Spokesman for unindicted co-conspirator in terror group funding case defames Spencer on CNN

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding case, was on Paula Zahn's CNN show tonight with Dennis Prager and Christopher Hitchens.

Prager and Hitchens shredded Hooper, and it is all worth seeing, but Hooper went out of his way to defame me about 4:30 into this segment, and so I felt it incumbent upon me to answer. He quoted a genocidal comment that was made on this website yesterday, and made it appear as if I had written it. (Prager would have none of it, and spoke highly of Jihad Watch, for which I thank him, although at the end of the segment, when Hooper attributed something else to me that I have never said, Prager disavowed it and responded, "I will" to Hooper's "Then tell Mr. Spencer that." In fact, I do not hold and have never stated anything of what Hooper attributes to me on this show.) In reality, someone kindly alerted me to the existence of the comment shortly after it was posted, and I removed it and banned the poster. The comment itself seemed to me and to others who posted on the same thread to have been written by a provocateur -- someone who wanted to discredit Jihad Watch and me by planting a comment here. Such people come through here fairly often. And now, after Hooper's use of this comment despite its being deleted, I suspect even more strongly that it was written by a provocateur.

I allow comments here because I believe in free speech and free inquiry. But in reality, I don't endorse any of them. Some I agree with, some I don't, some are brilliant, some are not, some apologize for jihad and defend jihadists, and some are extremely angry with jihadists -- but no one can legitimately assume that I endorse any of them unless I say so. And certainly if I remove a comment, it is a clear message. Every comments field bears this heading: "Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jihad Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein."

Were Hooper interested in honest dealing, he would have noted that, as well as the fact that the comment he quoted was deleted, and not attributed it to me. Had he actually done his homework, he might have noted the many times I have stated here that genocidal comments are not welcome -- and they certainly don't reflect my views, or he could have quoted something I actually said.

Four or five years ago I called Hooper, ready with questions. He is, after all, a media spokesman, and I was ready, even eager, to give him a chance to clear up all the questions and suspicions people quite rightly have about CAIR. He called me "Islamophobic" and hung up on me. I saw what he was then, and I see it even more clearly tonight. I think you will be able to see it too.

Charles at LGF has both parts of this long segment with Hitchens, Hooper, and Prager.

UPDATE: Audrey Hudson has kindly sent in this transcript:

ZAHN: I want to bring Christopher Hitchens and Ibrahim Hooper back into the discussion.

Mr. Hooper, let me put up one more line from Dennis' column today where, he writes: "The term Islamophobia has one purpose, to suppress any criticism, legitimate or not, of Islam."

Do you buy that?

(CROSSTALK)

HOOPER: No.

Mr. Prager sets up a fall premise and then tries to defend it, first of all, that the use of the term is an attempt to suppress criticism. No one is saying you can't criticize any faith, discuss things openly, be critical of certain beliefs. But what we're talking about is hatred of Islam and Muslims. And we don't -- again, the second part of his false premise is that we call it racist.

Islam is an ideology. It's not a race. You can be a bigot. Maybe we should discuss whether Mr. Prager believes in anti-Muslim bigotry. But we have get on a daily basis things like, kill Mecca Monkeys, Islamo-Nazi rag heads. A message on a Web site supporting Mr. Prager's column said, Muslims are al Qaeda and al Qaeda are Muslim. Let's be done with it and kill them all.

Is he now ready to repudiate Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch, one of his top supporters?

ZAHN: Dennis Prager, a quick answer to that. Then I got to get Christopher into this conversation.

PRAGER: Jihad Watch is one of most honorable Web sites that I know of monitoring jihad in the world today.

HOOPER: Kill all Muslims?

PRAGER: Nobody says kill all Muslims.

ZAHN: Do you defend that kind of language, Dennis?

PRAGER: Who says kill all Muslims?

Oh, what you to think? It is despicable. Of course not.

ZAHN: All right.

PRAGER: It is absurd.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Christopher, fear isn't exactly the same thing as hate.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Christopher, isn't it possible to fear Islam or some aspects of it and be free of hate and not be a bigot?

HITCHENS: Well, phobia means -- phobia, I think as well as meaning fear, does imply dislike. And I dislike Islam, as I dislike all religion.

I'm just astounded by the turn the discussion has taken.

HOOPER: Equal opportunity hater.

HITCHENS: Every day, all the time, all the time, we have to hear propaganda pumped out of radio stations across the Muslim world telling children to kill Jews, telling children to kill Hindus, telling children to kill Christians, telling them that their sisters and mothers and aunts are inferior, telling them that homosexuals should be stoned.

We have to read and claim not to be offended about the stoning of 10 people in the Islamic Republic of Iran in the last week alone for crimes that they did not commit. They would not be crimes except under the mad religious laws that Islam proposes.

Mr. Hooper has to get used to this idea. Some of us find that offensive, too. But we don't demand that he be shut down or be prosecuted. We put up with his self-pity. We put up with his rantings and his distortions, because we believe in the First Amendment.

HOOPER: The rantings that led to the Muslim...

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: All we ask -- all we ask in return -- all we ask in return is that he upholds...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: All we demand in return is he -- all we demand in return...

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Let's let Mr. Hitchens finish his thought.

HITCHENS: All we demand in return is he upholds the First Amendment, too. He has to uphold the First Amendment as well.

HOOPER: We love the First Amendment. We uphold it every day.

HITCHENS: Nonsense.

HOOPER: And the First Amendment also protects free expression of religion. And when you engage in acts of intimidation against a religious group, that goes against the First Amendment.

ZAHN: Dennis Prager, you get the last word tonight.

HITCHENS: You haven't read -- you have neither read nor understood the First Amendment, sir.

(CROSSTALK)

PRAGER: Mr. Hooper said that he welcomes criticism of Islam. Can one say that women, as a rule, are treated better in the Western world than the Islamic world? One who says that, is that person an Islamophobe?

HOOPER: No.

PRAGER: Yes or no?

HOOPER: We discuss that issue every day.

PRAGER: So, one can say that -- so, one can say that, and not be accused?

HOOPER: Again, you set up a false premise. We discuss that kind of issue all the time.

PRAGER: It's not a false premise. I ask that -- oh, well, really?

(CROSSTALK)

HOOPER: And by the way, the Web site that Mr. Prager is defending...

(CROSSTALK)

PRAGER: I asked that question in a "Los Angeles Time" article.

(CROSSTALK)

HOOPER: The Web site that Mr. Prager is defending says that we should make the life of Muslims in the West so difficult, they will leave.

ZAHN: Gentlemen, I have got leave it there.

PRAGER: That, I don't agree with. I do not agree with that sentiment, for the record.

HOOPER: Well, then tell Mr. Spencer that.

PRAGER: I will.

ZAHN: I wish we had more time to continue this, but we don't.

Christopher Hitchens, Ibrahim Hooper, Dennis Prager, thank you, all.

PRAGER: Thank you.

ZAHN: Still ahead tonight: What kind of world is it when $3.5 million is a disappointment?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX VOGEL, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: You can't make it to the White House when you're only raising $3 million a month, when you're up against Giuliani and Romney on your own side and obviously Hillary and Obama on the other side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Can Fred Thompson's not quite a campaign yet make it in spite of disappointing fund-raising numbers? The truth is in those numbers. We will share them with you a little bit later on. And why didn't anyone rush to help a mother and son while they were attacked in their home by 10 people for three hours?

And the liberals under the bed. New children's books designed to scare your kids into hating the political opposition, republicans and Democrats are writing them. See what they're all about when we come back.

Ohio: Ally of al-Qaida terrorist admits to conspiracy in mall plot

Ohio Jihad. "Ally of al-Qaida terrorist admits to conspiracy in mall plot," by Andrew Welsh-Huggins for AP (thanks to Patrick Poole):

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Map, News) - A Somali immigrant the government says plotted to blow up an Ohio shopping mall pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Nuradin Abdi, 35, entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley a week before the expected Aug. 6 start of his trial. He answered each of the judge's questions with a quiet, 'Yes, Your Honor.'

Under a plea deal, Abdi is expected to receive a 10-year sentence on the count, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years. Three additional charges were dropped in exchange for the plea.

The Justice Department accused Abdi of suggesting the plan to attack an unidentified Columbus shopping mall during an August 2002 coffee shop meeting with now-convicted al-Qaida terrorist Iyman Faris and a third suspect, Christopher Paul.

Faris is serving 20 years in a maximum-security federal prison in Florence, Colo., for his role in an al-Qaida plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris scouted the bridge and told al-Qaida its plans wouldn't work, court papers have said.

Federal agents arrested Abdi the morning of Nov. 28, 2003, the day after Thanksgiving, out of fear the attack would be carried out on the heavy shopping day. He was arrested at 6 a.m. while leaving his Columbus home for morning prayers.

Prosecutors say Abdi gave stolen credit card numbers to a man accused of buying gear for al-Qaida, and lied on immigration documents to visit a jihadist training camp.

Taliban: "We Might Stop Killing Hostages"

For strategic reasons only. From CBS (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

(CBS/AP) A high-ranking Taliban commander in Afghanistan with direct involvement in the capture and captivity of a group of South Koreans has told CBS News, "we might stop killing hostages, because our strategy may be changing."

The Afghan government is "under extreme pressure, and they are embarrassed, so we want to keep them in this situation and sustain this crisis for a while," the militant said in a phone interview.

He did not say exactly how the group planned to draw-out the situation, but he did say the killing "might stop," if only temporarily. The commander spoke to CBS News on condition that he not be named.

Mullah Sabir Nasir, the senior Taliban commander in Ghazni province, where the South Koreans were abducted more than two weeks ago, told CBS News that two hostages were killed due to the Afghan government "cheating us" in negotiations for their release.

Nasir, who holds one of about 30 seats on the Taliban's "supreme council" of leaders, said government negotiators had repeatedly gone back on promises to release Taliban prisoners in exchange for the hostages' — 21 of whom are still said to be alive.

He expressed frustration at apparently not being able to negotiate directly with South Korean officials, suggesting the government of Afghan president Hamid Karzai was blocking any such discussion.

"The Afghan government just wants to make us angry, and push us to kill all the hostages at once to bring an end to the crisis," Nasir told CBS News.

No sense of humanitarian concern whatsoever.

"Nothing has been found out about you"

Until now. London Jihad Update: "Andrews dishes dirt on Haneef," by Matthew Franklin and Bruce Loudon in The Australian (thanks to PRCS):

FREED terror suspect Mohamed Haneef was warned by his brother last month to use the birth of his daughter in India as a pretext to flee Australian authorities investigating bombing attacks in London and Glasgow, according to chatroom messages intercepted by investigators.

After Dr Haneef was told "nothing has been found out about you", he moved quickly, booking a one-way ticket to India and organising leave from his job at the Gold Coast Hospital.

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews released the chatroom messages last night in an attempt to defuse criticism over his decision to strip the 27-year-old Dr Haneef of his work visa, despite a charge of recklessly assisting terrorists being withdrawn on Friday in the Federal Magistrates Court.

[...]

The exchange was revealed against a background of strident denials of any knowledge of terrorism by Dr Haneef, and his claim that he had tried repeatedly to contact Scotland Yard after hearing of the British bombing attempts. He had hoped to explain that he had left a mobile phone SIM card with a relative implicated in the attacks.

But the British authorities failed to return his calls.

In Bangalore, Dr Haneef's lawyer, Peter Russo, said the information revealed by Mr Andrews had been dealt with in a police interview. "It is more smoke and mirrors from the minister," Mr Russo told Southern Cross Broadcasting. "(Mr Andrews) has led the Australian public to believe that this is the secret information. It is hardly secret information if it was put to my client in the second record of interview ... the Director of Public Prosecutions would have had access to that when they were making their judgment call (to drop the case)."

Mr Andrews said the intercepts showed the brother of Dr Haneef saying, "Nothing has been found out about you", and asking him when he could leave Australia. "Today," Dr Haneef had replied.

Mr Andrews said the brother had then asked whether Dr Haneef had permission to take leave and that Dr Haneef had told his employer that his daughter, Haniya, had been born in India by emergency caesarian.

The brother had then advised: "Tell them that you have to as you have a daughter born, do not tell them anything else."

Mr Andrews said the brother also ordered Dr Haneef not to give his contact details to anyone and added that "Auntie told him that brother Kafeel used it in some sort of protest over there", in a reference to accused British bombing suspect Kafeel Ahmed.

Mr Andrews said Australian Federal Police had cited the exchange as possible evidence of Dr Haneef's "awareness of the conspiracy to plan and prepare the acts of terrorism in London and Glasgow".

"The AFP consider Dr Haneef's attempted urgent departure from Australia on a one-way ticket for a purpose which appears to be a false pretext to be highly suspicious," Mr Andrews said.

[...]

Earlier, Dr Haneef demanded the Australian Government apologise "to my peace-loving country and citizens". "Islam means love and peace," he said. "I do not want anybody to be victimised in the name of terrorism."

Qur'an flushing case: Cops caved to CAIR

The unindicted co-conspirators pull off another coup. Hot Air has details and video.

Only in a public square suffused with the anti-Western self-hatred that is political correctness and multiculturalism could this kind of thing happen: an advocacy group that has been linked to terror groups, that has leaders who have advocated Islamic supremacism and other officials who are doing time on terror charges, says "Jump," and law enforcement officials, the people who are supposed to be protecting us, say, "How high?"

2,000 rally for Pakistan jihad

"The blood for the martyrs of Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa will not go waste!" Tiny Minority of Extremists Update from Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Chanting slogans in favour of jihad, about 2,000 women from Pakistan's hardline Islamic parties rallied in the capital Tuesday in support of the radical former leaders of Islamabad's Red Mosque.

Demonstrators gathered outside the sprawling Faisal Mosque urged the government to enforce Islamic laws in the country.

At least 102 people were killed in fighting when security forces raided the Red Mosque and its adjoining seminary for girls after its deputy chief cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his associates holed up inside and refused to lay down arms.

"The blood for the martyrs of Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa will not go waste!" the demonstrators chanted.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the chief of Pakistan's main Jamaat-e-Islami party, told the crowd his group would build new seminaries to replace the one at the Red Mosque, which was at the centre of the rebels' resistance and was torn down by authorities last week.

Shoe bomber waiting for Allah to spring him

Because in the view of Abdul Raheem (Richard Reid), Allah would find nothing objectionable in the mass murder of infidels.

Meanwhile, why is he allowed books about Islam in prison? Do prison officials suppose they will make him better, when it is clear from this article and from everything else that we know about him that they are the things that made him worse?

"Crazed bomber says Allah will get him out of Supermax poky," by Corky Siemaszko for the New York Daily News (thanks to WriterMom):

Shoe bomber Richard Reid sits and waits in his cell at the Suprmax prison in Colorado. The British terrorist says he has dreamed he will be spared from the life sentence he serves.

Failed shoe bomber Richard Reid fantasizes that Allah will free him from the Supermax prison cell where he lives in isolation - and in his socks.

"I had a couple of good dreams about my situation changing for the better in the not-so-distant future, so this is a blessing from Allah," Reid wrote in letters obtained by a British newspaper.

"I place my trust in Allah that he will bring that into fruition and ask him to give me patience until the time when that occurs."

The Mirror also secured exclusive photos of the 33-year-old Al Qaeda acolyte who tried to blow up a packed Miami-bound jet with booby-trapped sneakers - and who stares with crazy eyes at the camera.

Behind the British-born Muslim convert are his paltry possessions - a few books about Islam, scraps of writing paper, a bear-shaped plastic container of what appears to be honey resting beside a shabby trunk.

His beard is scraggly and he wears a white, long-sleeved T-shirt and gray sweatpants. He expresses no remorse for his failed attempt at mass murder - and seems serene despite the terrorist path that landed him in prison.

"As long as we strive to follow the laws which he has laid down for us then everything which occurs in this life contains some good for us," he wrote.

Reid is serving a life sentence in the ultratough federal prison in Florence, Colo., for attempting to bring down an American Airlines jet with nearly 200 people aboard on Dec. 22, 2001. Fellow passengers and crew members overpowered him before he could ignite the explosives hidden in his shoes.

In missives to his Jamaican father, Robin Reid, the bearded bomber hectored him to get religion - the Muslim religion.

"How's your situation in regards to upholding the daily prayers?" he wrote. "Hopefully my advice was well received and if you didn't start praying yet, I'd ask you to re-read the two letters I wrote earlier this year on that subject and to reflect on your situation with Allah."

Reid also harshly rebutted his dad's suggestion that a Christian aunt who died suddenly was in a "better place."

"You should know that while Allah is merciful and forgiving, this applies only to those who upheld His rights," he wrote. "I do know that if she died while still believing that Jesus and God are one then that's not good as she had the chance to find out about Islam."

Prager: Why 'Islamophobia' is a brilliant term

Dennis Prager speaks truth to power.

What do anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia have in common?

In fact, nothing.

But according to Islamist groups, Western media and the United Nations, they have everything in common. Anti-Semites hate all Jews, racists hate all members of another race, and Islamophobes hate all Muslims.

Whoever coined the term "Islamophobia" was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not "Muslim-phobia" or "anti-Muslimist," it is Islam-ophobia – fear of Islam – yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.

The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.

To cite three of innumerable examples: The Guardian published an opinion piece titled, "Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism"; the European Union has established the European Monitoring Center for Racism and Xenophobia; and the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission of Australia notes that "Muslims have also been the target of racism in Australia, often referred to as Islamophobia."

Even granting that there are people who fear Islam, how does that in any way correlate with racism? If fear of an ideology rendered one racist, all those who fear conservatism or liberalism should be considered racist.

Of course, some may argue that whereas conservatism and liberalism are ideas, Islam is a religion, and while one can attack ideas, one must not attack religions. It is, however, quite insulting to religions to deny that they are ideas. Religions are certainly more than ideas – they are theological belief systems – but they are also ideas about how society should be run just as much as liberalism and conservatism are. Therefore, Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism should be just as subject to criticism as conservatism or liberalism.

Read it all.

Guía políticamente incorrecta del Islam (y de las Cruzadas)

I am pleased to announce that my book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) is now available in Spanish. The publisher is Ciudadela Libros of Madrid.

It's my small expression of gratitude to Pelayo and the heroes of Covadonga.

Here and here are two reviews in Spanish (thanks to Ignacio).

"Liberty Has Ruthless Enemies"

The good folks at Heavy Stix have, for quite some time, been on their own initiative designing and selling Jihad Watch shirts and bumper stickers, and kindly donating some of the proceeds to our efforts here.

Their "Liberty Has Ruthless Enemies" shirt grows more apt with every day's headlines, as we see the ongoing attempts by Islamic advocacy groups and their allies to intimidate into silence all those who speak frankly about and ask Muslims to do something about the elements of Islam that give rise to violence.

Hearty thanks to all at Heavy Stix.

Saudi turns his back on jihad

Bridge for sale! With Saudi jihadists now making up almost half of the foreign fighters in Iraq, the Saudis are touting their anti-jihad campaign. This man asked two questions: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions? He got negative answers, and according to this story, that was it. The jihad imperative in general is unquestioned -- Iraq is just the wrong place, wrong time.

This might be a temporary fix, but it ultimately won't be even close to enough.

By Donna Abu-Nasr for Associated Press (thanks to all who sent this in):

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The last time Ahmed al-Shayea was in the news, he was in the hospital at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, being treated for severe burns from the truck bomb he had driven into the Iraqi capital on Christmas Day, 2004.

Today, he says, he has changed his mind about waging jihad, or holy war, and wants other young Muslims to know it. He wants them to see his disfigured face and fingerless hands, to hear how he was tricked into driving the truck on a fatal mission, to believe his contrition over having put his family through the agony of believing he was dead.

At 22, the new Ahmed Al-Shayea is the product of a concerted Saudi government effort to counter the ideology that nurtured the 9/11 hijackers and that has lured Saudis in droves to the Iraq insurgency. The deprogramming, similar to efforts carried out in Egypt and Yemen, is built on reason, enticements and lengthy talks with psychiatrists, Muslim clerics and sociologists.

[...]

Al-Shayea says his change of heart began when he was visited by a cleric at al-Ha'ir Prison in Riyadh following his repatriation from Iraq.

He says he put two questions to the cleric: Was the jihad for which he traveled to Iraq religiously sanctioned? And were the edicts inciting such action correct in saying the militants should not inform their parents or government of their intentions?

No and no, came the reply.

"I realized that all along I was wrong," al-Shayea told The Associated Press in a two-hour interview at a Riyadh hotel before returning to an Interior Ministry compound that serves as a sort of halfway house for ex-jihadists rejoining Saudi society.

"There is no jihad. We are just instruments of death," he said.

[...]

At the time he was first approached to join the insurgency, al-Shayea was already becoming a devout Muslim in his ultraconservative town of Buraida. He grew a beard, prayed five times a day and stopped listening to Arabic love songs he used to enjoy. He was 19 and jobless.

Then he was contacted by a school friend whom he doesn't identify.

"My friend started telling me about Iraq, how Muslims are getting killed there and how we should go there for jihad," said al-Shayea. "He told me there were fatwas (edicts) and DVDs issued by Saudi and Iraqi clergymen that called for jihad."

"We didn't think of jihad as something that would lead to our death. It was a fight against occupiers," said al-Shayea....

"His MORPC employers were not aware of his close friendships with Al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Courts Union and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists"

CAIR official exposed: "Ahmad Al-Akhras on the Ropes?," from Patrick Poole at Central Ohioans Against Terrorism:

According to a very reliable source, as a result of my FrontPage exposé several weeks ago, "Hometown Jihad: Getting By with a Little Help from His (Terrorist) Friends" (restored link), CAIR-National vice chairman Ahmad Al-Akhras is on his way out of his long-time cushy government job with the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), where Al-Akhras is currently assistant director of transportation. Until my article, his MORPC employers were not aware of his close friendships with Al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Courts Union and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and operatives or his pro-HAMAS and pro-Hezbollah rallys he has regularly staged here in town.

Apparently things are so bad that not even his good friend, Mayor Michael Coleman, can apparently save him (but Coleman may still keep him on the Community Relations Commission and the Street Car Working Group).

Jihadists seize shrine in northwestern Pakistan, rename it after Lal Masjid

"The attack drove home the lack of government control in the tribal region." Again.

"Militants seize shrine in Pakistan," by Riaz Khan for the Associated Press:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pro-Taliban fighters seized an Islamic shrine in restive northwestern Pakistan and renamed it after the Red Mosque, where dozens of militants died this month in a showdown with government forces in the capital, officials said Monday.

We usually see "restive" used to describe southern Thailand. Is it becoming a synonym for "jihad-stricken?"

The attack drove home the lack of government control in the tribal region, where a local government official said authorities were trying to negotiate the militants' peaceful departure from the shrine.

[...]

About 70 pro-Taliban militants overran the shrine of renowned Pashtun freedom fighter Sahib Turangzai and its adjoining mosque in Mohmand tribal region late Sunday, a militant representative said.

They evicted the mosque's caretakers, renamed it and declared their support for Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the deputy cleric of the Red Mosque, who had spearheaded an increasingly aggressive, Taliban-style anti-vice campaign in the capital.

Troops finally cracked down on the mosque and Ghazi was killed along with at least 101 other people after a weeklong siege that ended July 12.

In Mohmand, the militants vowed to set up a girls' seminary at the site — reminiscent of the one in Islamabad where the anti-vice campaign was centered and that was demolished by authorities after the siege.

"We will ensure education here for students who were dispersed after the operation against Lal Masjid in Islamabad," Khalid Omar, a man who claims to speak for the militants, said in telephone calls to journalists in Peshawar.

A government official in Mohmand, who sought anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, confirmed the militants had taken control of the shrine. He said authorities have sought the help of tribal elders to get the militants to leave the area peacefully.

CAIR-NY Says Hate Vandalism is Not Free Speech

Flushing a Qur'an in the privacy of your own home is not the same as doing it in a place where it will create a "hostile learning environment."

Or at least so says CAIR (thanks to War On Hate).

"We commend the NYPD for its appropriate handling of this case," said CAIR-NY Civil Rights Coordinator Aliya Latif. "We must all be concerned when any actions cross the line from protected free speech to acts designed to intimidate. Just as there is a difference between someone burning a cross in their own backyard and burning that same cross in the yard of an African- American family, there is a difference between desecrating a religious text in a private setting and doing so in a setting that will create a hostile learning environment."

CAIR announced no plans at Pace or elsewhere to establish any programs among Muslims to teach against the jihad ideology and thus do their part to diminish any "hostile learning environment" that the Qur'an-flushing may have created. Nor did they say anything about the "hostile learning environment" that may have been created by the relentless barrage of Islamic jihad terror attacks, all perpetrated in the name of Islam, and the tepid, mealy-mouthed, and responsibility-evading response of Muslim groups in America and elsewhere.

Hamas says it benefits from intelligence files given to Fatah and seized in Gaza

The response to this, of course, will be to give Fatah even more compromising information, as well as money and more -- which Hamas will then have a chance to seize in its next offensive. "Hamas to Show an Improved Hand: Organization Aims to Capitalize On Intelligence Gains From Gaza Takeover," by Cam Simpson and Neil King Jr. in the Wall Street Journal (thanks to Steve):

When the Islamist group Hamas conquered the Gaza Strip in June it seized an intelligence-and-military infrastructure created with U.S. help by the security chiefs of the Palestinian territory's former ruler.

According to current and former Israeli intelligence officials, former U.S. intelligence personnel and Palestinian officials, Hamas has increased its inventory of arms since the takeover of Gaza and picked up technical expertise -- such as espionage techniques -- that could assist the group in its fight against Israel or Washington's Palestinian allies, the Fatah movement founded by Yasser Arafat.

Hamas leaders say they acquired thousands of paper files, computer records, videos, photographs and audio recordings containing valuable and potentially embarrassing intelligence information gathered by Fatah. For more than a decade, Fatah operated a vast intelligence network in Gaza established under the tutelage of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hamas leaders are expected as early as tomorrow to go public with some of the documents and the secrets they hold.

Criminal complaint against Qur'an-flusher

Michelle Malkin has the actual text of the complaint, as does Charles, along with a good roundup of reactions to this ridiculous arrest.

Taliban: Male hostage shot dead

An update on the Korean Christian hostage crisis. From Reuters (thanks to Jihad Watch News Editor Marisol Seibold):

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- Taliban kidnappers shot dead a male South Korean hostage on Monday, a spokesman said, accusing the Afghan government of not listening to rebel demands.

Protestors participate in an anti-war rally calling for the safe return of the kidnapped South Koreans.

"We shot dead a male captive because the government did not listen to our demands," spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by telephone.

Sudan sought Al-Qaeda’s help to fight Darfur peacekeepers

This is a race issue, or a class issue, says the mainstream media. Nothing to do with jihad. Yet when the Sudanese government needed help, they called...Al-Qaeda.

By Wasil Ali for the Sudan Tribune (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

July 29, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government decided to lift restrictions on Al-Qaeda members in the country in return for their help in fighting peacekeepers in Darfur.

The classified document sent to Sudan Tribune by a group named Kosh Liberation Movement (KLM) was dated April 27, 2004 and signed by senior members of Sudan’s presidency, ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and the army.

One of the signatories was Sudan’s presidential adviser Majzoub al-Khalifa who was killed in a car accident last month signing on behalf of the NCP.

The authenticity of the document could not be independently verified.

Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan for several years in the early 1990s.

The document requests all government agencies to allow “foreign Jihadis who came to Sudan with Osama Bin Laden in 1994 to resume their political activities in Sudan given the circumstances surrounding foreign intervention in Darfur to support armed forces and the people of Sudan to fight Zionist enemies”.

The decision outlines certain steps to be taken to allow Al-Qaeda to operate in Sudan such as unfreezing their bank accounts and returning all properties confiscated in 1996.

A copy of the order was sent to President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, Head of Security Services and a representative of Al-Qaeda in Sudan.

Last year Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims in a video released on Friday to launch a holy war against proposed U.N. peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region.

[...]

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when an ethnic minority rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, which then enlisted the Janjaweed militia group to help crush the rebellion.

Let's launch a 'cultural offensive' against militant Islam, Brown tells Bush

This sounds great until one realizes that both Brown and Bush are in total denial about the deep roots of jihad and Islamic supremacism within Islamic theology and tradition. Can we really fight the war of ideas effectively while ignoring and denying the true nature of the conflict itself?

And then when you see what Brown is actually recommending, it just involves a further retreat from the ideological challenge the jihadists present. Instead of confronting that challenge and joining the battle, he is recommending that we ignore that jihadism represents a "cause" altogether, and treat it the way it was treated before 9/11, as a series of unrelated, distinct "crimes" that had no underlying unifying purpose or goal.

Imagine if the Allies had tried to fight World War II that way: instead of treating Nazism as an ideology and combatting it, imagine if they treated each German offensive in Europe as a separate "crime," not as part of any larger purpose, and offered outreach programs to Germans in the face of each "crime." How far might Hitler have gotten?

From the Daily Mail (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

Gordon Brown will use his first formal talks with George Bush to urge a massive cultural offensive against Islamic extremism.

He is set to urge America to learn from the Cold War and mount a battle of ideas rather than rely on military might alone.

Ahead of his first formal talks with President Bush, he declared: "It is our shared task to expose terrorism for what it is - not a cause but a crime. A crime against humanity."

His words contrasted strongly with the Bush rhetoric of a "war against terror".

He emphasised the importance of winning with ideas and values rather than just bullets.

"We should remember that during the Cold War, the united front against Soviet communism involved deterrence through large arsenals of weapons and a cultural effort also on an unprecedented scale, deploying what Roosevelt called the 'arsenal of democracy'," he wrote in the Washington Post.

"Foundations, trusts, civil society and civic organisations - links and exchanges between schools, universities, museums, institutes, churches, trade unions, sports clubs, societies - were all engaged."

Yes, there was a lot of attempting to win hearts and minds. There was also a lot of clear-eyed confrontation of the Communist ideology. Where is today's Radio Free Europe, beaming anti-jihadist broadcasts into the Islamic world? Who would dare to establish it?

Karzai calls abductions un-Islamic

"When an adult male is taken captive, the caliph considers the interests ... (of Islam and the Muslims) and decides between the prisoner's death, slavery, release without paying anything, or ransoming himself in exchange for money or for a Muslim captive held by the enemy." -- 'Umdat al-Salik, o9.14

Of course, that refers to combatants, not to civilians. But these hostages are Christian missionaries, whose proselytizing is considered in Islamic law to be an act of aggression in itself. Thus the Taliban can reasonably respond to Karzai that the hostage are not "foreign guests," but enemies of Islam, and thus that the hostage-takers have acted in accord with Islamic law on this.

It would be refreshing if Karzai addressed and explained such matters, and perhaps thereby convinced some of the Taliban that their actions were contrary to Islam, rather than simply asserting that this hostage-taking was un-Islamic without explaining why.

By Emal Haidary and Laura King for the Los Angeles Times (thanks to all who sent this in):

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — President Hamid Karzai declared Sunday that the abduction of 23 South Korean church workers by Taliban militants was an un-Islamic act that brought disgrace on Afghanistan.

Karzai issued his statement, his first since the hostage crisis began, after meeting with Baek Jong-chun, a special envoy sent by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.

Eighteen of the captives are women, and Karzai said their abduction was a particularly heinous act.

"Hostage taking and abuse of foreign guests, especially women, is against Islam and the Afghan culture," Karzai's office quoted him as telling the envoy. "The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values."

Similar sentiments were voiced Sunday by Afghanistan's national council of clerics.

Meanwhile, a purported Taliban spokesman set a new deadline of noon today for the freeing of 23 militants held by Afghan authorities, threatening to kill the hostages if the demand was not met.

"If the Kabul administration fails to meet our conditions by then, we will start killing the hostages," Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the kidnappers, said by telephone.

The Korean church workers were seized by militants July 19 as they traveled on a public bus along the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The group's leader, a pastor, was shot and killed by his captors Wednesday, setting off a wave of grief and dismay in South Korea.

Bostom: Flush To Judgment?

Andrew G. Bostom discusses felonious Qur'an-flushing in FrontPage:

Twenty-three year old Stanislav Shmulevich awaits arraignment on hate crime charges for “criminal mischief and aggravated harassment,” accused of having hurled Korans into toilets at Pace University’s Manhattan campus, 10 months ago. This past October 13, according to police, a teacher discovered a paperback Koran in a second-floor bathroom toilet, while on November 21, a student found another submerged Koran in the same bathroom.

[...]

Western discourse must move well beyond condemnation of clumsy acts of disapproval, such as Koran flushing, and their aggressive prosecution under pressure by Muslim avatars of real hatred, and abettors of murderous jihad terrorism, such as CAIR—to more fundamental and unnerving questions: What role do Koranic injunctions themselves—eternal and beyond criticism (least of all by non-Muslims)—play in inciting “criminal mischief and aggravated mischief”, and much more heinous crimes against humanity, including jihad genocide, and the destruction of non-Muslim religious, cultural, and political institutions?

Read it all.

Blogging the Qur’an: Sura 3, “The Family of Imran,” verses 33-63

According to Muhammad’s first biographer, Ibn Ishaq, the first eighty verses of Sura 3 were revealed after a delegation of Christians came from the Yemeni city of Najran. One of the leaders of this delegation was a bishop, Abu Haritha ibn ‘Alqama, who received money, servants, and other favors from “the Christian kings of Byzantium.” Abu Haritha, says Ibn Ishaq, knew that Muhammad was a prophet, but refused to accept him for fear of losing the loot that the Byzantines were lavishing upon him.

Ibn Ishaq records that the delegation “differed among themselves in some points, saying [Jesus] is God; and He is the son of God; and He is the third person of the Trinity, which is the doctrine of Christianity.” They presented arguments defending these propositions to Muhammad, but he would have none of it. When they told him that they had submitted to God, he responded: “You lie. Your assertion that God has a son, your worship of the cross, and your eating pork hold you back from submission.” Allah then revealed much of sura 3, refuting their assertions and giving the world the truth about Jesus and Christianity.

He begins by telling the story of Mary’s birth and early life, telling us in v. 35 that her mother was the “wife of Imran” – that is, Amram, the father of Moses and Aaron. This verse, along with 19:28, in which Mary is called “sister of Aaron,” has given rise to the charge that Muhammad confused Miriam the sister of Moses with Mary the Mother of Jesus, since the names are identical in Arabic: Maryam (مَرْيَمُ). When confronted about this, Muhammad had a ready answer: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.” However, while this may explain why Mary is called “Sister of Aaron,” it doesn’t explain why she is clearly depicted here as the daughter of Imran.

In any case, Imran’s wife dedicates the child in her womb to the service of Allah (v. 35); when she gives birth, she says of Mary, “I crave Thy protection for her and for her offspring from Satan the outcast” (v. 36). Every child, said Muhammad, is “pricked by the Satan” after he is born – that’s why babies cry when they’re born. However, Mary and Jesus were preserved from this touch of Satan. Although the child is a female and “the female is not like the male” (v. 36), the wife of Imran fulfills her vow: Mary is dedicated to Allah’s service. Bulandshahri says that she went to live in the Temple in Jerusalem, which he calls the Baitul Muqaddas (“Holy House”) and, in keeping with the Islamic idea that the original message of all the Jewish prophets was Islam, identifies as a mosque. There Mary is fed miraculously (v. 37).

This story recalls one told in the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century Christian document: in it, Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, prayed to God for an end to their childlessness, and dedicated the child they subsequently conceived to the Lord in thanksgiving. When Mary was three, she went to live in the Temple, where she was fed by an angel. This is the sort of thing that earned Muhammad the charge that he was just retailing “fables of the men of old” (6:25, 8:31, 16:24, 23:83, 25:5, 27:68, 46:17, 68:15, 83:13), not divine revelation. But Muslims respond that the Qur’an is sorting out the true from the false about Christianity among the revelations that were corrupted by the followers of Jesus.

Vv. 38-41 recount the birth of John the Baptist, hitting the highlights of Luke 1:5-80: angels tell Zechariah he will have a son, he asks how this can be since he is old, and he is rendered unable to speak. Then the Qur’an begins to tell the story of the birth of Jesus, beginning with a reaffirmation of Muhammad’s prophethood (v. 44): Ibn Kathir explains that even though Muhammad wasn’t present at these events, “Allah disclosed these facts” to him as if he had been an eyewitness.

The angels’ announcement of Jesus’ birth (vv. 45-6) differs from Gabriel’s annunciation in Luke 1:30-35 in several key particulars: in the Qur’an, Jesus is identified as a “word” from Allah and is called “Messiah,” but not “Son of the Most High.” Muslim exegetes explain that Jesus is Allah’s word not in the sense of being divine, as in John 1:1, but because he was created without a human father by Allah’s word, as was Adam — as v. 59 explains. In v. 48, we’re told that Allah will teach Jesus “the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel”: in the Qur’an, the Gospel is not the news about Jesus, but a book that he is given by Allah. V. 49 recounts several miracles Jesus performed, each one “by Allah’s leave.” Bulandshahri explains that this clause is repeated in order to emphasize that only by Allah’s permission does Jesus perform miracles – since “after witnessing these miracles, especially the raising of the dead, it is possible that a person may consider Sayyidina Isa [Master Jesus] to be Allah himself.” One of these miracles involves bringing clay birds to life, which appears in the second-century Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

When the Jews reject Jesus, he gathers disciples who say, “do thou bear witness that we are Muslims” (اشْهَدْ بِأَنَّا مُسْلِمُونَ) (v. 52). And while Jesus’ enemies plotted against him, Allah, “the best of schemers” (v. 54), plotted also, revealing that he would cause Jesus “to ascend to Me.” This, says Ibn Ishaq, refuted “what they assert of the Jews in regard to his crucifixion” – to which we will return in sura 4, which says that “they slew him not nor crucified” (v. 157).

“This,” says v. 62, “is the true account: There is no god except Allah…” – in other words, Jesus is not divine. Allah tells Muhammad in v. 61 to challenge those who believe otherwise: since “knowledge hath come to thee” he should say to dissenters: “Come! Let us gather together, our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves. Then let us earnestly pray, and invoke the curse of Allah on those who lie!” According to Ibn Ishaq, when the Christian delegation from Najran heard this, they asked Muhammad for time to confer among themselves. Then one of their leaders told the rest: “O Christians, you know right well that Muhammad is a prophet sent (by God) and he has brought a decisive declaration about the nature of your master. You know too that a people has never invoked a curse on a prophet and seen its elders live and its youth grow up. If you do this you will be exterminated. But if you decide to adhere to your religion and to maintain your doctrine about your master, then take your leave of the man and go home.” So they went to Muhammad, declined his challenge, and went home, obstinate renegades confirmed in their rebellion against Allah.

Next week: Why the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) are covered with shame.

(Here you can find links to all the earlier "Blogging the Qur'an" segments. Here is a good Arabic Qur’an, with English translations available; here are two popular Muslim translations, those of Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, along with a third by M. H. Shakir. Here is another popular translation, that of Muhammad Asad. And here is an omnibus of ten Qur’an translations.)

Sudan's defense minister: Jews behind Darfur conflict

Of course, this isn't the first time Sudan has blamed Jews for Darfur. "Sudan: Jews behind Darfur conflict," by Yaakov Lappin for YNet News:

Sudan's defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused "24 Jewish organizations" of "fueling the conflict in Darfur" last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper.

Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week.

A journalist from Saudi Arabia's Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: "Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?"

"The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning," the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by "friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict."

"Are these Jewish groups supporting (the rebels) financially?," the interviewer from Okaz asked Hussein.

"Yes, they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles," Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using "all means to fuel these conflicts."

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false, and said: "We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or rebel actions."

[...]

Several days ago, Sudan's Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused "Isaeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their country."

He added that his ministry was "very confused" by Sudanese citizens who came to Israel."

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera television: "We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children. We came here to look for a better place."

Meanwhile, in the US, a number of Jewish organizations have attempted to raise awareness over the plight of Sudanese citizens who face mass killings and ethnic cleansing from the Sudanese government. Some 20 Jewish organizations joined the 'Save Darfur Coalition,' along with other religious communities and American civil rights groups.

Freed Guantanamo inmates return to jihad

Why should this surprise anyone? No effort was made at Gitmo to disabuse them of jihadist sympathies.

"Freed Guantanamo inmates take up arms," from The Age (thanks to all who sent this in):

AT LEAST 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees have been killed or recaptured after taking up arms against allied forces following their release.

They have been discovered mostly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but not in Iraq, a US Defence Department spokesman told The Age yesterday.

Commander Jeffrey Gordon said the detainees had, while in custody, falsely claimed to be farmers, truck drivers, cooks, small-arms merchants, low-level combatants or had offered other false explanations for being in Afghanistan.

"We are aware of dozens of cases where they have returned to militant activities, participated in anti-US propaganda or engaged in other activities," said Commander Gordon.

Pace University Qur'an desecrator facing two felony charges

Outrageous. Beyond outrageous. A book is placed in a toilet, which is a plumbing issue more than anything else and a vandalism issue at best, and a man is charged with two felonies.

LGF has the details, via an email from the defendant.

Fitzgerald: See Dick Nod, Nouri, or, Color Me Kubrick

As Bush videoconferences with his new best friend Nouri Al-Maliki, new echoes of Dr. Strangelove:

Hello?... Nouri? Ah... I can't hear too well. But the picture's great. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Nouri... plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh? And the picture? Can you see me waving? And Dick is waving too, Nouri, can you see that?...He's right here beside me, and he's waving too... We're both waving... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're all coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha...

Now then, Nouri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with that country of yours... Iraq, Nouri... The country Iraq, Nouri, your country... Well now, what happened is... ah... well, you know, our people, Nouri, they're just a little funny on the subject...just a little funny in the head, and they don't always understand...just a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny. And, ah... they've gone and done a silly thing... Well, I'll tell you what they've done, Nouri. They've been protesting, Nouri....No, we have to let them, we don't have a choice....That's right, Nouri. No, really, they do have that right....Well, Nouri, I'm afraid they want us to stop supporting your government....Yes, Nouri, your government. They don't like your....No, Nouri, I don't think it is fair. I know you're trying....You don't like them, either, Nouri? I understand. I completely understand....

Well, it's like this, Nouri. Some of them think that they don't see why our government should keep supporting your government. If you and the Sunnis...yes, Nouri, the Sunnis. You know...the other ones? Ah...yes, I know it's none of their business. Yes...but they think it is, Nouri.... They think that everyone should use their new-found freedom.... What freedom, Nouri? The elections, Nouri. Have you forgotten? The purple thumbs, Nouri? You haven't forgotten the purple thumbs?....And the Constitution? And the referendum on the Constitution? That doesn't matter? Oh, I think it does. We have a Constitution here too, Nouri, and it matters. You don't care about our Constitution? I don't care that you don't care, Nouri, it's important to us...Oh, you didn't mean it that way. Okay, sorry. But what about that freedom, for ordinary moms and dads, Nouri, the freedom, you know, the elections, the purple thumbs, everybody marching? We've all done so much to bring it about, haven't we Nouri? Your people, and my people, together?

What's that, Nouri? You don't care about the Sunnis? They have it coming to them? They did it to you for a thousand years and now it's their turn? No, Nouri, that's not right. We are both men of faith, aren't we, Nouri? Don't we all worship the same God, Nouri? Just different routes to the exact same destination? No, Nouri, I have faith too, just like you. Don't say that, Nouri, that's not nice. Well, let me finish, Nouri... Let me finish, Nouri... Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it?... Can you imagine how I feel about it, Nouri?... Don't you think I want ordinary moms and dads to have freedom just the way you do? Why do you think I'm calling you? Just to say hello?... Of course I like to speak to you!... Of course I like to say hello!... Not now, but anytime, Nouri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible is happening... It's a friendly call. Look, let me give you another wave. And Dick -- Dick's waving now too. We're both waving, Nouri. Look at us. Both of us, both waving at you from here at the White House. Yes, I can see you are waving too. And the interpreter. Yes, he's waving too. And your bodyguards, yes, I can see they are all waving. All of them. It's very nice, Nouri. I didn't mean to suggest you weren't nice, Nouri. Of course it's a friendly call... Listen, if it wasn't friendly... you probably wouldn't have even got it...

They will not be able to turn our policy around for at least another few months, Nouri...I am... I am positive, Nouri ... Listen, I've been all over this with your ambassador and with my generals. It is not a trick... Well, I'll tell you. We'd like to give your folks a chance to make compromises, okay? ... That's right, Nouri. I think you should share power with the Sunnis. So you won't have to kill each other. What? You think they won't be able to kill you but you'll be able to wipe them out? You think they've miscalculated the new situation? That's not nice, Nouri. I don't think you should promise to do that, Nouri. Not all Sunnis deserve that, Nouri. What if we give you another hundred billion in mad money? Would that make you feel good, Nouri? Would that make you willing to give the Sunnis just a little something? And a little something for the Kurds, too? Or could we just give it to them directly? Is that all right, Nouri? Would that be....You don't have to get mad, Nouri. I am not insulting the Shi'as, Nouri... No, not at all. I know you've suffered terribly, Nouri. We've all suffered, Nouri. We're all suffering because of Iraq, Nouri. Listen, Nouri, I mean i-i-i-if you're unable to come to an agreement, then... I'd say that, ah... well, ah... we're just gonna have to stop helping you, Nouri....

I know you need them, Nouri.. But they're our boys...and our planes, and our equipment. And our money.... C'mon Nouri, be reasonable. Dick, right now, is nodding, Nouri. Look at him nod. See Dick nod, Nouri. He agrees with me, Nouri. Everyone around this table is nodding, Nouri. We all agree. No, Nouri we don't owe it to you... No, Nouri, I don't agree with that columnist who wrote that "we broke it and we have to fix it." You know, Nouri, how broken it was before we came. Yes, you do. You know who persuaded us that everything would be fine if we got rid of Saddam Hussein, don't you Nouri? Nouri, do you know that another Iraqi who knew you in Syria reported last week that you've been boasting about how you supposedly tricked us into getting rid of Saddam? You never heard of that before, Nouri? You don't know the fellow at all? But he always was the biggest liar you ever knew? Oh, Nouri, don't tell me that. Don't try to trick me, Nouri. I wasn't born yesterday, Nouri. I'm the President of the United States. I'm the most powerful man in the world. And Dick, right here, he is Vice President. So that means he's the second most powerful man in the world. Don't try to tell us that we have to stay longer or give you planes and tanks and night-vision goggles, Nouri. Don't tell us that. Don't tell us it is something we have to give you, or else...Stop talking like that, Nouri. That's not nice....

Of course we won't leave till you tell us we can go. No, not in Iraq either. Promise.... Okay, can you calm down? Did you calm down? ....Yes, I know it's a religion of peace, Nouri....Yes, and tolerance. Peace and tolerance, Nouri...Both together, yes, Nouri....No, I won't forget that for a minute, Nouri. I promise. Not for one minute.... Okay, are you calm, now? Nouri, can you please calm down? ....All right, we'll listen now. Who should we call?... Who should we call, Nouri? The sheikhs at Al-Azhar? Al-Qaradawi...? Someone in Saudi Arabia? Nouri, are you definitely a Shi'a?... Why do I ask? Well, Nouri, I think it matters, doesn't it? Not sure, but I think you guys have some differences, isn't that right, Nouri? I just wanted to be sure. You know, in case you guys in Iraq decided you wanted to fit in with the other Arabs and become Sunnis...Wouldn't that just make things easier for everyone, Nouri? For you, for me, for Dick, for the Arab League, wouldn't it? ...

You tell me, Nouri. You tell me what I should think you think... Whatever you say goes... No, Nouri, I am not making fun of you. Believe me, Nouri....Nouri, listen, in these things you're the boss, okay? ... Oh, yes I should have known. Right, our new ambassador in Iraq, Crocker, he's on your side, isn't he? And General Petraeus, you know he's with you... Right, Nouri, hearts. And minds. Yes, you're right. He is the one who said that insurgencies last on average ten years. And this one is not even five years old. Yes, you are right, Nouri. Your arithmetic is right. So you should have five more years. Yes, I do know about algebra, Nouri, Yes, I know the Arabs invented mathematics. Yes, and optics too, Nouri.. Optics, I said optics, Nouri. Yes, and all of science. It's all in the Qur'an. I know about the greatness of the Arabs, Nouri. I just forgot. Sorry. I should have known....No, Nouri, I'm not being sarcastic....No, Nouri....

Nouri, does that mean all Shias over there are just like the ones in Iran? No? So you're different. You wear ties and they don't. What's that got to do with it? Oh, I see. That's good, Nouri. That's very good. Glad to hear it, Nouri. That takes a big weight off my mind. And Dick, too, he's smiling now. Can you see Dick smile? It's a big weight off Dick's mind, too, Nouri. He's glad you are different Shias from those other Shias in Iran. Those guys are mean. Glad to know you're different. We didn't realize about the tie thingy.....

No, I'm sorry, Nouri, I didn't mean any disrespect. Just trying to figure it all out..... Yes, Nouri, it is complicated for us here.... Why does it matter? Well, you tell me, Nouri. Does it matter? Should it matter, Nouri? Should I think it should matter? I mean, do you get arrested and maybe executed if you are a former Ba'athist or a Sunni or just if you are a former Sunni Ba'athist?... What's that, Nouri? Oh, it doesn't matter? Not the least little bit? Not even the teeniest little bit? Same punishment? Gosh, Nouri, you guys really take it seriously, don't you?... No, Nouri, I didn't mean that. No, Nouri, I didn't mean to insult you. It's just that I didn't realize.... No, It's fine...Yes, Nouri. Yes, I apologize. I sincerely apologize. I won't say that again....No, Nouri, I'll never do it again...How sincerely, Nouri? Very sincerely, that's how sincerely...Is that alright?... No, the Vice-President won't either. No, I can guarantee it, Nouri. I promise, Nouri...Yes, Nouri, I'll have him call you on the video hook-up later and tell you him...Of course not...Yes, I know how you feel... No one in the American government will ever ever make fun....uh, you, sorry, your picture faded away for a minute there... Here you are again. See you just fine now. Here, I'll wave to you, Nouri. Wave back. That's right. You look good, Nouri. Been jogging? You don't jog? It's too dangerous in the Green Zone right now? Oh, I see. Sorry, I had no idea.

So what's the best person to call about getting this whole compromise thing going with your Sunni brothers, Nouri...? They're not your brothers? You hate them, Nouri? They have to call you and beg to be allowed to stay in Iraq, Nouri? They have to apologize for everything they've done in the last 1350 years? And especially since modern Iraq was founded? Uh-huh... Listen, do you happen to have the phone number on you of Moqtada al-Sadr?... Whe-ah, what? I see, just ask for Baghdad information...

Ah-ah-eh-uhm-hm... I'm sorry, too, Nouri... I'm very sorry... All right, you're sorrier than I am, but I am as sorry as well... I am as sorry as you are, Nouri! Don't say that you're more sorry than I am, because I'm capable of being just as sorry as you are... So we're both sorry, all right?... All right.

Islamic cleric to "wage jihad" if US attacks Waziristan

Maulana Mohammad Yaseem Naumani threatens to wage an interior spiritual struggle against the Americans, saying that the U.S. has "ruined" Iraq in the name of American interests -- an ironic charge in light of all the American efforts to stave off Iraq's ruin. "Cleric to 'wage jihad' if US attacks Waziristan," by Wajid Ali Wajid for GulfNews (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist):

Islamabad: The top religious cleric in the volatile tribal Waziristan region has said there are no foreign militants or training camps in the area. He also threatened to wage a jihad against US and Nato forces if they used any pretext to attack.

Talking to Gulf News yesterday, Maulana Mohammad Yaseem Naumani, chief cleric of the Gul Pakhel Jamia Masjid in Miranshah, the agency's headquarters, said Islam negates terrorism at all levels. But he said it does not mean the opponents of Islam believe in this as well.

"If the occupation US or Nato forces stationed in Afghanistan launch an attack on our territory, the tribesmen here will not retaliate but inside Afghanistan because the Wazir tribe is on both sides of the border.

Intelligence

"The people of Pakistan can very well imagine that the same US intelligence who told the world Iraq had weapons of mass destruction [WMDs] is claiming the existence of foreign militants or training camps in our area. Where are those WMDs now," the cleric said.

"The Iraqi WMDs were used as a pretext to ruin that Muslim country for American interests, the same game is being played here but the tribal people will not allow this," he added.

The prayer leader said the US was targeting Muslims around the world merely on the basis of their religion and using several pretext, including Al Qaida to subjugate them.

"We are regretful - not for the US - but for the Muslims who support their attacks on Muslims," the cleric added.

Bosnian Muslims mark 600 years of Islam in Bosnia

From AP via The Star Online:

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Bosnian Muslims celebrate 600 years of Islam in their nation Saturday with a concert of spiritual music, a prayer for peace, and a gentle reminder to Europe: not all of the continent's Muslims are of immigrant origin.

"Recently we have noticed that Europe is obsessed by the immigrant Muslims from the East,'' said Mustafa Ceric, head of the Bosnia Islamic Community, the official institution of Bosnia's Muslims. "This is an opportunity to remind that there are indigenous Muslims in Europe.''

"By celebrating 600 years of Islam here we want to naturalize Islam in Europe,'' he said, adding that Bosnia's Muslims have illustrated how Islam can be harmonized with a European way of life.

Sarajevo is a good place to send a message of peace, since the last century started and ended with a with a war in Sarajevo, Ceric said.

Is anyone able to put two and two together here? Maybe it had something to do with the presence of Islam in the Balkans that the region has been so marked by conflict? And what sort of "European way of life" does Islam intend to "harmonize with"? Fascism? Genocide? Spitting on America?

The 1914 assassination in Sarajevo of the crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian empire triggered World War I. And genocide was carried out on Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

For those still laboring under the adumbrated delusions of the most recent round of Balkan wars, see Diane Johnstone's Fool's Crusade or anything on the matter by Serge Trifkovic.

Islam arrived in Bosnia with the Ottoman occupation in 1463 and found the local population split between Roman Catholicism, a dying indigenous Bosnian Church, and Christian Orthodoxy.

Islam spread over the next 400 years of Ottoman rule, mostly thanks to tax cuts and other benefits given to those who converted. It remains the faith of almost half of Bosnia's population.

Tax cuts. That's right -- tax cuts. Were the Muslim conquerors Republicans? One assumes that this is a reference to the converts' not having to pay protection money, the jizya, to the Muslim overlords. Other advantages included not having one's children taken as slaves by the Devshirme system and getting to keep your head if you were late on your protection payments. Read on, if you like.

Iran's Khamenei says U.S. and Israel are main foes

Shock horror! Who would have thought it?

1938 Alert from Reuters (thanks to Mackie):

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday the United States and Israel were his country's main enemies, just days after U.S.-Iranian talks about Iraq's security.

Iran and the United States cut diplomatic ties shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. They held talks in Baghdad on Tuesday to find ways to restore security in Iraq, after an earlier round in May.

"The Zionist regime (Israel) and the American government are the main enemies of Iran, and hatred for America is deepening every day around the globe," Khamenei said in a televised speech.

Fitzgerald: The new survey of Muslim attitudes means nothing

More Muslims reject extremism, survey finds: Support for bombings fell in seven of eight Muslim countries surveyed -- the headline to this story

This survey means nothing, except insofar as it has the ability to mislead and console the unwary. Why? Suicide bombings are now taking place not against the Americans -- who mostly suffer casualties from I.E.D.'s, but against other Muslims, in both Iraq and Pakistan, where they are directed against the government. And there have been other cases in Lebanon and in Saudi Arabia. And it may have spread to the Maghreb. Muslims are well aware of this. They are well aware that suicide bombings may be a threat to them, to their own wellbeing, as they walk down the streets of Cairo or Damascus or Beirut or Algiers or Riyadh.

And they are also well aware of what damage, not all terrorism, but a particular kind of terrorism -- suicide bombing -- does to the all-important "image" of Islam. It is too easy to put into a political cartoon a suicide-belted fanatic. That can be easily grasped by the viewer. A growing number of Muslims obviously feel keenly the public-relations problem, which for them is quite different from moral abhorrence.

Imagine, if you will, that there were no suicide bombs going off in Iraq, or now in Pakistan, or in Algiers, or, here and there, even in Lebanon, or Morocco. Imagine that you are a Muslim living in Doha or Dearborn. If in Doha, you probably don't like the idea that suicide-bombers could suddenly decide that the Al-Thani family has been too friendly to Infidels (it's nonsense), or that the wife of the reigning ruler is a bit too fashionably got up and too "feminist" in her leanings. And these suicide-bombings, you might feel at this point, are something to be discouraged, for they might come to you.

And if you are a Muslim in Dearborn, and are keenly aware of the need to lie low for now, and to proceed softly-softly so as to ensure that you have the time to solidly insinuate yourself into the American landscape. You do this not least through constant repetition of phrases about "three abrahamic faiths" and a deliberate emphasis, with which the media plays eager ball, on how family-oriented (you bet!) Muslims are, and what good incomes Muslims make in this country (a sign which we are apparently to interpret as making them more American, Just Like Us, Nearer My God to Thee) and all kinds of other things. None of them, of course, have anything to do with the texts or tenets or inculcated beliefs of Islam, such as sole loyalty being owed only to Islam and fellow members of the Umma. None mention the disbelief in pluralism (save where, in countries still controlled by Infidels, such "pluralism" can be exploited to Muslim advantage), or in individual rights and autonomy (Islam is a collectivist faith; the individual does not matter, and he certainly is not to be permitted the Western ideas of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech).

That's it. Some of those answering the survey of Muslim "opinion" surely have learned by now that they can answer any damn way that suits the interests of Islam, and would naturally wish to put the best face on Islam for the Infidels that they can. So the lying, which we shall primly describe as the "margin for error," only goes one way -- and the size of that "margin" in a culture of lying for Islam must be very large. Certainly it cannot possibly be estimated in any plausible way.

All such polls of Muslims, when they have at hand a worked-out doctrine of religiously-sanctioned dissiumulation (taqiyya and kitman, both of which are ultimately derived from Muhammad's declaration that "war is deception" -- a statement taken to heart over the past 1350 years of Islamic history) are silly. Or rather, they are useful only in establishing the absolutely minimum number of Muslims who might support something hideous. If 29% of Muslims living in Great Britain, for example, reply to a poll that they support acts of terrorism within Britain itself, then one has a base line -- 29% -- and can conclude, with confidence, that at least 29% of Muslims in Great Britain would support domestic terrorism. But that is all one can say. One cannot say, with equal confidence, that 71% of Muslims living in Great Britain are unalterably opposed, or even opposed, to acts of terrorism within Great Britain. One cannot say that those who are opposed to such acts of terrorism within Great Britain are also opposed to such acts in, say, New York or Washington, D.C., or for that matter Jerusalem or Delhi or Bombay.

And the main point is this: is any declared opposition to a particular kind of terrorism -- as suicide bombing -- based on fear that this weapon could easily be used, as in Iraq and Pakistan, against Muslim regimes, and so be a threat, given the nature of the weapon, to the security of Muslim streets in Muslim cities, combined with a worry over Islam's "image"? Or is it a principled opposition to the random killing of non-combatants? And does it extend to Infidels, and if so, to all Infidels, or only those who live in cities where there are also Muslims who might suffer?

Without knowing the answers to these questions, these polls are, and will remain, guides to nothing and nowhere. Polling is an exceedingly clumsy way to find out the truth about what Muslims think. What they think surely must come from what they are taught to think, in environments in which Islam informs every area of life, in a way that no other faith does or ever has, but that can only be compared, in its overwhelmingness, to living in a totalitarian state, with the ruling ideology that is in the very air one breathes. Nevertheless, this poll will be taken seriously, and misused, in order to prolong naivete, unwariness, willful ignorance, and a willful refusal to study and to think about the unprecedented problem of millions of Muslims allowed to live, without anyone having thought much about it, in the countries of Western Europe and North America, and the consequences of that heedlessness, that nearly criminal negligence, that civilizational frivolity.

Fitzgerald: Appeal to Muslim self-interest

The seizures at airports in San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore included "wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances," including block cheese, the bulletin said. "The unusual nature and increase in number of these improvised items raise concern." -- from this article

Much more information should be given out about Muslims who are picked up for such things, rather than keep it all hush-hush. Why? Because one way to inhibit Muslim behavior, or to channel some of it in a way that can help us, the Infidels, is to give every such act so much publicity, that the damage to Islam, and to Muslim interests broadly conceived, may make local Muslims turn in or discourage others.

They will do so because the position of Muslims in Western societies will be increasingly endangered, as it should be, by the continued examples of would-be terrorism. The reason Tariq Ramadan counsels patience and temporary pseudo-"integration" into the West, and with a serpentine hiss keeps mentioning some kind of non-existent and absurd-on-its-face construct, so-called "European Islam" (presumably with different, bowdlerized "for European readers only" versions of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira), is not because he does not wish for the ultimate triumph of Islam, but because he does.

If, and only if, Muslim interests -- conceived broadly -- are made to suffer from such dry-runs and attempts at terrorism, will there be much greater Muslim cooperation in monitoring other Muslims in this and other Infidel countries. There should be a great deal of publicity about this, not merely a laconic TSA statement. What, after all, happened to all those people found to be carrying such materials on board planes? Where are they now? What are their names? Disclosure of all this will inevitably do damage to the image of Islam. And only when the damage to Islam is felt to outweigh the benefits of terrorism will two things happen:

1) a sufficient number of Muslims, for practical not moral reasons, will more energetically monitor, and turn in, those who are actively participating in Jihad (so far the cooperation of Muslims has been almost non-existent); and

2) those Muslims who are actively engaged in terrorism may decide that at this point the position of Islam in the West needs not to be further endangered, and that it is better to proceed through use of the Money Weapon, Da'wa, and demographic conquest, rather than by means of the instrument of terrorism.

Terrorists must not only be caught and killed, or caught before they can act, but the instrument of terrorism must be seen to damage the cause of Islam, the image of Islam. And that requires more, much greater, publicity to every single attempt.

Why does the government not understand this? Why do other Western governments not understand? Why do so many newspaper accounts avoid the words "Islam" and "Muslim"? Why do government officials so often do the same? In so doing, in attempting not to annoy Muslims, not to cause "resentment," they are not winning Muslim cooperation. That can only be won by appeals to self-interest, to making Muslims in the West understand that their position is not quite as secure as they allow themselves to believe, and that once aroused Infidels can and will take whatever measures they deem necessary to protect themselves. And that we, in contradistinction to the Israelis, are not going to endure, as a given, a level of terrorist threat that would make our lives, and has already made many lives, much more unpleasant and physically dangerous than they ought to be or have to be.

There are ways to constrain and deter. One way is to make sure that such acts -- the attempts at "dry runs" as well as the real thing -- will be on every news program, in every newspaper, and that every such "dry run" attempt will be given publicity that, inexorably, will damage the overall interests of Islam. That is the only way to modify Muslim behavior -- not appeals to decency or a "common humanity" that have no basis in the theology of Islam. Ask those who know best -- the defectors from Islam. Ask Walid Shoebat, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They will set the naive straight.

Fitzgerald: "Anti-jihad" initiative offers no hope for Infidels

In a prison cell south of Cairo a repentant Egyptian terrorist leader is putting the finishing touches to a remarkable recantation that undermines the Muslim theological basis for violent jihad and is set to generate furious controversy among former comrades still fighting with al-Qaida.

[…]

Their authors are neither secular nor liberal: their self-criticism includes observations that the wrong path to jihad benefits only the Jews, the US and Egypt's Christian minority. -- from this article

There is no reason -- none -- for Infidels to be relieved, much less overjoyed, at this news. This is purely an internal Muslim matter. It has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam, the texts of Islam, the inculcated hostility or hatred toward Infidels, and the state of permanent war (not necessarily active warfare, but war) that must exist between the Muslim world and Infidels. For Infidels, the ability of this or that group of Muslims to convince another group of Muslims not to consider them to be “Infidels” (the “takfir” business) not only offers no hope to us, the full-fledged Infidels, but is likely to be misunderstood. Ignorant Infidels eager to grasp at straws will seize upon it -- and there are a great many of those “taking a leadership role” who, almost willfully ignorant, are eager to grasp at those straws. They will take it as proving what it does not prove and cannot prove: that Muslim terrorists can be "reformed" and that if only we play our cards right, and do nothing to offend Muslims, why then the same new view of things can extend to us, the Infidels.

It can't. It won't. There is no possibility, in Islam, of doing away with the central view on which that fighting faith is so obviously based: on the opposition of Believer to Infidel. Islam itself was concocted early on to justify conquests already under way by Arabs, conquests of lands possessed by far more settled, wealthy, advanced populations of Christians and Jews (and later, Zoroastrians, and later still, Hindus, Buddhists, and others).

What has happened as described above is simply that clever and ruthless and corrupt regimes are accused (quite rightly) of being corrupt and ruthless. The accusers naturally framing their opposition in Islamic terms. They must describe those regimes -- the Al-Saud princes, princelings, and princelettes, or Mubarak and his family-and-friends plan -- as "un-Islamic," and the rulers as "non-Muslim." Since, in Islam, one is encouraged to obey the Ruler, no matter how ruthless, as long as that Ruler (or government) can be called "Muslim," the only way to arouse opposition in states and societies full of Muslims is to put everything in terms of Islam.

Americans and other Westerners have failed to realize this. They have failed in the past to realize that the numbers of the truly Westernized and secularized are small, and that they -- such people as Kanan Makiya and Mithal al-Alusi and Ahmad Chalabi -- will forever be a small minority. Thus when we fashion policy on the assumption that they or others like them will win out, it always will lead to naught. In the end one Muslim regime will be replaced by another.

Still another, even more dangerous conclusion, is that drawn by some who believe we have "nothing to fear" from Muslims who are, or seem to be, outraged largely by domestic corruption. Obviously the Slow Jihadists of Fatah are much more corrupt than Hamas. Their cosmetic accommodation with the West, and their differences on timing and tactics (a longer wait, and less obvious support for outright annihilation by military means of the state of Israel) should not obscure the fact that their goals remain the same. In Egypt, Mubarak's regime is corrupt and unjust (which causes his opposition) and also meretricious abroad. Yet it manages by uttering a few phrases to be a continuous recipient of American aid (more than $60 billion) -- though its regime is vicious, and its people far more anti-American than, say, the people in Iran.

Some now argue, in their latest attempt to ignore or miscomprehend Islam, that we should take the side of the opponents of such regimes, and not be "afraid" to work with, for example, the Ikhwan, the Muslim Brotherhood, "as long as its methods are peaceful."

This is senseless. Of course the Ikhwan will promise us, we the foolable Infidels, that its methods are "peaceful." Of course the opposition to the Al-Saud, similarly, can rightly point to the viciousness of the regime, and suggest that if only...if only, the Americans and other Westerners would support them, they would be glad they did, because an honest regime of Muslims will result. These Muslims, we will be told, and are being told, are "not part of Al Qaeda." That is formally true, and also utterly irrelevant). We will be told that this new regime will create -- well, something. Something good.

One lesson from Iraq is that the Infidels should not presume to think that they can undo the effects, or attitudes, or atmospherics, of Islam. Only those regimes in Muslim countries that can hold Islam in check, and what's more, work steadily to create a class that is truly secular, and a class that will be able to constantly enlarge its numbers through iron-fisted control of education and the media, can contribute to lessening the overall menace of Islam. Turkey under Kemal Pasha was such a regime. But he died in 1938, and those Turks who are secularized and Westernized, that is, those who managed to get beyond deep belief in the obvious replacement-theology of "the Turk" and "Ataturk" (instead of "Believers" and "Muhammad"), relied too heavily on the army as the final guarantor of their own position. Instead, they should all have been working night and day to enlarge their own ranks, and to constrain Islam still further, using whatever elaborated ideas they could. They might also have encouraged a truthful coming-to-terms with the Armenian genocide. What's more, they could have begun openly to discuss just how many "Turks" must, in fact, be of Armenian, Greek, Jewish origin -- and even encouraged a "search for roots." (The same thing, by the way, would be useful in Iran, where a revival of interest in Zoroastrianism, and a depiction of Islam as the "Arab gift" that turned out to be the source of so much present and past woe, sounds absurd, but it isn’t.)

What is described in the article above is only an intra-Islamic accommodation. As such, it has no meaning for Infidels and offers nothing useful that will help them. In fact, like other kinds of accommodation, like that sought by the Bush Administration in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi'a, it may actually work against us. For we do not want an Egypt or a Saudi Arabia where there is no domestic opposition. We want the Al-Saud to go to bed at night worried about what will happen to them. We want them to be deeply concerned about whether or not foreign workers, without whom Saudi Arabia would collapse, will stay. We want them to worry about the loyalty of their people. We want them to worry about all that so much that they will discover the need to stop spending the fortunes they are spending on mosques and madrasas, and on public relations campaigns -- such as the recent transparent campaign of Op/Eds and media appearances and coordinated "Letters to the Editor," all meant to demonstrate that "Muslims" in America are "just as American as apple pie," aw-shucks and good country people. The whole shtick was designed carefully to keep us from looking at the texts and tenets of Islam. Rather, it focused on participation in some local group, all very inspiring. No doubt, such sentimentalists as Bush or the unsentimental careerist Dinesh D'Souza would focus on this kind of thing as "proving" that there is no problem with Islam, no menace from campaigns of Da'wa and demographic conquest all over the European half of the West, because this or that Muslim has run for office (and therefore this means he must have "accepted" the American way, for he has chosen not to throw bombs but to "work within the system").

And, as a just-published article by Stanley Kurtz shows, the Saudi effort is not limited to all those mosques (with the anti-Infidel hate literature that the Center for Religious Freedom investigators discovered) and madrasas and public relations specialists (Western hirelings, eager to take on any client, indifferent to the results to their own society, even possibly to their own children). Now there is also an effort to take control of how Islam is taught in schools, and to carefully limit what is said and written in those carefully-compiled courses, with the lesson plans all prefabricated, and the syllabi all pre-written. Read what Kurtz has to say, and then read as well what Sandra Stotsky says in her study of what is being done in Massachusetts, thanks in part to "Middle East experts" relying on their ability to intimidate and silence opposition -- because, you see, they are associated with Harvard.

Saudi Arabia's rulers are not our friends. And we do not wish or should not wish them well. We should wish that their domestic opposition causes them anguish and worry. We should not be happy that the Saudi rulers, or the Egyptian rulers, have found a way -- if they have found a way -- to stay solidly in power by making sure that Al Qaeda, and all others who wish to participate personally in active Jihad, operate only outside their countries.

If indeed some of the most corrupt and vicious regimes have managed to successfully deal with the "takfir" problem -- that is, the problem of one group of Muslims defining another group as "not Muslim" or as "Infidels" who can be treated as Infidels of course can be treated -- that is to their advantage, but not to ours. We will only suffer the more. We have a stake in encouraging division and demoralization in the Arab and Muslim world. If our cities are not off-limits to the Jihad, we have a stake in Riyadh and Jiddah and Cairo and Damascus being similarly unsettled. We have a stake in Muslim regimes that cannot be allowed to believe that their domestic opposition will always and everywhere target only the certified Infidels of the West, or only the local non-Muslims. Nothing is said in the article above about managing to convince Al-Qaeda supporters in Egypt to lessen their vicious hostility to non-Muslims, such as the insecure and frightened Copts.

The more secure the Mubarak regime is, the more that dissatisfied Egyptians can no longer take out their dissatisfaction against the regime but are persuaded that their only enemies are, as before, the "Infidels," the more likely it is that they will, within Egypt, attack the Copts. It is still more likely that they will go off to attack the Infidels elsewhere -- perhaps after having been admitted to a Western country as merely a hard-working "economic" immigrant. There are no merely "economic" immigrants among Muslims in Infidel lands; they bring Islam, undeclared, in their mental baggage, and the Infidel governments, like the people they are supposed to be protecting, simply have no understanding of this.

No, for Infidels this news means nothing good, and very likely will make our task, rightly conceived, much harder. And just wait. Just how many breathless articles do you think you will now see from oily Fawaz Gerges, from lean, mean, jogging John Esposito, from that thrusting young academic who seems deplorably to have turned his media party trick (raised as an "Orthodox Jew" but now an "expert on Islam") into a frequent gig at The Times, Noah Feldman, from Tom Friedman and from Nicholas Kristof, in other words -- tutti quanti -- about what "hope" this new development offers, and what a magnificent model this is for us, if only we do not listen to "those who preach that there can be no accommodation with Islam" when the turn-around in the minds of former terrorists, by the Egyptian authorities, is..."nothing short of miraculous"?

Oh God. Spare us this kind. But we won't be spared.

Fitzgerald: "Fanaticism plus Machiavellianism plus brutality equals Islamic Pakistan"

I recently picked up at a book sale a copy of "The Miscellany," edited by P. Lal, and published in Calcutta. Issue #51 (June 1972), was one of three devoted to the then recently-deceased, at age 41, David McCutchion. An Englishman, David McCutchion was a lover of India, but not of the william-dalrympish sort, that is the kind who loves the luxe of the Moghul court and its love intrigues. Nor was he the kind of Englishman (also william-dalrympish) of the walking-across-half-a-continent-when-young sort, making use of local color of the human interest kind, often grizzled or wizened or wizenedly grizzled picturesque Muslims, to do the work for him. (These are downmarket Byrons and Newbys, not to mention the now-unfashionable, because bookish, traveller Gide in "Le Retour du Tchad.")

Rather, McCutchion was a true scholar, an Indophile who studied brick temples in Bengal, and Indian writing. He was a friend of Satyajit Ray and all sorts of interesting people in Calcutta who never get the attention in the West that all those anti-Western islamisant arundhati-roys manage to get.

I read through “The Miscellany” #51 -- and discovered a tribute from the Sanskrit (and Buddhism) scholar Richard Gombrich (son of E. H.). He opened his essay, titled “His Work Is Unrepeatable,” with this:

“The recent death of Mr. David McCutchion in Calcutta at the age of 41 is a catastrophe for oriental studies.” Gombrich describes McCutchion as a scholar who “devoted all his time, his money, and his exceptional energy and enthusiasm, to the study of arts and monuments which are fast disappearing. He tramped all over Bengal, both West and East, taking notes and photographs; his knowledge of the countryside was famous. A self-taught photographer, he spared no pains to take the perfect shot; and he leaves well over ten thousand colour slides and as many black and white photographs of high professional quality…..His greatest specialties were Bengali temple architecture and terra-cotta sculpture, the latter a lost skill of whose monuments little is known to the wider world; he also studied and collected Bengali scroll paintings. He explored many other parts of India too, and recorded even Gupta temples previously unknown.”

And a little more, taken from a website:

“David McCutchion (1930-1972), English-born scholar, Indophile and early critic of Raja Rao, was an authentic pioneer: in his short lifetime...made a major contribution to the study of Bengali temples...one of the first scholars to write on the now much commented subject of Indian Writing in English....Born in Coventry, David attended that city's King Henry VIII Grammar School. He made it to Cambridge University the hard way, on intellectual merit alone. He read Modern Languages (French and German) at Jesus College. After graduating in 1953, he taught English for two years in southern France. He went to India in 1957. He worked there first as an English teacher...and later, as Professor and then Reader in Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, Calcutta.... David's ground-breaking study of Bengali brick temples, The Temples of Bankura District, was published by Writers Workshop in 1972.”

David McCutchion lived through the war made by West Pakistan (now Pakistan) on East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in 1970-71. This was a war in which Muslim fanatics in East Pakistan, locally called razakars, joined forces with the raping and murdering army of West Pakistan. They accepted the argument that what was good for Pakistan -- that is, staying one country -- was necessarily good for Islam, and what was good for Islam was all that mattered.

Here is how, in a letter from England to a friend, McCuthion described the behavior of Pakistan:

“…We are raising funds [for those in what was then East Pakistan being murdered by the army of West Pakistan and its local, fervently Muslim East Pakistani collaborators], and hope to see the Minister of Overseas Development. What do I think of it all? Appalling…Pakistan shou’d never have existed -- it has cost more lives than the whole of the British Empire in 200 years. What should I think of a culture that burns down the British Council library in Lahore because an English publisher printed a picture of Mahomet? Fanaticism plus Machiavellianism plus brutality equals Islamic Pakistan.”

One More Time:

"What do I think of it all? Appalling...Pakistan shou'd never have existed -- it has cost more lives than the whole of the British Empire in 200 years. What should I think of a culture that burns down the British Council library in Lahore because an English publisher printed a picture of Mahomet? Fanaticism plus Machiavellianism plus brutality equals Islamic Pakistan."

Print out that last bit, and put it on your refrigerator, under the title: Pakistan.

Man arrested for hate crime for Qur'an desecration

Sharia thoughtcrime comes to the U.S.: a man throws a Qur'an into a toilet, and has now been charged with a "hate crime." The unindicted co-conspirators of CAIR are, of course, involved.

"Hate-crime arrests in Quran desecrations at Pace University," from AP (thanks to LGF):

NEW YORK (AP) _ A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said.

Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said. It was unclear if he was a student at the school. A message left at the Shmulevich home was not immediately returned.

The Islamic holy book was found in a toilet at Pace's lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.

Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.

No one, of course, is calling upon those "Muslim activists" to take a strong stand against those Muslims who are justifying violence on the basis of the Qur'an and thereby lead people like Stanislav Shmulevich to come to despise the book.

The school was accused by Muslim students of not taking the incident seriously enough at first. Pace classified the first desecration of the holy book as an act of vandalism, but university officials later reversed themselves and referred the incident to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit.

The incidents came amid a spate of vandalism cases with religious or racial overtones at the school. In an earlier incident on Sept. 21, the school reported another copy of the Quran was found in a library toilet, and in October someone scrawled racial slurs on a student's car at the Westchester County satellite campus and on a bathroom wall at the campus in lower Manhattan. Police did not connect Shmulevich to those incidents.

Treatment of the Quran is a sensitive issue for Muslims, who view the book as a sacred object and mistreating it as an offense against God. The religion teaches that the Quran is the direct word of God....

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the national CAIR office in Washington, D.C., has said the organization receives frequent reports of Quran desecrations in the United States, especially postings on Internet sites, but seldom makes them public.

He said CAIR decided to speak out about the Pace incidents because Muslim students are impacted by the creation of what could be viewed as a hostile campus environment.

LGF has background on ongoing dhimmitude at Pace and more.

WaPo touts two Hizballah supporters' definitions of jihad

"The Many Meanings of Jihad to 2 Prominent Muslims" in today's Washington Post is part of their ongoing "On Faith" whitewash series, in which prominent Muslims retail pleasing platitudes about Islam and ignore the real issues. This segment is no exception: the paper's introductory paragraph to the statements by Ali Gomaa and Ayatollah Fadlallah even acknowledges that Fadlallah is "known for his support of the armed Shiite movement Hezbollah" (not, you'll notice, the "terrorist group Hezbollah"), although it doesn't mention Ali Gomaa's support for the same terrorist group.

Ali Gomaa's bit is entitled "Jihad Is Not Just Armed Struggle." The frequency with which Islamic apologists trot out this particular theme always surprises me. This is supposed to be reassuring to the potential and actual targets of armed jihad? I fail to see how the fact that jihad has multiple meanings, including interior spiritual struggle, somehow renders less lethal the AK's and bombs with which other jihadists wage jihad.

After sketching out jihad's pacific meanings, Gomaa says:

...In addition to these meanings, the term jihad refers to the defense of a nation or a just cause. These characteristics that amount to "in the way of God" are summed up in the Koran, "Fight in the way of God against those who wage war against you, but do not commit aggression -- for, verily, God does not love aggressors." (2:190) . . .

In saying this, Ali Gomaa does nothing to refute the jihadist contention that all non-Muslim belief constitutes aggression against the Muslims that allows the Muslims to fight back. Sayyid Qutb says that "aggression has been committed in the first place, against God's Lordship of the universe and against other human beings who are forced to submit to deities other than God." "Aggression," then, is rebelling against God and submission to deities other than God: he sees the aggression simply as not believing in Islam. So does the British jihadist Anjem Chaudary, here.

Thus by emphasizing that Muslims must not be aggressors, Ali Gomaa has said something that non-Muslims will understand in one way, and jihadists in quite another. And his statement does nothing to show those jihadists in any way that what they are doing is wrong from an Islamic perspective.

Same thing with the rest of it:

As for suicide bombing, Islam forbids suicide, it forbids the taking of one's own life. Attacking civilians, women, children and the elderly by blowing oneself up is absolutely forbidden in Islam. No excuse can be made for the crimes committed in New York, Spain and London, and anyone who tries to make excuses for these acts is ignorant of Islamic law (Sharia), and their excuses are a result of extremism and ignorance.

The bit about no excuses for New York, Spain, and London is good, but here again, what Ali Gomaa says will not convince any jihadists that they are on the wrong path, since they contend that suicide bombers are not committing suicide, they are seeking Islamic martyrdom (per Qur'an 9:111, which guarantees Paradise to those who "kill and are killed" for Allah), and thus the prohibition of suicide doesn't apply to them. And they further contend that their targets are not civilians at all, but people who are aiding in the war against Islam, and thus are fair game.

If Ali Gomaa really wants to stand for reform in Islam, he needs to address and refute those contentions on Islamic grounds. But he doesn't do that here.

Fadlallah is no better:

Jihad in Islam (the violent confrontation of the enemy) is the fighting movement that aims at preventing the enemy from forcing its hegemony over the land and the people by means of violence that confiscates freedom, kills the people, usurps the wealth and prevents the people's rights in self-determination. Therefore, Jihad is confronting violence by means of violence and force by force, which makes it of a defensive nature at times and a preventive one at others.

And who is the enemy, and what constitutes its hegemony? Fadlallah has said nothing incompatible with the idea that Muslims must wage war until "religion is for Allah" (Qur'an 2:193) -- that is, until the hegemony of Islamic law is established over the whole world.

He then goes on to explain that jihad is purely self-defense, which in light of Qutb's and Chaudary's contention about the aggressive nature of unbelief, gets us exactly nowhere once again.

As for those suicidal bombers who kill innocent people, as well those who accuse others of unbelief, just because they differ with them in some sectarian views even within the same religion, or those who explode car bombs, killing women, children, elderly and youth who have nothing to do with any war of aggression. To those we say that their inhuman brutal actions have nothing to do with Islam whatsoever, and that what they are doing will lead to God's wrath and not His satisfaction.

The key word in that paragraph is "innocent."

Distort D'Newsa

That, I'm told, was Dinesh D'Souza's nickname in his Dartmouth days, and I have come to see in my recent interactions with him how