true meaning of 'jihad' is considered, be seen as acts of jihad. Rather, they were planned and executed by those who chose to use their religion as a sort of cloak. A comparison can be made to the Crusades: the Crusaders of Europe acted in the name of Christianity, but the tenets of Christianity (both then and now) do not allow for their horrible, even "terrorist" actions. The Islamic extremists who commit acts of terrorism are somewhat similar to the Crusaders; they have misunderstood, misinterpreted, and grown accustomed to distortions of Islam, and they have used these misrepresentations as a basis for action.

It is exceedingly odd, then, is it not, that those Muslims who hold to an undistorted, unmisrepresented version of Islam have not managed to mount any large-scale, comprehensive program to teach Muslims to reject the jihadist version of Islam. If what McAleer and Ali are saying is true, this shouldn't be difficult. Is it too much to ask for?

Clearly, those Muslims who have been involved in terrorism have been acting on their own personal beliefs which do not accurately represent the tenets of the faith or the convictions of the majority of the world's Muslim population. Rather, the Qur'an teaches that "anyone who murders any person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes, it shall be as if he murdered all people. And anyone who spares a life, it shall be as if he spared the lives of all people…"

This is the oft-quoted verse 5:32, which is followed by 5:33, which says: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land..." What's more, in condemning "anyone who murders any person who had not committed murder or horrendous crimes," the Qur'an leaves a huge loophole for someone who believes that he is killing someone who has committed horrendous crimes and thus deserves his fate. And that's just what Osama bin Laden thinks.

The basic truths about the concept of jihad have not been widely disseminated in the West.

I couldn't agree more!

The resulting dearth of information is not only a disappointing disconnect between two cultures, but also a major cause of further terrorist acts.

So are McAleer and Ali saying that Americans' alleged "ignorance" about jihad causes terrorism? I can't begin to figure out how the reasoning behind that one goes, unless they're making a D'Souza-like point -- something like, our thinking jihad can be violent so enrages Muslims that they turn to...jihad violence.

And yes, that is what is going on:

The fact that many Americans and other Westerners fail to make an effort to understand Islam and, as revealed by the polling described above, are suspicious of all Muslims they meet, can only serve to drive more and more Muslims under the "cloak" of Islamic extremism. This cycle of misperception leading to further violence can only be stopped through education. With proper definitions and through mutual understanding, the "cloak" can be removed from those who have engaged in acts of terrorism in the past, and future acts can be prevented.

So we are to believe that Westerners' suspicion of Muslims, arising from 9/11, drives Muslims to become "extremists." So put yourself in that position: imagine yourself as a Muslim who "understands" Islam, and is aware that jihad is a peaceful interior struggle, and that those who commit violence in the name of jihad lack any justification whatsoever within Islam itself. Then 9/11 happens, and some Americans start being unkind to you. This so enrages you that you begin to misunderstand Islam, and join a group that promotes violent jihad. Anger toward being unjustly suspected has led you to throw the truth of your religion overboard and to join a gang you had hitherto regarded as heretics and criminals.

This is the Dinesh D'Souza theory of one of the causes of jihad violence. I think its absurdity is self-evident.

The myth of Muslim support for terror

Terror Free Tomorrow, an organization that recommends jizya as an antidote to terror, says that Islamic terrorism isn't that big a deal anyway. In "The myth of Muslim support for terror: The common enemy is violence and terrorism, not Muslims any mor